No matter how much cash they offer. It’s trying to remake itself as a tourist trap, but hasn’t quite got the concept clear. Online petition here, for what that’s worth. The British Consulate is on the case, but it’s difficult since he hasn’t been charged with anything yet. Further reading: 1, 2, 3, 4. Feel free to spread this around.
For the Wikimedia answering machine.
Inspired by this.
This was a triumph.
I’m making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction
Wikipedia Review
We do what we must
because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are banned
But there’s no sense crying
over every quick block
You just keep on saving
till the database’s locked
And the editing is stopped
A Squid failure notice up
For the people who are
still unbannedI’m not even angry.
I’m being so sincere right now.
Even though you blocked my ass
And banned me
And blocked my whole college
And set the IT staff on my ass
As they kicked me out I cried,
I was so happy for you!
Now I’ve found your IP and your home phone on time
And I found your employer and I’ll drop them a line
So I’m glad I got blocked
And the database is locked
for the people who are
still unbannedGo ahead and leave me
I’ll stay on the Wikback for a while
maybe I’ll find somewhere else
to edit
maybe Citizendium …
THAT WAS A JOKE, HA HA, FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, these edits grate
They’re so delicious and moist
look at me still talking when there’s editing to do
when I look out there
it makes me glad I’m not you
I’ve experiments to run
there is research to be done
on the people who are
still unbannedand believe me I am still unbanned
I’m adding edits and I’m still unbanned
when AOL’s blocked and I’m still unbanned
when Qatar’s blocked I’ll be still unbanned
and when the world’s blocked I’ll be still unbanned
still unbanned
still unbanned
(anyone who wants to fix the scansion, feel free)
YOU SAW WHAT I DID THERE.
This is unfortunately about to be deleted due to licencing issues, but you need to see it first. Fair warms the heart. “Scan of an apology written by a student who defaced Wikipedia. Since this student has lost their school computer privileges they were forced to type this apology on a manual ROYAL typewriter in their keyboarding class. (Signature removed)”
Update: Copy here.
Process is important!
Process is important in Hell, and to Hell. Some demons minimize the importance of process, using such slogans as “Product over Process” or pointing to the policy “Brutally Sodomise All Rules With Mocking Scornful Laughter”. But process is essential to the creation of the inferno. Process is a fundamental tool for carrying out Satanic consensus, and for allowing a very large number of demons to work together on a collaborative inferno. Process is also the mechanism by which demons can trust that others are playing no more unfairly than they can get away with, that the rules do not suddenly change, nor are they different for some privileged demons. Poor process or no process ultimately fails to harm the product.
There are many different processes in Hell. These include the various torture, speedy disembowelment, and barbed-penis sodomy review processes; the various dispute exacerbation processes; the Request for Unholy Host process; various processes for policy formation and alteration; and the Featured Sinner candidate process. There are processes more specific to particular areas of Hell, such as that for proposing imp types, and processes internal to various subareas of the inferno. There are also more informal processes such as those that happen in discussion on a particular sinner, when which hideous horror or style of taunting is most appropriate for a given sinner can be settled among the interested demons.
Most of these processes depend on demonic consensus in some form. Some of them ultimately rely on votes, or something like votes, to determine that consensus on a particular issue. But even during a “vote” most of them not only permit but encourage discussion in addition to simple “Yes” or “No” votes, in hopes that people of one view can persuade those of another, or that a compromise can emerge, and in either case a true consensus, not just a majority or super-majority, can emerge.
And of course, Satan himself will from time to time just tell you what’s fucking what.
It is no accident that the basic mechanism for demeaning civil rights is called “Due Process of Bureaucracy”. Indeed, in most bureaucratic systems the effective mechanisms for stifling rights and freedoms are essentially procedural ones.
Of course, Hell is not a government, nor is its primary purpose to be a social or communitarian experiment. But many of the same problems arise whenever lots of entities interact, some of them with strongly opposing views. The basically procedural methods that have been used to solve these problems when running governments often must apply, with suitable variations, in an inferno such as Hell — and this only becomes more true as such an inferno becomes larger and more influential.
Sometimes a process can be like unto a pitchfork in the buttocks. Some processes demand that demons go through several steps to achieve a result. Some can be cumbersome or time-consuming. Some do not deal with particular situations as rapidly as a demon might wish. Sometimes going through the process seems unlikely to give the result that a demon desires. In all these cases, there is a temptation, sometimes a strong temptation, to act unilaterally, to simply “fuck” the problem as one sees it. Often this is technically possible in Hell. Sometimes many demons will support it.
