Bliss

June 16, 2017 Ian Gilfillan Leave a comment

Dragon

In late 2015, after a moment of bliss, I decided to write down some of the peak moments, those little appearances of bliss, that I’ve experienced in my life. They’re in no particular order, just what came to mind at the time.

1) In my parent’s garden, doing chi kung at midnight, a clear sky, channeling moonlight to the earth.

2) A hike in the Hout Bay mountains, 3 close friends, a howling gale and I lean out over the edge, held up by the wind, buffeted, supported.

3) In a car, driving home from the Boland Trail. Day 2 was cut short by an intense hailstorm, fingers numb, we stumbled and slipped down, sat by a fire having a hot chocolate, drove home in bliss in a warm car, listening to the Waterboys, conversation.

4) Late night at “the mad-hatters tea party”. The moon is purple, smiling, a figure dancing in circles under the moonlight. Is it one or two figures? The world glows with beauty.

5) Making love under a skylight, beauty, my body liquid, soft.

6) On a mountain, a sandy overhang, 3 close friends, candles, sharing stories, connection.

7) In a forest alone, near Knysna, night falls, fireflies come out, it becomes a magical fairy forest

8) Dancing in a village in Madagascar, a new years party, a head taller than everyone, the music strange. The ecstasy of surprise, music and connection, after arriving on New Years Eve, no plans, after the dullness of Christmas alone in a forest eating a litchi for dinner.

9) Floating on my back in Silvermine dam, ears underwater, silence, the mountains a bowl around me.

10) Arriving at Rustlers Valley after an exhausting 3-day/2-night hitch. Collapse on the welcoming grass. Feel a deep sense of being home.

11) Dancing at Rustlers Valley, no sense of anyone else. Feeling unwanted in my tent, I go to the dancefloor in the early hours, ecstatic frenzy.

What’s noticeable about the list is that all eleven are moments felt in the body, mostly outdoors. There have been highs thinking, writing, doing something mental, but none of them have the same intensity as those moments felt in the body. Of the eleven, about half I was alone in some sense, and the other half were shared with others.

And the other thing noticeable is that none of them are particularly recent. Most are from the 90’s, early 2000s. Only one, perhaps two, are from this decade. Time to change that!

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Water (Personal)

No Lady

April 14, 2017 Ian Gilfillan 2 Comments

I haven’t learned my lesson and I’ve chosen the cheapest hotel I can find in Manhattan, in the Chinatown district.

I get to my room on the 2nd floor. A gloomy corridor leads to a tiny window, facing a wall, and there are countless doors dotted on either side of the passage, with about a doors-width of wall between each door.

I enter the room. It has a tiny single bed, too short for me to lie without resting my feet on the wall. The entire room is smaller than a double bed. I can sit up with my back against the one wall, resting my feet on the far wall. I won’t have been the first person to do this, as three of the walls are covered in streaks from weary feet/shoes. There are no windows, but the streaks on one wall are broken by a carefully positioned plastic artwork.

The view
Floral masterpiece

The bathroom is smelly. A friendly cockroach comes out of a drainage hole in the middle of the floor to greet me.

The rooms have a chicken wire roof, so the area is more like a dorm with tiny walls between them, with every sound from the neighbouring guests broadcast across the floor. “No lady” said the sign outside, and I’m not sure whether they’re more concerned about disturbing the other guests or about the wellbeing of the lady as she contorts to fit on the bed along with the guest. Or perhaps it’s the walls they’re worried about – they don’t look like they could withstand much activity.

It may be New York, but the roof aims for that Alcatraz style

The wifi is not working.

I meet a Serbian artist. “Terrible, terrible place. I will never come back here, never!”

“You hear everything, and the man next door, he’s an ex-convict, he tell me to switch my light off. ‘I’m reading’ I say. He threaten to kill me, say he stab someone to go to jail and if I don’t switch my light off, he kill me. Terrible, terrible.”

“I snore, he shout at me to keep quiet. But he snore like steam train!”

The artist leaves to go to his exhibition, where he will put on a helmet in order to control a giant robot arm that will wave him in the air, apparently controlled by his brainwaves.

