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<DIV><EM>The fact that people would make a judgement calls and declare that
women are into editing fashion articles, etc, is really bizarre to me. The
first articles I ever edited were about European new wave bands, nor have I
ever edited an article about make-up, children, "women's issues" or soap
operas ;)</EM></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Sara, I wasn't <EM>declaring</EM> this, just
following up on some observations the NYT article that prompted the creation
of this list made (an observation that at least one female editor on the
fashion project, as the diff I posted with it, seems to share). I don't expect
any new editor on the project to focus on any specific topic area determined
by immutable personal characteristics (though of course some will; that's
human nature); many female editors I know (you included, as I learned sitting
next to you all day at the National Archives) have as diverse an array of
editing interests as I do. But, I would imagine, a higher percentage of female
editors would probably result in more attention being paid to some otherwise
neglected areas where the pool of informal expertise off-wiki has more women
in it than men. Just as lifting the PRC block would bring more editors with
some degree of knowledge to China-related topics (though that, of course, we
can't really do anything about).</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I would probably also posit that, currently, the
overlap between women who thrive within the Wikipedia community and women who
would primarily want to contribute primarily in the aforementioned topic areas
is probably fairly small.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Daniel Case</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>