Laura Hale asks:
> 1. What women's focused content have you, as a man, improved
> on Wikipedia and other projects since joining this mailing list?
I was trying to abstain from editing to support my appeal to get
un-banned, but when the tsunami hit I couldn't resist. So I noted a
dead link on [[spindle neuron]] (which is apparently the cell that
causes some mammals to be altruistic and gives them the ability to
recognize themselves in the mirror), made some universal health
care-related edits (universal health care is an issue which
disproportionately involves women) and then tried to help out with
accuracy on the tsunami article. It took a while before I regained
the will to resist, and I look forward to my continued obedience to
the hegemony in order to someday regain the rights I lost fighting for
the truth of depleted uranium, climate change, instant runoff voting,
the history of nutrition, plug-in hybrids, and cold fusion. I hope
everyone will be glad to learn that I no longer have any interest in
cold fusion, as I have recently become much more interested in
aneutronic fusion such as boron-11 + proton fusion. But I'm not so
interested in editing about that until I learn much more; years more,
probably. But on the subject of energy and climate change (which
affects women more than men because floods disproportionately affect
families compared to individual risks) I want to create an article
about http://windfuels.com and I am sad that I can't.
Some of us are prevented from editing or encouraging more women to
edit because circumstances would allow that to be construed as
allegations of meat-puppetry. But the arbitrator who suggested my
appeal has refused to say whether reasonable people might reasonably
disagree about the extent to which accuracy issues outweigh behavior
issues under conditions where the government is deliberately lying
about toxicity (including reproductive toxicity, which also
disproportionately affects women.) I have always seen that question
as a civil justice issue, but perhaps civil disobedience is too
WP:IARish for many wikipedians.
> 2. What offline events specifically have you, as a man, created and
> run specifically run that were marketed at women to help specifically
> increase the participation of women on Wikipedia?
Each time the Girl Scouts have offered me cookies, I have offered them
an extra dollar if they promise to advocate for a merit badge in
online encyclopedia improvement. So far no troop has refused, and
they have all accepted my post-it note with more information. I
consider this behavior an important part of my personality, and would
ask for the extra work beyond the box of cookies even if I was with a
date or in a hurry. Even if it meant decreasing the probability of
future dates.
> 3. What online events specifically have you, as a man, created and
> run specifically run that were marketed at women to help specifically
> increase the participation of women on Wikipedia?
I've been trying to keep
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_more_female_editors up
with the ideas on the mailing list, but I'm a few weeks behind. Can
someone please help go through
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2011-March/ and add
anything I missed? Sorry, but I've been too busy.
> 4. As a man, how much time do you spend thinking about the content of
> your posts and how people, who specifically identify as women, will view
> the content they post? Do you worry about your posts being viewed as
> using gendered language, and insulting to women?
I think of both my online and offline behavior as part of an
integrated whole. I spend at least 30 minutes a day, and sometimes
much more, thinking about how the people in my life -- who are mostly
women -- will respond to my thoughts, ideas, words, and actions.
Sometimes I am completely wrong in predicting how women will respond
to my proposals. When I write a post to this mailing list, I
generally review it for how well it seems to make sense in the context
of the problems we are all trying to solve, which probably involves
some language issues that I would consider problematic, but I am in
the minority when it comes to the proper use of some language.
> 5. What help have you provided to women on this list, when the women
> have expressed concerns? (Note: Responding to an e-mail does not count.)
I tweeted Jimbo about Wikipe-tan and a few days later he renounced her.
> How many good article situations that people have mentioned have you stepped
> in to help with? How many articles, categories, policy pages have you, as a
> man, gone to edit because of requests for help on the list?
About ten.
> 6. What have you, as a man, done to help make women, specifically
> because the contributor is female, become administrators on all WMF
> projects since joining the list?
I've tried to encourage people to list more female role models on
Wikipedia, because I believe that will attract more female
administrators. I wish some women and/or Foundation officials would
respond to the implications of the four secondary sources listed on
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Role_models -- but I haven't even been
able to get anyone but Erik Zachte to respond more than a few words to
my concerns about declining administrator ranks. I just hope that the
extent of inaccuracy and incomprehensiveness remain in a declining
equilibrium with total editor effort before the loss of administrators
destroys accuracy by shortening dispute resolution time.
