[Gendergap] Hello and ten specific recommendations for increasing the number of female editors

James Salsman jsalsman at gmail.com
Thu Feb 3 03:36:50 UTC 2011


Hi, I'm James 'Jim' Salsman.  I'm a male wikipedian who got in trouble
for not backing down in a dispute about depleted uranium and birth
defects. I really want things to be much better than they are for
female editors of all ages, because I am sure that would make it
easier for people trying to work on the same social problems I had
been working on. I believe I have been right to ignore my editing
restrictions because they were not serving to improve the quality of
the encyclopedia. I am the only editor known to have taken an article
to featured status while banned.  I think if more people respected
improving the quality of the encyclopedia instead of the often
opposing policies and guidelines, the encyclopedia would be more
welcoming for women and girls.

I've already commented a couple times on
http://suegardner.org/2011/01/31/new-york-times-prompts-a-flurry-of-coverage-of-wikipedias-gender-gap/#comments
where I read about this email list.  I have a specific set of
recommendations, at http://talknicer.com/wm10ca.pdf but I want to make
the following overlapping recommendations to specifically address the
gender inequality issue:

1. Ask chapters to compete to nurture the greatest number of female
administrators;

2. Bring all the articles on birth control to featured status;

3. Revive Esperanza and the Association of Editors' Advocates with a
focus on editor mentoring;

4. Support a multilateral tax haven treaty in the US and any other
countries that might still be opposing one;

5. Less javascript for mobile devices;

6. Simple language wikipedias in languages other than English (likely
using namespace, subpage, or similar methods, not necessarily entire
new wikis, if that will help editors share watchlists);

7. Low stakes instructional assessment content in Moodle's GIFT
http://microformats.org/wiki/gift ;

8. Audio upload with rtmplite and gnash -- not just "would be nice"
but with money sent to gnash developers;

9. Most popular related articles; and

10.  Remove WP:NOTHOWTO because it is used to argue against topic
notability but not well respected.

Please share your thoughts on these proposals.  I am happy to explain
how each of them benefits female editors or females in general (and
thus female editors) and I hope you agree.  Please let me know!

Best regards,
James Salsman




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