Hi,
After reading an interesting related discussion on GenderGap, I have
queried the top 10 users of the thanks feature last month, on both the
English Wikipedia and Commons. Snapshot image attached and report link
below.
Perhaps someone might think of a suitable barnstar and award these
folks for "being nice"? :-)
Link: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:F%C3%A6/sandbox&oldid=1…
P.S. This is a long query to run, taking 20 to 30 minutes due to the
nature of the logging tables. However if someone wanted to make a
monthly summary on-wiki somewhere, part of an active "be nice"
campaign, I would be happy to set up an automated monthly report (if
someone discovers this is already reported somewhere, that's cool we
can use that).
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
Hi everyone, I have been checking how we are doing on closing the gendergap
on biographies of women artists for a while. Part of the problem is
collecting the data, and Wikidata is a great help. Unfortunately there are
still lots of women artists with Wikidata items without any statements at
all, but since this is also true for male artists, looking at the stats is
useful. What I did was to collect data for all female artists and all male
artist and came up with percentages for painters versus various matched
data bases in Mix-n-Match.
Thanks to our push on Art & Feminism, the score is better (12.5%) on
Wikimedia projects than for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(10.1%). The ODNB is currently the only database that is completely
matched. The other databases are still being matched, but still, it's
interesting to see how we currently stand with those. Here are the scores:
Wikidata painters - 12.5%: 45016 male, 6430 female
RKD - 11.4%: 21809 male, 2795 female
United List of Artist Names - 8.6%: 32993 male, 3091 female
BBC Your Paintings - 7.7%: 6535 male, 545 female
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - 10.1%: 49419 male, 5581 female
http://tools.wmflabs.org/mix-n-match/
These stats were gathered this morning using Autolist:
http://tools.wmflabs.org/autolist/autolist1.html
I know some people have been wishing for a sexual harassment policy. I
have just made such a proposal, titled "Comprehensive harassment and
privacy policy", at the Grants:IdeaLab
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Comprehensive_harassment_and…
Suggestions for improvement welcome, or feel free to email me with any
private suggestions.
Regards,
Neotarf
It is perhaps a truism that if you want to concentrate on fixing something
(i.e., gendergap) , first you need to measure it.
Has anyone looked at the Inspire grant proposals to see if any of them
include metrics?
So far, we have the 2008 survey, conducted by UN University in Maastrict
(UNU-MERIT), and posted in 2010. The survey showed that "*only 12.64% of
contributors are female*".
https://web.archive.org/web/20130717211630/http://wikipediastudy.org/
The next survey was conducted in 2011. It found that "*only 8.5% of
editors are women*".
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Editor_Survey_Report_-…
The results of the 2012 survey were never published.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_2012#Resul…
Questions about it remain unanswered.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikipedia_Editor_Survey_2012#…
So what surveys need to be done, how often, and by whom? (It seems that
this UN University in Maastrict group did a pretty good job.) The
editathons are new, has anyone actually talked to any of the women who
participated? Shouldn't there be some focus groups at this point?
This is really basic to the whole project. Can someone figure out what is
needed and whether anyone has submitted a workable proposal? Andreas?
Would someone like to summarize how the campaign is doing now it is
(presumably) half way through?
>From the IdeaLab page[1] there is a week left before the proposals
part of the campaign closes on the 1st April, with the expectation
that 100 ideas will be created. This deadline might be the wrong one
though, as the notice on the main PEG page[2] says the campaign is
open "February 1 - April 30".
I admit to being confused by the structure on meta. After following
the links for the Inspire campaign, I cannot find a list of gender gap
related proposals open for community feedback and support. Perhaps
someone could point me in the right direction, or create a listing
page if it does not exist?
Links
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gen…
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grants:PEG&oldid=11234142
Thanks,
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
I haven't heard from him in a couple weeks but last I checked he was busy recovering. I've poked him in case he didn't see this email.
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
-------- Original message --------
From: Neotarf <neotarf(a)gmail.com>
Date:03/28/2015 1:55 PM (GMT-06:00)
To: "Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the participation of women within Wikimedia projects." <gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc:
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] A path back for day-two editors (was: Wikipedia Day NYC 2015 mini-conferenceh for te project's 14th birthday)
Someone should ping Kevin Gorman on this, I believe he knows of some research. Does anyone know about his health? Is he able to respond?
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 12:40 PM, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with Christine. There is good work being done as learning has taken place about the strengths and weaknesses of edit-a-thons.
Because it has been know for a few years that one off edit-a-thons create content but don't grow new users, now many people have been experimenting with different ways to use edit-a-thons other than editor recruitment. Having an edit-a-thon on a specific topic can increase the quantity and quality of content on that topic even if the people never edit again. And the people leave with a better understanding of Wikipedia and the behind the scene working or the community that seem very mysterious to the outside world.
And also regular meet ups to edit like WikiSalons or /Wiki Editing Clubs are being tried in as a way to create a stable group of people who enjoy editing together. These people are true Wikipedians even thought they might not be high volume users. The can fill a needed niche in Wikipedia especially if they are editing about topics that are under represented on Wikipedia or they have an alternative perspective than the average Wikipedian.
