All posts tagged english

  • Backchannel story: ‘Meet The Ultimate WikiGnome’, February 2015

    My first story for Backchannel, the technology section of Medium.com. Excerpt below.

    Meet The Ultimate WikiGnome

    One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake

    'Meet The Ultimate WikiGnome: One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake' by Andrew McMillen on Backchannel, February 2015

    On a Friday in July 2012, two employees of the Wikimedia Foundation gave a talk at Wikimania, their organization’s annual conference. Maryana Pinchuk and Steven Walling addressed a packed room as they answered a question that has likely popped into the minds of even the most casual users of Wikipedia: who the hell edits the site, and why do they do it?

    Pinchuk and Walling conducted hundreds of interviews to find out. They learned that many serious contributors have an independent streak and thrive off the opportunity to work on any topic they like. Other prolific editors highlight the encyclopedia’s huge global audience or say they derive satisfaction from feeling that their work is of use to someone, no matter how arcane their interests. Then Walling lands on a slide entitled, ‘perfectionism.’ The bespectacled young man pauses, frowning.

    “I feel sometimes that this motivation feels a little bit fuzzy, or a little bit negative in some ways… Like, one of my favorite Wikipedians of all time is this user called Giraffedata,” he says. “He has, like, 15,000 edits, and he’s done almost nothing except fix the incorrect use of ‘comprised of’ in articles.”

    A couple of audience members applaud loudly.

    “By hand, manually. No tools!” interjects Pinchuk, her green-painted fingernails fluttering as she gestures for emphasis.

    “It’s not a bot!” adds Walling. “It’s totally contextual in every article. He’s, like, my hero!”

    “If anybody knows him, get him to come to our office. We’ll give him a Barnstar in person,” says Pinchuk, referring to the coveted virtual medallion that Wikipedia editors award one another.

    Walling continues: “I don’t think he wakes up in the morning and says, ‘I’m gonna serve widows in Africa with the sum of all human knowledge.’” He begins shaking his hands in mock frustration. “He wakes up and says, ‘Those fuckers—they messed it up again!’”

    Giraffedata is something of a superstar among the tiny circle of people who closely monitor Wikipedia, one of the most popular websites in the English-speaking world. About 8 million English Wikipedia articles are visited every hour, yet only a tiny fraction of readers click the ‘edit’ button in the top right corner of every page. And only 30,000 or so people make at least five edits per month to the quickly growing site.

    Giraffedata—a 51-year-old software engineer named Bryan Henderson—is among the most prolific contributors, ranking in the top 1,000 most active editors. While some Wikipedia editors focus on adding content or vetting its accuracy, and others work to streamline the site’s grammar and style, generally few, if any, adopt Giraffedata’s approach to editing: an unrelenting, multi-year project to fix exactly one grammatical error.

    To read the full story, visit Backchannel.

  • The Global Mail story: ‘Do You C What I C?’, March 2012

    My first story for The Global Mail: a feature about the use of the word ‘cunt’ in modern Australia.

    Excerpt below; click the image to view the story on The Global Mail website (link will open in a new window).

    Do You C What I C?
    by Andrew McMillen

    Long absent from polite society, it is widely considered one of the most obscene words in the English language — and yet this very vulgarity is suddenly very vogue in some circles. But even the twentysomethings who fling it around willingly wouldn’t use That Word in front of their parents. What’s changed with the C word?

    “WHAT A CUNT OF A WEEK,” writes a female friend on Facebook one Friday afternoon, after an apparently stressful week of work at a Brisbane radio station. A live music promoter friend updates his Facebook status in the early hours of a Sunday morning: “Extremely tired. Just found out the fucking dog has pissed on my bed. I’m done with that cunt.”

    When I’m playing a first-person shooter video game online and my character is killed by an opponent’s bullets, I’m likely to type those four letters among a ridiculous string of expletives, mostly to amuse myself while I wait for the next round to begin.

    As a 24-year-old Australian male, I’m drowning in the word. It seems to be the go-to expletive for people around my age — mostly males, but females aren’t exactly a rare exception. The word cunt is in common usage — most often as a term of frustration or ironic endearment rather than an insult directed at any particular person.

    We say it because we think it’s a funny word to say, to type, to express to other human beings. It’s something of a naughty vice that we knowingly indulge in, smiling inwardly at our own wickedness. Among my friends, its use is entirely context-specific. It is not a word that would ever be uttered during dinner table conversation with my parents. But in the lounge room with my housemates, all in their 20s, it falls from our mouths at a frequency that would undoubtedly shock my grandparents. I recall that during my early high school years, the word was perceived as risqué by my friends and me. When our schoolmates said it, we flinched. How dare they say that?

