Please see below. I really don't know what to say right now except <3
you Sue. (And let's hope another woman leads WMF ;) )
-Sarah
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement *please read*
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:04:49 -0700
From: Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hello Wikimedia community members,
This is not an easy e-mail to write, and it’s been a very hard
decision to make. But I’m writing to tell you that I’m planning to
leave my position as the Executive Director of the Wikimedia
Foundation.
My departure isn’t imminent -- the Board and I anticipate it’ll take
at least six months to recruit my successor, and I’ll be fully engaged
as Executive Director all through the recruitment process and until we
have a new person in place. We’re expecting that’ll take about six
months or so, and so this note is not goodbye -- not yet.
Making the decision to leave hasn’t been easy, but it comes down to two things.
First, the movement and the Wikimedia Foundation are in a strong place
now. When I joined, the Foundation was tiny and not yet able to
reliably support the projects. Today it's healthy, thriving, and a
competent partner to the global network of Wikimedia volunteers. If
that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t feel okay to leave. In that sense, my
leaving is a vote of confidence in our Board and executive team and
staff --- I know they will ably steer the Foundation through the years
ahead, and I’m confident the Board will appoint a strong successor to
me.
And I feel that although we’re in good shape, with a promising future,
the same isn’t true for the internet itself. (This is thing number
two.) Increasingly, I’m finding myself uncomfortable about how the
internet’s developing, who’s influencing its development, and who is
not. Last year we at Wikimedia raised an alarm about SOPA/PIPA, and
now CISPA is back. Wikipedia has experienced censorship at the hands
of industry groups and governments, and we’re --increasingly, I
think-- seeing important decisions made by unaccountable
non-transparent corporate players, a shift from the open web to mobile
walled gardens, and a shift from the production-based internet to one
that’s consumption-based. There are many organizations and individuals
advocating for the public interest online -- what’s good for ordinary
people -- but other interests are more numerous and powerful than they
are. I want that to change. And that’s what I want to do next.
I’ve always aimed to make the biggest contribution I can to the
general public good. Today, this is pulling me towards a new and
different role, one very much aligned with Wikimedia values and
informed by my experiences here, and with the purpose of amplifying
the voices of people advocating for the free and open internet. I
don’t know exactly what this will look like -- I might write a book,
or start a non-profit, or work in partnership with something that
already exists. Either way, I feel strongly that this is what I need
to do.
I feel an increasing sense of urgency around this. That said, I also
feel a strong sense of responsibility (and love!) for the Wikimedia
movement, and so I’ve agreed with the Board that I’ll stay on as
Executive Director until we have my successor in place. That’ll take
some time -- likely, at least six months.
Until then, nothing changes. The Wikimedia Foundation has lots of work
to do, and you can expect me to focus fully on it until we have a new
Executive Director in place.
I have many people to thank, but I’m not going to do it now --
there’ll be time for that later. For now, I’ll just say I love working
with you all, I’m proud of everything the Wikimedia movement is
accomplishing, and I’m looking forward to our next six months
together.
Jan-Bart’s going to write a note in a couple of minutes with
information about the transition process. We’ll be hosting office
hours this weekend as well, so anybody with questions can ask them
here or turn up to talk with us on IRC.
Thanks,
Sue
_______________________________________________
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Did anyone see this? A popular blogger on Science (with more than 4
million followers) is a woman. The woman herself, Elise Andrew, had no
idea it was a secret, and she was "outed" when she announced her
twitter account featuring a picture of herself. Apparently the bias
occurred because of the swear word on her facebook page which made
readers assume she was a man. Interesting conclusion! This is a
facebook hype that deserves a WP page, no?
article is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/us-news-blog/2013/mar/20/i-love-science-w…
facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience
The TV interview with Dr. Michio Kaku on CBS morning show is here:
http://cbsn.ws/109mAEL
I'm getting an onslaught of WikiWomen stuff all the sudden...so pardon
the many emails. Awesome to see Netha quoted and when I visit India I
want to know how to pronounce the city name where this was reported :)
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-05/thiruvananthapuram/3…
Malayalam Wikipedia takes a gender turn
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As part of this year's women's day celebrations,
Malayalam Wikipedians have launched a month-long edit-a-thon, a drive to
expand articles of importance to women. The project aims to introduce
more women to Malayalam Wikipedia, create new articles related to women,
expand the existing stubs and translate English articles to Malayalam.