I like this place already.

Bumbling Round Bergen

Water (Personal)

A Visit to Home Affairs

January 17, 2017 Ian Gilfillan 1 Comment

My passport expires soon, so it was time to brave the horrors of Home Affairs again. But wait, could things have improved? Since I last had the pleasure of experiencing their welcome, Home Affairs in Wynberg has moved to Maynard Mall, and this post gave a glowing review.

Arrive at 11-ish? 8 people in the queue, smoothly in and out? Glowing comments corroborating the experience? What alternative universe have I arrived in!?

I arrive at Home Affairs about 11h30. There’s a queue snaking right out the door to Capitec Bank. Heh, those poor suckers are probably applying for an ID. I go to the front. Am stopped from going in and told to get a number for the passport queue at the back. No problem, I can already see the envious looks as I’m called in to the passport queue, leaping ahead of the poor saps who’ve probably been waiting since dawn.

The guard at the back is in deep conversation with someone else. Tells him he needs photos. What? Already a spanner in the works, what happened to the new biometric application system, digital photos taken right there? No problem, I don’t mind getting photos, we’re well situated in a mall, should be easy to get.

Eventually there’s a small queue by the guard, playing gatekeeper at the back of the large queue. He turns to me. “I’d like to apply for a passport” I smile. He starts laughing.

“What, hahah, no, we’re full. You must come back tomorrow!”.

“Er, OK, what time tomorrow” (I’d done well getting there by 11h30 I thought).

“Before 7am”.

“BEFORE 7am!?!?”

“Yes”. He’s already done with me, moves on the next person.

Before 7am? Not only am I no longer in the utopian universe of 8 people in the queue, I have moved into another universe where the laws of physics do not apply. I can conceive of being there before 7am as easily as I can swim faster than the speed of light.

I’ll never leave the country again…

Metal (Technical)

South African Banks SSL Security (2)

January 9, 2017 Ian Gilfillan

After seeing someone’s Facebook security horror story about a local credit card (not one of the banks listed below), I was inspired to re-run the tests I previously ran on the South African banks, using SSL Lab’s SSL Server Test.

The results last time were awful, with Standard Bank and Absa falling way below the acceptable standard. This time, I was pleasantly surprised (previous results in brackets).

Ranking	Bank	Overall Grade	Protocol Support	Key Exchange	Cipher Strength
1	FNB	A+ (B)	95 (95)	90 (80)	90 (90)
2	Nedbank	A (B)	95 (70)	90 (90)	90 (80)
3	Capitec	A- (A-)	95 (95)	90 (80)	90 (90)
	Absa	A- (F)	95 (0)	90 (90)	90 (90)
	Standard	A- (F)	95 (0)	90 (0)	90 (60)

All of the banks have improved their scores. Capitec, which has dropped from first to third, still does not support Forward Secrecy, but has improved its key exchange ranking from 80% to 90%.

FNB, which jumped from second to first, has deployed HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) with long duration. FNB gets the only A+ ranking.

Nedbank, which jumped from third to second, has improved from a B to an A, improving its protocol support and cipher strength rankings.

Absa and Standard Bank have both improved from F’s to A-‘s, and are joint third with Capitec. To put things in perspective, their rankings would have put them top during the previous test. So all banks are doing better than the best bank in May 2016. With no-one talking of a big four anymore (Capitec now outrank Nedbank in some metrics), perhaps little bit of competition is helping after all.

Earth (Arts and Literature)

November 2016 African language Wikipedia update

November 24, 2016 Ian Gilfillan 5 Comments

The March update was positive, so let’s see how the various African-language Wikipedias have progressed since then. As always, this measures the number of articles, which is an imperfect metric, but it’s interesting to follow the trends.

