A #Netflix documentary, #Youtube reviews and a more #NPOV @Wikidata reaction

I really enjoyed watching "You are what you eat", a Netflix four part documentary based on research of the differences found between a vegan and an omnivorous diet in identical twins. The results of this research can be found in a paper called "Cardiometabolic Effects of Omnivorous vs Vegan Diets in Identical Twins". 

The documentary has several story lines, one is about the research itself, another informs about participants in the study and finally we are informed about the industry that produces our food. The chosen participants are a vehicle for the story, there were chefs, athletes cheese aficionados and people from other cultures (seen from an US-American perspective). What people eat is produced so we are informed about the food industry. The picture painted is not pretty but based in facts.

On YouTube there are several "reviews" and now some reviews as well. All of the "reviews" are really disappointing because they express expectations that are not realistic. The program is NOT about only the science and it is NOT giving equal weight to the production of fish or meat. The results of the research are favorable to a vegan diet and the documentary provides information on what is available when less or no meat is eaten. It is why we learn about the quality of vegan cheese and meat products. Great cheeses and a biltong that is not meat based are explored by participants of the study. 

I found the YouTube "reviews" disappointing because they came across as hatchet jobs. When they consider the documentary biased, it finds its basis in the bias of the reviewer and not necessarily on the results of the research. When it is said that these reviews were requested by "so many people", it feels like that people in the agro business exposed their hand. 

Wikipedia has the article on the documentary and it has an article on the principal author of the paper. They have an appropriate neutral point of view.

My Wikidata reaction is that I added the paper to Wikidata, I added many of its authors and many of the papers cited as references and to be brutally honest, seen from within Wikidata it looks awful, it is one dimensional, it is unusable. However thanks to tools the full impact of available information becomes available. Scholia is my preferred tools for science. This is the Scholia for the paper.

Thanks,

      GerardM

A Scholia for "water fluoridation"

Some topics are poisonous. People have a set point of view; hell or high water they will budge from their position. Even Wikipedia with its "neutral point of view" makes no dent in their preoccupation. So why argue?

Wikipedia is known for its references to sources and Wikidata is great at connecting these sources together. Particularly scholarly papers with a "DOI" may link to authors, cites works and works citing a paper. When a paper is of particular interest, you can expand the information in all these ways.

So I did not get into an argument about "water fluoridation", I included papers mentioned to Wikidata. I linked some papers with "water fluoridation" in its title to the subject. I attributed papers to authors including one by the Surgeon General of the United States..

Everything that was done on the subject is reflected in the Scholia for the subject. It suffices for me as my participation in an endless argument.

Thanks, GerardM 

Covid enquette in the Netherlands ..

 

Dutch politicians will have their day in an "enquette commissie" coming up with their version of what there is to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic. The result will probably mirror the composition of the mainly right wing commission. It is not as if we do not know what there was to learn; a recent research paper commissioned and paid for by the Dutch government lays out the effects of vaccination on mortality in the Netherlands. It does even refer to a study on religion and vaccination coverage in the Netherlands.

Given the composition of the committee, they will have a hard time convincing people of their outcome. Nobody is really interested in my opinion, but I do believe in proper science. Given the qualification of the people writing the commissioned paper, I added the paper to Wikidata, author strings were replaced by author identifiers, known publications were linked to the authors, I linked the cited papers and ensured that the primary author is known to Wikidata as well. The result is that anyone can find this enriched information in its Scholia.

Given that some Dutch politicians express that they not understand the scholarly process, the best I can do is open up information that has a scholarly foundation, particularly in a field where I do trust politicians to come up with a report that reflects their political bias.

Thanks,

      GerardM

For Dr @ashadevos there are 14 @Wikipedia articles

 

Hardly a "woman in red", Dr De Vos has many accomplishments chronicled in these Wikipedia articles. She presents herself with her colleagues on Facebook and, the graph of her co-authors should paint a similar picture, initially it did not. At first there were only a few publications to her name, they have been expanded to 26 at present. It introduced many co-authors and there are now some 112 co-authors missing.

Obviously, there is much more that could be done. Adding more papers and co-authors adds complexity to the Scholia of Dr de Vos. More distinctions could be added, talks at conferences and papers that were cited. I typically restrict myself to papers with a DOI and authors with an ORCiD identifier as they have the biggest network effect. 

I was reminded by Greenpeace that some people give themselves nothing for their birthday. So I updated this Wikidata item. Who will notice or care.. Like Greenpeace, Dr De Vos cares about whales; it is her specialty.