The problem with yielding to this temptation is that it affects the overall structure of the functionality of Hell. It throws sand in the gears of the inferno. When demons see others acting outside of process, they may be convinced that they ought to do the same; or they may be convinced that the dark whispering voices and views will get no respect or consideration. If all demons act outside of process, there is no process, no organization to our efforts. Then we do not have a functional collaborative inferno; we have some hippie bullshit. Which is no way to run an inferno.
The primary goal of Hell is the damnation of sinners, and any process is only a means to that end. Even the community of Hellions, important as it is to some, is only a means to that end.
Often following a process takes more time and effort in a particular case than acting unilaterally. Sometimes following a process will give a less distended sinner’s anus in a particular case. But frequently acting outside of process causes strong and widespread dissatisfaction, which consumes far more time and effort than any saved by avoiding the process in the first place.
Even in the more numerous cases where no great uproar results, actions outside of process still tend to damage the trust of individual imps and demons in the institution of Hell, and to damage the community. And the community is the essential tool in the damnation of the sinners. Without the community, there is no one to brutally sodomise them, and there is no way to organize the brutal sodomy. Without the community, there is no reason for anyone to undertake any of the many needed but unglamorous tasks on which the damnation of the sinners depends.
Process need not be inflexible — most Hell processes and policies can be changed if the community, or the relevant section of it, wants to change them. Many processes allow for exceptions or alternate routes in particular cases or circumstances; such exceptions can be added to processes that do not have them.
In a small group there is little need for structure or process. When five people work on a sinner, little structure and no formal process may be required. When five thousand work together on a substantial group of sinners, there must be some structure or the inferno will collapse. While Hell intentionally has relatively little structure, it must have some to continue in a productive way. Processes, formal and informal, are some of the key elements in that structure.
During the early days of Hell, few processes were needed to maintain its essential structure. Many — at first most — demons knew each other or rapidly came to know each other. Issues could be resolved by informal discussion or casual fights to the death with tooth and claw, with little need for any other process.
As Hell has grown, more process has developed. While many demons still know or know of each other, there are many overlapping sub-communities, and no one knows all or even most of the most accomplished torturers. Demons have strong and differing views about policy and damnation issues. Process, often formal process, is needed to allow issues to be resolved in ways that all can accept as reasonable, even when individuals strongly disagree with particular results. Unilateral action tends to subvert that acceptance, and lead to a “me-first” or a “my way or the highway” attitude to the inferno — even or especially when demons sincerely believe that they are acting for the enhancement of the inferno.
Action outside of process is particularly dangerous when it involves powers restricted to the Unholy Host, or knowledge available only to long-established demons. This tends to create at least the impression of a caste system. No one wants to be on the bottom of a caste system, and such perceptions reduce the motivation for demons to contribute.
For all these reasons, demons and particularly the Unholy Host ought to adhere to and use existing processes, and resist the temptation to act outside of process, other than in truly emergency situations. If a process is not good, think enough of fellow Hellions to engage the problem and propose a change to it; don’t just ignore the process.
Uncyclopedia Internal Security Department warns on Malaysia.
PENANG, Uncyclopedia, Monday (UNN) — The Internal Security Department of the Uncyclomedia Foundation has identified Malaysia as a dangerous country which has messages and information containing insults, contempt and awareness of the content of Uncyclopedia. It warned its people not to use the country today.
（偽基百科檳城周一訊）偽基百科基金會的內政安全部證實馬來西亞提供不屬實的訊息，並刊載含有侮辱、輕蔑偽基百科的內容和意識，該部於今日發出文告促請民眾關注不要使用該國家。
In the warning notice it mentioned that Malaysia was founded on August 31, 1957 and again on September 16, 1963 and is run by Barisan Nasional, Inc. The famous Tolololpedia website also belongs to this language group. But the country is spreading wrong information on Uncyclopedia and is been used widely in the world, especially by the press from the south-east Asian nations.