> 7. How many times have you, as a man, contacted other men offlist
> because of the other man's onlist behaviour being problematic and
> discriminatory against women, working counter to the goal of helping
> increase women's participation on Wikipedia?
I tried, but both of them have refused to call me.
> 8. As a man, how many contacts have you provided to women on the list
> to help them accomplish of increasing women's participation on Wikipedia?
I often tell people about http://j.mp/wikidesk which is usually very
helpful, but I'm not sure. If the links on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_more_female_editors
count, then at least a dozen.
> As a man, how much assistance have you provided with web programming?
I am trying to mentor in the Google Summer of Code again this year.
Last year I recruited a guy who worked out well, but was unable to
recruit any women. This year I'll try recruiting female students. I
am hoping the projects I suggested this year which are likely to help
women more than men can make use of some code I've already written for
other projects.
> As a man, how much financial assistance you have provided towards women run
> projects to increase women's participation on Wikipedia?
$2 to the Girl Scouts.
> As a man, how much legal assistance have you provided for women trying to run these projects?
Legal? My appeal is still pending. The stubbornness I showed while
trying to tell the truth about the reproductive toxicity of depleted
uranium munitions fumes has made me an outlaw in the eyes of many
wikipedians. However, if I have set a good example by remaining
steadfast in the face of opposition against valid civil disobedience,
then I would hope that counts for something.
Regards,
James Salsman
Hi All,
If you're in SF, you may be interested in this talk organized by the *Women's
Media Center* on March 31, 6pm, at the Herbst Theatre.
General admission tix are $29. See this link for all details:
https://donate.nameitchangeit.org/page/contribute/sfglorias or scroll down
below ;-)
*The Women's Media Center
Invites You To
An Evening With Gloria Steinem *
*And Young Feminist Leaders*
* *
**
*Thursday, March 31, 2011
The Herbst Theatre
*San Francisco, California
*6:00 PM*
*Confirmed young feminist speakers include: *
*Lena Chen* is a sex and gender journalist and blogger (TheChicktionary.com,
SexAndTheIvy.com), organizer of the 2010 Rethinking Virginity conference,
and co-founder of Feminist Coming Out Day, a visibility campaign started at
Harvard University and now active at 15 colleges in the U.S.
*Shelby Knox* is a feminist organizer, speaker and writer, and Director of
Organizing, Women's Rights, for Change.org. She became nationally known as
the subject of the 2005 Sundance award-winning film The Education of Shelby
Knox.
*Miriam Perez* is a writer, blogger and reproductive justice activist. She
works with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and is an
Editor at Feministing.com.
*Latoya Peterson* is a hip hop feminist, editor of Racialicious.com, and
tech and gaming enthusiast. She eats pop culture for breakfast.
Moderated by *Rose Aguilar*, host of yourcallradio.org -- KALW News.
*The Women's Media Center works to make the female half of the world
visible. We do it by promoting women as subjects and decision-makers within
the media, training women and girls so they are media-ready and media-savvy,
exposing sexism in the media, and creating innovative new media and original
content.*
--
Bryony Jones
Program Assistant, Community Team
Wikimedia Foundation
Remote possibility: Would more front-page featured pictures like today's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MARTAKIS1.jpg
perhaps entice at least some women to edit who aren't otherwise doing so? Or at least even out the Wikipe-tan effect? Cf. this album cover: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frampton_Comes_Alive! and its purported effect on the sales of said album (not mentioned in the article, but maybe it should be).
Just a thought; else, hold that thought.
Daniel Case
Another 400 free Credo Reference accounts have been made available for
Wikipedians, kindly donated by the company and arranged by Erik Möller
of the Wikimedia Foundation. We've drawn up some eligibility criteria
to direct the accounts to content contributors, and after that it's
first come, first served. The list will open on Wednesday, March 23 at
22:00 UTC, and will remain open for seven days. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CREDO
Feel free to add your name even if you're lower on the list than the
400th, in case people ahead of you aren't eligible.