Launched in tune with Wikipedia's Wiki Women's History Month projects,
Wikipedians worldwide are organizing similar events.
Though Malayalam Wikipedia is one of the most active languages
Wikipedia, the number of women editors are below a dozen. Of these, only
one or two are active editors.
Netha Hussain, Kozhikode-based medical student, who is the torchbearer
of project in Malayalam, agreed that only a few women are active in
Malayalam Wikipedia. "The project aims to introduce more women to
Wikipedia. A list of topics, which needs to be expanded, edited etc, has
been prepared. Biography of prominent women and translation of
biographies are all part of the event," Netha said.
Usha Titus, M T Padma, K K Lathika, J Arundhati, Malethu Sarala Devi,
Rosamma Chacko, Jameela Prakasham are some of the prominent women
included in list of personalities to be included in Wikipedia as part of
the drive, which will conclude on March 31. Articles of a number of
women, including Tessy Thomas, Mercy Ravi, Ajitha, Parvathy Omanakuttan
etc, will be expanded. Biographies of award-winning women, people's
representatives, etc will be translated from English to Malayalam.
Surprisingly, except Netha and Ditty Mathew from Kochi, all others who
have joined the edit-a-thon so far are men.
--
*Sarah Stierch*
*/Museumist and open culture advocate/*
>>Visit sarahstierch.com <http://sarahstierch.com><<
Hi everyone,
Please welcome Liz Kent Leon, our new co-moderator of the gender gap list.
Liz is a librarian at Sweet Brian College, a small women's college in
Virginia. She started, and continues to maintain Gifts of Speech[1], the
world's largest, free, online, collection of full-text speeches by women
in the world. She's active on social media, tweeting[2] about women's
issues and maintaining Sweet Briar's Gender Studies Facebook page. She
participated in the recent THATcamp Feminism events and has participated
in the National Women's Studies Association conference.
She started editing Wikipedia in 2008, and has written two articles in
the process. She's been an active member of the Women's Studies Email
List and brings her experience from that list with her to help
co-moderate Gender Gap-L.
Welcome co-moderator Liz, and thank you for volunteering.
-Sarah
[1] http://gos.sbc.edu/
[2] https://twitter.com/LizLintonKent
--
*Sarah Stierch*
*/Museumist and open culture advocate/*
>>Visit sarahstierch.com <http://sarahstierch.com><<
Hi everyone,
I know this is a bit late, but, there is an edit-a-thon tomorrow in
Washington, D.C. It's a partnership between the Archives of American
Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Museum of Women
in the Arts; with sponsorship by Wikimedia DC.
It's from 10 AM - 5 PM and will take place at the Archives! It's a woman
planned event, and will focus on improving content about women in the
arts (obviously :) )
Learn more here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Women_in_the_Arts2013
-Sarah
--
*Sarah Stierch*
*/Museumist and open culture advocate/*
>>Visit sarahstierch.com <http://sarahstierch.com><<
Hi all,
happy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover (a.k.a: Pesach) and upcoming Western
Easter (which some people may know as the day before the day with all the cheap
chocolate) and hope you are enjoying the Northern Hemisphere spring where
spring is present.
««««
Note: this post is both opinionated and a bit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postfeminism and post-Buffyist (there was a post
about some post-Buffy shows on http://moshez.livejournal.com/ , but Google does
not find it), and so may offend some people. It was not the first post I made
to this list and while being a straight male, I'm honestly not a sexist person,
so I'm going to risk it.
