User:Jmabel

	Seattle meetup 6
	Date: April 8 and April 18, 2009
	Place: UW Seattle campus
	Seattle meetup 5 occurred June 19, 2008

• Barnstars, etc. • DYKs • My user page on Commons • Personal site •

Bienvenidos / Bine aţi venit / Wilkommen / Benvinguts / Bienvenue / Benvenuti / Bem-vindo. Welcome to the Wikipedia home page of Joe Mabel.

By the way, if anyone has a Seattle-based opening for manager, director or VP of software development, or a project / program manager in an interesting company, or even a very capable C++ developer or high-end tech writer, have a look at my resume.

Wikipedia:Babel, etc.

enThis user is a native speaker of the English language.

es-3Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel avanzado de español.

- This user is a translator from Spanish to English on Wikipedia:Translation.

ro-2Acest utilizator poate contribui în română la un nivel intermediar.

- This user is a translator from Romanian to English on Wikipedia:Translation.

de-1Dieser Benutzer hat grundlegende Deutschkenntnisse.

ca-1Aquest usuari pot contribuir amb un nivell bàsic de català.

it-1Quest'utente può contribuire con un livello semplice di italiano.

pt-1Este usuário/utilizador pode contribuir com um nível básico de português.

fr-1Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau élémentaire de français.

Cyrl-1 ДThis user has a basic understanding of the Cyrillic script.

chauvin -0 This user chooses not to listen to ultra-nationalist rhetoric, of whatever nation.

File:TowerOfBabel2.jpgThis user helps with Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English

This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify)

This editor is a Master Editor and is entitled to display this Platinum Editor Star.

This user is the subject of a wikibio.

BAThis user has a Bachelor of Arts degree.

MScThis user has a Master of Science degree.

This user is an actual human.

Wikipedia and me

I was one of the mainstays of Wikipedia for about three and a half years. I backed off from such a major role in April 2007, though I am still a moderately active participant here, and quite an active participant in The Commons. My reduction in involvement was largely because:

• Wikipedia is now basically a success, and does not need my time the way it once did.
• While the current demand for enormous amounts of citation is probably necessary, it has made this all a lot less fun. I admire the generally rising standard of citation in articles, but do we really need a citation for the sun being visible at noon on a clear day?
• I really get tired of the Wikilawyering (people trying to "game" the rules)
• I think in some ways Wikipedia is now taking itself too seriously. Frivolous but amusing articles that have broad authorial participation and are decently cited are deleted; deadly dull and/or poorly written articles on equally frivolous topics are kept. The precipitating incident for my reduction in involvement was the discussion of "List of songs containing covert references to real musicians"; the discussion can be seen at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 April 15. Note in particular the appallingly uncollegial notion that my views are irrelevant because the "tribe"—in which 60,000 or so edits apparently do not gain me membership—"has spoken". For examples of articles that are both frivolous and dull, I will simply direct you to Category:Pokémon and invite you to look at any but the most major articles.

Sadly, Wikipedia recently is simply not a supportive enough environment or enough fun for me to spend the equivalent of a second full-time job here. I still think Wikipedia is a great project, but I don't like the atmosphere as much as I used to.

Currently, I'm focused above all on photography (mostly on The Commons), also writing the occasional article, and doing other things on a "hit-and-run" basis. Someone else can hash out policy, start WikiProjects, try to mediate disputes, etc. - Jmabel | Talk 16:21, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Update: I have been doing a bunch of translations of articles from the Spanish-language Wikipedia, probably about 80 in the last 6 months. - Jmabel | Talk 21:12, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Mini-CV

Originally from Freeport, New York, went to college at Wesleyan University, and did have a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Washington. Have lived most of my adult life in Seattle; also stints in London, Barcelona, and Bucharest.

I've been in the software industry since 1980, about equally divided between hands-on programming, project/program management and management roles. Since 2001 I've mostly been contracting and consulting, though I'd love to do another management or long term PM or Dev Lead stint if I can find the right company. I am currently doing hands-on software development as sole developer on a cutting-edge web application: some C/C++ and a little bit of Java, but mostly JavaScript+jQuery, HTML5 Canvas, and PHP. I'm enjoying getting back to hands-on development; before this contract it had been a while.

My DYKs

Quite a few of my articles have been DYK'd. See User:Jmabel/DYK.

