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-coverag…
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
Risker/Anne wrote:
> I'm not seeing the connection between female editors and multilateral tax havens....
In developing countries the gender pay gap is very often worse than in
the developing world. Can you imagine what it would be like to have
six kids and be entirely dependent on the generosity of men to feed
them? Many women in the developing world face that situation while
the richest corporations and individuals in their society reduce their
tax bills sometimes more than 90% because they are able to take
advantage of tax haven shelters. That lost income is preventing social
services to women.
A multilateral tax haven treaty is supported by almost all of the OECD
countries with the notable exception of the United States of America.
As U.S. citizens and residents we should be profoundly ashamed that we
are living in a society which promotes such tax shelters when --
according to the peer reviewed secondary epidemiological sources cited
on http://equalitytrust.org -- income inequality is the root cause
limiting over 23 quality of life measures including gender pay
equality, infant mortality, lifespan, educational attainment, and
obesity -- the latter being the most sharply increasing preventable
cause of death for both men and women, and which the U.S. government
lies about (see http://3.ly/CDClied for further details.)
Please write the U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, President Obama, and
your U.S. Senators asking for a multilateral tax haven treaty for
greater income equality worldwide. I have a dream where Sue and Jimmy
lobby Congress specifically on this issue for a week. I bet Fox News
would be unlikely to cover that.
> 3. Revive Esperanza and the Association of Editors' Advocates with a
> focus on editor mentoring;
>
> Well, no, let's *not* bring those back.
There are a lot of people who were in favor of them when they were
eliminated. Do you think that the Campus Ambassador program is likely
to reach more people? I don't. I think the Campus Ambassador program
is great, but I would hate to see the on-wiki resources and enthusiasm
currently mothballed not utilized to provide mentoring to new people
of all ages and genders simply because someone is working on a new
off-wiki program for mentoring some people in the higher education
community. What do you think the greatest drawbacks of those
organizations were?
Fred Bauder wrote:
>> 10. Remove WP:NOTHOWTO because it is used to argue against topic
>> notability but not well respected.
>
> This is a policy I have never agreed with along with the one exiling recipes.
I thought they were the same, or at least were at one time.
> But how does it relate to women?
>
> Actually I do know as my mother was a collector of both recipes and
> household howtos, but I would still like to hear your take. Howto can
> also be howto fix brakes or use a chain saw.
Firstly, some females want to know how to fix brakes and use a chain
saw. The reason is not always evident, but even if no female ever did
those things, it would give them an economic advantage to select brake
repair or lumber services to understand the procedures. But the reason
I proposed the suggestion is because earlier on this email list
someone pointed out how the many rules forbidding topic inclusion were
being used to argue against womens' issues. Let's trim those which
aren't grounded in a rational basis.
Off-list someone asked privately:
> Could you please at least briefly explain on-list the relevance of
> items 4-10 to the list topic?
Sure, I've already covered numbers 4 (tax haven treaty) and 10 above, so:
5. Less javascript for mobile devices -- Given that mobile devices are
often less expensive, and low end mobile devices are less capable of
rendering complex javascript correctly, supporting low end, less
expensive devices is more likely to benefit women more than men in
cultures with a gender income gap.
6. Simple language wikipedias in languages other than English -- Women
are more often responsible for raising children so content appropriate
for beginning language learners is more likely to benefit women more
than men.
7. Low stakes instructional assessment content in Moodle's GIFT --
Assessment questions can be used to guide people to the appropriate
level of content, as explained on p. 8 of
http://talknicer.com/wm10ca.pdf in addition to providing an automated,
background third party process of anonymous review of facts in order
to maintain a database of such assessment questions. Therefore, low
stakes assessment content will make simple language wikipedias more
effective by providing a means to guide learners to their appropriate
level content, and prevent male editors from ganging up to influence
the outcome of gender-specific disputes concerning the answers to
various questions.
8. Audio upload with rtmplite and gnash -- Again, since women are
usually disproportionately stuck with child education requirements,
content which assists beginning language learners is more likely to
help women than men. http://es.wiktionary.org/wiki/hola still doesn't
have an audio recording, so how to you expect anyone to learn
pronunciation from non-English wiktionaries?