Feel free to let me know if you have problems with anything I said here and
I'll try to reply in the Verbal Judo fashion -
http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html
»»»
Well, anyway, you may wish to peruse reading this post that I've written on my
blog as a reply to a different and older post by the wonderful Katrina Hill
( https://twitter.com/ActionChick ) on her http://actionflickchick.com/ blog:
* http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/2396.html - “About Female Action Heroes”.
* Original post -
http://actionflickchick.com/superaction/wired-interviews-the-action-flick-c…
- part of my motivation for publishing the post on unarmed.shlomifish.org is
because the original page ate my original comment and because the second
comment became devoid of links.
-----
Anyway, in the post I start from the premise of the post of discussing
awesome female ass-kickers, go on to discuss
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_%28TV_series%29 and other
shows I watched back around the Web 1.0 days, and their influence on my work
as a writer of fiction and essays. Then I cover the so-called Judeo-Christian
ethics and why they have discriminated against women (and to a lesser but
also important extent - men), followed by what I think is an action hero.
Then I cover several prominent Jewesses who championed the break from the
Judeo-Christian ethical system.
-----
Anyway, part of my theme in my stories (see
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/stories/ ) and some of the recent essays (and
I hope you don't take it the wrong way) is that in order to gain true
liberation, females should be:
#. Competent
#. Confident
#. Resourceful
#. Not feel bound by many invisible or stupid rules.
#. Take decisive action and risks
#. Not read into the minds of people who open doors to them. Seize
opportunities.
#. Realise that "reality to be conquered must be obeyed", and not try to make
unnecessary enemies by semantical accusations ("Girl? Does she call you a 'boy'
by any chance?").
#. Interact with men rather than exclude themselves from them.
#. Be forgiving and not hold a grudge against people for their past sins.
#. Etc.
And all that while not depriving themselves of sexuality and sexiness among
members of the appropriate sexes (MOTAS), in part because being sexually
attractive (and naturally - not only physically) is indicative of
competence and values, rather than the opposite as was sometimes implied
recently.
Slashdot reported that
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12/06/2228210/how-men-and-women-badly-…
men are thought to be smarter than women despite the fact that males and
females are fairly equal overall in intelligence tests, both men and women
think that their fathers are smarter than their mothers, and that their sons
are smarter than their daughters. I think part of the problem is that men are
conditioned or encouraged to be more showy in what they know and do (not
saying why this is the case), and flaunt their knowledge and intelligence, even
if they are not 100% sure that what they say is true, and they take risks more
doing that. This is while women tend to need to be sure that what they say and
do is 100% right and flawfree.
-----------------
I think that technology not only empowers females, but also youth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith was a female and was only 10 years
old when she helped end the cold war, by the simple act of writing a letter.
Similarly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Aragon was female and 10 y.o when
she became an Internet sensation by doing a simple piano+vocals cover of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_This_Way (but one which I like better than
the original).
Paul Graham discussed the empowering of youth here -
http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html (What You'll Wish You'd Known - advice
for high school students) and here - http://www.paulgraham.com/lies.html (Lies
We Tell Kids), and I'm planning to cover it here:
http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/putting-all-cards-on-the-ta…
There is no good reason why young people should necessarily always be less able
than their older peers, just because we've recently been conditioned to expect
children and teenagers to be locked in a pre-school environment which is
distanced from the outer world. During the middle ages, craftsman finished
their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece (which now means something
completely different) at a young age, and got married at a much younger age
than today.
Thanks to technology (both tangible and mental) we can expect youth
to become empowered again. I'm glad I started my long journey into software
development using XT BIOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC and other dialects
of BASIC because it was a bona fide programming language for its days (back in
1987 when I was 10 years old) that trusted me with power and allowed me to
shoot myself in the foot, whereas the only thing you could do with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29 was draw some
drawings, and it treats its users in an infantile way, which I think no one
really appreciates (including not children).
