The former contributors study - and this is my fundamental problem with the brainstorming here - did not take the gender of the participant into account. There is no reason to assume this applies explicitly or more strongly to women. The appropriate response is either:<br>
<br><ol><li>To take the former contributors' concerns into account and brainstorm ways to fix them that apply regardless of gender, as the survey did.</li><li>To find out if there is actually a distinction between the concerns of female ex-editors and male ex-editors and then brainstorm from the results.</li>
</ol>Your idea of a dedicated portal for women deals with neither of these problems. It will either have the same social standards as the rest of Wikipedia, or it won't. If it does have the same standards, it's useless and unnecessary, because the participants could do just as well on the rest of the project. If it doesn't, it's useless, unnecessary and unfounded, because you've yet to demonstrate any evidence stronger than "somebody said" that there are gender-specific problems here. Further than that, it's simply preparing these new editors to be metaphorically dropped in it from a great height when they run into the rest of the community for the first time.<br>
<br>I appreciate the concerns of the female contributors here and at various comment threads on blogs around the world. If my time in the political world taught me anything, however, it's that such places are <i>not</i> breeding grounds for reliable data. You tend to attract either people who are highly enthusiastic and fine with the project, or people who are highly pissed off by it. Making broad assumptions and actions based on the second- or third-hand evidence of a few people who fall into those categories is inefficient. I'm not talking about a four-year survey; what I was proposing, and what garnered some support (and no opposition) before vanishing from the face of the earth, was a repeat of Howie's survey with a gender drop-box. This would not take long, and would allow us to see a) whether some work the WMF has already put in has had any discernible effect, b) more accurately what the proportion of men to women is on WMF projects and c) if there is any discernible difference in the concerns reported by self-identified women and self-identified men. From that we can see what needs to be done.<br>
<br>I'm fully supportive of opening up Wikipedia to more users, addressing their concerns, and making women a particular focus due to their underrepresentation, which may lead to systematic bias and an absence of NPOV. But until you can actually demonstrate reliable evidence that there <i>are</i> different concerns for men and different concerns for women, applying different standards seems to be a complete waste of time.<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 2:03 AM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:carolmooredc@verizon.net">carolmooredc@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"><div class="im">
<br>
On 2/14/2011 6:00 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">"Men of course would be allowed to help and<br>
learn, but doubtless there would be a low tolerance for
questionable and<br>
trolling behavior."<br>
How nice of you to tolerate our barbarianism.<br>
</blockquote></div>
I believe that is a misrepresentation of what I said and what I
meant.<div class="im"><br>
<blockquote type="cite"><br>
Again, this comes down to "do we want to divide the community"? If
it's behavioural issues within the community, the behaviour of the
community has to change. Dissecting it will only cause greater
problems further down the line.<br>
</blockquote></div>
It's a resource, not a division. It's an idea, not a demand. This is
a brain storm. Feel free to come up with a better idea to help
attract and keep women editors. <br>
<br>
Portal - which I notice was just mentioned - is another good idea. I
haven't had quite enough experience with both to have a strong
opinion on whether one or the other would better.<div class="im"><br>
<blockquote type="cite"> <br>
I want to again take this opportunity to emphasise that <i>we
don't know why so few women edit compared to men</i>. Is there
any chance we could gather some statistically reliable data first,
and come up with ideas on how to fix the (currently baseless)
presuppositions later?<br>
</blockquote>
</div><a href="http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Former_Contributors_Survey_Results" target="_blank">http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Former_Contributors_Survey_Results</a>
As I mentioned earlier today this shows that comments about removal
of material, also were made by women in the NY Times debate and on
this list. Obviously it's a feature of Wikipedia all newbies have
to learn to deal with, but coming up with strategies to keep it from
being a major reason for leaving would be a big help for men and
women, who may take such rejection more personally, depending on how
it is done.<br>
<br>
And women in lots of off wiki articles and/or on this list have
expressed that dealing with locker room or bar brawling attitudes
and even hostility also is an important reasons women leave. <br>
<br>
I don't think we need a four year long study to figure out a few of
the major issues, while ignoring the experience, ideas and solutions
of women who joined this list to share them.<br>
<br>
Thanks.<br>
<br>
Carol in dc<br>
<br>
</div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br>