Some non-wiki writings by Joe Mabel

Jmabel Oct 2006

• Peace Heathens Seattle Crisis Resource Directory (editor-in-chief)
• From my own site:
  • Travel writing, including an extensive narrative of six months working in Bucharest, Romania.
  • The Interview Brainteaser and its Discontents.
  • Internationalization and Localization, tips on building international software.
    • By the way, for those who complain if I remove a link to their personal website: I removed a link someone made to this from our Internationalization and localization article, because as a link to a personal web site—mine—it does not meet our criteria for external links.
• For Lux Group (preserved on the Internet Archive):
  • XML: Why it Matters
  • Project Lifecycles: Waterfall, Rapid Application Development, and All That
• For Microsoft:
  • From April 2005 through December 2005, on contract, I wrote Microsoft MSDN documentation about internationalization and localization. Most of this part of the Windows Vista docs. Some of the first examples to "go live" on line were Unicode normalization and Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). The related function documentation (follow the links) is also my work.
• Miscellaneous offline writing, especially for Architectural Glass Concepts magazine, an annual.

Interests

History, art, travel, film, books, bicycling, language and linguistics, politics (mostly the non-electoral sort), the game of go.

Favorite Music

• Elvis Costello
• Kurt Weill
• Charles Mingus
• techno etc. for dancing
• … and more recently The Saturday Knights and Janelle Monáe have been right up there.

Favorite Books

• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Shame by Salman Rushdie
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Gift by Lewis Hyde (ISBN 0394715195)
• Jazz by Toni Morrison

Favorite Movies

• Aguirre, Wrath of God (directed by Werner Herzog)
• Children of Paradise (directed by Marcel Carné)
• The General (directed by Buster Keaton)
• The Saragossa Manuscript (directed by Wojciech Has)
• Winter's Bone (directed by Debra Granik)

Wikipedia: Major areas of work

The following is by no means comprehensive, but if you like, here's comprehensive, at least for the English language Wikipedia. I've also made extensive contributions to The Commons: see Commons:User:Jmabel.

Ethnicity

In January 2004, I started Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups. A lot has been done—I think Wikipedia is no longer flummoxed by the very notion of ethnicity, as it was—but more work on the project is certainly needed.

Related to Romania

Rooftops in Lipscani. You can see more of my pictures of Bucharest on my Wikimedia Commons user page

Most of these I've written myself, a few I've translated. If you are aware of Romanian-language articles that could use translation, please notify me on my talk page.

• Casa Capşa
• Athénée Palace
• Constantin Tănase - written January 2005, an interesting figure little-known in the English-speaking world.
• Bucharest Mall
• Centru Civic
• Corneliu Baba
• Hunger circus
• Iron Guard
• Lăutari (traditional Romanian Gypsy musicians)
• List of buildings in Bucharest
• Nicolae Iorga
• Palace of the People (Romania)
• Systematization (Romania).
• stub articles on other Romania-related topics
• lots of translations of originally Romanian-language material
• lots of articles related to History of Romania
• Thraco-Roman: I didn't write this, but I translated passages in its notes from something like five different languages.

Romanian bands

• B.U.G. Mafia
• Hi-Q
• Spitalul de Urgenţa
• Taxi - I'm really happy with this article, especially because band leader Dan Teodorescu gave us explicit permission to quote extensively from and to translate his lyrics.
• Zdob şi Zdub, who are actually Moldovan
• Taraful Haiducilor

Yiddish theater

In early 2005, I wrote a bunch of articles on the early years of Yiddish theater (and related topics like badchonim and Brodersänger). You can find a lot of them at Category:Jewish film and theatre. I also did some articles on the State Jewish Theater (Romania) and related topics. More to come at some unspecified future date. Tough area: not a lot on line (I think in many cases, we're the first to post even birth and death dates for some rather important figures); I managed to borrow a copy of Israil Bercovici's Romanian-language book on the history of Yiddish theater in Romania, which was useful for research, as were actor Jacob Adler's memoir and scholar Sol Liptzin's works. Really interesting stuff. Check out especially Abraham Goldfaden. This has been a weird one to research, because while I understand a bit of spoken Yiddish, I never learned to read it, so I'm not able to go to the primary sources.

Related to Seattle

Sky Church, Experience Music Project.

• Using some material of my own plus material contributed by Emmett Shear, some back around 2004 I completely reworked all of the articles related to the History of Seattle. This has a ways to go; I've added stubs for subtopics I think particularly could use attention.
• John Considine (Seattle): this man's life should be a movie.
• Denny Party
• David Denny
• Grunge music
• The Squirrels
• In the Seattle Wiki, which allows POV and original research, check out Last Exit on Brooklyn: a crucial part of the history of Seattle coffee culture.
• Bernie Whitebear, his brother Lawney Reyes and sister Luana Reyes, the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation and the Daybreak Star Cultural Center.
• Reginald H. Thomson
• Chin Gee Hee
• John Butler (artist)
• Century 21 Exposition
• Jacob Furth
• Schwabacher Brothers
• Joshua Green (seaman and banker)
• Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation
• St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church (Seattle)
• I did the majority of the photos in National Register of Historic Places listings in King County, Washington, and List of landmarks in Seattle, and List of landmarks in King County, Washington.
• Central Waterfront, Seattle, Washington
• Oh, and my own neighborhood, Wedgwood.

