On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 7:36 AM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 14:11, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> Should we discuss such problems or should such posts have been rejected
>> by a moderator or the poster warned and required to revise their post?
>>
>> I have high toleration for disorder, but have found lately that wholesale
>> deletion has been useful when I get behind. The conversations here have
>> not been substantial or focused enough to command sustained attention.
>>
> I wouldn't mind seeing more moderation. I've just changed my
> preferences to digest mode, which means I'm going to miss things, but
> it was becoming too much and not focused enough.
>
> I wonder whether it would make sense to have two lists -- one for
> Wikipedia-specific suggestions, and another for the broader issues.
"Wikipedia-specific suggestions" seems better to be defined as English
Wikipedia suggestions. It would be a good practice of thought why
those questions came here, not to other and solid Wikipedia dedicated
fora, wikipedia@lists. wikimedia.org or its sister EnWP specific list.
Have you girls and guys never known those two lists? Or ...?
>
> Sarah
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gendergap mailing list
> Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
>
--
KIZU Naoko / 木津尚子
member of Wikimedians in Kansai / 関西ウィキメディアユーザ会 http://kansai.wikimedia.jp
Hi all,
I am an Australian mother who has begun a campaign to increase women's participation in Wikipedia in light of the recent media attention on the issue. I have set up a basic web site at http://women4wikipedia.net as a base to organise Womens Wikipedia Hackfests between now and International Womens Day (8 March). You can find previous chat transcripts at the site and other resources. I've also hooked Sue Francis up with Social Media Women (Sydney, Australia) to do an IWD presentation on Women4Wikipedia.
I've begun hosting Twitter chats on the subject of Women & Wikipedia (our 3rd is Mon 21 Feb) and I think there is only another 3 before IWD by which time I hope that we'll have inspired some women to organise somen Womens Wikipedia Hackfests (before or after IWD is fine).
Everyone is welcome to the weekly Twitter chats and I need all the help I can get. Given the recent article in Datamation on the Ada Initiative http://bit.ly/fih76w I thought it raised some interesting issues in terms of how women in open source is portrayed in the media.
Mon 21 Chat will be on the topic of 'Sexism & Internet Security' What should women be aware of online
& when editing Wikipedia? I thought it would be a good time to give out a few pointers on internet safety for women to combat some of the negative media coverage. It should be noted that I'm not a Wikipedia/technology expert so I can do with any help offered. I started this campaign for the very reason that you don't have to be an expert to edit Wikipedia and because I was so surprised at the low participation rates of women.
Please find Twitter Chat times (Monday 9am UTC/GTM) at http://women4wikipedia.net or http://wthashtag.com/Women4wikipedia which you can also use to participate if you have a Twitter account.
I am also building a list of articles edited or created by women on Wikipedia. We've only just begun and already have 2 more women Wikipedians. If you would like to add your contrib page to the list please email me or contact me via Twitter. It is to show people that women actually can and do edit Wikipedia. Thanks to Kathy O'Donnell for forwarding me links to this mailing list and pleased to meet you all! :-)
regards
Rosie Williams
http://collectiveaction.com.au
@collectiveact
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 16 February 2011 10:51
Subject: [PRESS] Discovery News: Is There A Gender Gap Online?
To: Communications Committee <wmfcc-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Is There a Gender Gap Online?
By Cristen Conger | Mon Feb 7, 2011 11:31 AM ET
http://news.discovery.com/tech/is-there-a-gender-gap-online.html?print=true
When the online encyclopedia Wikipedia recently celebrated its 10th
birthday, media outlets highlighted its stunning growth, number of
articles, range of topics -- and its contributor gender gap.
A 2010 study co-sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation discovered that
barely 15 percent of Wikipedia contributors are women, with the lion’s
share of the articles being written, edited and updated by men in
their mid-20s.
“(Online) public contexts such as web forums and Wikipedia, especially
if they’re associated with domains such as politics, technology, or
knowledge, are still overwhelmingly male-dominated,” said Susan C.
Herring, a professor of information science at Indiana University who
specializes in online communication. “These domains are important, and
women’s relatively lesser participation in them is potentially a cause
for concern.”
But that doesn’t mean women don’t have a presence on the Web. A few
years ago, we wondered whether there was a gender gap in terms of who
was getting online. A finding from the 2005 Pew Internet & American
Life Project answered that.
The widely publicized Pew survey found a slightly higher number of
American women online than men. And in the current social networking
age, the ladies are still leading the pack. Multiple surveys,
including a 2010 comScore report, consistently show more female
engagement on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.
