Printable Version of Topic

Click here to view this topic in its original format

_ Wikimedia India _ Wikipedian Indians on Bishakha Datta's Appointment

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

Wikipedian Indians on Bishakha Datta's Appointment, from: http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/14/stories/2010041461392200.htm

Indian feminist journalist and filmmaker Bishakha Datta was recent invited to join the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. She runs the Mumbai-based non-profit Point of View, which is "dedicated to disseminating women's perspectives through media, art and culture."


Noble gender balancing on behalf of Wikipedia San Francisco or a non-democratic cultural imperialist of Whites over Indian Wikipedian community?


Why, of course, the Wikimedia Foundation want trustees who know nothing about daily life on the Wikipedia!!! Let's see Bishakha Datta wiki-format a table or propose some hard core degradation pornography for deletion.
QUOTE
EXPLAINING HER PRIORITIES:

The virtual close-knit community of Wikipedians in India was bemused last week when the Wikimedia Foundation appointed its first ever Indian board member.

The predominantly male community was further astounded that the appointee was a woman, an “outsider” at that, with no background or involvement in wiki editing.

Even at the Bangalore Wikipedia meet, Ms. Dutta is conspicuous, being the only woman.

Image

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Fri 6th August 2010, 7:34pm) *

Wikipedian Indians on Bishakha Datta's Appointment, from: http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/14/stories/2010041461392200.htm

Indian feminist journalist and filmmaker Bishakha Datta was recent invited to join the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. She runs the Mumbai-based non-profit Point of View, which is "dedicated to disseminating women's perspectives through media, art and culture."

Noble gender balancing on behalf of Wikipedia San Francisco or a non-democratic cultural imperialist of Whites over Indian Wikipedian community?


Why, of course, the Wikimedia Foundation want trustees who know nothing about daily life on the Wikipedia!!! Let's see Bishakha Datta wiki-format a table or propose some hard core degradation pornography for deletion.
QUOTE
EXPLAINING HER PRIORITIES:

The virtual close-knit community of Wikipedians in India was bemused last week when the Wikimedia Foundation appointed its first ever Indian board member.

The predominantly male community was further astounded that the appointee was a woman, an “outsider” at that, with no background or involvement in wiki editing.

Even at the Bangalore Wikipedia meet, Ms. Dutta is conspicuous, being the only woman.

Image



I'm having a hard time parsing what direction you are coming from here. Clearly the a board member does not need to have editing experience to contribute some to the board. In fact WMF needs to broaden the range of stakeholder represented beyond only Wikipedians. I think we agree on this. I believe Ms. Dutta interest in rape etc is from an activist and journalistic perspective and not at all prurient. Your clip art graphic comic book format with images of child sexuality while seeming to criticizing Wikipedia contributes a disturbing look and feel to the forum. Could you consider toning them down?

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Fri 6th August 2010, 9:35pm) *
I believe Ms. Dutta interest in rape etc is from an activist and journalistic perspective and not at all prurient. Your clip art graphic comic book format with images of child sexuality while seeming to criticizing Wikipedia contributes a disturbing look and feel to the forum. Could you consider toning them down?

We've asked him before, but he doesn't seem to "take the hint."

OTOH, I think I sort of see what he's getting at - it's a "careful what you wish for" thing, right? Bishakha Datta says she'd like to see some articles that address the horrific problem of gang-rape in India, thinking Wikipedians will take the socially-responsible path and portray them as the brutal, inhuman crimes that they are - only she doesn't realize that Wikipedia has little or no capacity for social responsibility, and is just as likely to produce "well-illustrated" articles that amount to apologia for the rapists, if not outright glorification for them.

If so, then clearly he's being a bit, uh, overzealous in hinting such a thing might happen, since while Wikipedia as a corporate entity lacks the aforementioned capacity (for social responsibility), there are probably enough decent-minded WP editors and admins left to prevent this. (Though, of course, there may be occasional "vandalism" periods of up to 60 minutes during which that sort of material might appear... but since she's a board member, maybe she can get them to use "Flagged Protection.")

More likely, the English WP folks will ignore her suggestion - India is a looonnnng way off for most of them, and there's no obvious pop-culture tie-in.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

Probably better not to copy and paste then all over again then ...

It is difficult, I know, but here we have the best pictorial representation of the dissonances contained within the active Wikipedian community.

if I was an Indian contributor, and had been working away at the Wikipedia for years, I think I would been pretty aggrieved to have someone in San Francisco elect someone with no involvement and no experience over my head.

Datta, as a now responsible trustee, is either for or against the imagery and either for or against the culture than encourages them. They are, of course, by no means the worst on the Wikipedia.

The problem with the overt sexualization of a so-called encyclopedia (or even media in general) is that the sexualization does sexualize all elements of it. The defenders of such images claim they can see no sexual activity. The defenders of animated child porn claim it is not damaging because it is not real. I disagree. it is the composition of real elements and imagined that makes it sexual as we have discussed elsewhere.

The Foundation has a problem. It is exporting that problem worldwide. They block and defend themselves against any reasonable requests and suggestions whilst spending their time and money on positive PR ... such as the appointment of Ms Datta.

How do we get the message across to them?

