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Seattle meetup 6 | |
| Date: April 8 and April 18, 2009 | ||
| Place: UW Seattle campus | ||
| Seattle meetup 5 occurred June 19, 2008 | ||
Bienvenidos / Bine aţi venit / Wilkommen / Benvinguts / Bienvenue / Benvenuti / Bem-vindo
Welcome to the Misplaced Pages home page of Joe Mabel. For Joe's true Home Page, see http://www.speakeasy.org/~jmabel.
Until the end of 2006, I will be less available to Misplaced Pages than I have been at some times in the past. I am on contract writing functional and technical specifications at Active Voice (in Seattle) for their next several major product releases.
| Multi-licensed with all Creative Commons Attribution Licenses | ||
| I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under Misplaced Pages's copyright terms and the Creative Commons licenses by-sa v1.0, by v2.0, by-nd v2.0, by-nc v2.0, by-nc-nd v2.0, by-nc-sa v2.0, and by-sa v2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under alternate licensing, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides. | ||
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Trust
Recently, working on Misplaced Pages:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards has made me realize how important it is to know who you can trust to be both intellectually honest and expert in certain areas. I've also noticed that certain users have used their user pages as a Rogue's Gallery of people they are annoyed with (which strikes me as totally out of the spirit of Misplaced Pages, though sometimes it's easy to see how they are tempted). However, it inspired me to start listing some people whose intellectual honesty and expertise in certain areas I trust enormously: I am so glad to be able to ask these people questions sometimes (for example) I'm not sure whether to trust a particular anonymous edit or not sure exactly how to translate a particular phrase.
By its nature, the following list will never be comprehensive and there are probably some equally trusted people I'm forgetting to name, but here are some I want to single out for praise:
- We have an enormous number of great contributors on Romanian topics. Particularly notable among the crowd are (in alphabetical order by handle) Bogdangiusca, Biruitorul, Dahn, Gutza (who has been rather scarce lately), MihaiC (ditto) and Ronline.
- Error on all things Basque.
- Ahoerstemeier and Hadal for general trustworthiness: I can't remember seeing a single edit from any of them that was not a plus to the article in question.
- John Kenney and Michael Snow are two more contributors who I trust completely.
- Jwrosenzweig for advice on dealing with conflict within Misplaced Pages. I don't always take his advice, but it's nice to know he's there.
- Angela on how to go about getting a given thing done within Misplaced Pages. She knows the wikipedia name-space better than I know my record collection.
- Chamaeleon for help with tough Spanish-English and French-English translation issues (although we do not necesarily see eye-to-eye on politics).
- If Sam Hocevar says he's just fixing the spelling, he isn't doing anything else, and he isn't getting it wrong.
- LGagnon and BTfromLA both know even more about punk rock and its predecessors and successors than I do, and I've never seen either of them go wrong on the topic. BT and I apparently were in the same (very loud, rather crowded) room at the same time in London in 1976 (clue: the gig is mentioned in the article Punk rock, and not because we were there), but we don't believe we've ever properly met.
- deeceevoice: says what she means, means what she says. We don't always agree, but she's always aboveboard.
- Jayjg and Ramallite, two of the cooler heads involved in the difficult Israel/Palestine areas, both consistently competent and well-intentioned in an area where bullying and personal attacks sometimes drown out honest efforts to build an encyclopedia. Also Zero0000.
- Schuminweb: Excellent on things related to anti-war groups, etc. Knows the difference between hype (on either side of the issue) and encyclopedic content.
- I've also had the pleasure of working with BrianSmithson on several theater-related topics. One of the few Wikipedians writing about 19th-century theater, and doing a damn fine job of it, at that.
Wikibooks:Errata
Wikibooks:Errata: a place to note factual corrections to books. This could become a very important project, so I'm plugging it.
Mini-CV
Originally from Freeport, New York went to college at Wesleyan University, and did graduate work in Computer Science at the University of Washington have lived most of my adult life in Seattle; also stints in London, Barcelona, and Bucharest.
I've been in the software industry since 1980, about equally divided between hands-on programming, project/program management and management roles. In January '06, I started a 6-month contract at Active Voice LLC, mostly writing functional specifications for their next-generation product.