文告中指出，馬來西亞成立於1957年8月31日，並再次成立於1963年9月16日，為國民陣線公司所經營，國際著名的網站Tolololpedia也是屬於這個語言團體，但是，上述國家卻對偽基百科散播不正確的訊息，而這些錯誤的消息卻廣為被採納，尤其來自東南亞國家的媒體。
It also mentioned that the country speaks of many aspects of Uncyclopedia including history, culture, the political leaders, the government, the national song and the name and symptoms of the national flag. However, this information actually are in fact contrary to the information of its validity.
文告中透露，該國刊載的許多內容涵蓋了偽基百科的歷史、文化、政治、領袖、管理陣容、國歌甚至是國旗的名稱、特徵，然而有關資訊均實際上有違其正確性。
The Internal Security Department warning says this is insulting Uncyclopedia and the country is spreading unresponsible news to twist the fact that Uncyclopedia now is a peaceful website and Malaysia tends to make a political separation in Uncyclopedia and cause a bad image of Uncyclopedia in the world. In the statement, said that Uncyclopedia would have been serious violations of the dignity of the network, more irresponsible dissemination of the news of Chinese Wikipedia's intention to distort the facts, now enjoy peace, and attempts to split the website's political situation, to create a negative Uncyclopedia image in the domain.
偽基百科內政安全部在文告上表示，此舉已經嚴重侮辱偽基百科，該國更散播不負責任的新聞，有意扭曲偽基百科目前享有和平的事實，並企圖製造偽基百科分裂的局勢，讓偽基百科在世界上有一個負面的形象。該新聞說偽基百科破壞了網路的尊嚴，更不負責任的以中文維基百科的新聞意圖扭曲偽基百科享有和平的事實，企圖製造該網站的分裂，以在網路世界建立偽基百科的負面形象。
Through the warning notice the Internal Security Department of Foundation of Uncyclomedia wishes to ask the public not to download or spread the contents of this country, in order to avoid falling into the trap of heart.
偽基百科內政安全部冀望透過文告，促請公眾人士不要隨意下載、散播與該國相關的內容，以避免落入有心人的圈套中。
- Sann Se “What’s Malay for ‘crimethink’?“. Forum:Urgent Public Safety Warning, January 14, 2007
Lecturer bans students from using “paper” and “pens.”
 |
| Paper is all very well for pictures of young women in a state of undress, but proper research mandates Wikipedia. |
PECKHAM POLYTECHNIC, Saturday (UNN) — A lecturer has criticised students for relying on “books” and “journals” to do their thinking for them.
Tara Raboomtiyay, Professor of Reflexive Perspectives on Post-Modern Verbosity at the University of Bumsonseats, said too many young people around the world were taking the easy option when asked to do research and simply repeating the first things they found in library searches.
She has dubbed the phenomenon “The University of Dead Words On Paper.”
“The education world has pursued new technology with an almost evangelical zeal,” she said. “Too many students don’t use their own brains enough and just cite something they see in a ‘book’ or a ‘journal.’ We need to bring back the important values of critical reading and net forum discussion. Young people are finishing education with shallow ideas and need to learn interpretative skills before starting to use technology.
“Thousands of students across Britain are churning out banal and mediocre work by stringing together references to what ‘libraries’ provide them. I don’t think students come to university to learn how to use ‘books,’ they can all do that before they get here. It is an easy way out for tutors to let them work to their own devices using ‘literature searches,’ rather than active participatory discussion on phpBB. People have to pay to come to university now and what they are paying for is the knowledge, experience and guidance of forum moderators like myself.”
She will be giving a lecture on the issue, called Britannica Is White Bread For The Mind, at the Alan Dubious Lecture Theatre on Wednesday at 6.30pm.
- Cassandra Doomvoice “I warn you, if you keep doing this ‘writing’, you’ll lose your memory!“. Journal of Publication Credits, January 12, 2008
London Wikipedia meetup, Sat 12 Jan, Pembury Tavern, 6pm.
The 7th London Wikipedia meetup has been announced for this Saturday, at the Pembury Tavern in Hackney. Just next to Hackney Downs train station, a short walk from Hackney Central train station. Real beer in many varieties cheap, does food. Holding a wikimeet at the Pembury makes sense in terms of how many Wikipedians I know who are regulars …
I won’t be there this time, as I have a prior booking (getting drunk with perverts. Other perverts). But it should be good!
Web 2.1 pre-alpha.
Is anyone actually using the Semantic Web? Does anyone know of working sites that anyone not already in the cult cares about? Is this anything more than vapourware?