    But by senior year, something had changed – trends, taboos, our maturity or lack thereof – and we’d regularly make each other laugh by quoting lyrics from a song titled ‘I’m a Cunt‘ by West Australian rappers Hunter and Dazastah. Sample: “I’ve done a lot of cunty things / And out of cunts you know / You know I be the king.”

    CUT TO March 2012. I walk the streets of Brisbane with a blue A4 folder in my hand. Underneath the cover, wedged inside the plastic sleeves, I’ve printed six words in mega-sized fonts. Dark blue cardboard separates the six pages, so the next word can’t be seen until the page is turned.

    I meet 43-year-old local author Krissy Kneen at a New Farm café as she flips through the words: bloody, arsehole, shit, fuck and motherfucker. Before she flips to the final word, I ask Kneen what she thinks will be next.

    A brief pause. “Cunt?”

    And there it is, in 255-point Times New Roman.

    To read the full 4,400 word story, visit The Global Mail.

  • Mess+Noise ‘icons’ interview: ‘Lawrence English + ROOM40’, December 2010

    An interview for the Mess+Noise ‘icons’ series. Excerpt below.

    Lawrence English and ROOM40

    In an age of disconnect, Lawrence English still believes in the life-affirming power of new sounds. It’s what’s kept his label ROOM40 going for 10 years, writes ANDREW MCMILLEN.

    If you’re an experimental sound artist looking to distribute your music internationally, no matter where you’re based, the name Lawrence English is bound to crop up in your research. English [pictured right – kind of] has operated the label ROOM40 out of his home in Brisbane since 2000, or, in his own words, he’s delivered “sound parcels from the antipodes since the turn of the century”. Such is the man’s reputation for courteous professionalism, kindness and amiability among the world’s non-mainstream music community that he could well front a Tourism Queensland campaign for international relations.

    “The six degrees separation thing in this particular field, I think, is much less than six. Even your top level guys, your Brian Enos, the degrees of separation, are like two or three at the most,” English says. “One of my very good friends, Ben Frost, is Eno’s current mentee. We put out Ben’s first album. There’s this great flow-on effect. I think the really good thing about this particular area is it is really like an extended family, in the best way possible, not in the kind of squabbling way.”

    English’s greatest passion appears to be sharing interesting sounds with others. As far as I can gauge, this is why ROOM40 exists. Every release is a labour of love, carefully choreographed with a selection of artists hand-picked from around the globe. ROOM40’s Australian releases over the years include John Chantler, Chris Abrahams (of The Necks) and Rod Cooper.

    “I’m a big believer in that generally in music, there’s enough room for everyone to do their thing and to find an audience. The kind of competitive, closed spaces that sometimes happen with more contemporary music – I just don’t believe in that because I think there’s plenty of room for Big Day Out, for Soundwave, for all these major festivals. I believe in open systems. The cycle of the fringes to the centre and back around again; that’s what keeps it interesting.”

    As 2010 marks ROOM40’s 10th anniversary, I dropped into English’s home in Kelvin Grove, a suburb of Brisbane, to discuss its past, present and future.

    I’ve read that you consider ROOM40 not just as a label, but a multi-arts organisation, which encompasses the label, distribution, promoting shows – what else?

    Festivals, art curation, and art installation. It started as an umbrella so it was like the label publishing editions and all that kind of stuff; the opportunity to bring people to Australia and send Australia overseas, like a kind of cycle thing … We’ve had some great international artists. Christian Marclay was here a few years ago in Melbourne at ACMI [Australian Centre for the Moving Image]. But we are yet to see that celebration of contemporary sound culture or a kind of connective thing – this thing is, for most Australian musicians in this area, their profile is overseas. Someone like Oren Ambarchi, for example, that guy’s touring in every other country. He plays in Australia maybe three times a year or something. He might play 50 shows. The same for me: I played two shows this year and by the end of the year I’ll have played like 30 or 40 something. Ninety percent of them will not be in Australia. It’s just because the opportunities are elsewhere and Australia is just one of a number of countries that you can go to.

    For the full interview, visit Mess+Noise. Thanks for being one of the most interesting people I know, Lawrence. For more info on ROOM40, visit their website.