Related to Jorge Luis Borges and Argentina

• Boedo
• The Book of Sand
• Jorge Luis Borges
• H. Bustos Domecq
• Ezequiel Martínez Estrada
• Florida group
• Gaucho
• The Library of Babel
• Martín Fierro
• Martín Fierro (1904–1905 magazine) (translated from Spanish)
• Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
• Xul Solar
• Translated several articles from Spanish
• Lots more biographical articles. I'm finding that there is very little on anyone from Argentina, so I keep finding myself widening the circle from Borges outward. Almost no source materials seem to be available in English, so I'm guessing that a lot of what I'm writing are the first English-language articles on these individuals, at least on line.

Related to the French Revolution

• 18 Brumaire
• First Estate
• Glossary of the French Revolution
• List of people associated with the French Revolution
• Second Estate
• ...and a lot more. I've now had my hands pretty seriously in about a hundred related articles.

I've also carried the article on the French Revolution solidly through about September 1792, and have spun out more detailed historical articles (incorporating, also, a few solid pieces that were already there), but haven't gotten around to continuing it past that point. I'd be genuinely happy if someone else would carry this forward.

Related to Catalunya and the Catalan world

I've translated:

• Catalan grammar (& related articles)
• a series of articles related to Catalan myths and legends and also taking some material from these to present specifically Catalan aspects of more broadly Iberian or European myths and legends. See, especially, Catalan mythology about witches.
• a series of articles related to the Comarques of Catalonia. Unfortuntately, some of these aren't too strong in the Catalan original, but I'm translating (and in some cases enhancing) what is there.
• History of Catalonia (translated from Spanish, not Catalan)

...and a few others, mostly to do with Catalan monarchs and with Mallorca

BTW, pet peeve: Wikipedia chooses the spellings "Catalonia" and "Majorca".

I also wrote Ramon Casas i Carbó, drawing heavily on the excellent Casas Carbo Web site. I'd be interested in hearing about other decent sources to flesh this out further.

Brown v. Board of Education

In honor of the 50^th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I've written several short articles, including ones on the three other cases combined into Brown (Briggs v. Elliott, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, and Gebhart v. Belton) and on the Fifth Circuit Four.

Other

• Freeport, New York (my hometown)
• Wesleyan University (my alma mater)
• I made major contributions (some amounting to rewrites) to the articles liberalism, Socialism, Left-right politics, Left-wing politics, Right-wing politics, Conservatism, etc. Also, trying to work through an NPOV dispute in Left-wing politics led me to work extensively on ANSWER, Not in Our Name, and United for Peace and Justice. I've also written quite a few stubs on various groups on the political left, mostly in the U.S.
• Blitz!: a great musical that never played the U.S. (rewrite, we already had a cursory article).
• Over a hundred translations, including School of Salamanca, Paraguayos, República o Muerte (the Paraguayan National Anthem), José Ortega y Gasset, Wayang, Technoparade, Paragraph 175, about two thirds of ETA, and (on Wikisource) Salvador Allende's last speech. I'm a heavy participant in Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, Wikipedia:Translation into English, and Wikipedia:Vfd.
• I've also been known to adapt old, now public domain, articles to be more easily read by the contemporary reader. A good example of this work is at Exilarch.
• I've done some work on Blackface, Minstrel show and related topics. Much of what I've done doesn't show up as obviously my edits, because in some cases other editors have (with my permission) cut and pasted from separate sandbox pages where I was working.
• Fighting the good fight against rampant "currentism", I've written an article about the 1966 New York City transit strike, a watershed in the city's history, while everyone else seemed to be focused on the recent 2005 New York City transit strike.
• Did I mention doing lots of translations? Andalusia, for example. Or 1833 territorial division of Spain.
• Several articles related to enclaves in Spain, most notably the Enclave of Treviño and related topics.

On systemic bias

Several people have chosen to rework Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias to remove, restore, and seriously alter my short essay on systemic bias. Rather than fight over its presence or precise content on that page, I am reproducing more or less my original essay here. Probably other people made some small edits to this (you'd have to check the history of that page to see), but this is essentially my writing, and I have deliberately worked from an early version here (dating from October 4, 2004) rather than the more collective version of November 28, 2004 when it was removed. Since this is now on my own page, I have also taken the liberty to revert some other people's edits with which I did not entirely agree. For what it's worth, I find some of the present essay on WP:CSB rather snide.