So when it comes to gender and the Internet today, the more pertinent
question isn’t whether more men or women are surfing the Net, but
whether they’re surfing the Net differently.
Take online communication, for instance. Real-world gender differences
translate to differences in Internet interaction as well.
“My research into the gender dynamics of online discussion forums
found that men tend to be more adversarial, and to tolerate
contentious debate, more than women,” Herring said. "Women, in
contrast, tend to be more polite and supportive, as well as less
assertive … and (they) tend to be turned off by contentiousness, and
may avoid online environments that they perceive as contentious.”
Those dynamics help explain why women have gravitated toward sharing
on social networking sites while men move toward public domain content
creation like Wikipedia, where articles can erupt with editing wars
between contributors.
“Sites such as Facebook are 'walled gardens' -- users can select
their friends and in general have more control over who enters their
online space than in open forums, where any random person can come
along and harass them or start a flame war,” Herring explained.
“Facebook and Twitter are also oriented towards sharing personal
information and social exchange, which women and girls are more drawn
to do than men and boys are.”
Considering women’s active role on the Internet, online advertisers
and sites are working to overcome certain gender barriers that have
naturally arisen and finding new ways to attract larger female
audiences.
In the case of Wikipedia, for instance, founder Jimmy Wales along with
the Wikimedia Foundation have set a goal to increase its female
contributor base to 25 percent by 2015.
And for younger generations growing up wired (or wireless) the
ever-evolving Web landscape could become a more gender-neutral space
with men and women equally engaged in social networking, content
creation and collaboration.
“The Web seems to be evolving towards a better overall gender
balance,” Herring said. “That is, instead of mostly male environments,
there are now some environments in which females participate very
actively as well.”
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
The other day it occurred to me that a particular friend of mine could
be a great contributor to Wikipedia, and so I asked her if she ever
did. She said that she used to, and in fact started an article about a
particular topic (a particular biological taxon - I won't be more
specific at this point, but it is an extant article). I asked her if
there was a particular reason she stopped, and her answer was,
"Yes, the last time I tried to, though admittedly that has been a few
years ago, I was unable to. I can't remember what the impediment was
but I'm basically a lazy person. If I have to jump through even one
hoop, I lose my passion."
Now perhaps she tried to edit an article protected for a very good
reason, or who knows what happened, but this event was enough to make
her stop. I imagine she's not the only person to react this way. Is
this reaction more typical of one sex than another? I have no idea. I
just thought I'd throw it into the mix of known reasons some people
don't edit Wikipedia.
Aleta/LadyofShalott
Forgive me if someone posted about this and I just missed it, but if not...
Apparently today there was a public event in Chicago titled "Wikipedia: in
search of women",[1] held at a discussion group sponsored by Illinois
Humanities Council. Did anyone go to this or correspond with the event
organizers?
1. http://www.prairie.org/events/24650/wikipedia-search-women
--
Steven Walling
Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org
Hey folks,
A colleague at another organization asked me if I'd write up a quick
note recapping the basics about Wikipedia's gender gap and Wikimedia's
response to it. I did it for him, and then thought it might make sense
to also share it here.
It's below.
Thanks,
Sue
In January 2011, the New York Times published a story headlined
“Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List,” about the
gender gap on Wikipedia. It was rooted in the finding, from a 2008
UNU-Merit survey developed in partnership with the Wikimedia
Foundation, that only 13% of Wikipedia editors are female.
That piece prompted a flurry of other coverage, including six essays
in the New York Times from academics and other experts, a series of
commentaries in The Atlantic Monthly, opinion pieces in Canada’s
national newspaper the Globe and Mail and in the Ottawa Citizen, and
stories in Discover, Discovery News, Mother Jones magazine, Slate
magazine, the NPR blog, the UK newspaper the Telegraph, The Village
Voice, MSNBC, the Business Insider, TG Daily and the feminist blog
Jezebel. Links at the bottom.
None of that was an accident: we wanted the coverage, and we sought it out.
The Wikimedia Foundation has been aware that Wikipedia had a gender
gap, and we believe it’s a serious problem that needs to be fixed.
Wikipedia’s vision is to contain “the sum of all human knowledge.” The
premise is that everyone is invited to bring their crumb of knowledge
to the table, and together those crumbs become a banquet. If women are
underrepresented at the table, we can’t achieve the vision. So solving
the gender gap is critical.
But it's also very difficult. At Wikipedia, you don’t fix
deeply-rooted cultural problems through top-down mandates: you do it
through discussion. You need to have awareness that there’s a problem,
develop a consensus that it matters, and instigate, facilitate and
support efforts to fix it.
