The file containing the list of Wikipedia pages sorted by reverts ratios (reverts / total revisions) can be found at: wpcvn.com/enwiki-20100130.most.reverted.txt

The amount of reverts is generally proportional to the amount of vandalism, but there are cases where users revert mistakes made in good faith (by themselves or others). Also, it should be noted that several pages vulnerable to vandalism remain protected from editing most of the time, and hence might not appear in this list.

Anyway, the analysis of this data yields some interesting results:

The articles related to sex and excretion seem to be most popular with the vandals. The user pages of the Wikipedia users and bots fighting the vandals also seem to be a popular target of the vandals.

The number of people named Justin who think they are awesome (and therefore, deserve to be mentioned on the Wikipedia entry about their name), and the number of people who think that people named Justin are not so cool seems to be quite high:

The number of juvenile readers born in 1992 seems to be quite high as well:

The students from United States, who often refer Wikipedia for completing their history assignments, seem to like making a few test edits now and then.

But, I’ve no idea why some of our readers hate the warthogs so much:

The vandals obviously don’t like dedicated vandal fighters like User:Gogo Dodo (whose user page is now indefinitely protected):

Note: The above chart excludes the user pages of bots.

Some other results:

I must emphasize that the “reverts ratio” and the “number of reverts” can produce strikingly differnt results. Here’s an example:

Note: For most readers, America = “United States” = a country in North America. Also, people vandalizing Niger are most probably confusing “Nigger” with “Niger”.

There are a lot of other interesting tidbits (e.g. among the politicians, George Bush is the most [un]popular with the vandals) – I wish I had the time to share all of them!

Edit: For a scholarly analysis of these statistics, check out the blog of Antonio A. Casilli.

Many in the media have expressed shock and dismay at how India, which is often portrayed as one of the world’s most rapidly developing economies, is actually doing worse than the poorest nations of Africa. There are more poor in 8 states of a country than 26 countries of a continent! Time to panic!! Or is it?

Well, the situation isn’t as bad as it seems. India is well on its way to meet its povery reduction goals. The population of the 8 poorest Indian states surpasses that of the 26 poorest African countries by over 100 million. So, it should not be surprising that the number of poor in the Indian states surpasses the same number for African countries by a little over 10 million. In fact, as a percentage of the total population, the number of poor in the 8 Indian states is 69.29%, a figure that is much lower than 81.61% for the 26 African countries. Here are some graphs to give you a perspective.

Population data (2007) taken from UNDP’s Human Development Report 2009 (MPI also uses the data from the same report).

8 poorest states of India (in order of decreasing MPI): Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, West Bengal

26 poorest African countries (in order of decreasing MPI): Niger, Ethiopia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Somalia, Central African Republic, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique, Angola, Rwanda, Madagascar, Benin, Comoros, Congo, Malawi, Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania, Mauritania, Chad, Zambia, Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire.

How do you decide what's funny and what's not?

Joel Stein’s article in the TIME magazine, My Own Private India, has ruffled quite a few feathers. There have been a spate of posts by Indian-Americans criticizing the article as racist and offensive. The criticism ranges from well-worded to satirical (such as Kal Penn’s piece) to downright immature (targeting Joel Stein’s Jewish ethnicity). Several non-Indian-Americans have come out in their support, eager to flaunt their anti-racism.

Indians are no strangers to humor based on ethnicity or nationality. Sardarji jokes and jokes about Indians outsmarting dumb Americans continue to be circulated widely among the Indians and the Indian diaspora. Why did the Indian-Americans react so strongly to Stein’s article? Was it just because the joke is on them now? Or is it because the use of the term “dotheads” reminded them of the Dotbusters? Or was there another reason?

Here’s my theory: the Indian-Americans’ reaction to Stein’s article is a reflection of their latent fear that their status as a successful minority community might lead to a backlash someday. They feel it reflects the average American’s perception of the immigrants as a threat to the propsperity of those who arrived earlier.