Some non-wiki writings by Joe Mabel
- Peace Heathens Seattle Crisis Resource Directory (editor-in-chief)
- From my own site:
- Travel writing, including an extensive narrative of six months working in Bucharest, Romania.
- The Interview Brainteaser and its Discontents.
- Internationalization and Localization, tips on building international software.
- By the way, for those who complain if I remove a link to their personal website: I removed a link someone made to this from our Internationalization and localization article, because as a link to a personal web site—mine—it does not meet our criteria for external links.
- For Lux Group:
- For Microsoft:
- From April 2005 through December 2005, I have been writing Microsoft MSDN documentation about internationalization and localization. Most of this is not yet on line (and I'm not sure when it will be). Much of it is in the Windows Vista Beta 1 docs, more will be in the Beta 2 docs, but some of the first examples to "go live" on line are Unicode normalization and Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). The related function documentation is also my work.
Interests
History, art, travel, film, books, bicycling, language and linguistics, politics (mostly the non-electoral sort), the game of go.
Favorite Music
- Elvis Costello
- Kurt Weill
- Charles Mingus
- techno etc. for dancing
Favorite Books
- Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
- Shame by Salman Rushdie
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Gift by Lewis Hyde (ISBN 0394715195)
- Jazz by Toni Morrison
Favorite Movies
- Aguirre, Wrath of God (directed by Werner Herzog)
- Children of Paradise (directed by Marcel Carné)
- The General (directed by Buster Keaton)
- The Saragossa Manuscript (directed by Wojciech Has)
Misplaced Pages: Major areas of work
The following is by no means comprehensive, but if you like, here's comprehensive, at least for the English language Misplaced Pages.
Ethnicity
As of 02 Jan 04, I've started Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Ethnic Groups. I need collaborators.
Related to Romania
.
Most of these I've written myself, a few I've translated. If you are aware of Romanian-language articles that could use translation, please notify me on my talk page.
- Casa Capşa
- Athénée Palace
- Constantin Tănase - written January 2005, an interesting figure little-known in the English-speaking world.
- Bucharest Mall
- Centru Civic
- Corneliu Baba
- Hunger circus
- Iron Guard
- Lăutari (traditional Romanian Gypsy musicians)
- List of buildings in Bucharest
- Nicolae Iorga
- Palace of the People (Romania)
- Systematization (Romania).
- stub articles on other Romania-related topics
- lots of translations of originally Romanian-language material
- lots of articles related to History of Romania
- Thraco-Roman: I didn't write this, but I translated passages in its notes from something like five different languages.
Romanian bands
- B.U.G. Mafia
- Hi-Q
- Spitalul de Urgenţa
- Taxi - I'm really happy with this article, especially because band leader Dan Teodorescu gave us explicit permission to quote extensively from and to translate his lyrics.
- Zdob şi Zdub, who are actually Moldovan
- Taraful Haiducilor
Yiddish theater
In early 2005, I wrote a bunch of articles on the early years of Yiddish theater (and related topics like badchonim and Brodersänger). You can find a lot of them at Category:Jewish film and theatre. I also did some articles on the State Jewish Theater (Romania) and related topics. More to come at some unspecified future date. Tough area: not a lot on line (I think in many cases, we're the first to post even birth and death dates for some rather important figures); I managed to borrow a copy of Israil Bercovici's Romanian-language book on the history of Yiddish theater in Romania, which was useful for research, as were actor Jacob Adler's memoir and scholar Sol Liptzin's works. Really interesting stuff. Check out especially Abraham Goldfaden. This has been a weird one to research, because while I understand a bit of spoken Yiddish, I never learned to read it, so I'm not able to go to the primary sources.
Related to Seattle
- Using some material of my own plus material contributed by Emmett Shear, I've completely reworked all of the articles related to the History of Seattle. This has a ways to go; I've added stubs for subtopics I think particularly could use attention.
- Denny Party
- Grunge_music
- The Squirrels
- In the Seattle Wiki, which allows POV and original research, check out Last Exit on Brooklyn: a crucial part of the history of Seattle coffee culture.
- Oh, and my own neighborhood, Wedgwood.
