Author: Chris

Ad-hoc is Not Enough at Scale

There’s been a few recent conversations regarding social behavior and how to improve things within the Wikimedia movement that have caught my attention. I think these are important conversations to have, difficult and rife with misinterpretation and misunderstandings. They are, again in my opinion, the single most important thing our movement needs to figure out to succeed in increasing the diversity and representation within our movement. In both the content of our projects and those that choose to share their time in participation. We don’t need better software, we need better soft skills.

There needs to be a systemic rethinking of how we make it easier for folks to report behavioral issues – in the interface of things like WP:ANI, the handling of the case (private vs public) – but more importantly in the advocacy of “This is a place where we don’t tolerate harassment across the community – full stop. We want you to feel safe in coming forward with a report”.

We can’t continue to grow as a movement if we solely rely on individual admins and editors working in good faith in an ad-hoc manner. We can’t rely on people being strong enough in the face of adversity to have the energy to submit a report in public (with rather explicit instructions and requirements to boot).

It’s too inconsistent, fractured and obscure for mere mortals. 🙂 We need a critical rethinking of processes like ANI. We need research, design, and opportunities for admins to feel empowered to do this work.

Related: These shared experiences of a non-male community member in a male-dominated community. Like Wikimedia. Granted this is from another community outside of Wikimedia, but within the same society. There are very observable similarities.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/8t0wpb/are_you_gonna_play_the_victim_all_life_long_my/

Link List – July 3, 2018

Here are some interesting links I’ve collected in the last few months. I want to share them. With you! So sit down, open a few tabs and enjoy. Beats spending your time doing laundry. 😉

I’m perpetually doubting my own skills and eager to improve and learn what I know; and what I don’t know. This short video and related articles on the Dunning Kruger effect is something everyone should watch. Especially those who think they’re unaffected.
https://kottke.org/18/06/the-dunning-kruger-effect-we-are-all-confident-idiots

You don’t have the right to believe whatever you want to
https://aeon.co/ideas/you-dont-have-a-right-to-believe-whatever-you-want-to

The whole family watched this fun video from PBS Eons (and Hank Green!) about how the T-Rex lost its arms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=772GiBXnWoQ

Something that might explain why some folks are on edge about race-related matters in America. Unfortunately they’re wrong, but it provides some thinking on how folks think. I always thought the US was a melting pot of multiple flavors. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/24/opinion/america-white-extinction.html

Mr. Rogers was a big part of my childhood. Both my parents worked and I was a latchkey kid for most of my adolescence. As such, Mr. Rogers raised me and he’s a model for what kind of man I try to be like. There’s a documentary and book coming out soon about him. One of the things that has come out of this look into Rogers work is this set of rules for talking to children. I think they apply in our writing and working with communities. “Freddish” imbues writing with clarity, positivity, and simple understanding.
1
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/mr-rogers-neighborhood-talking-to-kids/562352/

I find these sort of introspective investigations of journalistic entities by other journalists to be a weird hyper-meta narrative of how organization and the news they produce are created. This one in particular, as Vice is a rather unorthodox and divisive group.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/inside-vice-media-shane-smith.html

I’m not a people manager, but I’d like to be one day. Like many of Rands’ past writing on the subject, this one seems incredibly apt for me. I’m not a very confrontational person. Sometimes you need to say the hard thing. That’s hard!
http://randsinrepose.com/archives/say-the-hard-thing/

As someone who works remotely (and believes everyone within a single organization should if anyone does) I found this manifesto useful. It covers tips on creating a remote-only org, how it changes the act of working, and it’s advantages.
https://www.remoteonly.org

Related to the two prior links, personal development has been on my mind as of late. Austin Kleon shares a note on figuring out what you want to learn. “the easiest way to re-invent yourself is to find something new to learn.”
https://austinkleon.com/2018/05/16/what-do-you-want-to-learn/

When seeing someone who I don’t recognize, but who obviously recognize me, I like to remind them (and myself) that sorry, my brain stopped storing that pattern and I’ll need you to help me create a new one.
https://kottke.org/18/05/mosaicism-or-dna-differences-from-cell-to-cell-not-just-person-to-person

Ok, I’m running low on time here. So more links, less talking!

Trump stuff 🤮

Other stuff

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Link List – April 24, 2018

I’m from St. Louis and choose to live here. While I don’t agree with the article in its entirety, I do think it hits on some of the pain points the region faces.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/maraprmay-2016/the-real-reason-middle-america-should-be-angry/

In a weird way this was both expected and unexpected.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/843zzy/the_average_faces_of_42_different_subreddits_oc/

I talk to people a lot. I often worry about looking like a goober. This is a helpful and healthy guide to appearing confident (even if like me you’re internally screaming when presenting publicly) 🙂
https://i.redd.it/72ykszmke5k01.png

The Jedi embody a form toxic masculinity in which emotions should be controlled, hidden, and not discussed. That leads to their downfall at the hands of Darth Vader. 2

“That passage gives us some clues as to the real reason why Anakin Skywalker can’t handle grief or loss. He’s been well-trained by the Jedi to stifle his emotions and hide his vulnerabilities. He’s never learned how to process and work through painful emotions in healthy ways. The results are as predictable as they are dysfunctional; Anakin is left completely unprepared for tragedy, and like too many young men in our own culture, he eventually lashes out in anger and leaves behind a trail of horrific violence.”
One of my favorite things from the new Star Wars film, The Last Jedi, was the message that we should learn from the past, but not ensconce the people present as heroes. The Jedi did some bad/stupid things and yet for years popular culture has been enamored with their zen-like understanding of the universe. Useful, but flawed. The starchy ‘on a pedestal’ style of the Jedi order should die, but the lessons should live on.

