Wikipedia has a black people problem

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Jake Is A Sellout
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Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:59 am

Is anyone actually aware of any Wikipedia editors who are black? If not, there might be a reason for that. To my eyes, Wikipedia hasn't got a hope in hell of addressing this one rather significant systemic bias.

Here's a few reasons why.....

* Wikipedia thinks Black Lives Matter is a political movement, so much so it refused to stand with it in a simple act of protest, one that wouldn't have harmed Wikipedia one bit. Something they have even done before, when it was a matter that deeply affects whitey (internet regulation). The Wikipedia community, that vast mass of white male privilege, quite readily signs on to the idea that there is something more to BLM than what it says on the tin. That perhaps it is a front for a radical communist insurgency intent on destroying that cherished American way of life. This means that although Wikipedia is pretty easily identified as a left wing movement on most issues, on this one, it looks to be more aligned with the right wing, and the kookier dog whistle edges of it no less. Not hard to see why.

* Rather than protest, the Wikipedia community chose to show their support for BLM by improving their content on black history. Which only served as a reminder that Black History is a notable absentee in the list of WikiProjects. Black History, in other words, is not considered important enough to create a place to coordinate and track efforts to improve Wikipedia content relating to black history. There are of course projects for American politics, and American history. And Pokemon. All the stuff that is important to whitey. There is a WikiProject for BLM of course, but this seems to only serve the purpose of reminding people that "This project does not extol any point of view, political or otherwise." Almost as if they want it made abundantly clear that they think BLM is a political movement. And for those who don't know, while Wikipedia does famously have a neutral point of view in most matters, there are some things it considers beyond the pale. Try starting WikiProject Pedophilia, and include a mission statement like "This project does not extol any point of view, political or otherwise." and see how fast whitey slaps you in chains. But Black Lives Matter? They are....non-committal. As well as making it clear what they see BLM as, the project is not up to much. It says a lot that Wikipedia's article on BLM is tagged as needing updating. It was seemingly only set up as a way for a white dude from Portland named Jason, who has been a Wikipedia editor for over ten years, to show he is woke as fuck. Yup, Wikipedia can't even find a black editor to front the BLM project. The project claims it has 80 other participants, but it doesn't seem like they're all that interested. Not even twenty have made more than 5 comments, and not even forty have made more than one. Jason has made nearly half. Of the eight who have made more than ten comments, not one identifies as black. And if you're minded to think that's because they're living in fear of harassment, that being a known issue with Wikipedia, that eight included several editors happy to identify as white women, and/or gay, and even a pansexual. So it seems unlikely. Judging by the fact most seem like they are ten or even fifteen year veterans of Wikipedia, this project was seemingly set up not as a means to recruit more black editors and represent black issues, but as a way to virtue signal that the Wikipedia community is not what people say it is. Except when it comes to black people, it so is. Wikipedia is white as fuck. Even the minorities. Perhaps especially the minorities.

* Outside of the obvious place to look, more generally, the people on Wikipedia who appear to be actually trying to help black people, are not the sort of people you really want to be seen helping black people. To take one recent example, the one they call Count Iblis, the editor who nominated the Derek Chauvin trial verdict for recognition as a newsworthy event on Wikipedia's front page, also more recently nominated the appearing of Neptune's face in sea spray, and the marriage of a Spice Girl. Serious ally to black people, or utter clown? You decide.

* The way they decide what to put on the Main Page as news more generally, still has quite a clear racial bias. Even this week, a proposal to share the news that the Robert E. Lee statue in Charleston was taken down, garnered no response. None. Almost as if they're scared to be seen as opposing, but smart enough to know that not saying anything, has the same effect. Clever whitey wins again. And not that they have ever really had much success in posting the election results of smaller countries, but the lack of relative interest in the Ethiopian result, a literal warzone, when compared to the relatively peaceful white European states of Molodva and Bulgaria results, is obvious. Even the worldwide news that is the South African crisis, is struggling to see any real impetus to get this on the front page while it is still actually, y'know, news.

* Not even in biographies, is Wikipedia proving to be an ally. None other than the Janeen Uzzell had to have her Wikipedia biography created by none other than a privileged white woman, Jess Wade. Someone so privileged that all it took for her to get a career as an author, in addition to her career as scientist (an easy task for a white woman with her background), was a few press releases put out by the Wikipedia Foundation praising her edits to help minorities. In Uzzell's case, this help consisted of taking notice of her for a couple of hours during a layover in an airport, and then completely forgetting she ever existed. The fact nobody on Wikipedia seems to have even noticed what she did next, is pretty good proof there is nobody on Wikipedia with the right gender/race/career background (black women engineer) who would notice. Whitey wins again, the wokester elements of the white race seeing a task like bringing more visibility to black people like Uzzell as nothing but a tool to boost the visibility and ego of a bunch of privileged white people claiming they have the interests of black people in their minds, nay their hearts, but whose actions say different.

