WikiWomenCamp was a very valuable experience for those of us that
attended. We all learned a great deal, had the opportunity to network with
other women and, by and large had our participation with the movement
validated as a positive thing. I also believe, having talked to several
participants and the granting bodies that helped make this conference
possible, that these outcomes validate the money spent bringing these women
together and the time we took out of our every day lives to attend.
Looking forward, there are several positive outcomes from this conference
and things participants plan to do going forward that can use community
support and that will support the community. These include:
*Conference specific outcomes:*
* Sue Gardner attending the conference means those of us who attended can
go back to our communities, especially those of us outside Europe and the
USA, and affirm that Sue Gardner supports women working on issues brought
up at the conference and working on a global local solution to the
gendergap, and that this is not just a problem for English Wikipedia in the
United States.
* We are planning to have this event again and believe we can get
additional support from inside the Chapters to help fund this important
event.
* Organisers have gained experience in organising international events that
they can use to host future events. A session on project management was
held and participants who were not key organisers gained insight into how
to run events that they could take back to their own communities to run
events like the one we did on a local level.
* Participants learned about different chapters, how they worked, some
general internal challenges and how this impacts how they function. This
knowledge means participants can more easily understand why some things
appear like they do on mailing lists and how this relates to them (or
doesn't). It will aid in the ability for chapters to work together.
* A list of reasons why women do not contribute to Wikipedia was created
and actively discussed. The list is valuable because it approaches the
issue from an international perspective that explains some local issues
about resolving the gender gap.
*Wikimedia specific outcomes:*
* A mailing list will be created for support in English and Spanish where
women can ask for help with harassment they are dealing with on Wikipedia
and offered solutions. A private mailing list where several people can be
on call was selected because the problems would not be made public and
aggravate problems.
* A discussion was launched about investigating the creation of an OTRS
women's specific help service.
* Learning/Training materials specific to women will be created and shared
with the community. These materials will make it easier to do outreach to
women's communities.
* The research on women in the movement will be continued to work on, with
a standardised format and a process for determining what gets included
resolved during a session. A committment was made that once this was
completed in English (a goal for the end of September of this year), it
would be translated into Spanish. This research may assist chapters in
recruiting female volunteers, provide benchmarks for researchers, and
giving chapters and the Foundation a very clear idea of where the movement
needs to improve.
* Methodologies were discussed and developed for measuring the impact of
women on Wikimedia related projects that can be used by participants to
conduct future research.
* Translation of materials between languages will be worked on. Materials
created in one place may be very useful to others but people do not know
about them and cannot use them because of the language issues.
* Some of the discussion will focus on why women should edit Wikipedia
instead of why they do not, as this question allows for pro-active
solutions that sound less demeaning to women and require less capital to
improve things like the technology back end if participants can be
motivated to contribute despite these issues.
* Participants will go back to their local communities and continue the
good work they have already been engaged in. Participants have a support
network they can now more effectively utilize in doing this work and there
is the potential for future projects as a result. Example: There was a
discussion about possibily trying to do something between Australia and
Russia for the 2014 Winter Paralympics.
* A line of reasoning was created to respond to questions of "Why women
only events inside the movement?" that make the need obvious: Most local
WMF events are men only, and when they are not, the one or two women who
registered to attend could easily be asked to leave to make the event men
only. This is almost never the case for women in the movement. Other
arguements and lines of reasoning were also developed.
*Broad community outcomes:*
* WikiChix wiki will be re-launched as a wikis in general organisational
space. The wiki will be hosted by Wikimedia Australia. Plans are under
way to work on this following the Ibercoop meeting in Santiago, Chile.
* Efforts will be made to increase work with female in technology groups to
help increase women's participation.
* In organising events in the future related to the gender gap and women in
technology in general, Open Space will be seriously considered as a
facilitation method given the general success of it at this event.
If you are interested in seeing the conference in action, some videos are
available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_from_WikiWomenCamp_2012 .
Parts of Sue's presentation are available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Audio_from_WikiWomenCamp_2012 .
A list of blog posts and media reports for the conference can be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp/Agenda#Other_publication .
Thanks again to everyone who attended and others who assisted in making
this event possible.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
VP of Wikimedia Australia and (one of the) conference organiser(s)
--
mobile: 0412183663
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
WisCon, in addition to being the annual Wisconsin SF convention, is
the world's leading (oldest and biggest) feminist SF convention. They
have a separate academic track, and one presenter today described a
finding in a European Union study that there is a correlation between
access to the Internet and a decision not to major in Computer Science
(but only Comp Sci, not Engineering, Math, etc.). The author's theory
is that women's exposure to what she describes as "the prominent
Western kyriarchal computing culture visible on the Internet" "becomes
central to the decision" not to enroll in Computer Science classes.