Related to Jorge Luis Borges and Argentina
- Boedo
- The Book of Sand
- Jorge Luis Borges
- H. Bustos Domecq
- Ezequiel Martínez Estrada
- Florida group
- Gaucho
- The Library of Babel
- Martín Fierro
- Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
- Xul Solar
- Translated several articles from Spanish
- Lots more biographical articles. I'm finding that there is very little on anyone from Argentina, so I keep finding myself widening the circle from Borges outward. Almost no source materials seem to be available in English, so I'm guessing that a lot of what I'm writing are the first English-language articles on these individuals, at least on line.
Related to the French Revolution
- 18 Brumaire
- First Estate
- Glossary of the French Revolution
- List of people associated with the French Revolution
- Second Estate
- ...and a lot more. I've now had my hands pretty seriously in about a hundred related articles.
I've also carried the article on the French Revolution solidly through about September 1792, and have spun out more detailed historical articles (incorporating, also, a few solid pieces that were already there), but haven't gotten around to continuing it past that point. I'd be genuinely happy if someone else would carry this forward.
Related to Catalunya and the Catalan world
I've translated:
- Catalan grammar (& related articles)
- a series of articles related to Catalan myths and legends and also taking some material from these to present specifically Catalan aspects of more broadly Iberian or European myths and legends. See, especially, Catalan mythology about witches.
- a series of articles related to the Comarques of Catalonia. Unfortuntately, some of these aren't too strong in the Catalan original, but I'm translating (and in some cases enhancing) what is there.
- History of Catalonia (translated from Spanish, not Catalan)
...and a few others, mostly to do with Catalan monarchs and with Mallorca
BTW, pet peeve: Misplaced Pages chooses the spellings "Catalonia" and "Majorca".
I also wrote Ramon Casas i Carbó, drawing heavily on the excellent Casas Carbo Web site. I'd be interested in hearing about other decent sources to flesh this out further.
Brown v. Board of Education
In honor of the 50 anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I've written several short articles, including ones on the three other cases combined into Brown (Briggs v. Elliott, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, and Gebhart v. Belton) and on the Fifth Circuit Four.
Other
- Freeport, New York (my hometown)
- Wesleyan University (my alma mater)
- I made major contributions (some amounting to rewrites) to the articles liberalism, Socialism, Left-right politics, Left-wing politics, Right-wing politics, Conservatism, etc. Also, trying to work through an NPOV dispute in Left-wing politics led me to work extensively on ANSWER, Not in Our Name, and United for Peace and Justice. I've also written quite a few stubs on various groups on the political left, mostly in the U.S.
- About 80% of Gift economy is my work. A very interesting, if somewhat obscure, topic.
- Blitz!: a great musical that never played the U.S. (rewrite, we already had a cursory article).
- Over a hundred translations, including School of Salamanca, Paraguayos, República o Muerte (the Paraguayan National Anthem), José Ortega y Gasset, Wayang, Technoparade, Paragraph 175, about two thirds of ETA, and (on Wikisource) Salvador Allende's last speech. I'm a heavy participant in Misplaced Pages:Pages needing translation into English, Misplaced Pages:Translation into English, and Misplaced Pages:Vfd.
- I've also been known to adapt old, now public domain, articles to be more easily read by the contemporary reader. A good example of this work is at Exilarch.
- I've done some work on Blackface, Minstrel show and related topics. Much of what I've done doesn't show up as obviously my edits, because in some cases other editors have (with my permission) cut and pasted from separate sandbox pages where I was working.
- Fighting the good fight against rampant "currentism", I've written an article about the 1966 New York City transit strike, a watershed in the city's history, while everyone else seems to bg focused on the recent 2005 New York City transit strike.
On systemic bias
Several people have chosen to rework Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Countering systemic bias to remove, restore, and seriously alter my short essay on systemic bias. Rather than fight over its presence or precise content on that page, I am reproducing more or less my original essay here. Probably other people made some small edits to this (you'd have to check the history of that page to see), but this is essentially my writing, and I have deliberately worked from an early version here (dating from October 4, 2004) rather than the more collective version of November 28, 2004 when it was removed. Since this is now on my own page, I have also taken the liberty to revert some other people's edits with which I did not entirely agree. For what it's worth, I find some of the present essay on WP:CSB rather snide.