* Jess Wade, widely hailed as a hero of minorities by the Wikipedia community (I know, the irony), is probably not the person you want fighting your corner as a black women anyway, if the Clarice Phelps case is anything to go by. That women will now forever be known as a Wikipedia controversy, rather than what she was, a not particularly notable scientist whose blackness didn't really elevate what she had done in science over and above the fact she was but a small cog in a large effort. Worse, thanks to Wade's idea of being an ally, black women scientists are now represented on Wikipedia by a black woman who, when offered the wokester hand of Wade, clearly jumped at the chance to have Wikipedia be her CV buddy, vastly overstating her actual efforts, at the expense of even other white women in her own lab. Wade clearly knows where the paydirt is, when the cameras are on. Wade had no qualms here about teaming up with another privileged white author when it comes to making, and then failing to back up, claims of significance of a black person. And then rather than admitting fault, she unleashed the weapons of wokesterism and victimhood. Wade was the victim here, naturally, not the black person. The poor little (incredibly vicious) white woman was upset that the white men were doubting her ability to judge significance. Rightly, as it happened, as history has shown. Were these claims of Phelps representing a black first in element discovery even true? Or were they made up to help these two white people's careers. It certainly looks like it, when examining the evidence. Why not ask them. Oh no, you can't. They have invoked their white privilege, on Twitter and Wikipedia, to their Fifth Amendment rights. The Wikipedia community rallied round to ensure these white people do not have to account for their actions, which appear to have cynically exploited a black woman's desperation to be recognised, for their own ends. Whitey wins again. For if Phelps had been trying to make this claim to fame without their help, we know where she would have been told to go by the Wikipedia community. Where's your proof, they would have demanded. You can't just come in here as a black woman and be making this shit up, and no, we're not just going take your employers word for it. We haz rulez. Where's your Wikipedia white champion? Your community appointed liar and charlatan, through which your black claims can be whitewashed? You will respect our ways and traditions, or you will fuck off. In a very big way, Wikipedia has, quite clearly, simply adapted the basic tenets of American racism, for the 21st Century.

* The only openly black Wikipedia editor I was ever aware of, was the black Jew who chose the user name Malik Shabazz. Yup, that's right. The only black person ever to get promoted to the role of Administrator, was someone who desperately wanted to be seen as a black supremacist and a self hating jew. And Wikipedia showed their inability to be an ally yet again, by continually and repeatedly showing that just because this guy was black, and of course, not even just because he was black, they were quite happy to overlook the fact he was also a crazy psycho bastard who was totally unfit for the role. This is not what black people mean by Affirmative Action. They are quite happy with a white police force choosing not to give a black criminal a gun and a badge. They would prefer it if black people had a say in that decision, sure, but baby steps. This rather unhelpful level of support came from as high as Wikipedia's Supreme Court, led by, you guessed it, a privileged white guy from the Deep South. The one they call Drmies, y'all, who certainly went to extreme lengths to make sure that the craziest of the crazy, represented black people in the Wiki police. You can make your own conclusions as to how that likely friendship blossomed, and what his real motives were.

These things quite easily explain why Wikipedia continues to fail to recruit black editors, and why the people who write Wikipedia continue to fail to see why they do not come across as potential allies to black people.

I have to stress, these aren't even incidents I went looking for. I was able to compile this litany of shame just in the normal course of looking into other issues. Imagine what could be done if you went looking specifically for these traits?

As usual with something that is so deeply white American, where there's smoke, there's a black person being burned alive. Or a white person setting a black person on fire, just so they can be seen to be the one to put the hose on them.

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Re: Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by Kumioko » Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:17 am

There are definately a few black editors, but most of those are in areas like Ghana. The only one I know of outside that is Malik Shabazz.

But you're right. Wikipedia is dominated by white male editors.
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Re: Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by SkepticalHistorian » Wed Jul 14, 2021 3:38 pm

FloridaArmy has been posting on Jimbo’s Talk Page regarding his new articles about black high schools, some of which have been mere stubs and rejected, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk ... _Wikipedia

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Re: Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:30 pm

I've seen a few black editors, apart from Malik. VERY few. Most of the ones I've noticed were actual Africans who triggered editwars by doing something the resident geeks didn't like. You can see some traces in the talkpage archives for Wikiproject Africa. (When I studied Wikipedia's geographical and historical biases back in 2012, the vast continent of Africa was VERY poorly covered. Compared to the US, and Poland of all places. It appears that some progress was made but I don't expect to see a major change.)