The author, as I said, has agreed to send me a copy of the final
paper, so that I may share it with the GENDERGAP folks, as I feel it's
deeply relevant to our task here.
(For those of you who have never been to a science fiction convention,
and have perhaps been misled by what the mass media portrays as
"science fiction conventions": THIS is part of what we do here in
Wisconsin; and there's not a pair of Spock ears in sight.)
--
Michael J. "Orange Mike" Lowrey
"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food
and clothes."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
Have not been posting much because the Internet access has been problematic
at times..,
... But WikiWomenCamp ended yesterday and today we have been having
WikiGenero.
The past few days have been fabulous and for the most part, drama free. If
you didn't get the chance to attend this year, I highly suggest trying to
make the next one.
We had women and transgendered people representing 15 countries. There was,
Not counting Sue Gardner , only one native English speaker. The conference
was
facilitated in two languages, with all women no matter the language feeling
they could speak, others often stepped in to make sure they could. We had
younger women in university and others who were retired.
At WikiWomenCamp, We discussed a wide variety of topics from Wiki Loves
Monuments to Chapters to why women do not edit to project management to
working on research related to the gender gap to discussing research
methods related to Wikipedia to the challenges of the open source
communicty versus the esiting wikimedia community to to issues in South
East Asia to journalism to issues related to LGBT articles and dealing with
the harrassment. We also worked on solutions to some problems identified at
the conference including creating translations of materials and conference
notes, to creating a new mailing list in English and Spanish where women
could privately go to get support when dealing with harrassment that will
be supported by active experienced members of the community to starting to
take steps to relaunch the WikiChix wiki to starting to plan for the next
WikiWomenCamp. (hopefully, the last point can have an announcement at the
end of June.)
Many of the participants had never participated in an Open Space event
before. There was a tremendous leap of faith required for many to show up
to an all women's conference, which in some case involved airfare around
$2100 USD and required over 36 hours in transit, where the the schedule was
a bit fluid and where the agenda was not developed until about 20 minutes
into the conference, and where the purpose was vague beyond provide a space
and time for all these different women in the movement to get together and
talk and collaborate together so they could go home and be more effective
leaders. Those who attended all appeared to have gotten something out of
it and the ones I have talked to are glad they came.
Thanks are again owed to Wikimedia Argentina for hosting the event. I'm not
sure how my chapter would respond if some one e-mailed us out of the blue
and said we will / should host a completely new conference with a very
different format that was bound to (and did) cause some controversy. The
accommodation was close to the venue and safe. The food was nice. The local
wikimedian community opened their arms to us. Thanks are also owed to
Wikimedia Australia who were the first chapter on board to financially
support this conference. Thanks are also owed to Wikimedia Deutschland and
Wikimedia Osterich who also supported WikiWomenCamp and helped being women
from around the globe to attend. As women, we managed to pull together the
money from chapters and elsewhere to make this happen. Thanks are also to
Sue Gardner who joined us for the last day of WikiWomenCamp and was a
speaker at WikiGenero. Thanks also the the Foundation for bringing in a
male speaker for WikiGenero (and Wm-AR for handling visa issues for him).
Lots and lots of people and organizations made a leap of faith and I hope
they feel rewarded for it. :)
Many many pictures are available on Commons. Notes are available on Meta.
Tweets can be found with #wikiwomen . We were mentioned in a local
newspaper if you want to better follow what we were up to.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
--
mobile: 0412183663
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
I thought that I'd bring an AfD discussion to the attention of this
list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Fanny_Imlay#Fa…
It really is ridiculous that this discussion is even happening, and is
yet another example of the gender bias on en:Wikipedia. I've followed
the discussion on the article's talk page, and it goes into absurdity.
I wouldn't say it there, but how in the world is Imlay not notable
but one of the articles I've been working on lately, [[Anthony
Field]], is? (I think that Field is notable, but it proves my point,
I think.) I bring it to your attention because the article needs our
support.
Christine
User:Figureskatingfan
Hi,
WikiWomenCamp got underway today in Buenos Aires. :D We took a lot of
pictures and videos; when we get home, many of them will be shared on
Commons. We started around 10am with an opening circle led by our lovely
and wonderful facilitator Anne Goldenberg from Montreal. The conference
was facilitated using open space, so we started out with introductions and
why we were here. After the hour long happy introduction fest, we broke
into two groups. The first group discussed statistics for Wikipedia and how
to measure success. The other group involved a discussion about our
personal experiences editing Wikipedia as women and transgendered people.
In both session, an obvious theme emerged that there are many regional and
cultural issues that make doing global projects difficult because these
conditions have to be taken into consideration when doing a project. The
second time period became a single group that went into three session
periods. We discussed why women did not edit Wikipedia on a personal,
regional and global level. At the end of the day, we had a closing session
and one of the major themes of this was how motivated and encouraged we
felt about the situation going forward, that we could go back to our local
communities with a real concept of what the gender gap means both locally
and globally, and have the contacts to enact change. The Argentine
catering was also fantastic (yummy!) and it enabled us to continue our
seriously awesome conversations and all important networking. Tomorrow and
Friday, we're hoping to progress from a problem identification to a more
solution oriented form of thinking.
