User:Christiaan

Kia ora, my name is Christiaan Briggs. I'm from the Land of the Long White Cloud (born 1976) and I currently live in England. I'm a draughtsperson, designer, uncle and some might say political activist. ^[1]

Contents 1 Topics I know a little bit about 2 Some thoughts on Wikipedia 3 Activism disclaimer 4 External links

Topics I know a little bit about

Participatory economics, anarchism, Single Transferable Vote, Human shield action to Iraq (an action I organised with Ken O'Keefe), 2003 Invasion of Iraq, Iraqi resistance, Popular opposition to war on Iraq, Malcolm Kendall-Smith Flag of New Zealand, Art Noveau, Straw-bale construction, Peak oil, Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, Club foot and Apple v. Does.

Some thoughts on Wikipedia

For me Wikipedia is not simply an encyclopedia but a tool to help set free the knowledge of humanity; and especially a way to help head off private corporations at the bend in their efforts to "own" everything dear to humanity. Wikis and the open-source movement as a whole are a living example that, contrary to what free-market fundies and advocates of capitalism tell us, financial profit is not a prerequisite for creativity, innovation and production.

The main concern I have about Wikipedia is systemic bias, which stems from the fact that its membership is formed in a similar way to the economic draft. Unfortunately there's not an awful lot that can be done to counter it, because the problem is mostly one of demographics, economics and politics (and not inconsequently, undemocratic media ownership and the subsequent framing of public discourse).

So content on Wikipedia is largely framed by people who, relative to the world, are disproportionately white and male, disproportionately American, and disproportionately people from white collar backgrounds. Therefore I think one of the best ways to counter such systemic bias on Wikipedia is to systematically get people involved in who are not white, male, American, or from a white collar background. Another longer term solution would be to replace capitalism with democratic economics

Systemic bias wouldn't be as much of an issue as it is if we could openly publicise the demographic of our editorial membership (making clear who has created the content), but this data is simply not available in an accurate form. As it stands many readers could be mistaken for thinking that Wikipedia is open to all and edited by a demographic similar to the English speaking world or even the whole world itself, but, unfortunately this is not so.

We can endeavour to form content with as neutral a point of view (NPOV) as possible but one culture's NPOV can be different to another culture's NPOV. Although we can attempt to write things with a NPOV, framing things from a NPOV is far more difficult because framing is interwoven into one's culture. In my opinion one example of this systemic bias framing is the decision to move Iraqi resistance to Iraqi insurgency.

Make sure you check out the Countering Systemic Bias project.

Activism disclaimer

1. ↑  From what I can work out an "activist" life is a sacrificial life and I'm just an ordinary guy indulging in life; attempting to seize control of it. So it seems a little strange to me that some of the things I do get labelled "activism," as if seizing control of one's life is some type of exclusive role available to a rare few. What better way to indulge in life than to undermine those who seek to stamp it out?

External links

• Last Straw - my weblog
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was created to defend our rights to think, speak, and share our ideas, thoughts, and needs using new technologies, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web.
• Downhill Battle is a non-profit organisation working to support participatory culture and build a fairer music industry.
• Public Knowledge is a U.S. based advocacy group working to defend your rights in the emerging digital culture.
• FreeCulture.org, an international student movement for free culture
• My blog entry on Malcolm Kendall-Smith

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