Next time I'm in the mood for writing an
instruction guide, WikiHow has my
undying loyalty. It's a great community and I know a few female >editors
who are extremely comfortable at WikiHow but find Wikipedia intimidating.
They are a pretty good litmus test for efforts like the >Teahouse and other
editor engagement projects.
At the early Thursday afternoon session that was originally supposed to be
Oliver Keyes' (User:Ironholds) "Eternal December" presentation but was
changed into a panel with him and several other editors discussing our
issues with new editors, the one which turned into one of the most
productive discussions all of us remember attending at Wikimania 2012,
Oliver asked if anyone in the room had edited Wikipedia but turned away. One
woman whose badge identified her as a WikiHow user raised her hand and said
that she had gone over to WikiHow after her two earlier attempts at editing
Wikipedia ran smack into some "complete jerks" as she put it.
I noticed, in fact, that a lot of the attendees from WikiHow were female,
including those two 13ish girls who hung out together all the time (one of
whom was knitting—yes, knitting!—during the aforementioned panel (Now
there's someone who we should get into editing Wikipedia at some point ...)
Seriously, I wonder if at least one thing we could do would be to allow
xlinks to a WikiHow article if it's featured. One common undercurrent in a
lot of discussions of our gender gap is that women seem to be more likely
than men to be looking for how-to online (I did indeed search YouTube for
all the tightlining tutorials noted by the one questioner at Jimbo's speech,
and there are indeed a lot). That might have something to do with the above
observation.
Daniel Case