Fighting Wikipedia Corruption: AVfM Partnership with WikiMANNia
www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/fighting-wikipedia-corruption-avfm-partnership-with-wikimannia
A few days ago I talked about the ongoing censorship of men’s rights issues and feminist distortion of information in Wikipedia. This was the bad news.
The good news is, an industrious group of dedicated German Men’s Rights Activists have, unnoticed outside the German-speaking world, spent the past five years building their own competing wiki known as WikiMANNia.
WikiMANNia (“mann” is German for “adult human male”) is dedicated to men’s issues and critique of gender feminist indoctrination and gynocentric ideology. Since 2009 they have consistently produced high-quality, feminist-ideology-free information on men’s and boys’ issues with great success in Germany. WikiMANNia articles on important topics frequently feature very near the top of German search engine results.
For some, the deliberate exclusion of a feminist view from articles addressing other subjects might be seen as an anti-woman bias within the WikiMANNia project. Such an impression is mistaken, although understandable from individuals living in a feminist-dominated culture. To be clear, although feminism purports to be either pro-woman or pro-equality, it is an ideology, almost a religion, carrying a set of assumptions which when applied to writing on almost any topic perverts the meaning of such writing.
On October, 30 2010 an International Anti-Feminism Meeting took place in Switzerland. This led, in 2011, to the editiorial team of WikiMANNia launching basic versions of WikiMANNia in English, Spanish, and Italian. Unfortunately the “International” aspect of the meeting was limited to the three German-speaking countries of Switzerland, Austria and Germany. So unfortunately no contact with the English-speaking Men’s Rights Movement took place, and contact with those in other non-German languages was limited, much to the WikiMANNia team’s frustration.
Some articles where translated into English in rudimentary fashion. But this attracted little attention in the English-speaking world. The frustration of the German group was, until now, to find people who would allow them to fully enter into the English-speaking world.
We now hope to see that change. After months of talks with the management of WikiMANNia, I have the honor of announcing that AVfM has entered into partnership with WikiMANNia. German WikiMANNa will greatly benefit from an English version and AVfM will benefit from the offerings of this terrific German team.
We strongly encourage anyone reading this with a general interest in the Men’s Rights Movement globally to sign up for a WikiMANNIA account, and begin helping to improve it.
The German team will keep control of WikiMANNia, but we hope to build an independent English-speaking editorial group with its own focus within WikiMANNia. And we hope you will help!
Most German Men’s Rights Activists have limited skills in English. Thus one of the first things needed is someone to clean up the grammar and syntax in many of the English-language articles already there. Even if you speak no German, it doesn’t matter. If you can take the somewhat clumsy English and make it stronger, that’s all you need to do. You can also add new articles and information, and possibly others will work to translate those to German as well.
Do you speak both German and English? Then perhaps you can contribute to both German and English articles. Also, do you speak Italian or Spanish? Then perhaps you can help with the Italian or Spanish articles, which the German group is also very interested in expanding!
Because of Wikipedia McCarthyism, we want to see WikiMANNia grow, just as we want to see the Men’s Human Rights Movement grow internationally, with people of all nations able to take part and cooperate.
On AVfM’s front page menus, you will notice there are now two items under “Wiki” – the AVfM Reference Wiki (which is purely for academic references), and WikiMANNia, which is for anything and everything else. We encourage all members of the Men’s Rights Community to contribute to these projects. If you have purely academic, hard-science references, great, theAVfM Reference Wiki is narrowly focused on that one thing: academic references, please sign up to help with that. Whereas if you want to help with more generalized topics–Men’s Rights Movement figures, history, debates within the community, etc. WikiMANNia is perfect for that.
We see this as not just a great way to expand the reach and scope of the Men’s Human Rights Movement, but also furthering the goal of making our movement truly global, with men’s advocates gaining knowledge and insight and strategies and even terminology from those of other nations.
For example, I have a new favorite new term I’ve learned from the Germans: Purple Poodle!
So please, go now and sign up for WikiMANNia, and help spread the Men’s Human Rights Movement globally.
Finally, while ordinarily, this notice might close with an imperative to go forth and FTSU, what we’re really doing here is the opposite.
The creation and expansion of a reference explicitly excluding gendered ideologies is the un-doing of vandalism and censorship in other sources. So, meine Herren und Damen, go forth and help restore un-corrupted knowledge to the world!
About Dean Esmay
AVfM Managing Editor Dean Esmay co-hosts AVfM Radio’s Revelations with Erin Pizzey and Tales from the Infrared. He also writes about numerous topics on Dean’s World and The Moderate Voice. He encourages people to look at issues through the lens of compassion for men who deserve it, and respect for women who deserve it. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel Methuselah’s Daughter. www.deadesmay.com