[Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Fred Bauder]

There seems to be nothing on Wikia, Black wiki is "about Criterion's
video game Black". Black Books wiki is about "BAEFTA award-wining sitcom,
Black Books." Nothing about African-American.

You're on to a real problem, which by the way, as should be obvious,
Americans don't know how to deal with or successfully ameliorate. As you
can see from this thread, denial is the usual defensive response which
serves to avoid the kind of detailed serious discussion you are
proposing.

If there were any demand for it, which there is not, a nationalist
"African-American" wikipedia would be acceptable, however it could not be
based on language differences.  However, I doubt that would be acceptable
to either Wikipedians generally or to any part of the African-American
community. That, after all, is segregation and paternalism.

I think we could, in the relevant articles, insure that the
African-American viewpoint as disclosed by the African-American press and
in published books and journals is included.

And an effort can be made to improve articles in the Categories:
African-American culture | African American literature | African American
studies and develop and improve the Portal:African American and articles
and issues linked from it.

Fred Bauder


> 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
>
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