African Language Wikipedias

Language	11/2/2011	9/5/2013	26/6/2015	5/3/2016	24/11/2016
Malagasy	3,806	45,361	79,329	81,240	82,799
Afrikaans	17,002	26,752	35,856	39,065	42,732
Swahili	21,244	25,265	29,127	32,565	34,613
Yoruba	12,174	30,585	31,068	31,172	31,483
Egyptian Arabic		10,379	14,192	14,839	15,959
Amharic	6,738	12,360	12,950	13,031	13,279
Northern Sotho	557	685	1,000	2,830	7,605
Somali	1,639	2,757	3,446	3,878	4,322
Kabyle		1,503	2,296	2,643	2,847
Lingala	1,394	2,025	2,062	2,131	2,777
Shona		1,421	2,321	2,459	2,638
Kinyarwanda		1,817	1,780	1,785	1,799
Hausa	–	–	1,345	1,360	1,400
Igbo	–	–	1,019	1,112	1,284
Kongo	–	–	–	1,122	1,173
Luganda	–	–	–	–	1,082
Wolof	1,116	1,161	1,023	1,044	1,058

Afrikaans continues to grow the steadily, and recently celebrated its 15th birthday. The quality of articles is high, and it’s starting to get more media attention. Which also means dealing with the kind of responses that the English Wikipedia has moved on from, such as but anyone can edit it, how can we trust it. It’s good to see the solid Afrikaans community continuing their impressive work.

Afrikaans Wikipedia's 15th birthday
The Afrikaans Wikipedia’s 15th birthday celebration in Cape Town

There’s a new edition to the 1000 club this time. Welcome Luganda, leapfrogging Wolof, which has mostly stalled since achieving the milestone

Most of the languages have continued to grow as per their previous tends, but yet again Northern Sotho is an exception, and showed the fastet growth over this period. Why is it doing so well? The overused Margaret Mead quote Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. perhaps? It’s disputed whether she actually said it, but moving on, just how small are we talking about? In the case of Northern Sotho, there are two main champions. User:Mohau, who has single-handedly created a whopping 4916 of them, and User:Aliwal2012, who I mentioned in the March update, has created 2958 articles. These two editors are an inspiration!

South African Language Wikipedias

Language	19/11/2011	9/5/2013	26/6/2015	5/3/2016	24/11/2016
Afrikaans	20,042	26,754	35,856	39,065	42,732
Northern Sotho	557	685	1,000	2,830	7,605
Zulu	256	579	683	742	777
Tswana	240	495	503	538	615
Xhosa	125	148	356	473	576
Swati	359	364	410	412	419
Tsonga	192	240	266	352	390
Sotho	132	188	223	299	341
Venda	193	204	151	228	238
Ndebele (incubator)	–	–	–	12	12

Besides Afrikaans and Northern Sotho, none of the languages are showing substantial progress, but all are showing signs of life, except for Ndebele, which has stalled in the incubator. As South Africa’s smallest official language, it most reflects the struggles of many of South Africa’s languages, which while official on paper, receive little to no real support.

But there’s no need to wait for others. Hopefully the Northern Sotho example has inspired you. All it takes is sitting down and editing!

Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

Water (Personal)

There’s a mouse in mi kitchen, what am I gonna do?

November 23, 2016 Ian Gilfillan

mouse

It’s useful to have some backup skills if you ever want a career change. Mine is mouse catcher. In the last month, I’ve caught 5 mice. And I mean caught. No poison, no traps. I channel my inner cat, sneak up on then, and catch them in a bucket (usually by herding them inside).

Don’t try this is the middle of the night. I’ve avoided sleeping in the lounge next to the fireplace for a while, as I hear them in the kitchen, can’t sleep, eventually furiously barge into the kitchen at about 4am, channeling not my inner cat, but my inner buffalo. The mice escape, I try to go back to bed. Repeat. And the next day I’m a sleep-deprived wreck.

No, you need to stalk them fresh and alert, usually first thing in the morning, or late evening.

I release them in a field. Not the field across the road, as I first did. Apparently mice can find their way back for more than a kilometre. So I take them for a little drive.

Mouse number five proved challenging. After catching it as easily as the others, I had it in a bucket with a book on top. I heard it desperately leaping up, as the others had done, but left it alone as I wasn’t quite ready for the drive.