Thanks,

     GerardM

Gender balance at @Wikipedia, deletion; a rear guard action.

 A recent Wikipedia Research article aims to prove that the English Wikipedia deletion process is not biased. For some that is a loaded question because it  centers on the question if Wikipedia is equitable.

As so often the article is all about English Wikipedia and it has its own bias. English Wikipedia does not serve half the public of the Wikimedia Foundation and much of the other half does not read English. The gender balance in English Wikipedia is however improving; the percentage of articles about women is slowly but surely increasing.

At issue in the article is whether the English Wikipedia deletion policies effectively harm gender and race biases. Obviously there are more biases; you may be male and white but when you are not from an Anglo-american background chances for Wikipedia recognition are slim. When you care to research this, check out Wikidata, it includes a super set of what Wikipedia includes and it is biased in this way as well.

When a Wikipedia article about a scientist is deleted, it does not follow that its Wikidata item is deleted and given enough identifiers, it is likely that its related subset increases over time tilting the "notability" balance. Even so, many important scientists are "scientists in red", an example is Prof Emily Fairfax her prominence is for instance in her explaining and demonstrating that beavers feature prominently in the fight against forest fires. 

When English Wikipedia defends its own policies, it follows that they rely on the base assumptions in those policies. When those assumption are questioned, their arguments are lost. Given that English Wikipedia represents a subset of "the sum of all knowledge" that is included in Wikidata, it follows that much of Wikipedia can be understood from such a perspective. 

Wikidata has no "red links"; when a relation exists for an recipient of an award, there must be an item for both the award and the recipient. Wikipedia has one link in black to the "SIRS Lifetime Achievement Award". while Wikidata has a link to all recipients. They are linked to identified publications and other awards and consequently the Scholia for the award is really informative. 

Based on information like this improved information is available that must wait for a Wikipedia volunteer. English Wikipedia is a victim of its success, it cannot fully maintain its information. The same can be said for Wikidata. It is however a superset and it does not necessarily require a mastery of English.

With new technologies becoming more relevant, there is an avenue to improve the quality of any Wikipedia, inform people based on the data in Wikidata and improve on the quality of the information that we provide. 

Thanks,

     GerardM

Analysis of a Wikipedia article

For professor Gerhard Gries there is a Wikipedia article and as a consequence there was a Wikidata item. Actually there were two; they have been merged. Many articles have been attributed to professor Gries and a Scholia template was added to the article.

Professor Gries has his own lab: the "Gerhard and Regine Gries Lab". There is no article for his wife and, there was no red link. There was no Wikidata item for his wife but there were 59 links indicating her as a missing co-author. She has now 68 articles linked to her as an author or co-author. Regine Gries is now a "woman in red".

The article states in two places that he is a "Fellow of the Entomological Society of America" (2019). It is in the text and it is in a Wikipedia category. Relevant are two additional lists; the website of the Entomological Society of America and the result of a query at Wikidata (shown in a Scholia). All these lists are incomplete, the fellows of 2022 are not yet included on the SoA website; they can be found in a different place. The Scholia has been added to the category article on the English Wikipedia; in effect you will find several "fellows in red". 

Three additional awards are listed, awards that have no category on the article. One is for the "Fellow of the Entomological Society of Canada", its reference may be found here. Another one is for the Nan-Yao Su Award and finally the Gold Medal of the Entomological Society of Canada had to be added to Wikidata. There are always more "award winners in red" to be found or to be added.

Every list, every category in Wikipedia is likely to be incomplete. What we do not know may be relevant. With data on missing articles available in Wikidata, there are more more options to make Wikipedia more inclusive.

Thanks,

       GerardM

he, she, they/them

One ambition at Wikipedia is to have more articles about women.  The Women in Red project does really well, slowly but surely the balance between articles about males and females is improving. How do we know this: in Wikidata we have a database we can query and it shows over time.

Obviously, both many deserving men and women could get an article in future and particularly many scientists are already known in Wikidata through their publications. So how do we know the gender of these scientists? Because of a name like Emma or Janice it is likely a woman.. Not a precise method particularly for those people who identify themselves in a different way. Google scholar or Twitter often shows a picture and that is not fool proof either. 

The dilemma is in two ways: manual entries are open to errors in the first place. A six percent error rate is to be expected in any edit and anyone is kindly requested to fix what should be improved; Wikidata is rich in alternatives for male/female identifiers. The alternative is that we do not add a likely gender. This results in no awareness of the composition of the co-authors of an author. No awareness of the volume and balance of people who do not have an article yet.

