Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big ethnic group living in US, which is named today as "African Americans" and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people. The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants. So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but because of their distinct cultural backgrounds. I didn't raise this issue because it is not common to see ethnic minorities underrepresented. It is common everywhere. However, obvious underrepresentation of the 30M+ ethnic group which native language is English and who are living in a developed country is very unusual. This issue is not the same as the gender issue. In comparison with women, male aggressive behavior is the same for all Y-chromosome backgrounds. It is based on cultural background and I don't think that there are big differences between middle class Americans of African and European origins. Speaking about numbers [1], there are ~100M of non Latin American females and almost 38M of African Americans. According to the fact that we have a number of prominent American female Wikimedians, I would expect that we have a couple of prominent African American Wikimedians. The situation with economic emigration from the second part of 20th century is different, especially in Europe. Their connections with the country of origin are still strong enough; they are fluently bilingual and they tend to edit Wikipedias in languages of their origin. A lot of the first wave of Wikipedia editors at Balkan languages projects were from diaspora, in fact. And it is not just about Balkans. A lot of Persian and Russian Wikimedia projects editors are not living in Iran or Russia. Unlike in those cases, native language of African Americans is English; usually, they are not bilinguals and they don't have another language edition of Wikimedia projects to edit. I wouldn't say that the problem is inside of particular ethnic group. I would say that the problem is inside of us. During the Open Translation Tools 2007 [2] in Zagreb I've met two African American females in the group with less than 10 Americans. If there is a comparable event to ours, than OTT is for sure of that kind. It is about software and culture, both, as Wikimedia events are. It should be noted that OTT community is much smaller than Wikimedia community. But, they are similar to us and they are catching something which we aren't. Sue mentioned tech-centricity of Wikimedia community. I would say that it is a good enough explanation for less women and less African Americans in Wikimedian community. But, disproportion in the case of African Americans is much bigger than disproportion in the case of American women. Note, also, that not all American women inside of Wikimedia community have tech background. So, logical question is: Are there numbers which confirm that there are significantly less African Americans with tech jobs than American women? There is also the fact that Wikimedia community has the culture distinct from tech communities. The ticket for becoming a member is not knowledge of programming languages, but knowledge of relatively simple wiki syntax. From my experience, there are no so much non-tech persons who are not able to adopt wiki syntax. Participation in OTT [2] requires similar level of tech knowledge, if not higher. Also, I think that it is possible that we are one of the causes, not the consequence of that stratification. Not intentionally, of course, but that our culture is giving fuel to those trends. I wouldn't say that not so user friendly interface is the main reason for that kind of stratification. I suppose that the picture would be much different if we would be able to know social and ethnic composition of those who edit once or a couple of times and then leave Wikimedia projects. Maybe it is about "our" and "their". There are four Wikipedias written in the same language system: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian. All four communities are generally welcoming newcomers from other political areas. The question is just about treating some of those projects as home project and integration in the particular community. (Political issues are the other question: you don't need to be a member of different ethnicity to have political conflicts.) However, it is a matter of feeling some project as the home one or not. If a person don't feel particular project as their home project, that project is usually out of their focus. So, maybe African Americans generally don't feel English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in English as their own. If my assumption is true, there should be wikis [out of Wikimedia] used by African Americans. Anything on Wikia? However, existence of such wikis alone doesn't confirm my assumption. Maybe it is about the fact that we are not the top trend on Internet for a couple of years. While Wikipedia was able to attract people in 2005 and to build communities around itself, other places are doing that now: Facebook, WoW... The most important factor in community building is having similar people around you. Which similarity would become a dominant one is not so easy question. Maybe the answer is exactly in the possibility to create a community. Not movement, but smaller community, where people know each other. It is quite easy to do that at some language edition of Wikipedia which has 10-20 millions speakers in the background. It is easy if it is about language with a lot of speakers, but they have not too small but not too large territory in which they are able to organize community (Spanish speaking countries, WM UK, AU, NYC). I had to think a lot about situations similar to African Americans. It is about a (1) dispersed ethnic group which (2) shares common language, (3) which is dominantly used by another ethnic group. India could have similar issues in the future, however, poverty is much more important problem there now. So, maybe we have lack of projects where people would be able to feel as a part of community. Maybe we need more community-related services. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_United_States#Race_and_ethnici… [2] http://www.aspirationtech.org/events/opentranslation _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I suppose that it could help up to some extent. However, we have at least one -- already identified or not -- big systemic problem. And it looks to me that it is not connected exclusively to African Americans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Wikipedians 146 who use template {{User afr-amer}} on user pages. i don't know who is active in wp

On 18 November 2010 05:47, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes: click the link I sent. African-Americans make up 7.1% of tech company employees nationwide; women make up 22.7%.