I returned to find the mouse gone. The tiniest of mice had leaped many times it height, and squeezed out the tiniest of holes I’d left for air. And mice learn fast. Back the next night, now it proved much tougher to catch. The slightest breath as I stalked it and it was gone. Once or twice I had it cornered but it knew to avoid the bucket at all costs.

I heard it again. After catching four mice I thought I had them all and had scrubbed the shelves. The next day they looked like a student’s party pad again. Although I’ve never met a student that shits everywhere. And gnaws holes in the hemp. Mice love hemp. If there’s no hemp seeds, they go for the hemp powder. If there’s no hemp powder they’ll go for the chia meal. Then the chia seeds. Then they start getting desperate and go for the lucuma. The only thing that’s safe is the cacao. They will even eat cardboard rather than cacao.

With the precious hemp safely squeezed into the fridge, and the cacao of no interest, the mouse was in the shelf with my drill, screws, light bulbs. Chewing the cardboard box around the drill. I had the bucket ready, sneaked up, blocked the exits. Threw open the door. And the mouse was gone in a flash, hidden before I could see where it went. I started unpacking furiously, bucket ready for a sudden escape. Light bulbs, extension cords, screws, screwdrivers. No sign of the mouse. It could only be in place. I peeked into the drill box. And there it was. I had to move fast – the box wasn’t that secure, with all the chewing the mouse had been up to.

Mouse shit everywhere. Pasta packets strewn open. The temptation to switch the drill on didn’t even cross my mind…

If driving while texting, or having sex, is dangerous, it doesn’t come close to driving while trying to keep in a mouse in a drill box with many holes. The thought of it chewing through the car didn’t appeal, so the mouse was not escaping again. Luckily it was late at night, and the slightly wobbly driving didn’t cause any accidents. The mouse raced off into the field, hopefully to meet up with the rest of the little hooligans.

It’s been two days. I may even sleep in the lounge tonight. The cupboards are half scrubbed, though I doubt I’d pass any kitchen health inspections. Hopefully that’s the end of them…

Picture from Wikimedia Commons

Earth (Arts and Literature), Water (Personal)

Bumbling round Bergen

October 16, 2016 Ian Gilfillan

Norway is not a welcoming country. Not when the bottled water is on sale for R60, or the quotes for the taxi from Oslo airport to the city centre start at R2400. I can also splurge on a fancy limo for R14000. Maybe choosing the cheap flight and arriving in Oslo after midnight wasn’t such a good idea after all.

I finally make it to my accommodation. Having failed to find a couchsurfer (another reason not to arrive after midnight), I look away as I hand over my credit card. Punch in my pin and hope my transaction doesn’t send the rand into freefall again. With impeccable timing, the finance minister has been charged with fraud, sending the currency plummeting 3.5% the day before. With the Euro, I can neatly pretend R1 equals 1 Euro (it’s actually 15 to 1), and everything looks a bargain. In Norway, that trick doesn’t work, as it’s about 2 to 1, and prices still seem outrageous even without doubling.

The person at the counter asks me if I want bedding. “Er, bedding?” I ask. Yes, the hotel room comes without bedding. OK, the place is a bit of a dive, but it doesn’t include bedding? “Er, yes, I suppose…” That’s a further R92, thanks to the infernal machine showing me the price in rands.

There was a review saying the place looked like a mental asylum. Online reviews, eh, always exaggerating.

The place looks like a mental asylum. The lift doesn’t work, and I find myself staggering up I forget how many flights of stairs, and in a long corridor, white walls, no windows, with poky doors. I expect to see bars on them, but am too tired to look. I find my room, am too tired to even put on the duvet cover, and collapse down to sleep.

A good lesson in why “order by price, lowest first” isn’t always a good idea when choosing accommodation.

What I looked like after arriving in Oslo
I wish I looked as good as this after arriving in Oslo

I plan to stay in Oslo one or two days, and then catch the train to Bergen. I even have a couchsurfer from later in the evening after he gets back from work. Which means I get to check out, and wander around the city hauling my bags around. I came to Europe for work, and politely made sure I had a clean pair of underpants for every day, but now I’m tempted to burn the lot so that I can travel light.

