Hi Matt,
How much actual editing of Wikipedia have you done? I have looked for some indication in
your rather lengthy message, but could not find any. Perhaps I have simply missed it, but
maybe you just didn’t mention, thinking that it is not relevant to the point.
Nevertheless, I would be interested to know, as it would be an indication of your exposure
to the editing environment. For the same reason, I would like to know which Wikipedia(s)
you have edited, they are not all the same.
Cheers,
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of mcc99
Sent: 08 January 2015 09:07 AM
To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Why WMF should reconsider the 3-month gender gap project-related
decision
Dear fellow Wikipedia devotees,
While I'm new to this list, I've been an avid fan and proponent of Wikipedia and
all the great service it gives people since it launched. People can learn not just all
the basics of nearly any topic imaginable, but for a large number, readers can with
diligence become expert on more than a few and save themselves the cost of
tuition/training. All this, in addition to satisfying their curiosity about millions of
subjects.
That said, it doesn't matter who writes the content on Wikipedia so long as it's
relevant and factual. Unlike the published, single-authority edited encyclopediae of the
past, Wikipedia allows anyone with relevant information to contribute to it. Their
additions or other edits are checked by volunteers to make sure the edit isn't a
defacement, irrelevant, patently unfactual, or unverifiable. They are typically left as
written or maybe edited only for grammar/spelling. Wikipedia is a rare success story in
democracy of knowledge. If one feels moved to contribute, they do. If not, they
don't. It's like voting in a sense, though it's true people in democracies
should perhaps take the opportunity to do so more often. But it's up to them.
Like voting or anything else, to single out a particular group of people based on their
indelible characteristics as being desirable as contributors to any field implicitly
devalues the contributions not just of those currently contributing who don't fall
into that category, but also says to any other group of a particular identity that you
care more about the group you're trying to get more involvement from than them.
"Identity politics" is unfortunately a fact of our current political climate and
I hope one day we can, as MLK Jr. hoped, judge one another not by skin color (and I'd
add gender, sexuality, and a few others), but by content of character. In the context of
Wikipedia, this would translate to the veracity and applicability of contributions made to
the vast Wikipedia knowledge-base -- not who in particular is doing the contributing, nor
their indelible characteristics of person.
Because identity politics is today part of general electoral politics doesn't mean it
need be for anything else, and especially given how such things as a person's
ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc., say nothing about what they know about or can do, I
don't see how it's relevant to the veracity and applicability of Wikipedia's
knowledge base. I don't care that, for example, a black person (Charles Drew, MD)
came up with the process of creating blood plasma, an innovation that has saved millions
of lives. He was tragically and mortally injured in a car accident, however, and so his
potential future achievements were lost to humanity. (He was not refused treatment for
his injuries at the hospital he was taken to because of his ethnicity, as is widely but
falsely believed; he was just so badly injured that he died. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Drew#Death ). I also don't care that Adm
Grace Hopper (USN) wad female, only that she wrote the first computer language compiler so
programmers of lesser brain power than her (such as myself) could go on to program
computers without struggling with binary switches and punch cards. Her contributions were
what was important, not her gender, skin color, or anything else as far as her
professional achievements go.
If you ask any RN the names of the greatest contributors to the nursing profession,
you'll get a stream of women's names. To suggest that nursing "needs"
more men or else it won't be able to achieve its greatest potential would be a crass
and inaccurate insult to the many thousands of women who have made modern nursing what it
is. Of course there have been and will be male nurses who stand out as contributors, but
only a very small percentage, probably in keeping with the ratio of men to women in
nursing. And yet, despite the high salaries RNs command, are there any
gov't-sponsored initiatives to get men into nursing? If so, it'd be news to me
and many others. But I ask, if men by and large, for whatever reasons, aren't
interested in becoming nurses, why make a big deal about it? Are there
gov't-sponsored campaigns to get more women into the relatively lucrative job of
refuse collection? Or, the likewise lucrative jobs of plumber, ordnance disposal
engineer, nuclear materials technician, etc.? No. But other fields that are a lot less
dirty and/or dangerous, yes. (Think professional STEM fields.) This isn't by
accident, nor is the fact that the nursing profession with its high salaries (for RNs,
anyway) is in no hurry to recruit men simply because they're men. But why should
they? That one receives care from a female vs. male nurse isn't relevant. To trumpet
a "need" for men in nursing minimizes the huge contributions of women nurses and
is a patently false proposition. Nursing needs competent, dedicated people in its ranks.
The gender of them is irrelevant.
This returns me to my primary point, which I hope you can see. WMF may think this idea to
single out a particular group based on an innate characteristic to encourage them to be
Wikipedia contributors is good for some reason, but it rests on false assumptions around a
connection between one's gender and their competence at any given task. Unless the
task is inherently tied to a person's sexual biology, it doesn't play a part in
whether or not they are good or not at something, nor whether or not they want to do it.
(I am for example a good improv-style comedian; many have suggested I go to open-mic
nights and share my schtick with the crowd. Thing is, I don't want to, so I
don't. It's enough for me to know I can keep my friends in stitches when I am so
moved.)
As for devaluing current contributors should they happen *not* to be female: WMF, like a
political party, needs to be careful, I suggest, not to drop a dozen eggs while going to
pick up three. Also, in the process of telling other identity groups you're focusing
on just one, you marginalize them. "Playing favorites" is a trap the gov't
has fallen into and the results have been bad for it.
