[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Milos Rancic]

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 15:14, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore at gmail.com> wrote:
> We know that our core contributors are a homogeneous group and could be
> introducing biases into WMF, both in  content and policy decisions.

Of course. Those editors created Wikipedia based on their biases.
There wouldn't be Wikipedia without people whose ideology is to build
free knowledge repository. There are others, biased in other ways, and
they created, for example, Conservapedia.

> We can start from the premise that WMF is an international organizations
> that needs to find ways for people of all cultures to work to together.

That's demagogy. Whenever anyone from the *international* community
spoke about need for multicultural perspective, very precise issues
were raised. Dominant influx in this issue is not from "international"
community, but from one part of American society, supported tactically
by people who have similar positions in relation to

Besides that, the most vocal "international" people are usually
talking about imposing their POV, which is in collision with NPOV
policy.

I agree that there many issues exist and we should start gather those
issues. However, again, we are not talking here about protecting
indigenous people of Australia from publishing photos of their sacred
places, but about very common place in US. Thus, there is nothing here
with multiculturalism.

> We can recognize going into every situation that our contributions are going
> to be seen by people who do not share the biases we have.

May you list those biases, because you are talking too generally. What
are the biases of Wikipedians for yourself?

> We can attempt to avoid making stereotypical  comments about people from
> other cultures.

May you define what the phrase "other cultures" means to you? I can't
say that American culture is not mine, as well. From time to time I am
better introduced into the current events in US than in Serbia.

> If we don't do these things then it is near impossible to be an organization
> where people of all cultures feel free to express their opinion, and join
> the community. Without the opinions of these people, then we will not
> achieve our core mission.

If by "culture" you mean all parts of particular societies, then
Wikipedia is not for all of them; as neither Encyclopédie was for
everyone from Paris. Particular intellectual level is needed to be
able to accept the world as-is.