Luke: “We are what they grow beyond”.

Apply this to religion, patriarchy, Christopher Columbus, etc.
http://popculturedetective.agency/2018/the-case-against-the-jedi

“Some thoughts on what can be lost, and what can’t be, when we share what we love.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESyJop31cmY

SAVE HILL VALLEY! (and the history of video games)
https://uncrate.com/video/saving-lost-video-games/

I’v always been a fan of folks over at Penny Arcade. I have taken my family to PAX. The guys at PA aren’t perfect, but they seem like good people who are continuously improving themselves. These two recent comics and notes are evidence of that.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2018/03/07/toxic-masculinity (discussion)
https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2018/03/09/everything-old-is-new-again1 (discussion)

This video of Fred Rogers testifying before the Senate Subcommittee in 1969 should be annual viewing for all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA

There’s many little robots inside you. Growing up I always thought nano machines would look like little metal robots. As I read and learned more, I have a feeling that our future nanobots will be organic – highly modified, but based on CGAT vs the microprocessor. I think humans might one day surpass the biological machines that live in the body, but that day is not today. This is some impressive evolutionary engineering.
https://www.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/7te9zy/dna_polymerase_iii/

That giggle at the beginning kills me. 11-year-old kids man. Dealing with this shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiQaIaI9xmk

Spike Jonze is one of my favorite directors. Particularly for his shorter works. My fandom extends to seeking out a DVD of his collected works (which is now woefully out-of-date). His latest music video (and incredibly small advertisement) does not disappoint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=305ryPvU6A8

One of the larger teams I support at work recently deployed a significant feature to the last two (and largest) Wikipedias. It feels good.
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/04/17/wikipedia-page-previews/

I went and saw Hamilton this past week. I didn’t quite understand the hype and purposefully avoided listening to the soundtrack. 3 I can confirm that it did not disappoint. It is easily one of my top 4 theatre productions.

Jackie and I are a few episodes into Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which is co-created by Michael Schur who also created Parks and Recreation and The Good Place. I don’t know why we missed this show, but I’m happy that I have 5 seasons to catch up on.

I don’t know what to believe is real anymore.
http://prostheticknowledge.tumblr.com/post/173230067806/image-inpainting-for-irregular-holes-using-partial

I bought Skyrim (again) for the Nintendo Switch. This was one of the first games Kari and I played together. She would sit on my lap at my computer and tell me where to go and what to do. When the game got scary I’d tell her to look away as I beat up the monsters. I wonder if Kori will be as interested to play with me?

My dad and I went to a book signing by John Scalzi. He was as thoughtful and funny in person as his online persona – and obviously as witty as his writing. It was also a special event as science fiction, and John’s books in particular, are a bit of a bonding experience for my dad and I. My dad got to ask John a question and I had him sign our book “Mike + Chris”. []The question my dad asked John was if he had read the book Earth Abides, which my dad considers one of his favorites next to Old Man’s War – one of John’s first books. The answer was, “No, but I’ll look into it.” and, “Thank you that means a lot.”[/efn_note] If you like good books, check out Scalzi.

Let me know with a comment or email if you find any of it interesting. It’s like a newsletter about random stuff I like. Subscribe!

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John Roderick – XOXO Festival

A frequent guest at XOXO, John Roderick is the frontman and songwriter of The Long Winters, the receiving end of Merlin Mann’s weekly phone calls for Roderick on the Line, and one of our favorite storytellers of all time.

One of the most consistently funny talks from XOXO 2016 4 , John Roderick laid on the line the myth of no effort. 5 The idea that trying to be cool, to avoid being considered uncool, is unhealthy. Being cool is not more important than admitting to yourself and others that something required hard work. Because, as my dad likes to say, “If it wasn’t hard, they wouldn’t call it work”.

I wonder if some of this comes from the fallacy of youth. That as young people we’re not well-educated on how to take a compliment. Maybe it’s partial social anxiety at being “found out” (like imposter syndrome) so it’s easier to minimize and brush off the effort it truly took to do something. I was raised in the midwest, so part of how I was raised was to remain earnest and modest. Maybe that shortens the impact of our work and our growth as people?

In the second half of the talk Roderick got into why he kept finding himself doing things that came to him easily.

Speaking for myself (and many other people I know), some people keep doing the easy thing, or find another easy thing thinking it’s harder, but never get the courage to do the truly hard thing. Doing the truly hard thing is, unsurprisingly, hard.

So, my encouragement to you: Don’t be contented with being contented.

As Jackie put it while watching this with me, “There is always more to be done. Be ok with the ambiguity of that.”

Tracy Chapman is Timeless

The other day I discovered a new cover of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. 6 The cover featured Kina Grannis, an artist whom I fell in love with a few years back with her creative music video for her song “In Your Arms”.

As you do when you’re reminded of something, I went to Wikipedia to read about the original song. I was surprised by what I discovered. Fast Car by Tracy Chapman came out in 1989! That couldn’t be right, could it‽ I was 8 at the time. I always remembered this song as a contemporary song from my high school days in the late nineties.

It’s funny how human memory works – or in my case doesn’t work – in remembering events tied to music. It’s probably not a real memory, but I could swear I listened to this song in the car on the way to school. On CD.

My only explanation is that this song is way more modern than it has any right to be.

While you’re here, have a listen to this performance of Chapman’s from 2015. She performs “Stand By Me” on one of the last episodes of  Late Show with David Letterman. Beautiful.