Like others on this list, I also got an email today from someone who subbed me to a
supposed Google Group for lesbian Wikipedia contributors. While I knew immediately it was
a fake [1. I'm not female and thus 2. Cannot by definition be a lesbian], its very
existence shows the disaffection with the decision. It also underscores the hazards of
going the identity politics route. For example, to be extra-inclusive within the target
audience (women), would this initiative now need to be tweaked to include a special
sub-effort of outreach to gay women? And what about bisexual women? They are, arguably,
like gay women, a group in need perhaps of specific outreach and encouragement. But maybe
the same can be said of black people (or African-American, if you prefer), Lationos (or
Hispanics, again, if you prefer), or maybe people of western Asian descent (i.e., people
whose ancestors lived in pre-modern era Asia in countries now named China, Mongolia,
Korea, and Japan). And then there are people of Indo-Asian ethnicity (India, Pakistan,
etc.). Polynesians. Mexicas. Native Americans (or Indians, depending on who you ask).
Gay men. Bi men. Gay Latinos. Transsexual Polynesian-Indo-Asian women, men, or both.
There's no end of it once the precedent is established, and there'll be no peace
for the WMF.
The gov't can get away with using identiy politics and pursuing policies of favortism
based on whatever aspects they choose to use. Age, sex, ethnicity, non-natural personhood
(i.e., corporate welfare/punishment), etc., are all open to them because they are the
gov't. Unless people are ready to rebel against them, they have the say about where
the taxpayers' bounty goes and who is favored over another. It may annoy some in the
pop'n (esp. those not getting the largesse), but too bad. Unless you're ready to
go rebel, you have to accept it.
Non-profit shoestring volunteer-dependent endeavors cannot afford to be choosy or worse,
be or appear to be high-handed. One key to success in the marketplace is recognizing that
everyone's money is as green as anyone else's. In the case of WMF, the currency
is contributors of knowledge. WMF can't afford to alienate them in favor of *maybe*
picking up a few more volunteers/contributors. Again, don't drop a dozen eggs trying
to pick up three more. The risk isn't worth the reward. The only thing WMF has going
for itself is popularity and justifiable faith in what it provides. Lose either of these
things and it's done for. If you start counting such irrelevancies as the physical or
similar aspects of contributors (like their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.)
as being ipso facto relevant to the value of their contributions, you've lost the
second thing (justifiable faith). If you openly, in fact or in appearance, start playing
favorites from among your readers/contributors/volunteers for any reason, you are sure to
lose the first (popularity).
WMF would be better-served focusing not on the sex, etc. of its contributors, but on its
long-term survival strategy. At the moment, WMF is living hand-to-mouth and relying on
end-of-year micro-donations to keep itself afloat. This isn't a sustainable model.
Wikipedia is a free web-based teaching and reference service. It is only a question of
when someone with a better mousetrap who has a way to make money from their site comes
along. (Remember the #1 search engine in 1996? It was called "Alta Vista".
Then came Google. The rest is history, and the big reason for that is simply
Google's AdSense. If Alta Vista had come up with that idea, maybe they'd still be
around.)
I won't suggest Wikipedia stop being Wikipedia. Did Google stop being a free search
engine after they learned how to make money from it, allowing them to continue being
Google (and more)? No. Neither should Wikipedia. But WMF has to figure out how to
become able to sustain itself without the kindness of strangers. Projects like closing
the (so-called) gender gap will actually work against the aim of making Wikipedia more
atteactive than it is now as a web site for gaining knowledge but without the heaps of
embedded editorializing found today in newspapers on- and off-line, in textbooks covering
almost anything but the hard sciences, etc. Still, it can create for itself opportunities
to pay its own way and attract donations that people feel good to make.
About a week and a half ago, I asked for input re a project suggestion. (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTribute ) To date, I haven't gotten feedback
because perhaps the list has been filled with discussion about the exclusivity of the
3-month gender gap project funding. Already, the topic has distracted people from
possibilities that may otherwise have been entertained that could generate income for WMF.
Aside from the idea's merits as such, it is also a way to encourage donations/get
fees, and in an ongoing basis rather than principally at one time of the year (December).
But even if WMF thinks it isn't worth pursuing, it needs something else -- something
it can charge for that will have broad, on-going appeal to many people and/or business
entities. (AdSense, for example, is used by ordinary people with blogs and large
high-traffic commercial web sites alike.) It has to leave people feeling good about
Wikipedia and WMF and be popular broadly and "agnostically". Does your local
gas station care if you're male or female? Gay or straight or bi or asexual? Or
does the Red Cross decide when there's a blood drive that only certain donors will get
the cookies and coffee or be encouraged to get them while telling other donors to wait
until that particular group has gotten some first? If they did, donations'd fall off
fast, or blood donors would go directly to hospitals to donate -- assuming they still felt
like it.
Maybe my note and/or opinion will be ignored, or denounced, or something else. Perhaps
it'll have no effect at all. But as a devoted Wikipedia enthusiast, donor to WMF, and
pro-knowledge-democracy advocate, I can tell you that raising a fence if even temporarily
to full participation in WMF activities for Wikipedians interested in seeing it grow is
bad on multiple levels: politically, philosophically, practically, and financially, and
most especially, relative to its foundational purpose of allowing others to
contribute/participate to this great effort of recording the world's collective
knowledge on an on-going basis and without hindrance, except insofar as the contributions
are accurate, relevant, and sincere.
It's a dream worth keeping alive. I for one would hate one day to look back on 1Q
2015 and say to the others with me in the nursing home "Yeah, Wikipedia -- it was a
sad day back in '15. The beginning of the end. I was there. I tried talking them
out of it, but... it just didn't work. Now we're all stuck with
www.selected-contributors-only-o-pedia-not-wikipedia.com and that's nothing close to
what we used to have in Wikipedia."
Of course by then, we may all have computers implanted in our brains that tell us anything
we want to know just by thinking the question. Doubt it, but who knows.
Thank you for reading.
Matt
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