[Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Milos Rancic]

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_ethnicity
[2] http://www.aspirationtech.org/events/opentranslation