Wikipedia has a number of systemic biases, mostly deriving from the demographics of our participant base, the heavy bias towards online research, and the (generally commendable) tendency to "write what you know". Systemic bias is not to be confused with systematic bias. The latter just means "thoroughgoing bias". Systemic bias means that there are structural reasons why Wikipedia gives certain topics much better coverage than others.

As of this writing, Wikipedia is disproportionately white and male; disproportionately American; disproportionately written by people from white collar backgrounds. We do not think this is a result of a conspiracy — it is largely a result of self-selection — but it has effects not all of which are beneficial, and which need to be looked at and (in some cases) countered.

Wikipedia is biased toward over-inclusion of certain material pertaining to (for example) science fiction, contemporary youth culture, contemporary U.S. and UK culture in general, and anything already well covered in the English-langauge portion of the Internet. These excessive inclusions are relatively harmless: at worst, people look at some of these articles and say "this is silly, why is it in an encyclopedia?"

Of far greater (and more detrimental) consequence, these same biases lead to minimal or non-existent treatment of topics of great importance. One example is that, as of this writing, the Congo Civil War [eventually written about at Second Congo War], possibly the largest war since World War II has claimed over 3 million lives, but one would be hard pressed to learn much about it from Wikipedia. In fact, there is more information on a fictional plant. [28 Aug 2006: I stand corrected: "on a fictional race of giants who appear to be trees."]

An example list of poor treatment due to this bias would include (in no particular order):

• Africa and the 'Third World' generally, in all of its aspects
• Asia - particularly 'underdeveloped' countries
• Female oriented/dominated subjects
• Foreign literature (particularly writers whose work is unavailable or not widely available in English)
• Non-white figures in the U.S., UK, etc.

Systemic biases are not easily addressed. We will need a variety of strategies. Among those are:

• Identify existing structures that can help in promoting this effort — e.g. Collaboration of the week, the translation page, cleanup — or can serve as models: the Irish wikipedians' notice board, WikiProject Philosophy, etc.
• Create new structures to coordinate our efforts toward countering systematic bias.
• Create an infrastructure for recruitment and support of contributors outside the present Wikipedia mainstream. For example, this could include active outreach to Historically black colleges and universities in the U.S. and to colleges and universities in various countries of the Commonwealth of Nations.
• Identify subject-matter areas and specific articles that have been neglected due to systemic bias and which ought to be written, added to, or otherwise improved.
• Collaborate on producing such articles.

Wikipedia is an evolving project. While some of its biases — e.g. a preference for online sources — are probably inherent, others — generally the demographic ones — need not be. However, they will not be overcome by wishful thinking. We need to devote active effort to these matters, rather than keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

To this I would like to add (November 29, 2004):

I believe that the most important of these correctives would be infrastructure for recruitment and support of contributors outside the present Wikipedia mainstream. I also think it is the one we are doing least to address. We need to deepen our understanding of why women and certain ethnic minorities in the English-speaking world do not find this project as appealing as white men and we need to work out what we can do about it. We need to work out how to successfully recruit contributors from a broader human base.

Please write any comments on my talk page, not here. -- Jmabel | Talk

Ethical Public Relations in Wikipedia

My own take on this is at User:Jmabel/PR. I'm not at all happy with the current "just say no" approach.

Other relevant discussion can be found at User talk:MyWikiBiz, Wikipedia talk:Conflicts of interest, User:LinaMishima/PaidEditing.

Perpetual problem articles

I've noticed that a few of our articles are perpetual problem articles, constantly drawing a high ratio of pseudo-scholarship rather than actual scholarship. I'm going to start maintaining a small list here. If others wish to contribute suggestions, please make your remarks on my talk page rather that here on my user page.

• Igbo people
• Iyer
• Solomon's Temple
• Temple in Jerusalem
• Ten Lost Tribes
• Übermensch

…and some perpetual battlegrounds:

• Lenora Fulani
• Pablo Neruda
• Fred Newman

There are, of course, numerous other articles that will be perpetual battlegrounds. Wikipedia's wide-open editing is simply not conducive to building consensus on topics such as liberalism where there is a strong minority (basically, American libertarians in this case) who feel passionately about an interpretation of history that does not concur with the majority of scholarship. Similarly on fascism. - Jmabel | Talk 19:47, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Cite.php trick

To get cite.php references into two columns: {{reflist|2}}.

How to change the name of Desaix ?

The name of Desaix is not Louis Desaix (as it is written on Wikipedia English) but Louis Charles Antoine Desaix ! (As you can see on his baptismal certificate http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Extrait_acte_bapteme_desaix.jpg). I am not able to change this name on wikipedia ! Could you help me ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nolege (talk • contribs) 17:14, 22 July 2011 (UTC)