What’s that mean? Do you speak Italian, or have relatives who do?
It also means something totally different in New York vs. flyover country. In New York, more people are of Italian heritage than any other heritage. On the other hand, I’ve lived places where there weren’t even any Italian restaurants, let alone people of Italian heritage.
I don’t speak it no. Just ethnically, 2nd-generation.
What? He cofounded it in 2001 along with Larry Sanger - his own Wikipedia page says as much.
To this day, the Wikimedia Foundation uses Jimmy to fundraise for the foundation, so I’d hardly call the relationship a negative one.
I’m less interested in personal motives than I am with results - does it matter, for example, if Elon Musk’s goal was fame and fortune when he got behind SpaceX and Tesla? Or does it matter that he’s using them to transform spaceflight and attempt to bring renewable energy and transportation to the masses?
Jimmy just started the WikiTribune project, aimed at combatting “Fake News” by using crowdfunded journalists and wiki principles of sourcing and editing, rather than relying on advertisers.
You are welcome to have issues with him personally, but it is undeniable that he has significant positive impact on both the reach of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as alternative funding projects for information as a whole.
I don’t personally believe that the assembly and curation of the world’s information can only be done on a volunteer basis. I don’t believe that it’s wrong for folks to profit from their efforts, provided (as I said in my very first comment in this topic) that the goal of providing information to the world remains.
When projects like Wikia and Everipedia start passing policies that favour advertisers / contributors over others, that’s when I’ll get out my pitchfork. Until then, I applaud efforts to diversify the availability of curated, sourced information online, especially information Wikipedia has deemed not notable or otherwise unsuitable for inclusion.
In other words, you’re just some white guy, unless you live in Minnesota or some place like that.
I identify as European-American, yes.
Well, we don’t have a policy, and yet we somehow magically have these editors.
How is burying an anti-harassment policy/statement somewhere on a page nobody will read helpful? We are not against having one, I am just curious. Lots of tech companies have diversity officers and things like that, proclaim commitment to diversity, etc, yet are still mostly White males. Actions speak louder than words.
Because taking a position against bigotry is important. It doesn’t matter if it is read or not - that’s, in many ways, like saying “Well, these people don’t need protection, see? They’re perfectly fine as they are” and ignores the broader trends in society at the moment.
Generally, yes, the wiki editing process helps prevent harassment since much of it will be rolled back, but what about, for example, an editor who stalks another editor edits because they notice they are editing content they happen to disagree with? If your goal is to attract diversity, then knowing you have their back, even if the act is symbolic and doesn’t get used, may cause some editors to feel they are protected and therefore increase participation.
The time to have a policy is not simply when you start having incidents that call for one.
Right, all your women editors. Wait …
And here we are, a woman expert telling you that she wouldn’t donate her time to your effort, nor allow her students to do so, while you sit there and adopt a weirdly aggressive stance on not wanting one.
Who said you should bury it? Most conferences I go to, you have to click through it to even register. You can bury it if you want, I guess. Even if you did, there is at least a statement of what behavior is not acceptable, and a statement of company/event/space jurisprudence so that people have recourse. I’ve had fucked up things happen to me in all manner of situations and spaces, and I’ll tell you right now that it’s immensely helpful to have a document I can refer to for how to get help.
Well of course an anti-harassment policy isn’t helpful if you don’t enforce it. What actions are you taking to broaden your editorial pool?
I’ll admit I know effectively nothing about the scholarship and politics of what actual inclusion is considered to be and frankly dont understand some of what I read when I do try and figure it out, but what you wrote in that comment seems darn sensible.
Well that leaves no hope for my own language. I am a native Serbo-Croatian speaker. With 20+ million speakers that are not really interesting for most advertisers my language gets deprioritised to oblivion with all profit driven initiatives. :-/
Our “actions”, so to speak, is not shooting down non White male editors. We aren’t going out of our way to attract any particular identity group or sex, we don’t care, and are not going to pander. The fact that most of our editors are not White speaks for itself.
You are right, we do not have any significant female editors. We will add the ‘feel-good’ statement, it is probably good to have anyways, but it would not do anything to affect our existing behavior. As long as you make an effort to be scholarly with your work, you are welcome here.
How many of your editors are non American?
We have a Venezuelan (or #1 editor) and Canadian (#5). Most are Americans though.
I don’t think that she (or anyone) wants you to add a feel-good statement about the policy that you don’t intend to enforce. What is probably a good idea to have is a written statement of what constitutes unacceptable behavior and a policy in place how to act in case this code of conduct is broken.
Ok. We will add one soon.
Look, I’m not trying to pile on, but I’ve made two observations over the past few years:
It’s much easier to grow a community that is healthy from the start than fix it later, like @orenwolf mentions.
People react very poorly when they feel they don’t have recourse. And it really only takes someone tweeting about a negative experience to kill the momentum behind something, particularly for new websites, conferences, etc that don’t have a ton of clout anyway. People who feel satisfied with their organization’s internal jurisprudence don’t typically go public.
It’s not useless feel-goodism to cultivate a community in which everyone gets respect, and people understand the expected conduct.
Point taken, we will add a statement soon.
[Editted to add: And I see the conversation moved on while I was typing that. Nice one.]
That’s the thing though, these things don’t happen by choice - no-one decides ‘off the bat’ that their place is going to be unfriendly to women, or any one of an infinite number of ethnicities, or genders, or disabilities. It just ends up baked-into the culture, slowly and transaction-by-transaction over time and what the science fiction cons, skeptical groups and many, many, others found was that the 'it can’t happen here’s let it happen by default, because it doesn’t happen here. (Does it? Nah, can’t be.)
And the people who got burned by this, or have something in common with the people who got burned by this - or just saw and empathised with the people who got burned by this, look for a clear statement of policy that unlike many other times, any complaints won’t just be ignored or given lip service. It’s not a ‘policy/statement somewhere on a page nobody will read’ - it’s a policy that gets used, if and when it needs to. And if it’s ignored, well, the flak will follow.
I’m not saying your growing corporate culture will try to be sexist/et al - quite the opposite but that page of policy, taken seriously helps reassure the burned, that unlike all the other examples, in other places, they’ll get treated fairly here.
And that’s a selling point. You want editors? You say you’re doing this anyway? Then it’s easy. Document it, promote the hell out of it and use it as a selling feature - “The 'pedia that treats it’s editors right” - that’s one hell of a pitch.
And the fact that lots of corporations get away with legal-minimum lip service to such policies doesn’t mean that that looks the same ‘from the outside’ as visibly making such policies and visibly taking them seriously. Joe user can tell. It makes news.
I mean, you’ve got the right good intentions - but that should make putting this in policy an obvious, easy, decision.
(Please note, I’m not actually anti-your project, nor am I an particularly pro-wikipedia-person. I’m curious about your idea, and look forward to seeing how it pans-out.
This just seemed liked a real, well, missed-opportunity, if nothing else.)
Always has been. Look up Raymond Wolfinger. (I entirely agree with your several points in re: Mandarin, it’s just that misquoting of Wolfinger’s brilliant aphorism is a pet peeve of mine 
).
I cannot believe nobody has jumped on this.
OK, I’ll have a go: If Apple were trying to make Wikipedia today, it would be closed-source and based on BSD-licensed software, heavily monetized, and have rounded corners!