I wander through the botanical gardens. It’s autumn, and everything looks like I did the night before. I carry on to the train station. There are lots of beggars. I wonder about the viability of setting up a proxy beggar, and sending the daily earnings back home. Probably eradicate poverty in Cape Town.

Looking online before, there are regular trains from Oslo to Bergen. I come across the train station, and decide to buy a ticket there. It turns out there’s a train strike, with limited trains and most of them full. The only option in my timeframe is the very next one, leaving in about an hour. I quickly message my couchsurfer, book accommodation for Bergen (again, I have a couchsurfer, but not for the next two nights) and settle down to enjoy the ride.

Each time I travel, I fantasise about meeting some gorgeous stranger. It doesn’t help that a friend did just this on a flight to Cape Town, ended up showing her around the whole week, and is now married to her.

On the 12-hour overnight flight to Amsterdam, I was seated next to a gorgeous stranger. Who promptly went to sleep. She woke up about 2am, just as I was hoping to fall asleep myself. She started rummaging around for her iphone. This went on the whole night, and it didn’t help that she got up about 6 or 7 times too (I was in the middle seat, she by the window). After a miserable sleepless night, she finally accused me of stealing her iphone and demanded to search my bags. I let her search my bag (all the while hoping it hadn’t slipped into my shoe or something). She didn’t find it. She wanted me to ask the equally grumpy, sleepless passenger next to me whether he’d taken it. I decided to rather ask him to get up, so that we could both get out of her way and she could search for her iphone properly. The stewards came to see what was happening.

“Is this yours?” the passenger behind helpfully asked, showing her the iphone that had slipped to the seat behind.

Happily she got her iphone back. Unhappily I was more of a wreck than usual on arrival. No, we’re not getting married.

The train from Bergen to Olso is apparently one of the most beautiful train trips in the world. I sit down next to a gorgeous stranger. But she has the window seat and is blocking my view. Soon the seat in front is free, and I move there to look at the view. Just as we start ascending, and I start to see snow on the hills, the gloom descends, and I can’t see anything. Thanks to the late departure, most of the trip will be overnight, and I’ll miss the views. I move back to the gorgeous stranger. She likes the pictures of Cape Town. She gets off at the next stop.

I arrive in Bergen. It’s late again. At least the place I’m staying at is walkable from the station.

It’s a self-service checkin. Enter your booking code. Enter your credit card. Aargh, not again, can’t the machines here stop showing me the price in Rands! I punch in the pin. The machine spits out my keycard, and flashes out a whole bunch of information. I’m tired, I want to go sleep. Wait, my room number?! Was it 420? 402? I enter the keycard in the main doors. Red light. A note pasted to the door says “you may have to enter your card a few times before getting a green light). I enter it again. Red light. And again. About 15 times later I’m starting to get a wild look in my eyes and am wondering how strong the door is. Luckily I’m saved from a night in Bergen prison by someone else coming in, telling me I need to remove the card quickly, rather than wait for the light.

At least the lift works, and room 402 turns out to be correct. But disaster, what’s the wifi password!? Perhaps that was also on the bunch of info I didn’t read. I really must stop arriving late at night as a zombie. I go downstairs to find someone. Except I can’t get downstairs because I can’t find the lift. I remember coming through a door into a passage, but which door? There are lots, and they all look the same! At least everything is not all white this time. I try a few, all locked. Eventually I find the stairs, find someone who can give me the wifi password, and, concentrating carefully to remember my room number, the wifi password and where I came in, make it back, and settle in for the night.

I can’t sleep, with the infernal racket the fridge is making. I get up to switch it off.

The next morning I awaken, looking up at the hills surrounding this beautiful town. A deep, contented breath as I feel relaxed at last. And step into a huge puddle formed from the fridge defrosting onto the floor. Shortly after I get a reminder about the work I promised to finish up after Amsterdam, and haven’t got around to yet. The hills call to me as the day passes, distractedly punching the keyboard.