I'm launching an editing club in the topic area of oral health soon. Because I always mention gender in my Cochrane Collaboration presentations the women who edit in these clubs know that they are helping to balance the gender gap on Wikipedia even though that was not their primary reason for editing.Like most outside organizations Cochrane is at least 50% women. So by doing these initiatives we are automatically helping the gender gap. They see this aspect as an added benefit of our collaboration.
Sydney
Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wikipedian in Residence
at Cochrane Collaboration
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 1:11 AM, Christine Meyer <christinewmeyer(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Kerry and all,
I've been thinking about much of what you wrote. Being in this list has made me think about how to recruit and retain more female editors. I attended Emily's training about how to conduct workshops and edit-athons in Washington, D.C. last fall, which was a very valuable experience. Many things germinated during the training, including Rosiestep's creation of the Women Writers Project (I'm proud to say that I was present, in the same room, when she created it) and the planning stages of the GA Cup, which was hugely successful. There was an off-hand remark made during the training that I think all the edit-athons and workshops that have occurred since has borne out--that the most successful edit-athons in terms of recruiting new editors have been reoccurring.
I wonder if the answer is the creation of editing clubs, something that has been discussed here before. The reason I'm thinking this way is that I'm preparing an educational session I'm leading at the end of April, at the District 9 Toastmasters spring conference in Yakima, Washington. (I'm a very active Toastmaster, like I'm a very active Wikipedian.) It won't be a workshop about how to edit WP, but a more general session about how to more effectively use WP to write speeches, although I am providing participants with a resource list about editing. So I've been thinking about how being a Toastmaster has made me a better WP editor, and how being an editor has made me a better Toastmaster.
I'm starting to believe that a more effective way to recruit editors is to create clubs like Toastmasters, which meet regularly (once or twice a month) and have a core of 7 or 8 people. TM states that 20 members make a healthy club, and they should know; they've been in existence for 90 years. I agree that editors are born, not made. (Which is ironic, because TM's tag line is, "Where leaders are made.") Editing clubs, though, are ways to find those folks, and to mentor them through the complex WP policies. If they exist on college campuses, they can be folded into the university's existing club structure. They can, like TM clubs, be held in church basements or in hotel conference rooms or in hospital meeting rooms.
I get what you say about experienced editors have little patience with the bungling newbies. However, if it weren't for a few more experienced editors who mentored me through my bungling stage, I probably wouldn't be here today. Adrienne Wadewitz, btw, was one of them. I think that we, as experienced editors, have a responsibility to mentor newbies--to pay it forward like others helped us when we were newbies. Shoot, I still need it. For example, I'd say that I'm a very experienced editor, and I'm stupid when it comes to creating tables. I'm getting assistance with that as we speak, in my most recent FLC (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_list_candidat…).
Anyway, that's what I've been thinking.
Christine
User: Figureskatingfan
On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 1:01 AM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Certainly my own experience with edit training and edit-a-thons is that, while people (both male and female) seem to enjoy the workshop, they don’t come back for more. I increasingly share the view that Wikipedians are born not made. I am not sure that outreach achieves very much, given it is very difficult to scale. So, I am inclined to think that the best investments are in nurturing new organic (as in “self-selecting”) editors and maintaining the enthusiasm of the longer-terms editors. I think it is ultimately “the community” that grinds all of us down in the long term. I’ve heard it expressed in different ways by different folks. Some say they’ve just sick of the vandalism fighting. Personally I did a very short stint as a reviewer for Articles for Review because so many were of them looked dubious notability and probably CoI that I thought why am I bothering (the wrong attitude I know but at least know I understand why AfR produces so few accepted articles – I think you either walk away or turn into a Auto-Reject Reviewer). Others get tired of fixing problems created by an endless stream of newbies making the same well-intentioned but inappropriate edits. My personal peeve is the Lamington article which is frequently changed to say it was invented in New Zealand, but with no sources provided, in an article that currently documents every known early mentions of lamingtons and shows all of them are Australian in origin (sorry, Kiwis, but you need evidence to back up your persistent claims). Others get tired of having run-ins with same grumpy old editors, the gatekeepers, etc. The interaction between the I’ve-really-had-enough-of-these-newbies and the bumbling-but-well-intentioned newbie is clearly a bit part of the problem; it seems one of them gets burned by the interaction (either the old hand flays the newbie or the old hand gives and walks away)..
My solution is not female-specific, but I think we do have to recognise that we have years of effort gone into many articles. The people who put that effort in don’t want to keep dealing with the newbie edits on what is often very stable text. I think we have to consider that it isn’t appropriate to have immature editors messing with mature content. It would be kinder to all parties if we could (automatically) flag text that has achieved “maturity” and give it some semi-protection from the newcomers, directing them to the talk page rather than direct edits to the page itself. But let other articles or parts of articles that don’t have maturity to be more able to directly edits by relative newcomers. How do we measure maturity? I am not sure, but I think indicators are survival of much of the text over a long period (disregarding short-lived reverted edits), large number of editors who have contributed to the development of this articles, large watchlist, .., these are machine-measurable things, i.e. could be automated.
