2011/2/6 Brandon Harris
<bharris(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:
On 2/6/11 10:10 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
I think
many women have enough patience or insight to stick around
long
enough to get though preliminary unpleasantness, survive the systemic
problems we have, and make substantial contributions to content and
policy, particularly if there is social support.
I don't think this is a wise perspective.
The treatment that new users receive is very clearly one of the
reasons
why they don't stick around. Simply saying "oh, they'll get over it in
time" doesn't do anything to help solve the problem, it only
perpetuates it.
and it probably has two more effects:
* it acts as a filter to only let a specific personality type enter
wikipedia
* it educates newbies the wrong way how to behave in wikipedia
It is also one of my personal reasons for leaving Wikipedia (I don't
want to live in a house any more where well-meaning people are
regularly beaten up when they try to enter)
greetings,
elian
(wikipedian since 2002, wikipedia researcher 2006-2008, passive
observer with occasional edits since then)
The question for those who are actively involved is how to get to a
better place from where we are now: defining attainable goals and
creating ways to achieve them.
Actually there are two types and scales of "being beaten up": internal
and external. Nothing that happens internally compares to the external
pressure. We have very little control over external harassment.
Fred