This particular problem is complicated by the fact that solutions
don’t lie entirely within the Wikipedia editorial community, because
important voices are missing there. We knew we would need to bring in
voices from outside, and support them in making themselves heard. Only
then would we have a shot at achieving lasting cultural change. Hence
the New York Times article.
In January, Sue Gardner (Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director) and
Moka Pantages (Wikimedia Foundation Global Communications Manager)
used the occasion of Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary to have an
off-the-record lunch with New York Times staff. At the lunch, we
talked with them about our gender gap. We knew it would stimulate a
big, public conversation. And it did: immediately after the story was
published, we were flooded with media inquiries and offers of help.
* Female columnists and bloggers pledged to try editing Wikipedia
themselves, and urged their readers to do the same. Academic, feminist
and women-in-technology groups started discussing on their internal
lists how they can help.
* Several prominent academics with specializations in gender and
technology offered us their ideas about the origins of the problem.
* An anthropologist offered to help the Wikimedia Foundation design a
study to find out why so few women edit.
* The Wikimedia Foundation launched a new public mailing list to talk
about the issue: in its first two weeks it attracted 150+ members
who’ve made 500+ posts to the list (35 per day).
* A moderator at a popular online forum which has successfully solved
its own gender problems shared what had worked for them.
* Wikipedians conducted an analysis of editor self-identification as
female across multiple language versions of the encyclopedia,
resulting in the finding that the highest proportion of
self-identified women is at the Russian Wikipedia, which is also the
faster-growing Wikipedia.
* Wikipedians created a Facebook group “Women at Wikipedia.”
* Wikipedians have created special wiki-pages and wiki-projects aimed
at brainstorming ideas for fixing the gender gap.
* Wikipedians have proposed using International Women's Day, March 8,
to kick off a special initiative inviting women to become Wikipedia
editors. The staff of the Wikimedia Foundation is currently assessing
how it could support that initiative with banner invitations and by
helping experienced editors self-organize to mentor and support women
who respond to that invitation.
Current state: We've leveraged Wikipedia's visibility to develop
public awareness of the gender gap, resulting in a flurry of
decentralized activity in expected and unexpected forums,
brainstorming potential solutions. Those forums include a healthy mix
of women and men, and experienced Wikipedians and external
perspectives.
Some of the initiatives that have been proposed will fizzle out and
have no impact. But some will flourish. In coming months, we hope to
learn, with some cautious investment on the part of the Wikimedia
Foundation, which catalyzing strategies can successfully increase
female participation in Wikimedia projects. We have a 2015 goal to
increase the percentage of female editors to 25%. As we get smarter
about which strategies work, we will ramp up our investment. The
initial global positive energy around and interest in this topic are
giving us confidence that we can reach our goal.
Links to some of the coverage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=1&src=b…http://www.businessinsider.com/wikipedia-is-hampered-by-its-huge-gender-gap…http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/01/wikipedias-gender-problemhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/8293217/Why-Wikipedias-edit…http://www.tgdaily.com/software-brief/53845-85-of-wikipedia-entries-are-mad…http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2011/01/31/on-friendship-bracel…http://jezebel.com/5747740/why-wikipedia-needs-more-ladieshttp://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Where-Are-All-the-Wiki…http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/01/31/133375307/facing-serious-gen…http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/31/5960810-dude-centric-wikipe…http://news.discovery.com/tech/is-there-a-gender-gap-online.html?print=truehttp://www.slate.com/id/2284501/pagenum/all/#p2http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/world+according/4246585/story.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/02/where-are-the-women-in-wiki…http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/01/wikipedia_is_a.php
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hey folks,
Erik Moeller, my deputy, created this group at my request, and so I'm
its owner. To recap for anyone who doesn't know: this list was
prompted by a January 31 New York Times story about Wikipedia's gender
gap. The NY Times story prompted a lot of discussion among experienced
Wikipedians, new editors, and external people such as researchers and
academics. We created this list so that the discussion had somewhere
to go -- because people wanted to help, and we wanted to give their
energy and momentum a place to grow.
Thus far, I haven't made any attempts to moderate or shape the
conversation here in any way. People who are used to Wikimedia lists
probably are finding the experience here pretty familiar -- the
conversation is unstructured, wide-ranging, and there's no real
quality control. People who are more used to non-Wikimedia lists might
find it TOO uncontrolled, too noisy, too wide-ranging: I don't know.