9. Most popular related articles -- this is another feature which can
help beginning learners find content appropriate to their vocabulary
level, and thus will tend to benefit women saddled with greater
educational responsibilities disproportionately. For example, lets
say you were confused by the math formulae in the [[Cosine]] article.
If a list of most popular related articles were displayed,
[[Triangle]] and [[Trigonometry]] might figure prominently on it, and
would tend to help you find a much simpler or more comprehensive
background article, respectively. This feature was already about half
implemented by a student who I recruited for last year's Google Summer
of Code, but who was rejected because the other Mentors said that the
work would probably be too difficult. (The part that the other Mentors
said would be too difficult was already completed by the student I
recruited while the decision to reject the project was being made.) I
hope the Foundation will kindly accept that student's project this
year. I would think that it would be a matter of common decency to
apologize when such a mistake is made.
Most popular related articles also addresses two or three of the
factors identified on
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:091207_QOTW.png but I expect
that those are gender neutral. I tried to sort the ten
recommendations roughly by how firstly female editor specific, and
secondly gender specific, that their improvement outcomes would likely
be.
On the issue of sexualized content being discussed under a different
subject heading, I feel compelled to point out that the peer reviewed
secondary literature on the topic reports that children exposed to
even the very worst pornography are less likely both to be sexually
victimized and to commit sexual assault. Please see
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2005to2009/2009-pornography-acce…
and http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2010-porn.html
That very ironic, sexually charged, gender related information is in
fact a subtopic of birth control pertaining to teen pregnancy and
parenthood, which is why I hope the Foundation will support a
concerted and perhaps paid effort to bring birth control related
articles to featured status.
Best regards,
James Salsman
I'm George William Herbert, longtime English language Wikipedia
participant and administrator.
I joined this list as the contributions gap by gender seems to be the
most severe contribution inequality we've seen, and I am afraid that
it indicates worse problems in areas of new user friendliness and
community tone and civility.
With that said, I would like to hear what everyone else thinks about
it, as I have no particular insights other than being concerned...
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com
Hi,
First the short intro. I am a biologist and I have been editing
wikipedia since January 2006. Currently, I am an admin and bit more
active than a long time.
I am not at all surprised about the gender gap. I think the setup of
wikipedia from the beginning fitted far better with the way man are used
to operate than how woman are used to operate. Vandal fighting, edit
wars, etc, who wants to do that? Maybe I am wrong, but there is a
something we can use, and that is data mining. Just as the gender gap
was discovered. Basically, what is needed is an analysis of the data and
if there is a difference in the editing pattern of men and women. We can
than use those results to actually get a better idea why women are absent.
I make a prediction. Nothing is going to change, regardless of what we
find and discover, unless we find a way to change the governing system
(the community rules). But as the current system is dominated by men, we
have to convince them to change the rules. Good luck with that.
Kim
--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com
It may well be that we don't value volunteers as we should:
"When planning marketing outreach tactics to recruit volunteers, develop
messages with words that resonate with those who would be interested in
your cause or who carry a complimentary platform. Focus on words that
reinforce your base principles -- and keep it simple. The business behind
your community-base social marketing campaign generally isn't of interest
to a possible volunteer -- but of interest is the opportunity you are
providing them to allow their voice to be part of an underlying
movement."
I have absolutely no problem with such messages or spending money on such
messages directed to encouraging more women to edit. But when people do
step up we need to value them not treat them as though there is a
thousand more where they came from.
Fred
--------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Marketing:Green: The Business Of Volunteerism
From: "MediaPost Publications" <news(a)mediapost.com>
Date: Wed, February 2, 2011 11:03 am
To: fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marketing:Green: The Business Of Volunteerism
In the same way that you are trying to compete for market
share in your sector, you must work at obtaining a share of
the volunteer market. Think about volunteers as another
segment of your target audience -- those people who may
become potential spokespeople for your community-based social
marketing campaign. <
For the whole story, visit
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=1439….