Ethnic humor is often endearing and entertaining, especially when made by someone belonging to that ethnic group. However, sometimes you don’t know where to draw the line, and the things may go out of hand. The Sikhs know this quite well. Their willingness and ability to poke sheer fun at themselves created an entire genre of jokes: the ubiquitous Sardarji jokes. My ancestors lived in Lahore before moving to Delhi during the Partition of 1947, and consequently my paternal family had ties with many Sikhs. A lot of them cracked Sardarji jokes and the non-Sikhs would often join them: this was not considered offensive at all. But, in the aftermath of Khalistan movement, things were not funny anymore. The Sardarji jokes were often used for harassing the enterprising Sikhs, whose success had created a sense of insecurity among the others. I remember, when I was around 14-year old or so, I once went camping in Mahabaleshwar, where two fellow campers were discussing how stupid Sardars are. I wasn’t sure whether they were serious or just kidding, but being brought up in a family where Sardars are seen as hardworking and honest people, I didn’t feel very comfortable about the conversation. So, I intervened and told them that the Sardars were very intelligent and enterprising people. The young campers, in all seriousness, countered my claim by narrating an incident about two eight-year old Sikh kids who didn’t know all the rules of playing cricket.

Many Sikhs today feel that tasteless Sardarji jokes have harmed the self-esteem of their kids, who often face ridicule in school or on the playground. The Indian-Americans want to avoid such a situation. Stein might have intended to be humorous, but if they allow one such satirical article to go uncriticized today, it might encourage a hundred such articles in the future. And then, it won’t be funny anymore. There are a lot of nutjobs out there in America, who will bring the word “dothead” back in fashion after reading these articles. If they allow Stein’s lines (“…even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor”) to go unchallenged, their kids might become objects of ridicule in the schools tomorrow, stereotyped as not-so-bright immigrants.

The status of Indian-Americans today is reminiscent of the status of the Sikhs, the Jews and several other minority communities at their pinnacle. Both the Jews and the Sikhs gained prominence as successful minorities. However, in the period following their success, they allowed strong negative stereotypes to be associated with them. These stereotypes later came in handy for the Jew-bashers and the 1984 rioters. Indian-Americans don’t want strong negative stereotypes to be built around them. So, they are actively opposed to even the slightest negative take on their community, even if it’s supposed to be humorous. When an Indian-American writes an article on “How To Date A White Bitch”, it’s all right. But, imagine the furore that will be caused if a White author wrote an article titled “How To Date An Indian-American Bitch”.

Are you one of those who are appalled because I found Joel Stein's article (somewhat) funny?

I know many readers would be appalled at this, but I actually found (at least some parts of) Joel Stein’s article funny. I also found his apology funny (“Also stupidly assumed their emails would follow that Gandhi non-violence thing.”) Stein seems to have tried mellowing down the perceived anti-Indian rhetoric by using some self-deprecatory humor in his article (e.g. “There is an entire generation of white children in Edison who have nowhere to learn crime.”) I don’t think he wrote like a racist — he was just a little insensitive. Sometimes, you’ve to be a little more considerate about the audience, the context and the times you’re living in. Stein wasn’t considerate enough.

It’s hard to draw a clear line between when we should laugh at ourselves thinking “it’s just a joke!”, and when we should get concerned about others making fun of us. Fifty years down the line, we might be feeling stupid about the knee-jerk overreaction to the Stein’s article or we might be reading a book about how the article was one of the early signs of vehement racism that led to the widespread violence against the Indian-Americans.

Cleopatra.
Image credit: Louis le Grand

So, apparently, a lot of people are angry and hurt about Angelina Jolie playing Cleopatra in Scott Rudin’s upcoming film, because they believe that Cleopatra was a black African queen, and it’s unfair to let a white actress play the role. That’s racist, besides being historically inaccurate, they say. Anil Thakkar declares in The Times of India:

Arguments such as those made by the producer that she has the right ‘look’ for the role are laughable; being of the correct ethnicity should, one assumes, be a basic component of having that look.

Well, first of all, Cleopatra wasn’t a “black” woman. She belonged to the Ptolemaic dynasty, which was of Macedonian Greek descent. In all probability she was a “white” woman (having a tanned skin, maybe, with blessings from the Egyptian Sun God). Even if we were to believe the fringe Afrocentrist theories about the race of ancient Egyptian rulers, Cleopatra, at best, could have been a “part black” thanks to the genes from her mother’s side.

But, more importantly, I don’t give a damn about the ethnicity of Cleopatra or that of the actress who plays her. Cleopatra was known for her beauty, her extravagant lifestyle, her love affairs, her shrewdness and her political liaisons. Can Angelina Jolie play a woman with these traits? Yes. Even if Cleopatra were a 100% black woman, what’s the problem with a white woman playing her in a movie? The skin color of Cleopatra didn’t play an important part in her life or in the contemporary Egyptian society. A debate discussing the modern concept of “black” and “white” “races” in the context of Cleopatra’s times is an example of anachronism. A white man playing Martin Luther King, Jr. can be considered a travesty, but there is nothing wrong with a white actress playing Cleopatra. The Times of India editorial puts it best:

Wrecking rather than erecting barriers, cinema can do without intolerance.

