[Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Philippe Beaudette]

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.  

pb

_______________________
Philippe Beaudette
Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

pbeaudette at wikimedia.org

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On Nov 17, 2010, at 3:28 PM, George Herbert wrote:

> Thanks, Sue.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> 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.
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>>> 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.*****
>> 
>> 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
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
> 
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