Hi, I'm Nihiltres. I'm male, I live on the island of Montreal, and I have a history of trying to support others in contributing to Wikipedia. (Warning: long, rambling post follows. If TL;DR, skip to past the line of asterisks.)
I'll be straightforward and say that gender issues are not my cup of tea. I don't want to be a part of something that stirs up the kind of emotions that gender issues generally do.
Despite my aversion to the specific issue, I think that there are specific, gender-neutral lessons that we can take from why the gender gap exists in the first place. I strongly agree with Sue Gardner's attitude as quoted in the NYT that we should avoid "women-specific remedies like recruitment or quotas" and instead try methods of "subtle persuasion and outreach". Kat Walsh's essay "Women and Wikipedia" also resonated with me, particularly in the section where she suggests that "the culture is not biased against women, but rather biased toward certain traits and against others". Let me REALLY echo this sentence: "I don't think it's about gender in particular, and I hate to focus on gender specifically; it discounts the experience of the women involved and it makes things uncomfortable for the men involved."
I think that I see, through some of my help work, a pattern that might be relevant. It might be stupid, and it certainly plays on a stereotype—so please take it with a grain of salt. It has been my experience that Wikipedia is a tricky place to get started in. This isn't inherently the problem. We have a lot of rules, and many of these are for good reason. A veteran Wikipedian will have probably picked up a fair amount of knowledge regarding copyright (law), conflict of interest (journalism, ethics), verifiability (epistemology), markup ([X]HTML, CSS, wikicode)… and the list goes on. This is in some ways a good thing, and in some ways a bad thing. Experienced Wikipedians have a lot of knowledge inherent to the Wikipedian process that *helps make Wikipedia of better quality*, though it makes getting to be an experienced Wikipedian in the first place quite the learning process.
Not everyone can absorb all of this knowledge. While experienced Wikipedians will likely pick a lot of it up over time, the problem that we are facing is just to get people (and to some extent particularly women) *in the door*. Newbies need a place to start. I think that this is one of the most important places in which we Wikipedians are weak. We have reams of documentation—scary amounts of it, in fact. If a newbie comes in, there is a fair amount of reading to do before they can get started. If they skip the step, it's reasonably likely that someone at some point will come along and say "You're doing it wrong" and potentially scare the newbie off. Getting a more personal route through the jungle of documentation would be hugely helpful to these people.
Now for the stereotype. I'll stress again that I know that this is a stereotype, and that I think it will apply to many men as well as many women. This is that women tend to favour interpersonal interaction.
To quote Kat Walsh again, "I think there need to be many different ways to be a part of Wikipedia--if you're the kind of person who reads the manual first and wants minimal interaction, there should be a place for you; if you want someone to talk you through your first interactions and spend time getting to know people personally before you contribute, there should be a place for you too." I don't want it to be a gender issue, but it occurs to me that if the stereotype has any basis in reality (which stereotypes often do), it might be a general improvement that can counter an implicit, *unintentional* skew against women's participation.
*******************************
If I could make one quick fix to Wikipedia possible, it would be to integrate something along the lines of the #wikipedia-en-help chat channel on Freenode IRC (see http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help for an in-browser version) more directly into Wikipedia. Why do I suggest such a particular change? The chat channel has several benefits:
* It's immediate. Once you hit the chat channel, you can get help synchronously, rather than having to check back for answers by refreshing a page. *Push, not pull.*
* It's personal. Once you get some help, you have a contact. If you work with the same person more than once, there's an element of trust that goes beyond "this person is a certified Wikipedia helper-person".
* It's scalable. Wikipedia is huge. If we want to sensibly get new users the help they need, we need to give them *very* simple instructions to get *to* the help. If we focus help services in one place to do this, we end up with huge wiki pages that aren't friendly to new users who would benefit most from *personal*, focused help. If I look at the history of Wikipedia's general "Help desk" page, it tends to have at least 60k bytes of wikitext at any given time. The table of contents alone stretches vertically for about a page and a half of my reasonably large (1080 pixels vertically) computer screen, using the default font size. If you can start talking with a single helper on a chat channel, it doesn't matter how busy ("noisy") the chat channel is: that's what direct messaging is for.