My hope when we started the list was that it would be a place where
people could come together to share experiences and information about
the causes of Wikipedia's gender gap, and kick around possible
solutions. I hoped that, at worst, it could become a sort of talkfest
and "centre of expertise" on the gender gap issue --- and at best, it
would be a place where real work would happen (e.g., the Women Edit
Wikipedia Month type stuff). I assumed it'd be a pretty loose
conversation, with plenty of noise to the signal, and it would end up
(like many of our lists) being supplemented by work on wiki pages.
And that, I think, is pretty much how it's playing out.
So I'm curious to know from the people here:
1) Is the conversation here pretty much what you expected? Is it
better or worse than you expected -- and if so, in what ways?
2) Are you comfortable with this discusson being mostly unmoderated,
or would you prefer that we had some simple behavioural
rules-of-engagement?
3) Would anyone care to offer to help me moderate? The moderation has
been pretty light so far: a few people with questions about how to do
something, and a half-dozen posts stuck in the approval queue --- it's
very easy stuff to handle. I am often in meetings though, or
travelling, so I've felt bad when someone's question or post is
pending for hours. If you want to help, let me know off-list :-)
4) Any other comments about what we're doing here -- including, ideas
about how we can be more effective.
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
hi, I'm kath. I've had a wikipedia account for a while but didn't use it
until yesterday when I saw on twitter that only ~13% women are editing it.
(I saw links to a twitter conference that I'd missed
http://wthashtag.com/women4wikipedia) so I reset my password and read a few
help pages and tried editing a few articles to fix things like
references/links. I'm a digital tv engineer and use wikipedia every day, so
I thought it's probably about time I joined in and started giving back. I
liked reading the 'be bold' article - it reminds me of my fav saying 'make
your own fun'. hoping to learn more & improve the collection of knowledge.
not sure if I should be on this list considering how new I am, but I'll see
how it goes.
cheers
kath
user:kathodonnell
Hey folks,
Somebody here sent me an off-list e-mail with data about Wikipedians
self-identifying as female in their preferences: basically, the same
information Joseph has blogged about (http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/).
I was skimming fast through my inbox and tagged it as spam, and now
it's disappeared from my spam folder.
Whoever sent it, could you resend? I want to read it, to see if it had
information additional to what Joseph posted, and I also want to thank
you for sending it to me. I tagged it as spam by accident, partly
because I didn't recognize your name. But I do appreciate you sending
me the mail :-)
Thanks,
Sue
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
I agree with Sandy.
The % of Wikipedia editors who are women
is a completely different subject than
pornography.
I am a feminist.
I am also inclined to be efficient.
A month to call for Women editors
without mentioning any specific
topic will encourage women to
contribute on any and every topic,
which is the goal.
When the efforts to increase
women's participation is combined
with women's history,
pornography, language issues,
etc. the message gets
watered down and changes.
The emphasis becomes the topics
to be edited PLUS
the gender of the editor.
So since I am not an expert
on feminist studies, I would
not be more inclined to post.
Do not try to address everything
at the same time. You will
not get the results you want.
The separate threads so far
encountered on this list:
1.) updating and increasing entries
about women's history
2.) updating and increasing entries
about feminist issues
3.) correcting existing entries that
are offensive to most persons,
not just women, and review/edit
information, pictures, or drawings
that exploit women,
regardless of the the gender of
who posted them
4.) ease of use of the Wikipedia
interface
5.) gender and Manga child sexiness
of the Wikipedia mascot
6.) gender differences in languages
which are reflected in the Wikipedia
interface for that language
7.) gathering empirical data to
further guide our understanding
of the Wikipedia gender gap,
and to monitor any improvements
in this gap as a result of the
different campaigns to
reduce the Wikipedia gender gap
so that we know what is working
and what is not.
Let's do what the experts do:
Separate these topics into
different work groups and lists
so that progress can be made
on each.
These subjects all have sexism
as their root, but they are not
all solvable at once.
Define each, go after each.
You can't defeat a big
enormous blob.
BTW - I am currently preparing
my entries for the Wikipedia.
I do not wish to be merely
a commentator, I plan on
becoming a participant.
I'll let you know how that
works out.
- Susan Spencer Conklin
> Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:33:35 +0000
> From: Sandra ordonez <sandratordonez(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Moderation?
<snip>
>
> I didn't join this list because I'm confused of why sexism in the world
> exists, nor did I join this list because I need a therapy outlet. I, like
> many women, joined this list because we want to focus on something
> practical
> - closing the gender gap on Wikipedia.
>
<snip>
>
> Sandy
>