On 11/8/06, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: That's what I was thinking. <sarcasm>How many of the arb com candidates are protestant?</sarcasm> Who cares if an arb com candidate is male or female? Anthony

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Oskar Sigvardsson stated for the record: Well, I think it goes without saying that we need to establish an acceptable quota of females on the ArbComm. Then we need a procedure to follow if insufficient numbers of females run for the Committee, to impress enough to meet the quota. Then we need to ensure that a proper percentage of articles are being written by women, and then that a proper percentage of those articles are deleted. Quotas must be met. Of course to prevent fraud, we must verify that all editors truthfully state their sexes (and genders, if they have them). A DNA sample submission upon account creation is probably adequate. - -- Sean Barrett | The Internet is not something you just dump sean(a)epoptic.com | something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of | tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes | can be filled.... --Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK)

I'm sorry, but the last thing we need on Wikipedia is affirmative action. On 11/12/06, Oskar Sigvardsson &lt;oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

Sigvardsson seemed to be suggesting that we need to do something to "fix" the gender imbalance issue on Wikipedia. I think that nothing can be done, people will and should come and go as they please, regardless of gender. I'm not really sure what kinds of ideas Sigvardsson might have other than, as Barrett pointed out, quotas, which are totally ridiculous and unnecessary in these circumstances. Sorry if my inference was incorrect/mangled. On 11/12/06, Phil Sandifer &lt;Snowspinner(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

That's all fine and good, but it just seems irrelevant and out-of-touch with Wikipedia's open nature. I see it as inherently unfair to evaluate somebody based on what they are-and-can't-change. On 11/12/06, Phil Sandifer &lt;Snowspinner(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

Oh, "systematic bias", that's exactly the term I was looking for. On 11/12/06, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

On Nov 12, 2006, at 6:41 PM, David Gerard wrote: In other words, systemic bias is when our administrator and arbitrator pools are disproportionately white American males. Systematic bias is when I went and banned all of the black Australian women on Wikipedia last night. -Phil

On 11/12/06, Phil Sandifer &lt;Snowspinner(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: we appear to have more europeans than you would expect. -- geni

Oh, yikes, I misread that one. On 11/12/06, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

On Nov 12, 2006, at 9:46 PM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote: I figured we'd implemented mandatory drinking ages ago. I mean, how else to explain RFA? -Phil

On 13/11/06, Brian Salter-Duke &lt;b_duke(a)bigpond.net.au&gt; wrote: I was stone cold sober when I applied, but reading the comments made me want to take to drink... -- Earle Martin http://downlode.org/ http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/

On 11/12/06, Oskar Sigvardsson &lt;oskarsigvardsson(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: There don't seem to be many women participating in this discussion. That, I would say, is the very very bad thing. I'd say the last thing women need is a bunch of men deciding that women are underrepresented by arb com and figuring out what to do about it. Anthony

On Nov 9, 2006, at 6:24, niht-hræfn wrote: Oops, already been said... but would being female change one's chances of being elected? Or change anything really.... --Keitei http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keitei