That's my idea, anyway. I don't want to suggest that it's the best plan, or even that it's remotely feasible. It's merely one spontaneous idea that I think could help, and I'd love to hear critical commentary on it. What *elements* of it appeal most to people? I think that looking for elements of the improvements that we want to implement is more important than finding a specific quick fix.
Here's to a more inclusive future for Wikipedia.
Nihiltres
I'm Slp1, an English Wikipedia editor since 2006 who lives in Montreal. I've resonated with a few of the introductions here. Like Sue Gardner, my work settings have always been predominately female. Like Sarah Stierch, my vision of Wikipedia includes facilitating the participation of older women (and men) who may lack the technical skills and confidence to participate. Like many others, I am interested to talk about solutions to improve the gender gap, because of the effect that it has on content.
My initial thoughts:
Based on discussions with other women, the technical aspects of wiki markup etc are challenging and off-putting for many. I'm sure I don't need to say that women are just as capable of learning it, but like it or not, especially for older women and women in more traditional cultural settings, men are more likely to have the background and confidence to try.The philosophy of wikipedia (consensus decision making, assuming good faith, neutrality) jive well with what I know of women's communication styles, and methods of solving disputes. In conflictual situations, however, these ideals often go out the window, and power-based decision making and interactions come to the fore. Entrenched editing from an ideological position, often accompanied by subtle or not so subtle bullying, is unpleasant for many, but perhaps especially for women, who studies suggest are typically prefer a collaborative approach to conflict resolution.
That's enough for now. I look forward to learning and helping come up with some good changes to the structural aspects of this project which seem to discourage participation.
Slp1
Hi, everyone.
This letter is addressed to the American Philatelic Society, to the
editor of The American Philatelist, and copied to gendergap, a Wikimedia
Foundation mailing list.
I'm doing a little research on behalf of Wikipedia with respect to
gender. You may have noticed the New York Time's article about
involvement of women on Wikipedia,
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation has been
concerned about this issue and we are discussing it, in part on a mailing
list, gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap that is open to
public participation.
I've been reading books about stamp collecting lately and in "The Error
World: An Affair with Stamps" by Simon Garfield I found this quotation:
It is a passage quoted from a piece of "light fiction", by Robert Graves
published in 1936, "Antigua, Penny, Puce":
"All English Schoolboys of a certain age collect postage stamps or at
least all schoolboys whose parents have a little money, below a certain
social level the collecting instinct must, we suppose, be satisfied
largely with cigarette pictures and gift coupons. Schoolgirls, on the
other hand...schoolgirls do not go in for stamp collecting, in fact, they
usually despise the pursuit, which is not direct and personal enough to
satisfy them emotionally; if they collect anything it is signed
photographs of famous actresses and actors. But they have brothers, and
brothers collect stamps. So in the holidays they very often consent to
lend a hand in the game. They rummage in bedroom drawers, and in their
parents's writing desks, and in boxes in the attic, and sometimes make
quite useful finds. The brothers are touched and gratified. Schoolgirls
are not interested in stamps, agree, but - this is the important point -
they are interested in their brothers' preoccupation with stamps. What is
it all about? What is the sense of it?"
When I read that I flashed on the insight that Wikipedia is a hobby, and
very similar to stamp collecting at that. I find there is a common
emotional feel about both avocations, but perhaps that is just me.
And I wondered what the statistics are with respect to women
participating in stamp collecting. What percentage of APS members are
women? Of collectors generally? My suspicion is that it is very similar
to the 15% of Wikipedia editors.
Fred Bauder
APS 128302
Wikipedia User:Fred Bauder
BTW, I'm sure the gender gap has been covered in The American Philatelist
before, but I couldn't find a convenient way to search the archives.
Please advise me with respect to that.
Hello,
My name is Marc Riddell (User:Michael David) My work is in Clinical
Psychology and Psychotherapy. I spent the 60's (rather passionately) at UC
Berkeley. Gender, and the issues it presents, are a large part of my work. I
came to the List to learn, and to be of any help that I can. I am interested
in learning how and why people and things work the way they do.
Marc
--
YOU must be your strongest advocate.