Misplaced Pages has a number of systemic biases, mostly deriving from the demographics of our participant base, the heavy bias towards online research, and the (generally commendable) tendency to "write what you know". Systemic bias is not to be confused with systematic bias. The latter just means "thoroughgoing bias". Systemic bias means that there are structural reasons why Misplaced Pages gives certain topics much better coverage than others.
As of this writing, Misplaced Pages is disproportionately white and male; disproportionately American; disproportionately written by people from white collar backgrounds. We do not think this is a result of a conspiracy — it is largely a result of self-selection — but it has effects not all of which are beneficial, and which need to be looked at and (in some cases) countered.
Misplaced Pages is biased toward over-inclusion of certain material pertaining to (for example) science fiction, contemporary youth culture, contemporary U.S. and UK culture in general, and anything already well covered in the English-langauge portion of the Internet. These excessive inclusions are relatively harmless: at worst, people look at some of these articles and say "this is silly, why is it in an encyclopedia?"
Of far greater (and more detrimental) consequence, these same biases lead to minimal or non-existent treatment of topics of great importance. One example is that, as of this writing, the
Congo Civil War , possibly the largest war since World War II has claimed over 3 million lives, but one would be hard pressed to learn much about it from Misplaced Pages. In fact, there is more information on a fictional plant.
An example list of poor treatment due to this bias would include (in no particular order):
- Africa and the 'Third World' generally, in all of its aspects
- Asia - particularly 'underdeveloped' countries
- Female oriented/dominated subjects
- Foreign literature (particularly writers whose work is unavailable or not widely available in English)
- Non-white figures in the U.S., UK, etc.
Systemic biases are not easily addressed. We will need a variety of strategies. Among those are:
- Identify existing structures that can help in promoting this effort — e.g. Collaboration of the week, the translation page, cleanup — or can serve as models: the Irish wikipedians' notice board, WikiProject Philosophy, etc.
- Create new structures to coordinate our efforts toward countering systematic bias.
- Create an infrastructure for recruitment and support of contributors outside the present Misplaced Pages mainstream. For example, this could include active outreach to Historically black colleges and universities in the U.S. and to colleges and universities in various countries of the Commonwealth of Nations.
- Identify subject-matter areas and specific articles that have been neglected due to systemic bias and which ought to be written, added to, or otherwise improved.
- Collaborate on producing such articles.
Misplaced Pages is an evolving project. While some of its biases — e.g. a preference for online sources — are probably inherent, others — generally the demographic ones — need not be. However, they will not be overcome by wishful thinking. We need to devote active effort to these matters, rather than keep doing the same thing and expect different results.
To this I would like to add (November 29, 2004):
I believe that the most important of these correctives would be infrastructure for recruitment and support of contributors outside the present Misplaced Pages mainstream. I also think it is the one we are doing least to address. We need to deepen our understanding of why women and certain ethnic minorities in the English-speaking world do not find this project as appealing as white men and we need to work out what we can do about it. We need to work out how to successfully recruit contributors from a broader human base.
Please write any comments on my talk page, not here. -- Jmabel | Talk
Ethical Public Relations in Misplaced Pages
My own take on this is at User:Jmabel/PR. I'm not at all happy with the current "just say no" approach.
Other relevant discussion can be found at User talk:MyWikiBiz, Misplaced Pages talk:Conflicts of interest, User:LinaMishima/PaidEditing.
Cite.php trick
I just learned (August 2006) how to get Cite.php references into two columns:
<div class="references-small" style="-moz-column-count:2; column-count:2;">
<references /></div>
- Wikipedians contributing under CC BY-SA 1.0
- Wikipedians contributing under CC BY-SA 2.0
- User en-N
- User es-3
- Translators es-en
- User ro-2
- Translators ro-en
- User de-1
- User ca-1
- User it-1
- User pt-1
- User fr-1
- User Cyrl-1
- Misplaced Pages administrators
- Wikipedian computer scientists
- Baby boomer Wikipedians
- Wikipedians in Washington