A similar controversy had erupted in 2006, when it was announced that Angelina will play Marianne Pearl in a biopic. The self-proclaimed anti-racists don’t give a shit about “accuracy” when Halle Berry plays a white woman (Tierney Cahill) in Class Act or Morgan Freeman plays an Irishman (Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding) in the The Shawshank Redemption.

The controversy stirrers remind me of the Indian politicians, who regularly indulge in the caste-based vote bank politics, while pretending to fight against the caste system. Just like the pseudo-anti-casteist politicians, these people are pseudo-anti-racists: people who claim that they are fighting against racism, but are in fact, among the ones most responsible for keeping it alive.

Is a fashion designer an artist or not?

I want to write about many things that have been happening at Wikipedia in the past few days ranging from the much publicized vandalism (now removed from the public archives) to contributions from Alexa Garavoille‘s students at the Durham School. But, due to paucity of time, I’ll limit myself to this gem published in DNA: ‘Wikipedia says fashion designer is not an artist’.

Tarun Tahiliani is an acclaimed fashion designer in India. He had claimed tax exemption as an artist for his work under section 80 RR of the Indian Income Tax Act, which provides certain concessions to authors, playwrights, artists, musicians, actors and sportspersons. Under this law, which was originally intended to support the artists who represent Indian culture abroad, up to 75% of the income obtained from the foreign sources is exempted from tax.

The problem is that the law doesn’t state who an “artist” is. The Income Tax (I-T) department insists that a fashion designer is not an artist, and dragged Tarun Tahiliani to the court. During a session on June 8, the court asked the I-T department to do some research on “what is an artist” by referring to the Oxford’s, the Webster’s and other sources, and come back on June 12.

So, on June 12, the I-T department returned armed with Wikipedia as a reference. I’m not sure which Wikipedia article did they refer to. The Wikipedia article on fashion design clearly says (since May 2010, permalink):

Fashion design is the art concerned with the application of design and aesthetics to clothing and accessories.

Maybe, they cited the Wikipedia article on “Artist” (permalink), which doesn’t list fashion design among one of the art activities:

Most often, the term describes those who create within a context of the fine arts or ‘high culture’, activities such as drawing, painting, sculpture, acting, dancing, writing, filmmaking, photography, and music—people who use imagination, talent, or skill to create works that may be judged to have an aesthetic value. Art historians and critics define artists as those who produce art within a recognized or recognizable discipline. Contrasting terms for highly-skilled workers in media in the applied arts or decorative arts include artisan, craftsman, and specialized terms such as potter, goldsmith or glassblower. Fine arts artists such as painters succeeded in the Renaissance in raising their status, formerly similar to these workers, to a decisively higher level, but in the 20th century the distinction became rather less relevant.

The term may be also used loosely or metaphorically to denote highly skilled people in any non-”art” activities, as well— law, medicine, mechanics, or mathematics, for example.

Leaving aside the debate whether a fashion designer is an artist or not, or whether the I-T department advocate cited Wikipedia correctly, the website should not be cited as a source (unless you’re writing about Wikipedia itself). I love Wikipedia, I’ve made over 50,000 edits to it, but Wikipedia, by its very nature is not an authoritative source. As the site states:

Even though Wikipedia articles can be easily tampered to thwart credibility, the references in an article usually link to credible sources.

Wikipedia is a starting point for research, not an ending point. It leads you to other sources – cite those, but never cite Wikipedia!

• It’s incredibly cool to talk about inclusive growth and the Bottom of the pyramid.
• The urban teledensity has already crossed the mark of 100%
• A better telecom infrastructure will help the villagers gain acccess to mainstream markets, and provide an impetus to the Indian economy.

However, there are several problems, the biggest of which is the huge cost of creating and maintaining telecom infrastructure in the low-income, sparsely populated rural areas. The Government has put in a lot of effort in trying to address this issue. For example, it has provided subsidy support for mobile towers in the rural areas from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).