I think that a male author with only male co-authors is problematic in and of itself. Quite often it is just that no attention was given to female co-authors so I often remedy this by giving attention to them. I add them to Wikidata, look for an ORCiD identifier, a Twitter handle a Google scholar profile. The effect is not only apparent for the male author, but it has an effect on all the co-authors for the newly registered author.

The issue I have is, I see no solution for the dilemma of a gender balance in Wikidata. What I do know is that Wikidata is a collaborative project and anyone is kindly requested to make it as good as it can be.

Thanks, GerardM

@WDScholia, proficiat Prof @DrSarahNull

 On Twitter it was announced that Sarah E. Null will be a professor at USU Watershed Sciences. Hydrology will prove to be a subject of even more importance. This subject has my interest so I checked out her entry in Wikidata.

Identifiers are really important, so I added her Twitter handle and her Google Scholar ID. Her Scholia showed what papers were known and I clicked "improve data" to disambiguate additional publications and link them to her Wikidata entry.

Google Scholar provides information of her publications and I added one paper to Wikidata; "Prolonged and Severe Drought in the Most Dammed Tributaries of the Lower Mekong Basin". It has 8 authors and only four have an ORCiD identifier, three did not have a Wikidata entry. Now they do and their ORCiD identifier makes them unique.

Typically I add several publications when I concentrate on a person. When I stop, I often revisit the "improve data" part of a Scholia to add missing co-authors. Of particular interest are the ones who are missing the most. They have the biggest impact on the "Co-author graph", making it more complex. Jay R. Lund is missing as a co-author ans so is J. R. Lund. Wikidata knew a "Jay Lund" and a "Jay R. Lund", they have been merged and I was then possible to attribute the missing publications for Jay R. Lund. After all this, Prof Null is no longer the only known author on seven papers. :) A bit diapointing so I added one other co-author for now; Marcelo A. Olivares. Others will creep in as more work is done in the future. 

Thanks,

       GerardM

An hydrology professor was killed in a shooting

I learned of Prof Meixner because of an outpouring of grief on Twitter by many people I knew of because of my hobby. I include papers and authors related to hydrology and related topics to Wikidata. As they expressed their loss, I started adding papers for Prof Meixner. The result is an evolving Scholia for him and his co-authors.

I have also done some work on some of the people I noticed on Twitter. Their Scholia has been expanded as a result. When they collaborated on research with Prof Meixner, they may pop up in his co-author graph.

Recently I had a tshirt printed with a design from a paper. When people suggest a picture that goes with a DOI and explain why it illustrated one of his papers, I will include the text on my blog. When there are more than one, the one Twitter likes best will get a tshirt.

It is horrible only to learn about someone when he dies like this. Apparantly this is how I deal with it.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Diversity for WMF is in its fundraising and in its results

Diversity is a stated objective and the Wikimedia Foundation does a comparatively good job.. except that it could be so much better.

It is known that (read Gapminder) genuinely rich people live in every country. The Wikimedia Foundation as a rule does not target the truly rich and consequently the average donation is low. It makes us independent of the vagaries of the opinions of the really rich. As Wikimedia becomes a truly global organisation, it should raise funds everywhere and report what WMF does locally. 

As we report on what we do locally, it follows that we have an interest for any locality. As local children do use Commons we ask people to upload pictures of a local policeman, firefighter, nurse, police car ambulance etc for them to use. As students read in their own language we easily offer e-books using the hub best suited for the purpose. When as a response we are asked to provide services, we prioritise the local service and we will internationalise and localise to get the most out of our investments.

As we become more global and diverse, the percentage of what the provision of our services will represent more and more the global distribution of people. It will grow our community, it will grow our audience and we will evolve away from an organisation managed from "the center of the world".

Plenty of challenges ahead but not so much the amount of money the highest earners in the WMF get paid. At that I do not give a fuck as long as the job gets done and, so should you.

Thanks,

        GerardM

Hierarchies of scientists from a personal @Wikidata/@Wikipedia point of view

 

As a hobby I add publications and scholars to Wikidata. I am particularly interested in hydrology, biodiversity and climate change. When I come across scientists, I look them up on Wikidata, I care most about scientists with an ORCiD identifier, I often add Google scholar and Twitter identifiers as well. ]

As there have been many, many papers and scholars for a long time, the impact I have is particularly in scientists new to Wikidata and attributing papers to them. This results in an improved representation that can be seen in their Scholia. When there is a Wikipedia article for a scientist, a template for the Scholia can be added; it will always show the most up to date information.