Good luck!
Sarah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SlimVirgin
Hello,
my problem in Wikipedia is, that we have not many rolemodels who are
not very known outside of the Wikim/pedia world. The only one, who is
constant in media is Sue.
Sue is wonderful, but where are the other faces of Wikim/pedia? Where
are the other women, why are they hiding?
Ok, we had a Wikimedia-Clip made last year with some female faces. I
like this clip very much, but there you see more male faces than
female again and for animate women to envolve themselves, it is too
special and for my taste too "Wikim/pedia-exclusive".
My oppinion is, if we want to win females, we need more visible female
Wikim/pedians.
Just my 2 cents.
J.
BookTV March 12, 2011
Tucson Festival of Books
Authors discussed their books about women in leadership. First, Dr.
Connie Mariano talked about her book, The White House Doctor: My Patients
Were Presidents - A Memoir. Then Gloria Feldt talked about her book, No
Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. They then
responded to questions from members of the audience. "Women of National
Influence" was a panel at the Tucson Festival of Books in the Gallagher
Theater of the Student Union on the campus of the University of Arizona.
No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think about Power by
Gloria Feldt
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/PanelonWomhttps://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gloria_Feldthttp://gloriafeldt.com/
Some things I remember from the program:
At the current rate of change women will achieve parity in 70 years.
15% of the opeds published are by women, who submit 15% of the opeds
submitted.
power over is contrasted with power to; domination versus leadership.
My personal thought is that Wikipedia offers nearly total power to submit
editorial changes and policy suggestions, or offer to assume significant
responsibilities.
Fred
I saw an incident recently on WP that's fairly common, but it's not
clear to me what we should do about it, if anything.
A woman editor did something that a few male editors didn't like, and
she was taken to task for it. In the course of the discussion, the
Wikipedia biography of a woman was mentioned and linked to, and her
photograph showed her as attractive. One of the men taking part in the
discussion said something positive about the image -- then he added
that policy prevented him from going into detail about his feelings
about it. (I won't quote him so as not to identify him, but it was
words to that effect.)
It's a remark typical of young men, and he almost certainly intended
no harm. But the effect on me as a reader was that it undermined the
woman taking part in the discussion. She also felt that way, and said
so. The response was that her objection was laughable.
What should we do when we witness this kind of thing? I've never said
anything in these situations, because I see them so often, and there's
a risk of turning it into a dramafest. I also know that some people,
men and women both, would say it's too minor a thing to comment on.
So -- should we be saying something, and if so what and how, or is it
best to ignore?
Sarah
I'd like to propose that the gendergap be forked. The main list would be
for women and transgendered who want to work together to help increase
female participation on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects.
The fork list would be for male allies who want to work towards a similar
goal.
This proposal is based on two things. The first idea is that women
themselves can probably best identify areas and needs regarding female
participation on Wikipedia. Assuming good faith, male contributors on the
list probably do really want to help work towards this goal and have women's
best interest at heart and want to see improvement in the total number of
female participants on the wiki... but there has been a fairly sizable
amount of research in the NGO sector in countries like Africa, where outside
organisations were not as effective as local organisations at identifying
local problems and creating solutions that work best in a local context. In
this situation, women and transgenders would be the local community and men
would be the international NGOs.
The second issue is that at the moment, men appear to be dominating the
conversation. (This may not by correct and I apologise if I am wrong. I'm
making this assumption based on the names of participants involved.) Men
are posting content with suggestions for women. Men are debating if women
find the term dick offensive. Men aren't asking the women on the list if
they have resources that they think other women might find useful. Men do
not appear to be asking the women on the list what their opinions are
regarding the use of the term dick and if women on the list find the term
offensive. Rather, it appears that men are speaking for women without their
consent.
I'd really like men to continue to be involved. I think the best way would
be for the creation of a sublist, specifically created for men. As allies,
they can discuss how to improve the rate of women's involvement. As men on
that strategies sublist about the creation and implementation of solutions
to increase female participation, the information can be summarised and sent
to some one else off list to be posted to the main list.
I just worry at the moment that the heavy male involvement is intimidating
and keeping some women from participating.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