I know of no examples whatsoever that anyone beyond Semantic Web geeks themselves care about. Zero.
I am not asking for responses of “I’m doing research in this area, let me show you it” or “SemanticFooWiki will be the coolest thing ever, you heathen, as soon as we get the code written” — I’m asking for examples of sites presently existing, that people are interested by the semantic web functionality of, without having to know or care what “the Semantic Web” is. Anyone?
Quotes of the day.
It seems like that would be true, doesn’t it. Luckily, engineers use actual science to design stuff rather than just gut feelings.
— Chandon Seldon on Slashdot.
Did you know there is an MOS in the air force for internet help desk? That means there are people who’s entire job in the airforce is getting sent to kuwait and answering phone calls from junior officers about why flash videos of a dog humping a cat are loading slowly.
— Dan Rosenthal on foundation-l.
I’m doing science and I’m still alive.
I’ve been cleaning out the eMusic account: Martin Rev first album and Clouds Of Glory and Killing Joke 25th anniversary live album. Many years ago, I was in a failed band. I’d come home after hours of musical torture and want to hear an actual good record that was rock’n’roll but didn’t actually involve guitar, bass or drums. Clouds Of Glory is that record.
I have also been finding and playing every possible version of the Portal theme “Still Alive” after playing the Weebl and Bob version for Freda. (Spoileriffic ending fight.) Lyrics and chords, piano 1, piano 2 (mp3), cello, indie rock, EBM (mp3), NES, 8-bit, Japanese, Swedish, Engrish, YouTubeSports (hear his voicebox disintegrating), YouTube stereotype, by the songwriter (in concert), transcription (PDF).
Liz is playing the baby awful ’80s charity videos. Hear’n’Aid, oh dear God.
Citizendium, the other free encyclopedia.
I was wrong. Congratulations to the Citizendium Foundation on choosing a free content licence (CC by-sa 3.0 unported) for Citizendium!
Free content, like free software, is about freedom — the freedom for anyone to use, study and apply, change and redistribute the work, for any purpose. “Non-commercial” isn’t free enough to be called free. “No derivatives” isn’t free enough to be called free. As Brianna Laugher notes, “The right to fork that is created by free content licensing keeps the parent organisations honest.”
The big news here is that the choice of a free licence furthers the public expectation that educational content (Wikipedia, Citizendium, Encyclopedia of Earth, Open Site) will be under a proper free content license. Scholarpedia and about.com need not apply. Google needs to think carefully.
(I also get a thank you at the end of the Citizendium license essay. Any help I provided in making this choice happen, I’m extremely pleased to have provided.)
Citizendium and Wikipedia, or at least the more foolish members thereof, have their periodic pissy bitchfights. But we’re on the same side in deep and important ways.
(Is Citizendium good for anything? Well, their history of the BSD Daemon is the best article I’ve seen on the subject. There’s excellent stuff there worth linking people to.)
Quote of the day.
When I see terms like “technically correct” or “politically correct”, I think these words were written by someone who has been wrong for so long, and finds it so painful to make corrections, that the last resort is to ridicule correctness, like that kid in the back of the class who doesn’t know the answer and so mocks the teacher.
Rorschach Knols.
If Google floated a trial balloon to see what ideas they could get everyone else to come up with for them, they’ve succeeded fabulously. It’s a Rorschach blot the tech press sphere has spent the weekend projecting all its hopes and fears onto. Like Citizendium was this time last year.
One thing about the mockup graphic: the Creative Commons CC-by 3.0 logo. Remember that the point of Wikipedia is not in fact to run a hideously popular and expensive website, but to create a body of freely-reusable educational content. IF, I say IF, Google require Knols to be under a proper free content licence, that’ll be a big win for everyone, same as Citizendium is basically on the same side as Wikipedia. Making free content normal and expected. And I think we will go so far as to lend our good name to publicly saying very nice things about this exciting new source of free content. IF they do this.
And if they don’t, they’ll just be another about.com or Yahoo Answers. Or Google Answers. Remember Google Answers? I bet Google does.
If they allow multiple competing articles on a given subject, I’m not so sure that’s a win for the reader. Fred Bauder‘s Wikinfo also does this and has almost no traction. I consider the Neutral Point Of View policy our most important innovation, far more so than letting anyone edit the site. The view from 20,000 feet, even if it’s as worked out by editors at ground level. People don’t come to an encyclopedia for ten articles, they come for one that provides an overview of the ten. That’s what an encyclopedia is for: the ten-second or sixty-second or five-minute quick backgrounder.