The telecom infrastructure is a key area in the Government’s Bharat Nirman programme, which is aimed at improving the overall rural infrastructure in the country, at an estimated cost of INR 1,760 billion. While the progress in the areas of electrification, roads and irrigation has not been satisfactory, the rural telecom connectivity has shown considerable improvement, if the government figures for 2009-10 are to be believed. Himachal, Kerala and Punjab have crossed the mark of 40% rural teledensity, along with the North-East- I region (comprising Meghalaya, Mizoram & Tripura), which has shown a growth of 182.9% over the previous year. The so-called BIMARU states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh have all shown a growth of over 80% in rural teledensity over the previous year.

Growth in rural teledensity in India 2009 to 2010

Rural teledensity in India as on 31 March 2010

The growth of brobadband in India (even in the urban areas) has been quite disappointing: the Government had set a target of 20 million broadband connections by 2010, but as of now, the number remains at 7 million. USOF has also focused largely on mobile services. But, the government claims to have achieved its full target for the year 2009-10 in the area of broadband coverage of the village panchayats. Pondicherry has achieved 100% broadband coverage in the village panchayats, while Kerala is a close second with a figure of 99.8%. Jharkhand is the laggard with a dismal 0.66% broadband coverage.

Broadband Coverage of Village Panchayats in India under Bharat Nirman-II-bar chart

Number of village panchayats in India with broadband coverage

Percentage of village panchayats in India with broadband coverage

Tag Cloud of the names of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers as of 1 January 2009	Tag Cloud of the names of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers as of 1 January 2009 (pairs)
Tag cloud of the names of the Chief Ministers of India (7 June 2010)	Tag cloud of the names of Members of Parliament of the 15th Lok Sabha

As you can see, I wasn’t far off the mark, though I had completely missed out the ubiquitous “Kumar“. “Kumar” and “Singh” are quite common as both middle names and last names, and are often used together (e.g. “Shilendra Kumar Singh“). These two were clear winners, leaving the other words far behind. The others among the top include “Agrawal” (if we include the variants such as Aggarwal and Agarwal), “Chandra”, “Gupta“, “Prasad”, “Sharma“, “Patil“, “Patel“, “Yadav“, “Reddy“, “Lal”, “Ashok”, “Krishna”, “Jain”, “Meena”, “Mishra“, “Mohan”, “Sinha”, “Ram”, “Joshi” etc.

Well, let’s leave alone the places in the remote parts of the country for a moment. Let’s talk about Agra, arguably the first place that most people think of when someone says “Tourism in India”.

When you search for “Agra” in Google, the internet giant throws agra.nic.in up at you. “Welcome at Officiald [sic] Website of Agra”, declares the title.

You ignore the typo, and head over to agra.nic.in, which has been designed by National Informatics Centre (NIC) (“the premier ICT organisation of Govt of India”). NIC has often been the target of severe criticism for poor design (example) and poor security (example), so it has put up a disclaimer in the footer to do some CYA: “Site designed and hosted by National Informatics Centre. Site contents owned, maintained and updated by respective departments. NIC does not take any responsibility regarding website contents.”

If you’re using Internet Explorer (IE), you’ll be lucky enough to be redirected to agra.nic.in/def.asp.

Why IE, did you ask? Because they use VBScript on my internets in 2010!

If you’re using Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari or any other sane browser, you’ll end up staring at a page with no content between the header and the footer.

Now, if you’re a tourist, you’ll inevitably click on the “Tourism” link in the header. If you are using IE, and if “Tourism” is the first link you clicked, you’ll end up at Touristn.htm, a page with badly formatted maroon-colored text. If not, you’ll land up at tourist.htm, a page with badly formatted maroon-colored text and missing images.

Sadly, agra.nic.in is just one of the several hundred horribly-designed district websites designed and hosted by NIC. Maybe the NIC folks who have designed the Web Ratna winning websites should create a common template for all the district websites, and save the nation the embarrassment of having such disgraceful websites.

"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." - Thomas Jefferson

Mohammad Adil Hossain has been suspended from the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) (which, incidentally, makes him the 148th student to be suspended by the University’s current vice-chancellor). One of the suspension charges include “resorting to and misusing the internet to tarnish AMU’s image”.

For the uninitiated, Adil is a student of Mass Communication in AMU, who has alleged the presence of “high-level corruption, authoritarian mechanism and religious bigots” inside the university. He has used the RTI Act to seek information on the alleged “financial bungling” at AMU, and has also criticized the suspension of Dr. Siras, speaking out against the university’s stand on the issue of homosexuality.*

On his blog, Adil has been written about several issues including the alleged corruption of the University officials, the lack of a placement cell for the Mass Communication department, the illegal dues charged by the canteen and the alleged intrusion of privacy by the University’s 57 CCTV cameras. He was quoted in the 8 March 2010 issue of Outlook as saying “Freedom of expression and democratic representation among students is totally denied here” (AMU has refused to give clearance to a proposal to set up an independent student newspaper, which the university’s vice-chancellor describes as “a hidden agenda to destabilise the varsity”).