My couchsurfer cancels. I get to extend my stay, and hand over my credit card again. I start to get worried about my cards getting blocked before I’ve even bought my return ticket to Amsterdam. I look at flight tickets. I find the cheapest ticket, one I’d briefly researched before. Click book. Wait! There’s an 11-hour stopover somewhere. I may as well walk. What about direct flights? Oh god, no. I feel like crawling into a ball and whimpering when I see the price.

It rains 240 days a year in Bergen, and once set an impressive record of 85 days of rain in a row. My kind of town.

And then there’s the fjords. I sit down to write some landscape love poetry.

Ah, the fjords

A good start, a little rusty, but I can feel this coming back to me.

The beautiful fjords, bellisimo, belle

Or is it bellisima and beau? What gender is a fjord anyway? Hmm, this isn’t really poetry, is it. I’ll skip the poetry.

Anyway, Slartibartfast deserves his award for the fjords. If you get a chance, go see some!

Earth (Arts and Literature)

Revisiting Patreon

September 6, 2016 Ian Gilfillan

In March 2015 I started a series, 30 Artists in 30 Days, where the plan was to find 30 artists to support on Patreon. The 30-days part ended up being a little loose. Read that post first if you haven’t already.

It’s been about 18 month since then, and I thought I’d go back and see how Patreon is working out for those artists.

Here’s the list:

Active means has posted on Patreon since June 2016.

Artist	Current Status	Mar 2015		Sep 2016
Nate Maingard	Active	153	$1343	269	$1309
Amanda Palmer	Active	3935	$29,193.25	8,317	$33,080
Cyra Morgan	Inactive	22	$140	25	$139
Julia Nunes	Active	504	$2,010.84	531	$1,424
Dan Newbie	Inactive	16	$43	21	$49
George Aguirre	Inactive	16	$221	removed
Okori	Active	13	$50.50	23	$68
Walt Ribeiro	Inactive	28	$158.11	removed
TimH	Active	53	$844.35	55	$968
Peter Yuen	Active	47	$558	78	$838
Peter Blanchard	Active	14	$251	18	$177
The DarkSide	Active	1	$1	1	$1
Raina Rose	Active	??	??	62	$198
James O’Deorain	Inactive	??	??	removed
Caitlin de Ville	Inactive	??	??	61	$336
Danielle Ate the Sandwich	Active	181	$1,011.85	193	$693
Nika Harper	Active	302	$1,918.41	194	$877
Scott Bradlee	Active	955	$3,427.59	620	$1316
Lauren O’Connell	Inactive	342	$1,463.68	357	$1,193
Ana Free	Active	75	$445.00	53	$390
Sean Osborn	Inactive	3	$31.00	5	$37
David Sides	Inactive	5	$9	4	$7
Cyrille Aimee	Active	79	$705	152	$1,125
Phil J	Active	9	$34	9	$40
Tony Lucca	Active	178	$1,373.00	165	$1,003
Christopher Bill	Active	48	$287.50	47	$98
Walk Off the Earth	Active	1448	$15,805.50	1,287	$9,512
Taylor Davis	Active	370	$1,857.00	412	$1,707
Unwoman	Active	293	$593.61	399	$751
Gabby Young	Active	40	$226.00	51	$260

Like Wikipedia, the concept behind Patreon seems to me like one those things the internet was designed for. Freeing up artists from the middlemen so that they can interact and earn directly from their audience.

So I was quite surprised to see that the majority have seen a reduction in their Patreon income, some quite substantially. A few no longer have Patreon accounts. Only 12 of the 30 have seen an increase. Most have fewer patrons, but even some with more patreons are earning less – so the average pledge has come down. I can’t really see a good reason for this. Patreon’s site was exploited in in October 2015, and perhaps this had an effect, frightening people off. But Patreon’s still getting good press, and still seems to be attracting new artists, so it’s a pity and a mystery to me that artists have not been able to grow their income in a way many would have hoped.