Actually, none of these "statistics" are relevant, because the overwhelming majority of Wikipedians do not use userboxes to describe their nationality, age, sex, or race.

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net&gt; wrote: <snip> this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive) generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the only part of the U.S. to consider).

The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer.

The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way.

The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed, unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the habit of volunteering.

All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the opportunity arises.

Inside of the other private email I've got an interesting data related to Twitter usage. American Twitter population consists 25% of African Americans, which is more than twice more than their population [13].

Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself. User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart, conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a short write-up of his study online:

Although the most of participants in this discussion understood me well, I want to be clear: I am talking about the specific 30M+ big ethnic group living in US, which is named today as "African Americans" and which ancestors came there as slaves. I am not talking about the the second generation immigrants from, let's say, Nigeria, which would say for themselves that they belong to, for example, Yoruba people. The second group is much more like any second generation immigrants. So, obviously, there are two types of African Americans and I am referring to one particular group. And Obama doesn't belong to the first one in the same way as, for example, Manute Bol didn't. It is not because of the characteristics of their skin or lashes, but because of their distinct cultural backgrounds.

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic &lt;millosh(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any > African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in > a European country without African population, so everything seemed to > me quite normal for a long time.

We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we should focus not on why so few people out of the general population participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.*****

On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers &lt;phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Oh gosh, I want to jump in here too, super-fast. Good question, Milos :-) I think the answer to this question is complicated, but known/knowable. Essentially I think it's fairly obvious that US Wikimedians are disproportionately male and disproportionately white -- like Phoebe, that's definitely been my own anecdotal experience in meeting Wikipedians, and although the people we meet face-to-face may not be perfectly representative of all Wikipedians, we don't have any reason to think the actual US Wikimedia editor population is dramatically different from the people we happen to meet. I would attribute the maleness and whiteness mostly to the tech-centricity of the Wikimedia community. We know it's a tech-centric group, presumably because editors were in the beginning early adopter types, and continuing because the editing interface is still relatively non-user-friendly. And we know that the tech community in general (in the United States) skews male, white and Asian ... And that that is self-reinforcing over time. In fact, this research http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_14383730?nclick_check=1&forced=true found that blacks, Latinos and women are losing ground in (Silicon Valley) tech, not gaining it. I would expect that all the factors that skew tech community demographics, have a big overlap with the factors that skew Wikimedia community demographics. There's lots of good research and thinking about that. (For example, the book Unlocking the Clubhouse has lots of good thinking about gender, and some about African-Americans and Latino-Americans.) There is lots of available information. I agree with Phoebe. Wikimedians are unusual in many ways. There's probably no point in Wikimedia trying to recruit general-population "women" or "African-Americans" or "Latino-Americans." We are likelier to succeed if we aim to recruit women, African-Americans and Latino-Americans who share some of the common Wikimedia characteristics -- like, a base level of good comfort with technology, a passion for learning, love of language/words/text, unusually high intelligence, a good base level of self-confidence, sufficient leisure time and inclination to volunteer, and so forth. My two cents, written fast :-) Sue _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

We tested Kartika earlier this week, and it did very very well.  So we're putting together a campaign based around editor appeals, and many of the folks we have are not ... well, people who look like me.  So I'm very happy about that.

Obligatory current event tie-in - Could we get a more multi-ethnic "I am a Wikipedian" campaign going for the fundraising drive? As attractive looking as Jimmy is, the community isn't a million clones of him. Seeing more of the variety would certainly help attract attention, I think.

The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer. The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way. The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed, unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the habit of volunteering. Another matter, although lip service is paid, few African-Americans have an interest in Africa, at least not enough to read and edit Wikipedia. African-Americans who live in ghettos in the inner city do bear some resemblance to Roma, the educated not so much; they are generally not entreprenurial as Roma are; they tend to take salaried jobs. All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the opportunity arises. Fred Bauder

According to the statistics only 0.2% of the page views in Germany go to Wikipedia in Turkish, by the way.Turks in Germany belong largely to social classes that tend not to read much in an encyclopedia, and when they need one for school, they presumably copy their homework from Wikipedia in German.{{citation needed}}

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net&gt; wrote: <snip> this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive) generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the only part of the U.S. to consider). -- phoebe

<snip> this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive) generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the only part of the U.S. to consider). -- phoebe

[a bunch of inflammatory comments]

I wish I could live in the world you wish, where poverty and oppression of a people did not damage it. The question was not whether there are a few who edit, but why there is not mass participation, and trouble when it does emerge. Fred Bauder _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l