( I would not recommend learning BASIC anymore because the world moved on since
then, but I hope you get my point. )
-----------------
Well, hopefully you were not too bored up to here, so I can just in
another self-promoting way recommend you take a look at my stories, especially
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ (The Human Hacking Field Guide,
recently subtitled “Who said girls can’t code?”) which tells the whereabouts of
several teenagers in 2005 L.A. who extensively deal with working on open source
software, and to a somewhat lesser extent free/open/Internet “content”
authoring, and also includes several instances of social engineering (or "Human
hacking").
The abstract reads:
<blockquote>
Jennifer is a trendy and popular high school senior who is living and studying
in the vicinity of Los Angeles. Her best friend, Taylor, convinces her to try
to become a developer of open source software. He puts her under the tutorship
of a different friend of his, the female open source contributor Eve, who
prefers to be called “Erisa”, and who is a self-conscious and rebelling punk,
with whom Jennifer finds it hard to deal. Jennifer remains determined to learn
how to become an open source developer from Erisa, but there are some surprises
along the road.
</blockquote>
The story is available under CC-by-sa under this interpretation -
http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/copyrights/ - and you can also buy exemptions
from it. Finally, like I said in
https://twitter.com/shlomif/status/315159699735580672 “In my stories, I aim to
project reality as it hopefully will become, rather than as I or other people
perceive it and take it forward towards better perfection.”. Moreover, I also
would rather err on naïvety than on cynicism.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
Free (Creative Commons) Music Downloads, Reviews and more - http://jamendo.com/
There is no IGLU Cabal! Home‐made Cabals eventually superseded the power and
influence of the original IGLU Cabal, which was considered a cutting edge
development at its time.
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Hi everyone,
Just a friendly reminder about our civility policy on this mailing list,
and the importance of staying "on topic." From our website[1]:
"Wikimedia surveys show that women's participation in Wikipedia and
related projects are between 9-13%.
This mailing list strives to discuss and explore opportunities to engage
and encourage women and transwomen's participation in Wikimedia projects
such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and the "free knowledge movement."
You are welcome to post in any language you feel comfortable engaging
in. (aka not just English!)
Note: This mailing list is actively moderated and people creating an
unwelcoming environment will be removed from the list. Please refrain
from personal attacks. For example, follow the
guideline:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility- have good
manners!
Are you new to Wikimedia or curious about the gender gap in Wikimedia
projects? Please visithttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap
to learn more!
See you on wiki :)"
Thanks,
Sarah
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
--
*Sarah Stierch*
*/Museumist and open culture advocate/*
>>Visit sarahstierch.com <http://sarahstierch.com><<
Hi everyone,
I am stepping down as a moderator of this mailing list. I am not leaving
the list, and this is nothing critical - I just think it's time to pass
on the baton to other leading WikiWomen in the community - and I am a
tiny bit burnt out and preparing for a new phase of my professional
life, where I'd like to have a clear head with that start.
Right now the current moderators are:
Sue Gardner
Kevin Gorman
Cynthia Ashley-Nelson
Sue is quite busy, Kevin has some personal stuff going on right now so
he's a big "AFK" (away from keyboard) and Cynthia could use some back up
on moderation front.
Your main duties are:
-Making sure people are civil and cool on the list.
-Dealing with mailing list concerns (people will email the owner email
if any problems ensue; sometimes that involves blocking/banning users,
turning on moderation for their posts, etc.)
-Approving and declining messages - you'll get an occasional email from
the mailing list server asking you to approve or decline spam, or a
non-member email (generally news, event information).
It would be great to have a WikiWoman involved, but allies are welcome
as well.
Feel free to email us at gendergap-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org if you are
interested. I am stepping down at the end of this week.
In wikilove,
-Sarah
--
*Sarah Stierch*
*/Museumist and open culture advocate/*
>>Visit sarahstierch.com <http://sarahstierch.com><<