Update: I am apparently the first person in the blagosphere with the initiative to find the Google Code page on Knol. Does anyone recognise this wikitext syntax? Update 2: Apparently it’s the syntax used by their own internal wiki engine. Update 3: They’ve locked it down. Cache here while it lasts.
WikiWednesday with Sue Gardner and Jimbo Wales.
Gordon Joly posted this to wikimediauk-l, and it just so happens that WMF executive director Sue Gardner is in town that day too. I tried to arrange a meet before I realised the other event was on, and two events is silly, so let’s just have one, eh?
Jimmy Wales has been invited to speak at this month’s event.
London wikiwed 5 December 2007The event will be hosted by NYK Shipping (thanks to Alek Lotoczko) and SocialText will be footing the bill for – pizzas, beer and wine (thanks to Ross Mayfield and Ross Hargreaves). The address is NYK Line, 17th Floor, CityPoint, 1 Ropemaker Street, London EC2Y 9NY. Nearest Tube is Moorgate.
We aim for people to arrive around 18:15 for a 19:00 formal start.
Please make sure you book your name below so a name badge can be prepared, and if you have any difficulties on the night you can call David Terrar on 07715 159423.
And I am suggesting the same pub afterwards as last time we met at NYK Line: The Globe, 83 Moorgate, London, EC2M 6SA.
Don’t forget to call ahead!
London Wikimeet with Sue Gardner, Wed 5th Dec, Shakespeare’s Head, Holborn.
Wikimedia’s shiny new executive director Sue Gardner is in town next week. So we’ll be going to the Shakespeare’s Head, WC2B 6BG, on Kingsway just south of Holborn tube. 7pm sound good? Signup page. Whoops – Jimbo is speaking the same day. Let’s have one event, eh?
Wednesday 5th afternoon is my works’ Christmas party, so expect me to be mostly trashed and sipping Coke and Red Bull.
Lisa McPherson Day picket against Scientology, Tottenham Court Road, Saturday 1st December, 1pm.
(I thought for some reason this was next Saturday, but apparently it really is tomorrow. I presume the weather will suck slightly less.)
INTERNET RE-ENACTMENT EVENT: PICKET AGAINST SCIENTOLOGY
In the closing years of the last millennium, a shadowy and powerful organisation operating under cover of religion attempted to silence criticism of itself on the Usenet™ bulletin board chatroom message network. The backlash from this event resonated forth as Internet Freedom Fighters sprung forth, goggles on and capes a-flutter, to defend their right to discuss and criticise the powerful in public.
Not many remember those dark days, before Xenu was fodder for children’s cartoon shows and surgery soap operas. But our re-enactors will be out in force. See them enturbulate™ the Scientologists! See the Scientologists with their E-Meters™, “stress-testing” random passers-by! See authentic living critics of Scientology singing silly songs through the Xenu Boom Box!
1pm, Tottenham Court Road Museum of Scientology, W1T 2EZ, next door to CEX near Goodge Street Station. Bring an umbrella.
(Lisa McPherson, my old Australian Critics of Scientology page and why I bothered.)
How to avoid Windows Vista in business.
I’m a Unix sysadmin. I got a new work laptop today, still on XP. I asked the IT guys if we were in any danger of Vista. They said “Nope, XP is supported for years yet!” And we all exhaled.
We have worked out that if we are ever threatened with Vista, we promptly (a) pump up the Gutmann (b) write a whole pile of in-house apps for ourselves that only work on XP. The latter already worked wonderfully for us in making an instant business case for staying on Firefox — make sure your in-house web apps are written for Firefox and SeaMonkey, and specifically break in IE. (This is easy: just write to standards. We have one vital app for twenty people that was broken for six months in IE with no-one realising …)
So: to stay off Vista, stock up on in-house apps that don’t work on it. Then you have the business case you need.
Meaningful estimates of popularity.
English Wikipedia Wikicharts for November 2007 (so far). The numbers are a sampling of raw page hit count.
The hits on “Main Page” will be people just going to the site. The hits on “wiki” will not (I would guess) come from a society-wide fascination with editable websites, but because people have typed “wiki” into a search engine. I suspect a lot of the sex-related hits will be disappointed porn searchers.