Crow has a good point--they DO NOT handle black American history very well, because so damn many of them are such hopeless miserable honkies. Basement-dwelling, comic-book-collecting, video-gaming, Doctor-Who-worshipping, pathetic whiteboys.

Apparently they have already forgotten the "Race and intelligence" editwar. Which mostly involved racist white people.....there are a couple of actual black editors listed in the epically-stupid arbitration. Which was from 2010, and was still being amended in 2019. Not many actual black people, but a helluva lot of Mikemikev, Capt. Occam and Mathsci ragetyping at each other. The Aristocrats!

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Re: Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by sashi » Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:27 pm

France would not have sold the US everything West of the Mississippi had it not been for Haiti. This is cross-posted but you get the final draft, Crow, Eric. :geek:

At the moment, on Jovenel Moïse's BLP, the acting president of Haïti is said to be one of the masterminds of his predecessor's killing.

Who knows, it may be true, (though the Haitian chief of police denies it and the Miami Herald focuses on this denial rather than on the claims). Most of the caracoles-tv article used to support the claim uses the convenient "it is alleged" conditional built into Romance languages...

Jovenel Moïse's ht.wp page hasn't been edited since Mr. ht.wp himself (Gilles2014: §) got done with it on 8 July, so, for the moment, the risk of a coup being instigated because of early reporting on wikipedia is somewhat lower. Nobody in Haïti really seems to pay all that much attention to Haitian Wikipedia, though. (cf. chanjman resan) I don't know if en.wp or fr.wp has any more readers there...

A thing that has been hidden is the fact that en.wp doesn't have a page for Haiti's biggest capital city high schools.
Moncrief wrote:Avoid red link. If someone happens to write an article on this Haitian secondary school, about which there's also no article in the French and Haitian Creole Wikipedias, I'm sure they'll think to link the article about its most famous alumnus.

source (removed redlink to non-existant Lycée Toussaint Louverture page)
Haïti Libre wrote:Le Premier ministre, Evans Paul, a fait l'éloge du Lycée Toussaint Louverture, pour sa participation à la formation d'une grande partie de l'intelligentsia haïtienne et félicité les efforts du Président Martelly à la promotion de l'éducation et de la formation des jeunes en Haïti.
source
Hm... I wonder about this logic/policy/communications strategy of having no red in frequently viewed articles. Is this common practice?

No *.wp had anything about the oldest high school (prep school) in the capital shutting down after only two quarters of exams this year. ( § ) Go figure.
Last edited by sashi on Sat Jul 17, 2021 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by ericbarbour » Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:12 pm

sashi wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:27 pm
Hm... I wonder about this logic/policy/communications strategy of having no red in frequently viewed articles. Is this common practice?
They were repeatedly embarrassed into making an "unofficial policy". But have continued to drop the ball for years. Still easy to find lists and articles full of red links.

This was first created in 2004 and has been screwed with by admins ever since. Also frequently vandalized. BECAUSE IT'S A FAILURE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Red_link

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Re: Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by ericbarbour » Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:00 am

Whoops, I forgot about this chart that James Salsman prepared some years ago:
blackwikipediachartSalsman.png
blackwikipediachartSalsman.png (136.38 KiB) Viewed 3766 times

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Re: Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by sashi » Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:22 pm

ericbarbour wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:00 am
Whoops, I forgot about this chart that James Salsman prepared some years ago:
Compiling stuff like that is dangerous: he was globally banned on 17 Nov 2020.

The only one of those people I ever interacted with was Malik. There are a few other people I assume are Haitian or African on pages I've worked on, but I don't actually know that.

(I also only noticed last weekend that Proabivouac won an SFB back in Jan 2020. I'm guessing that you aren't even going to bother trying, Eric? )

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Re: Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Jul 27, 2021 4:13 am

sashi wrote:
Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:22 pm
Compiling stuff like that is dangerous: he was globally banned on 17 Nov 2020.
*I* have no problems whatsoever with Salsman. Wikipedia critics, even the extra-annoying ones, have every right to take shots at those miserable Wikinerds. He did them a favor. (PS I gave up trying to keep track of his sock accounts long ago....talk about zero reward)
(I also only noticed last weekend that Proabivouac won an SFB back in Jan 2020. I'm guessing that you aren't even going to bother trying, Eric? )
No idea what you're talking about and also don't care, sorry

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Re: Wikipedia has a black people problem

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:49 am

Noting for the record that of the four community elected seats on offer in the first election post Floyd, all four went to white people.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimed ... 21/Results

Oh, and the two top ranking Wikipedia executives who authored this piece?

We Stand For Racial Justice (Medium)

Long gone.

The black woman didn't even have her Wikipedia biography updated to reflect the fact that not only had she left the Foundation, she had left it for a role where she felt she could better advance black causes.

The price you pay for being a victim of the drive by slactivism of Jess Wade. :lol:

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