The original memo signed by the AMU proctor on June 3 accused Adil of “indulging in rumourmongering, canard-spreading and defaming the AMU and also depicting the entire institutional infrastructure and administrative apparatus in poor light” (although now, 3 days later, an AMU spokesperson insists that Adil has been suspended for “various incidents of indiscipline including blocking the road and protesting against a power cut caused by a storm” and making “defamatory remarks against the university when a student lost his life while trying to cross a railway track”).

It might be possible that Adil is just a disgruntled student. His accusations about the alleged “spy agency of AMU, which snoops on its students and teachers” (on the issue of CCTV installations in the campus) might be a wild flight of fantasy. In the worst case, he might just turn out to be a publicity-seeking youngster. But none of these is a good reason to deny him the right to freedom of speech.

According to the Indian constitution, reasonable restrictions can be imposed on an individual’s right to freedom of speech and expression in the interest of public order, security of State, decency or morality. None of Adil’s accusations endanger either public order or security of the State. Nor are they indecent or immoral.

The suspension notice served to Adil by the AMU Proctor states that he had “misused the internet for passing critical remarks against the University administration onto websites which mostly deal with news pertaining to AMU and its alumni.” This suspension sets a dangerous precedent which should cause concern to not only the bloggers, but also to everybody else who supports the right to freedom of speech and expression. Given the poor quality of education in this country, it’s only natural that a number of students disapprove of the administration of their college they study in. It’s absurd to suspend a student simply because he or she is critical of the college or university administration. The right to criticize one’s educational institute is inherent in one’s right to freedom of speech and expression.

They often pronounce Evelyn Beatrice Hall‘s famous words in the classrooms: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (though they usually misattribute it to Voltaire). Maybe they should try standing by these words sometime.

* On 8 February 2010, Srinivas Ramachandra Siras, a 62-year old reader of Marathi in the Department of Modern Languages at AMU, was reportedly caught in a homosexual act on camera in his own house by two “journalists”. According to the charge sheet filed by AMU, the “journalists” informed the university’s deputy proctor, which resulted in its Public Relations Office and Proctor landing in Siras’ house two hours after the incident. The next day, Siras was suspended for “gross misconduct” under rule 403-C of the AMU statute, without any opportunity to present his case. Homosexuality is not acceptable in India, but in Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi (2009), the Delhi High Court held that treating consensual homosexual intercourse between adults as a crime is a violation of fundamental rights protected by India’s Constitution). As a reuslt, there were many voices against Siras’ suspension, and on 1 April, the Allahabad High Court stayed the suspension. On 8 April, Siras was found dead in “mysterious circumstances”. The two “journalists” were later arrested on 19 April, and charged with forcibly entering Siras’ house and causing physical harm to him. See the Alternate Law Forum (ALF) report (PDF) on the case for details.

I’m not one of those: I’m a regular Wikipedia contributor (and an administrator). Still, the algorithm that Google uses to calculate the rank of a newly-created Wikipedia page boggles me.

At 10:00 UTC, Dr.Shrikant Parikh mentions Max Hopper while teaching IT strategy in a class at SPJIMR. I search Wikipedia for “Max Hopper”, only to realize that it doesn’t have an article on the pioneer of airline reservation systems. At 18:00 UTC, I create a Wikipedia article on the Max Hopper. At 18:05, when I search Google for “Max Hopper”, I see my newly-created Wikipedia article 8th in the search results, ahead of many pages that I’ve used as sources for the article. When I search for “Max D. Hopper”, the same article is listed 7th in the search results, ahead of the Computerworld Honors Program interview (PDF), which is main source for my Wikipedia article (and the best source of information about Max Hopper available on the net).

In many cases, the newly-created Wikipedia articles are worthy of being featured on the first page of the search results (given the fact they provide a brief overview of the subject, which is what most people are looking for). But, this is not always true. Consider this nonsense page titled “Nazi organisation step up to control peoples leisure time”, which I deleted a few minutes ago:

I am an ardent fan and supporter of Wikipedia, but I still find Google’s unexplainable faith in the website somewhat disturbing. It is prone to be misused by propagandists. Want something on the first page of Google search results? Just create a Wikipedia article!