these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA

The Times of India has a brief article about the major contributor to the Gujarati Wikipedia and Gujarati Wiktionary. (Gujarati is the language of Gujarat, an Indian state in the northwest of the country.) As the article notes, the primary contributor (Yann Forget, who recently ran for the WMF board ) is not Indian, but French; there’s a charming story about how he came to know the Gujarati language, but I will defer to the article for that.

I’m not intimately familiar with every WMF wiki, but several smaller ones seem to have a similar story as the Gujarati wikis mentioned here — all the work is done by one or two very dedicated individuals, and if that core leaves, the project goes silent. Of course, we can blame much of this on either issues of scale (few speakers), issues of availability (few people with free time and decent Internet connectivity), or some combination of the two. Sadly, those issues are beyond the scope of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The next best hope for some smaller wikis, then, would be emigrants, expatriates, students, and foreigners. The Gujarati wikis, for example, might benefit from Gujarati speakers who live in the UK (especially around London, Leicester, Coventry, and Bradford). To get these people to contribute to Gujarati wikis, though, they first need to know that Gujarati wikis exist. (The Times of India article helps with that, though they could have at least posted a link.) On top of this, UK-based Gujarati speakers need to be nudged to spend more time on the Gujarati wikis than on the English Wikipedia; after all, the Gujarati wikis need a lot more help than en.wp.

It doesn’t help, of course, that the North American press tends to focus on the English Wikipedia. (Seriously, the only non-enwiki mentions I’ve seen lately have been about dewiki’s flagged revisions test; dewiki’s adventures in paper publishing; the ten millionth Wikipedia article, which was posted in huwiki; and an occasional en.wikinews story that “makes it” to the mainstream media.) Whenever possible, we should be reminding the press about the existence of other wikis — and not just the English projects!

Congressman Paul Broun, a Republican from Georgia, has introduced legislation that would restrict sales of “men’s magazines” on military bases.

I guess things must be mighty boring up on Capitol Hill now that world peace has broken out, the economic and energy and climate crises have all been fixed, and every human has adequate health care and education.

Seriously, though, it’s pretty sad that a member of the Congress of the United States places such a high priority on keeping servicemembers from becoming aroused. Maybe his constituents should pay attention to what Rep. Broun isn’t working on in Congress when it comes time to re-elect him in November.

(hat tip to Joe.My.God)

Busy week ahead. Tonight’s a final in theology, my least favorite class in a long time. Tomorrow night I have the option of taking a final in psychology, but I’m skipping it because the prof is dropping our lowest individual test score and because I have 78/80 on every single test so far (which is kind of creepy). Wednesday I have to appear before a judge to see if s/he wants me to serve on a grand jury; we also have a chorus-small-group rehearsal. Thursday morning I have an appointment to get a permanent crown on tooth #12; this will finish the work on that tooth. And this weekend, Fred and I are going to Chicago for a Brotherhood of the Phoenix event.

More later, if I get a chance.

Clay Shirky made a long blog post that’s now catching the usual attention from Boing Boing and Smart Mobs et al. In Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody, he discusses the role that sitcoms have played in American leisure time, and how that role is gradually being replaced by more participatory endeavors like Wikipedia.

At the end of the speech/post, he tells a story about a friend’s four-year old daughter, who was watching a Dora video and immediately began crawling around the back of the TV “looking for the mouse”. The assumption of participation is natural for today’s children, he says, and goes on to imply that that assumption will become more widespread.

I’ll confess that I already “look for the mouse”, as it were. In my case, though, it’s the “edit” button on blog posts and news stories and timeshifting capabilities on radio broadcasts and occasionally a conversation (”wait, what did he say?”). It’s a substantial a shock for me to spend an hour cleaning up a dodgy biography of a living person and then find that some of the cited sources are themselves poorly done. My instinct in these cases is to fix the problem myself — {{sofixit}} isn’t just a snarky template, it’s a way of life — and it’s infuriating when I find that I can’t.

Shirky’s smaller point, that Wikipedia editors “find the time” because they aren’t passively consuming content, also rings true for me. Aside from a few (frakking brilliant) shows, I rarely watch television any more. Instead, in my free time, I’m editing a wiki, or playing a video game, or baking, or cooking, or perhaps eventually playing rugby — in short, anything but camping out in front of “Deal or No Deal”. This pattern of behavior has been growing over the past few years, mostly because I’d rather involve my brain and hands and entire body than sit there blankly.

I don’t speak for all wiki editors, though, and I’m curious to know what other Wikimedia-connected folks think about Shirky’s article. Does he have a point? Is participatory culture a natural outgrowth of modern Western society?

Yes, we had an earthquake last night. It woke us both up, shaking the bed and rattling windows and doors. (The windows were rattling as though a strong gust had hit them, but then again the interior doors were rattling just as hard. Plus, shaking bed.) A couple drawers shimmied open. No damage for us, though neither of us could really get back to sleep afterwards.

Of course, it’s the only thing anybody can discuss at the office today. I’m just mildly surprised that nobody so far has mentioned December 3, 1990, when half of my sixth-grade class was mysteriously absent.