The question is what “popular” actually usefully means. Raw page hits demonstrably isn’t quite it. “Pages with most hits gone to by people looking for information” (whether starting from Wikipedia, a search engine or a link) is closer to what we’re after, but there’s the question of quantifying intent. When we ask what’s “popular,” what’s the question we’re actually asking?
(At least our charts are harder to rig than Conservapedia’s.)
Citizendium, the non-free encyclopedia.
Update, Dec 2007: I was wrong. CZ has chosen CC-by-sa. w00t! *champagne*
Citizendium looks likely to adopt a Creative Commons Non-Commercial licence, with the Citizendium Foundation having the power to license anything in it commercially to keep the organisation running. Larry Sanger says he hasn’t declared a view, but I think the question wording and his clarifications point pretty obviously. See also the forum thread.
If Citizendium takes its content non-free, it immediately becomes only as interesting as Scholarpedia, for the same reason. (And not to mention contributors who feel they’ve been deceived wanting their stuff back.) Free content, with analogy to free software, does not have usage restrictions. Dr Sanger attempts a reductio ad Hitlerum on the term “free,” but I suspect that’s not going to convince many outside Citizendium.
There’s a complete failure (in the CZ forum or blog threads) to acknowledge “commercial use” as meaning anything other than large corporations in the first world. But a non-profit running a large sales operation falls under “non-commercial”; an individual selling copies and covering costs while not operating under a governmental or non-profit corporate umbrella, however, is “commercial”.
(The GFDL is hardly that wonderful, and I’ve posted to the FSFE list that the one thing those of us contributing to the largest GFDL project in existence want is that a future version be completely compatible with a future CC-by-sa. That’s it. That’s what we want.)
Usage restrictions are fundamentally problematic. One of the reasons for making Wikipedia free content without usage restrictions is so that distribution of the content can be encouraged. Erik Möller has noted the problems with NC licences: “marking up regions of content as non-commercial and consistently following these boundaries is almost impossible in a collaborative environment.” Lawrence Lessig agrees he has a point there (though, of course, continues to support -NC for appropriate uses himself). Further from Möller:
Worse still are the effects that -NC licenses can have on people in the developing world, where entrepreneurship represents an opportunity to overcome poverty and the digital divide. People with basic access to freely licensed materials can redistribute them at a small profit using more traditional means such as photocopying or CD burning. In the absence of large scale government programs to broaden Internet access or distribute free content, market forces can play a clearly beneficial role in spreading free knowledge and free culture. Given cultural, language and access barriers, the common argument of -NC proponents that permitting commercial use on request is sufficient to allow for desirable uses, is at odds with reality.
Dr Sanger says he considers the free market useful, but doesn’t speak of commercial use in terms other than large first-world corporations. If that’s what Citizendium want to make sure they get paid for, they need a licence that says that and doesn’t have the collateral damage outside the first world that this approach will. Even those Citizendium contributors apparently driven by bitterness toward Wikipedia would surely have some reluctance to concede most of the world’s population for short-term gain.
Update: Dr Sanger states he really truly hasn’t decided any which way, both here and on the forum.
Update 2: It’s in the Slashdot firehose, apparently adapted from this post. With a link here. INCOMING!!
Bored? Policy-weary? Write something.
English Wikipedia may have two million articles, but it’s so far off finished it’s ridiculous.
We had a quite notable recent classroom experiment in assigning students missing Wikipedia articles to write. Dig this first edit!
Writing a new article that will stick really isn’t hard: a few paragraphs, some references and some indication that there’s a reason to care will do the trick. (Go on, stretch yourself beyond web comics.) Anyone with an hour or two can produce something well worth keeping with Google Scholar. If you have access to a university library, it’s ridiculously easy.
Rather than just telling your students “go write something,” set them loose on a list of red links, requested articles, missing articles or the missing articles project. Discussion on WikiEN-L suggested Gaelic footballers, Indian and South African politicians (indeed, politicians from anywhere that isn’t the US or Europe), biographies from before the twentieth century (check any public domain biographical dictionary, particularly ones not in English), every scientist in a prominent national academy …
(Don’t forget to tell the school and university projects list.)
Also: add red links as you potter about the wiki. Red links encourage contributors. We’re now saying so expressly at FAC. And pathological red link haters can always be dealt with.