For those not following this forum on a daily basis, the original discussion related to is here: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=30362&st=0&#entry247099 and images all from the Wikipedia.

QUOTE
Keep - Images are in scope cop ... Describing images of children in underwear as Child Porn is ridicolous -I see no sex act in the images ... the delete votes seem to be based on moral panic and/or on false assumptions

-- Cyclopia (talk) 18:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Spanking, cross-dressing a boy in stockings and suspenders, images of clearly drawn pre-pubescent genitalia are not sexual? And I suppose the drawing of a medical instrument being used to spread a pre-pubescent female vagina is for educational purposes and useful for medical students.

--For God's sake keep out of it (talk) 00:16, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Can you speak up, please? I can't hear you over the noise of the over 9,000 fapping inclusionists here

-- Alison ❤ 00:27, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

That kind of reply is neither useful nor warranted, Alison. Please refrain from impugning the motives of your fellow editors.

-- [[User:LtPowers|Powers]] ([[User talk:LtPowers|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 01:42, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Fri 6th August 2010, 11:15pm) *
The Foundation has a problem. It is exporting that problem worldwide. They block and defend themselves against any reasonable requests and suggestions whilst spending their time and money on positive PR ... such as the appointment of Ms Datta.

I see, it's just the usual anger-over-blatant-hypocrisy angle, then? I can understand where that's coming from...

Still, I wish there were a way to express that without quite so much pornographic imagery, even if it is their imagery.

QUOTE
How do we get the message across to them?

The kids are all using text messaging and Facebook these days, right? Or is this more of a Twitter thing?

Not much point in putting out the message to the very people whose livelihoods depend on their not listening to the message, and/or pretending nobody is telling them.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

I toned it down but cannot remove the copy and pasted version. Strange, there must be some caching going on or Flickr keeps deleted images.

Glassbead, whilst I am grateful for your detached moderation, I do remember you being defensive of this new trustee before ... rightly so from one point of view, e.g. she has not a clue what is going on.

On the other hand, she needs brought into the discussion. She has taken the bit, or bait, and is part of the PR machine now.

If you want to try a responsible approach, which I encourage and would appreciate, The Point of View website is here:

http://www.pointofview.org/contact.html

Point of View aims to promote the points of view of women through a sustained and creative use of media.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Sat 7th August 2010, 5:41pm) *

I toned it down but cannot remove the copy and pasted version. Strange, there must be some caching going on or Flickr keeps deleted images.

Glassbead, whilst I am grateful for your detached moderation, I do remember you being defensive of this new trustee before ... rightly so from one point of view, e.g. she has not a clue what is going on.

On the other hand, she needs brought into the discussion. She has taken the bit, or bait, and is part of the PR machine now.

If you want to try a responsible approach, which I encourage and would appreciate, The Point of View website is here:

http://www.pointofview.org/contact.html

Point of View aims to promote the points of view of women through a sustained and creative use of media.


There is a... wait for it... libertarian aspect to to Ms. Datta's work with people working in the sex industry that is what probably got her through the door at WMF. She seems to have no fundamental problem with prostitution. She does not seek to help woman escape from it but to gain better working conditions and wages. This probably looked good to Boomis heads, Commons porn fans and maybe even raised the hopes of Tyciol pro-pedophile and FT2 pro-bestiality crowd. But it does not seem to follow to me that she would endorse their nonsense. I'm still reserving judgment.

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Sat 7th August 2010, 6:41pm) *
On the other hand, she needs brought into the discussion. She has taken the bit, or bait, and is part of the PR machine now.

In the previous thread, I'm pretty sure someone linked to http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JQP/is_404/ai_n21026844/, which is illustrative of what GBG is referring to above. Most Western radical feminists will tell you that all pornography is exploitative and that prostitution is little more than males attempting to commoditize women, no better than slavery, and not the least bit "empowering" or anything else that might be deemed positive by a civilized society.

Bishakha Datta, however, is no "Western radical feminist." India is a completely different culture, and their attitudes towards everything related to these issues tends to be quite different from those in the US and Europe. Indian couples routinely use abortion as a means of child gender selection; bride-burning still occurs frighteningly often; women are almost automatically blamed for conception failure, with men often abandoning their wives rather than submit to a simple sperm-count test (though this may finally be changing, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7374/is_13/ai_n32018230/pg_14/?tag=content;col1); prostitution is rampant while condom use is considered "unmanly" by many Indian men, leading to high rates of STDs, and so on.

Meanwhile, on Wikipedia you've got people like Goethean (T-C-L-K-R-D) lamenting that Indian scholars are attempting to de-emphasize the heavy emphasis on sex promoted by certain Indian religious leaders of the past several hundred years.

It just strikes me that pornography is practically the least of India's sex- and gender-related problems, and that someone like Bishakha Datta isn't likely to treat it as a serious issue. If anything, she's likely to agree with studies suggesting that exposing adult males to porn reduces their tendencies towards sexual violence, which from her perspective would make it a good thing. That doesn't necessarily mean she's Part Of The Problem™, but if you're thinking she might take the lead on this issue, that just seems very unlikely to me.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Join the Holy Orgy Kama Sutra Everyone! (WP:JHOKSE)


Posted by: Moulton

I don't get the jokes.