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Hi I'm Cynthia. I'm a programmer, currently residing in Brooklyn NYC USA. Most of the stuff I put in is related to other systems projects I am working on.
I am also very accessible and not possessive of what I've put in. I welcome [expect, hope for even] assistance in correcting and updating items I've worked on.
Please always feel welcome in accessing the my talk page with any comments, questions and suggestions.
[edit] Things I am working on
- Trying to round up all the articles floating around Wikipedia having to do with the Bisexual community and adding an appropriate "B" identifier (i.e. bisexual -- activists, community, culture, musicians, painters, photographers, organizations, writers, etc., etc.) to their Category lists, so they can be easily found.
[edit] Things I wish were on Wikipedia
- an article on electronic activism
- articles about notable post-stonewall bisexual activists (with photos) 'casue inquiring minds would love to know "who ARE these people whose names we see on all that stuff"
- same as above for the LGBT community in general, yeah you important activist people all know who each other are . . . but what about the rest of us?
[edit] In re: 'citation needed'
brings to mind this story by the American writer Mark Twain.
An editor once admonished his cub reporter, Mark Twain, never to state as fact anything to which he could not personally attest. Twain complied, composing this classic account of a certain (not so certain) gala social event:
- "A woman giving the name of Mrs. James Jones, who is reported to be one of the society leaders of the city, is said to have given what purported to be a party yesterday to a number of alleged ladies. The hostess claims to be the wife of a reputed attorney."
[edit] About documenting various facets of a Bisexual Community
Because this same topic keeps coming up on some of the articles I have added to and I'm getting tired of endlessly repeating the same words on various "talk" pages, I've decided to simply post some of my line of reasoning here, so I can just point people to it.
It is my opinion that as a nascent community it is sometimes difficult for the Bisexual Community to provide as many examples of the rigorous documentation as might be expected for say an article about members of the British peerage. My reasoning is as follows:
• Until recently very few people even entertained the thought that there might even be such an entity as a "Bisexual Community", so there isn't exactly a long paper-trail to begin with.
• Even in the world of "Identity Politics" the Bisexual Community is, to quote HyperZonk, "the poor bastard child of the gay rights community -- that is, they get respect neither from the straight community nor from the gay community -- for various reasons. Ergo, their size and reach as determined by Google and Alexa (admittedly low) is not necessarily reflective of their notability, longevity, and importance."
• Given the Community’s recent arrival as well as it's lowly status, much of the documentation of the initial theory, philosophical underpinnings and work of community building was contained on ephemera.
Until the use of personal computers and eventually the Internet began to move into the mainstream, there were none to few archival documents of the beginnings of the Community. After all who actually keeps all those Xeroxed flyers, positions papers, meeting notes etc., etc. that would more properly document the accomplishments of the Bisexual Community as well as its movers and shakers?
• It is difficult to properly defend the notability of a Community, it’s Institutions and People who have made/are making significant contributions by pointing to the historical record of the proud list of the Community’s accomplishments when they are continuously being "erased", either by a majority culture who may wish to deny it’s existence or by other related minority communities who may wish to bolster there own credibility by claiming all accomplishments as there own.
A current funny yet egregious example is an account in a major US newspaper of the marriage of notable Bisexual activist Ms. Robyn Ochs', where the sub-headline blared “Lesbian Pair Wed After 7 Years Together”.
• In discussing Ciphergoth well-stated comments in re "noteability" where he states that one should endeavor to write an article that will for example convince the reader that the subject will be remembered a hundred years from now", I would reply that in any historical matter, there are both the "media stars" and the people whose names, though perhaps not as commonly known did as much work or even more to bring an idea or movement to fruition.
Just as historians are finally beginning to see that in order to understand the actual truth of an era we must look at more than the lives of Kings, Emperors and assorted Nobility so must we recognize the value of and preserve the knowledge of a community’s less glamorous "worker-bee's" as well as compiling lists of movie stars who are rumored to have been bisexual.
How many times in researching any historic topic have we all been frustrated by the lack of underlying data on how something actually came about and who the people who actually did the work were?
For instance, while it is interesting to ready about Runnymede and the Magna Carta, I sincerely doubt King John and the Barons themselves were hanging about the meadow with pens in hand thinking all of that up and writing it down. But someone was and as far as I know who those persons have been “lost” to history.
They probably were considered not “notable” enough to be remembered.