Wikipedia and systemic bias

March 28, 2016 Ian Gilfillan 1 Comment

Systemic Bias
A while ago, I noticed a comment on the talk page of one of the Wikipedia editors that I follow. An article he had created was nominated for speedy deletion.

Speedy deletion is the kind of thing reserved for articles about my pet cat, my high school teacher, the rock band I’ve started in my my basement that will be performing its first gig soon, the brilliant new open source content management system I wrote last night. In other words, articles that are uncontroversially deemed to be a waste of space.

The editor, Bobby Shabangu, has created many articles, almost exclusively African content, on the English Wikipedia, as well as the Swati Wikipedia. He’s on the board of Wikimedia South Africa. So, unlikely to add an article about his rock band then.

I took a look at the article. It was on David Tlale, a South African fashion designer. At the time (and it’s still the case as I write), the article was very short, a stub, but had a couple of good references.

In no way was it worthy of nomination for speedy deletion.

But it’s the kind of situation African editors routinely face. Whenever African content is added, the chances of it being nominated for deletion are high. In many cases, the editor is at fault, having not provided sufficient references, but in many cases it’s simply a case of systemic bias. Wikipedia recognises this (there’s a whole article on the issue, and how to tackle it), but that doesn’t help minimise the impact. At any gathering of African editors, there’s almost always much grumbling about the latest rejected content, a sharing of war stories. Another member of the South African board says he no longer contributes to the English Wikipedia for this very reason. And undoubtedly, if you’re able to contribute in another language, it’s far more rewarding to see your contributions gratefully accepted rather than viewed suspiciously.

I started editing in 2002/2003. At the time, the English Wikipedia was a giant blank page. It wasn’t hard to find a new article to create. The city of Durban? The Springbok rugby team? Kaizer Chiefs? Lawrence Ferlinghetti? Walter Sisulu? The Pan-Africanist Congress? I created the articles for all of these and more, and many articles were in a far worse state than Bobby’s once I submitted them. References? Pfft, too much trouble, who needs them.

Today, the English Wikipedia is a very different beast, the criteria are far more stringent, and it’s no longer possible to find such low-hanging fruit to create. But Wikipedia still severely under-represents African content.

Because I happened to spot, Bobby’s article I could remove it from consideration for speedy deletion. But shortly after it was nominated for deletion, which involves more energy spent justifying an article’s existence.

If I had faced the obstacles new editors face today, if my new articles were continually rejected, deemed unworthy, and I had to spend all my energy in fighting to keep them, I can safely say I wouldn’t still be editing 13 years later.

Let’s go back to David Tlale. Let’s imagine he was an American fashion designer. He’s had articles published about him in the New York Times and the Washington Post. His work has appeared at the New Fashion Week and the Paris Fashion Week. Would his article be seen as the equivalent of one about my pet rabbit?

Of course not.

Systemic bias doesn’t imply that administrators nominating African content for deletion are malicious, out to sabotage the project. No, I’m sure they are well meaning, and having to deal with a constant stream of rubbish contributions must test one’s patience, so when they see another article about someone they don’t recognise, when because of their background they can’t quickly tell the difference between references from South Africa’s largest media companies and various personal blogs, the outcome is not too surprising.

So what can be done about it?

Since I’ve been editing for so long, I’ve been granted the “autopatrolled” right. This means any new article I create is listed as “reviewed”, and is far less likely to attract the attention of a trigger-happy administrator editor looking to delete it.

At today’s Wikimedia South Africa board meeting, I proposed that we identify various experienced, trusted editors, and nominate them to receive the autopatrolled right. Most editors don’t know it exists, or don’t want to go through the red tape of applying and justifying themselves. This won’t help new editors, but it will help retain experienced editors who’re consistently beaten down by the opposition they face.

Let’s see how it goes!

Neverness

Bliss

No Lady

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South African Banks SSL Security (2)

November 2016 African language Wikipedia update

African Language Wikipedias

South African Language Wikipedias

There’s a mouse in mi kitchen, what am I gonna do?

Bumbling round Bergen

Revisiting Patreon

Wikipedia and systemic bias

Before, you are wise, after, you are wise. In between, you are otherwise.