The way it works out is that I am a "browser", I read Twitter feeds by a scholar, find a publication they enthuse about and I may already be on a tangent adding the papers and scholars. In my job I do not have time to read and comprehend but I have time to mechanically add more papers. I read in the morning, make a pick for the day and I "search" using the Scholia search function with a DOI as the argument. When a paper does not exist I am presented with the option to add it to Wikidata. When its authors can be found because of their ORCiD identifier, they are linked from the start to their Wikidata item.

My personal hierarchy

• I find a paper, a scholar on Twitter
• They publish on a subject I am interested in
• When they are already known to Wikidata, they are linked to the publication I search for
• When search indicates that an ORCiD identifier exists, I search Wikidata and add a scholar or add an identifier.
• When Twitter indicates Twitter handles, I add them
• When I cannot guess the gender, I look at Google scholar for a picture, I add the identifier as well.
• When a scholar is picked for the day, I add the latest pictures first because they include more ORCiD identifiers for co-authors.

A Wikidata/Wikipedia hierarchy

• Most valuable are scholars with a Wikipedia article that includes a Scolia template
• Scholars with a Wikipedia article
• Scholars with a Wikidata item with many identifiers including an ORCiD identifier.
• Scholars with only an ORCiD identifier
• Scholars with no identifiers
• Scholars only known because of an "Author string"

When I come across an Australian scientists who was rewarded with an award, who has a Twitter account, an ORCiD and a Google Scholar identifier but no Wikidata item, it is someone I will add. So a warm welcome to Heather Neilly. She is of interest to me because of her work as an ecological consultant and in natural resource management for local government. Her latest work is on vegetation change in sheep-grazed chenopod shrublands in South Australia.

Thanks,

       GerardM

Sabina Nowak a Polish scientist, an expert on European wolves

Dr Nowak has a Wikipedia article in several languages. Her notability is obvious because wolves is a very hot topic in many European countries. When people have opinions about wolves, it is obvious that in a European context you cannot dismiss the research of Dr Nowak over the years. 

When the notability and the quality of a Wikipedia article is assessed, it is obvious that an encyclopedic article is not best served with a list of papers Dr Nowak contributed to; the Scholia template provides more in depth information. However, Scholia only functions when the papers are known and attributed.

In Wikidata, there were two items that needed to be merged. Three papers were linked, an additional nine could be attributed. Additional identifiers were added, of particular significance is Google Scholar as it knows many if not most of the papers of a scientist. 

Adding missing papers is easy; you search with a DOI for the paper and when Wikidata does not know it, it is suggested to add it using the quickstatements tool. The best bit is that when CrosRef knows the ORCiD identifier for an author, it will either identify the author or will add the ORCiD identifier as a qualifier. 

Adding the Scholia template to any Wikipedia article about published scholars makes sense; the data is a "work in progress". It changes as more papers and co-authors become known. It is also an invitation to our communities and scientists to improve both the Wikipedia article and the data represented in the Scholias for any scientist.

Thanks, GerardM 

Herbivory and fire. Automate citations to display them in @WDscholia

When what is there does not easily burn, a fire will be not that damaging. In a forest, a prairie particularly those with wild grazers and browsers, the damage by a wild fire is substantially less. Science describes this effect and science describes the effect of beavers who have a similar beneficial effect.

For the paper "Effects of large herbivores on fire regimes and wildfire mitigation" Wikidata has an item, it links to its eight authors but there are no citations. Like any quality article there are plenty of references on the website for the article but we do not know them yet in Wikidata. There is a bot that goes around and adds citations in its own sweet time but when volunteers like me take an interest, it would be great to tool up for attention for a single paper.

What it would look like is easy; it would show the papers that are known to be citations and enable a one click solution to add them as a citation. Then it would show the papers not known to Wikidata but with a DOI. They can be added one at a time. What is left is the stuff that is cited but takes more effort to annotate. 

The benefits are obvious; science connects what is said before to what is said in a paper and eventually it will be linked to those citing a paper. As more papers from more authors get this royal treatment, Scholia as a tool will become even more relevant for those who care about the references in related Wikipedia articles; its references are referenced.

It is easy to suggest that it should not be hard to implement; there is a bot and it only needs to function for only one paper in stead of serially. It then has to find its way as a tool in Scholia and that opens up a box of user interface related issues. Well worth it (I think) but it then we also need to get the message out that Scholia is very much an active as well as a passive tool.

