Now that there's room in the discussion for a new topic :-), I'd like to ask for help from some of you experienced Wikipedians in bringing a new group of women to the project.
I'm a professor of Women's & Gender Studies, and for their senior capstone project, I've had a group of WSG majors students working on WP articles for the WikiProject Feminism. They've selected articles from the list of requested articles and stubs from WP:Feminism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Feminism), and have been researching, writing, and revising in their sandbox pages for the last few weeks. We're planning to post the articles in class today (a few make take a little longer, but this week for sure -- it's the last week of the term).
It's been a wonderful experience for them, learning about how to present research for the Wikipedia audience compared to an academic audience, and to make feminist ideas accessible to larger audience, and more. It's given them a new appreciation of Wikipedia -- most of their professors tell them not to use it, so it was a big shock the first day of class when I announced we'd spend the quarter working on it. It's also been very challenging for many, especially the technical aspects of working with wiki markup and Wikipedia.
Will those of you who volunteer in this area help shepherd them into the fold? I'm not expecting my students to be treated with kid gloves, but we've watched a few edit wars, and they're nervous. As with any group of students, some are stronger writers than others, and some of these pieces will need more help than others. Here's the list of articles that will soon be added/updated:
American women's firsts
Feminism in Thailand
Feminism & BDSM
Metaformic theory
Women's shelters
Genderfuck
Feminist pedagogy
Thank you for the work that you, and for any help you can provide to my students.
--
Elizabeth A. Kissling, Ph.D. <http://DrKissling.com>
Professor
Department of Communication Studies
Women's and Gender Studies Program
Eastern Washington University
Cheney, WA 99004-2409
The BBC broadcast a half hour documentary on Saturday called 'Guns, Girls and Games' which deals with sexual harassment in video games.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00s9jly>
Two of the women interviewed in the programme run websites which try to highlight harassment and misogyny in online games:
<http://fatuglyorslutty.com/>
<http://www.notinthekitchenanymore.com/>
They also briefly discussed the homophobia and racism present in some gaming communities.
Incidentally, Xbox Live's response to homophobia is a perfect example of how to not solve these kinds of problems. They simply made it so users couldn't express their sexual orientation on their profiles. 'Cos, you know, the best way to make gay users feel like comfortable and welcome members of a community is to force them back in the closet for their own protection…
--
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>
On 6/4/12 10:18 AM, "gendergap-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org"
<gendergap-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2012 15:44:06 +0200
>From: Caroline Becker <carobecker54(a)gmail.com>
>To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects
> <gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Gendergap] New WikiProject Feminism Articles from WSG
> students
>This is an awesome project :) I would be really interested in reading your
>feedback on the experiment, both from you and your students. I'm
>especially
>interested in knowing how you dealt with NPOV.
Thank you, Caroline. That proved to be a really stimulating part of the
course for all of us. Since our small WGS program doesn't have a feminist
methodology course, I decided to incorporate that into the capstone, and
assigned Joey Sprague's _Feminist Methodologies for Critical Researchers_
along side relevant Wikipedia policy and instruction pages about NPOV, no
original research, etc. It lead to many productive class discussions about
epistemology, the nature of research, etc. I think I'll eventually prepare
a conference presentation (maybe an article?) about it.
-EAK
>Message: 4
>Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:15:01 -0500
>From: Gobonobo <gobonobo(a)gmail.com>
>To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects
> <gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Gendergap] New WikiProject Feminism Articles from WSG
> students
>
>This is excellent. I look forward to seeing these articles go live and
>would be happy to help. Did you know about the Wikipedia Education
>Program
><http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program>? It
>might be a little late in this course, but for future reference the
>United States Education Program
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:USEDU> connects US universities
>with Wikipedia editors that can assist with class projects.
Thank you, Gobonobo. I did make contact with the Education Program before
the term started, but between our location and timing -- my school is one
of the few U.S. holdouts on the quarter system (three ten-week terms,
from late September to mid-June) -- it wasn't possible to find an
ambassador available to work with us. Possibly next year -- I'm scheduled
to teach this course again in the spring term of 2013, and even though
we're not *quite* finished, the Wikipedia project feels like a success.
-EAK
Hi all,
I am a new contributor to Wikipedia and read Larry's blog post and the subsequent discussion on this list with great interest.
My first thought was that this indeed is a red herring in terms of addressing the gendergap, however in my limited editing experience I do at times feel like Wikipedia is a boys' club, and perhaps the prevalence of pornography goes some way to an imagining of what is hanging on the clubhouse walls. Although not apparent in the course of normal browsing and editing (I've yet to stumble on anything particularly offensive), it may contribute to the culture which has resulted in a such a participation skew between genders.
I do think it is worth further exploring the idea of the "techno-libertarians" who dominate policy-making as being young males without children. I know that my views on any number of things has changed since I have had children of my own - as my ability to donate time to discussing such issues!
Kind regards,
Kim
Kim Osman │ Research Student
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
Z1 - 515 Musk Avenue│KelvinGrove Qld 4059
T: +61 7 3138 3687 │ F: +61 7 3138 3723 │ E: kim.osman(a)qut.edu.xn--au-f5w W: http://cci.edu.au
CRICOS No: 00213J
________________________________________
What research is needed?
We have academics across the world who want to do research on Wikimedia.
What questions can we put to the researchers in order to obtain a
better understanding of
* why women don't contribute?
* what would help them contribute?
* other?
--
John Vandenberg
> Hi,
>
> I edit Wikipedia a lot. I probably spend more time than I should editing
> Wikipedia. Can I ask where there is a prevalence of pornography on
> Wikipedia? I honestly can't think of a single time I have come across it
> when I wasn't directly looking for it. Misogny to a degree, yes.
> Discrimination against women's topics and topics outside the United States,
> youbetcha. But pornography? Maybe I just don't edit articles where
> pornography is very prevalent?
>
Hi Laura,
I totally agree with you - I have never come across anything remotely offensive in the course of editing or browsing. What I was trying to say is that rather than being a reason more females don't edit Wikipedia (and perhaps here my use of the word prevalence was wrong) the presence of certain types of pornography on Wikipedia contributes to the culture which results in the instances of misogny and discrimination you note. So I do see the editorial decisions made around the type of content Larry Sanger referenced as being part of a wider conversation about female participation.
Cheers, Kim
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Kim Osman <kim.osman(a)qut.edu.au> wrote:
> My first thought was that this indeed is a red herring in terms of
> addressing the gendergap, however in my limited editing experience I do at
> times feel like Wikipedia is a boys' club, and perhaps the prevalence of
> pornography goes some way to an imagining of what is hanging on the
> clubhouse walls
>
Hi,
I edit Wikipedia a lot. I probably spend more time than I should editing
Wikipedia. Can I ask where there is a prevalence of pornography on
Wikipedia? I honestly can't think of a single time I have come across it
when I wasn't directly looking for it. Misogny to a degree, yes.
Discrimination against women's topics and topics outside the United States,
youbetcha. But pornography? Maybe I just don't edit articles where
pornography is very prevalent?
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com