Session notes can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp .
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
(Appologies for cross posting)
tl;dr: registration open, programme announced: scientific conference
with focus on wikipedia research incl. diversity and gendergap.
>From 29 June until 1 July 2012 the Wikipedia Academy (#wpac2012) [1]
will take place in Berlin, under the theme “Research and Free
Knowledge”. For the first time, Wikimedia Deutschland organises this
conference in cooperation with Freie Universität Berlin [2] and the
Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society [3]. This year, we lay the
focus on research on, with and within Wikipedia and invite researchers
who scientifically deal with Free Knowledge and its implications for
research and society to participate in the conference.
The Wikipedia Academy is aimed to address an international audience.
The conference language is English.
On Friday and Saturday the conference will be set at Freie Universität
Berlin, School of Business & Economics, Garystrasse 21. The event
venue for Sunday will be announced soon.
== Registration ==
For participation you have to register for a participant pass in
advance. The online registration
(http://wikipedia-academy.de/2012/wiki/Registration) is open now. The
participation fee is 60 Euro (reduced price: 30 Euro) [4].
== Programme ==
The conference programme is yet subject to alterations. A preliminary
programme schedule can be found on the WPAC2012 website [5].
=== Friday 29 June ===
Ahead of the conference, in the morning of Friday, we offer three
workshops (tutorials) which will take place at the conference venue.
The topics are Wikipedia Data Analysis for Researchers, Toolserver and
GLAM Tools. You can register via the online registration form against
an extra participation fee of 10 Euro.
The conference will officially be launched on Friday around 01:30 PM
with a keynote speech by Benjamin Mako Hill (researcher at MIT Media
Lab and the MIT Sloan School of Management, fellow at Berkman Center
for Internet and Society, Free Culture Activist and Advisor der
Wikimedia Foundation) introducing to the conference theme Wikipedia
and Research. In the afternoon, we will provide the opportunity to get
to know a number of different research topics, projects, and ideas in
an alternative format during a so-called Speed Geeking. Then, we will
also have our first couple of Paper Sessions! Many international
researchers have followed our Call for Papers. A list of all accepted
submissions is available on our website. At the Paper Sessions the
authors will present their scientific works on Wikipedia and Free
Knowledge in 30-minute slots each. The first conference day will close
with a panel talk on Wikipedia research and the Wikipedia Community.
=== Saturday 30 June ===
On Saturday we will host paper presentations in three blocks of one
and a half hours each. Apart from that, we are planning a panel on
science communication applying Wikis and Blogs. The Lightning Talks in
the later afternoon will offer an additional opportunity to learn
about the results of recent research projects and also about proposals
for future projects.
=== Sunday 1 July ===
On Sunday the Wikipedia Academy will open up for a broader public and
invite Wikipedia researchers as well as all those who are interested
in the various facets of Wikipedia and related projects and those who
are engaged in projects in the context of free culture, free licences,
open data or free software.
Following a keynote speech by Sarah Stierch (Community Fellow of the
Wikimedia Foundation, consultant and expert for topics such as the
gender gap and GLAM) on Wikipedia and Diversity, an extended Free
Culture Brunch will allow for international and interdisciplinary
exchange and cross-linking. Later on, Jeanette Hofmann (HIIG) und
Sebastian Hauss (Universität Konstanz) will discuss topics such as the
social aspects of Free Knowledge in a panel moderated by Matthias
Spielkamp (irights.info).
Around 03:00 PM the festive presentation of the Zedler Prize for Free
Knowledge will round the Wikipedia Academy 2012 off. With this prize,
Wikimedia Deutschland awards single persons, groups or projects for
their outstanding performances in the field of Free Knowledge. All
Academy participants are cordially invited to join this event.
We look forward to our Guests with their various fields of research
and scientific interests, stimulating talks and presentations as well
as an active exchange of experiences and ideas at the Wikipedia
Academy 2012.
The WPAC2012 Team (academy(a)wikimedia.de) will be happy to answer
questions: Nicole Ebber, Angelika Adam, Maria Rößler and Denis Barthel
[1] http://wikipedia-academy.de/2012/wiki/Main_Page
[2] http://www.fu-berlin.de/
[3] http://hiig.de/
[4] http://wikipedia-academy.de/2012/wiki/Registration
[5] http://wikipedia-academy.de/2012/wiki/Schedule
--
Nicole Ebber
Projektmanagerin
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. | NEU: Obentrautstr. 72 | 10963 Berlin
Tel. +49 30 219158 26-0
http://wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg
unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das
Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.