Thanks, GerardM

You are a #scientist and, you want your papers to be read

People have to know that there is something new out there and Amy D. Willes gets it, she tweeted the news and illustrated it with gorgeous cover art. On Twitter I follow Jens Svenning, he retweeted the news from Amy and it is why there is now a Scholia for the paper.

When you want your paper to be read, you receive optimal results when your paper is used as a reference in Wikipedia. Current Wikipedia references have their references and when people want to review an article, it is only the later papers that provide new insights.

So what can you do for yourself and your papers:

• Check if your papers or you as a scientist are known
• a paper has a DOI
• you have an ORCiD, a Google Scholar et al identifier.. your Twitter id is appreciated
• You can check your profile using Scholia and you can add papers using Scholia
• It will identify co-authors with an ORCiD identifier when they are known on the publication at Crossref

Adding yourself or any other scientist is a start; when there is a Wikipedia article, it is great to add a {{Scholia}} as a reference particularly as it will get updated from new papers, cited papers, new papers or because of co-authors that become known.

Obviously a well developed Scholia is a stellar argument to support the notability when a new Wikipedia article for a scientists is considered.

Thanks,

       GerardM

PS you can also add a "main subject" to a paper for instance "woolly mammoth".. 

Making Wikicite a success by putting the Wikipedia editor first

Wikicite as a project has come to an end after a five year run. Much has been achieved (read the article). One great follow up idea is to harvest all the references of all the other Wikipedias and have all this data together so that we can analyse our quality even better.

All the data, all the Wikicite activities have been valued; people have been thanked, accomplishments announced and it is now left open how to move on. The best way to move forward is to bring a public to the data and add value. 

Every Wikipedia article has its references and we put Wikipedia editors and readers first when we show all the known references and its relations with older and newer publications. One button that provides the latest information will create buy in, makes it more interesting. It links to papers, to authors and requested updates are not part of a serial but of a targeted process.

A similar service we can provide for the authors of scholarly works. They will find in Wikidata what we know about them, identifiers of VIAF, ORCiD, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Twitter even Scopus. They can improve the information on their publications they can add identifiers, references to other publications, co-authors, subjects and see it improve the associated Scholia representations. What we can do for them is regularly harvest information and update Wikidata with the new or altered information.

When we truly build relationships, it is no longer essential that everything should be on Wikimedia servers. Why have a same project at the Internet Archive and at the Wikimedia Foundation? Why not share the work load. When we put our Wikipedia editors first, we provide them with the best information on literature, publications we have on offer. Most references are in the WaybackMachine anyway, we already rely on this so why not collaborate and share both the effort and the cost?

When we truly care about sharing the sum of all knowledge, it is in the eating that we find the proof, not in the dogma.

Thanks, GerardM

The pain that is in maintaining lists of African governmental politicians

At the French Wikipedia, there is a category with 16 Finance ministers of Morocco. A category is an unsorted list and the French category contains a few more entries than the English category. Both Wikipedias do not have a (sorted) list.

I maintain list of African heads of state and African governmental ministers, so this is just a next list to prepare. The workflow is as follows: I create an item for a position, on the talk page I add a template that contains the data and pointers to what is missing. Typically such information can be found on a Wikipedia list, this time I have to rely on templates on Wikipedia articles.. All my lists are "works in progress" and are on my watch list.

I have added copies of the Listeria lists to many Wikipedias. The texts are in English, the data is shown in the local language. It being in English is a reason to refuse these lists in several communities.

The Listeria functionality is replaced by Wikimedia Foundation maintained software. All the list definitions and expressions exist in one place. The data is shown in a language that can be selected. When a list changes, it is reflected on watch lists. You can watch for all data and possibly for data and labels in "your" language. A project can opt in to enable the use of these lists when they don't, functionality is available to compare a list with the centrally maintained list.

Thanks, GerardM 

The pain that is in maintaining the same list 300 times

As you may know, the board of the Wikimedia Foundation recently changed its composition. The President of the board resigned. This was easily reflected in English. Tonight there is a meeting of candidate board members for the Middle East and North Africa.

Obviously the information in Arabic needs to be correct and at this time it is not. There are many more languages supported by Wikimedia in the Middle East and North Africa and all of them could have information about the board and what it stands for. This inspired me to come up with the following user story..

An administrative person of the Wikimedia Foundation is tasked with maintaining  specific lists relevant to the movement. The data is maintained at Wikidata and lists that exist potentially in all Wikimedia languages, some 300, are updated with software maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. Each WMF list is on a watch list; when changes occur in the list, quality is centrally maintained.

Thanks, GerardM 

Two "user stories" for Nigeria

I spoke with my Nigerian friend Olatunde Olalekan Isaac on Facebook about growing more interest for Wikimedia content in Nigeria. I will not bore you with a verbatim discussion we had. Bringing you two user stories is much more satisfying.

Nigerian kids looking for pictures of a fireman goto their Wikipedia and search for an "onye oku oku". The search engine knows from where the request comes and shows the pictures of Nigerian firemen first.

The pictures are from Commons, in the meta data of the picture it says where the photo was taken. Happy kids, happy teachers and happy Nigerian Wikimedians because this brings more attention for the projects they care for.

At first it is an experiment that brings more traffic in their language. They then launch a photo contest in Nigeria.

People find pictures in Nigerian languages and to increase the choice of pictures to choose from, a photo contest is launched of everyday Nigerian objects, traffic signs, shops of all kinds, professionals, "be bold and show us your Nigeria" is the mantra. People find more pictures about Nigeria and even after the contest people continue to increase the selection people use for an illustration.

The Wikimedia Foundation has another challenge, there are copycats all over the world and the public use of Commons increases by 200% in a few months time.

Thanks,  GerardM 

The promise of things to come that is in @Wikicite

Wikicite is for me the biggest disappointment of all the Wikimedia projects. A disappointment not because it is not worthwhile, not because it did not bring us insights about what happens in English Wikipedia but because all the papers, conferences and data did not result in a transformation into active user stories. Closest comes Scholia where it identifies Wikipedia articles where a scholarly paper is used as a reference. 

Wikicite conferences have come and gone. They brought the best and brightest minds together discussing all kinds of ideas, all kinds of research. Once the papers were presented, the assertions discussed and analysed, when the conference was done they went home. From what I can observe in Wikimedia land, not much has changed.

Wikimedia Foundation has a real good friend in the Internet Archive. It already does much of what Wikicite could do. It archives everything that is used as a reference. When a reference goes dark, it links the reference to the backup. In FatCat it has information on scholarly papers and many of the papers, in Open Library it has information on books and many of the books. Many bots originating from the IA run on many Wikimedia projects. 

When it is up to me, I would have Wikicite as a joint project of the Internet Archive and the Wikimedia Foundation. A joint project will be based on the existing reality that is in the Internet Archive. Wikicite and Wikimedia projects bring it additional data, a public and additional user stories. Funding from the Wikimedia Foundation enables the development that such a synergy brings.

Data for all the citation in English Wikipedia linked to scholarly papers was available. We know in Wikidata, in FatCat, in Orcid, in Scopus how to disambiguate authors. When all this data gets integrated, a user story mentioned in a previous blog post is not fancy and easily becomes best practice. Thanks to collaboration with the Internet Archive there is less duplication of effort and the sum of the shared knowledge we hold is so much bigger; we can provide an even better service to our public. 

Calling a spade a spade and the "friendly space policy"

In my previous blog post I established that facts supported by science trump personal opinions, even community consensus. It follows that pointing out a biased opinion can be hugely unpopular and considered offensive. The "friendly space policy" is applied on the spot and at best can be later appealed at the "trust and safety". This is after the fact, it takes a huge time effort and it is why I did not bother. One other reason is that I told the respected Wikipedian that what he said was biased and I did not make excuses for saying so after prodding by a trusted officer of the Wikimedia Foundation. I am sanctioned and can no longer use certain functions.

I run for a seat on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation and even though it is a popularity contest, I am not in it to be Mr Wonderful; I will not kiss babies. My platform is to improve our service particularly to the projects other than English Wikipedia. To be successful, I have established that this is doable and I have to undermine accepted opinions that prevent us from improving on our service.

I truly respect the Wikipedian who made the biased remarks but I will not apologise for pointing his bias out. 

When I am to establish my aims at board level, there must be acceptance that we do not serve everyone with the sum of all the knowledge we have when there is this persistent bias towards our English speaking public. The recent developments at the Croatian Wikipedia show that "community consensus" can be overridden when this is necessary to establish our accepted global Wikimedia policies. It follows that the board should be mindful of the evolving science about the "gender gap" and insist English Wikipedia to consider its recommendations (aka clean up its act). It follows that even the most respected English Wikipedian and in the light of the "friendly space policy" can be called out for such bias.

As to the organisation of the WMF; its director reports to the board and is to inform about the development for other languages and the effects on the traffic in other languages. 

Thanks, GerardM