I think if we can prevent the interactions likely to be unpleasant then maybe people can co-exist a little happier.
Kerry
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Hmm, I see what you were saying now, Neotarf. We're throwing time, effort,
and money at getting people in the door (or at least, an edit-a-thon's
door), and some at keeping the long-term editors around, but there's sort
of a "doughnut hole" between those two points where we expect people to
just sort of find something in the eleventy-million (...that moment when
you realize that a joke quantity like "eleventy-million" isn't that far off
the mark of reality...) pages on a project that interests them enough to
bring them back. With no help except maybe SuggestBot, if they manage to
find that.
But what brings people back for edits five through one hundred, at a
population level? Getting over the hurdle to showing up for a second day
(whether on-wiki or at an event) is often going to call for...let's call it
an attention bump. Something that drives people back to logging in even if
they'd closed that browser tab. We could stand, as a community, to
brainstorm ways to get people in for day two.
It's not enough to just not drive them off (though we struggle managing
even that, in some areas/communities), it's that, e*specially *in the case
of women, I would expect to see an increase in return traffic when there's
a path actively shouting "Hello! I am a path! A path that leads somewhere!
I would like you to follow me!" Some social media send "Hey, we missed you,
come log in again!" emails after X missed days, for example. That's a bit
on the creepy side for my taste, but something a bit less stalky that could
serve as a reminder of what's on Wikipedia to do, or how the community
appreciates people's efforts, or what the person started but didn't finish
while there...hm. Things like that could work.
Is anyone aware of any work that's been done in this "doughnut hole" area,
covering the period *after *outreach when someone's attention can be
captured or fail to be captured by a new hobby like Wiki[m|p]edia editing?
On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 3:53 PM, Neotarf <neotarf(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> *"I doubt I'd attend any event purporting to recruit women that
> nevertheless limited itself to "people who were born female"; that's very
> much a type of exclusion I'm uncomfortable with. In general, however,
> there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from arranging a women-centric
> (or even women-only) edit-a-thon, or from reaching out to women in a
> certain field (via linkedin, maybe?) to urge them to get editing."*
> After what I've been through, I'm not likely to urge *anyone* to edit. My
> own opinion is that all Wikimedia spaces should be moving towards 50/50.
> But my point is, all of these people express an interest, come in for a
> day, sometimes in conjunction with a friend who is attending a similar
> event in another city, make their first edit, and then ...what? There's no
> signing up for a mailing list, no newsletter, no invitations to log into a
> safe space for continued collaborations, in short, nothing to show them
> that Wikipedia appreciates them or considers their contributions to be
> valuable. And nothing to show them the next step along the way. People are
> walking in the door. And then they walk out. Where is the infrastructure
> for making that second edit? And for staying connected with the people
> they meet?
>
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 1:38 PM, Katherine Casey <
> fluffernutter.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I doubt I'd attend any event purporting to recruit women that
>> nevertheless limited itself to "people who were born female"; that's very
>> much a type of exclusion I'm uncomfortable with. In general, however,
>> there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from arranging a women-centric
>> (or even women-only) edit-a-thon, or from reaching out to women in a
>> certain field (via linkedin, maybe?) to urge them to get editing. Those are
>> both cool ideas, and I suspect you'd get a lot of support, both from the
>> WMF and from the gendergap community in general, in setting such things up.
>> NYC would be, I suspect, a particularly fertile ground for
>> gendergap-specific meetups; there's enough of nearly every demographic
>> around there to fill some seats for a moderately-sized edit-a-thon, and the
>> WMNYC board appears willing to work with minority-focused groups..
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Neotarf <neotarf(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> See also this article: "AfroCrowd: The Black Wikipedia For People of
>>> African Descent" http://kreyolicious.com/afrocrowd/17531/
>>>
>>> One of the drawbacks of GLAM is that people are just making a few edits,
>>> and leaving, rather than becoming long-term editors. There may be chances
>>> for followup here that we are missing. Is the wiki-world ready for
>>> "WomanCrowd: The Women's Wikipedia for People Who Were Born Female"? Or
>>> maybe more realistically, ways for women in a particular cluster of
>>> professions to network with other women in their field, not to mention
>>> professional men who are supportive enough of women to come to one of these
>>> events (and who also might just happen to control access to career
>>> advancement).
>>>
>>> I have to say, though, that I totally support the idea of a Haitian
>>> Creole-language Wikipedia. This language barrier was a huge problem a few
>>> years ago, when there was an increased number of Haitians entering the U.S.
>>> after the earthquake in Haiti. The problem is the same with other
>>> creoles--instruction is usually given in one of the prestige languages--in
>>> this case French--rather than the individual's native or local village
>>> language, which makes communication and learning extremely difficult.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 12:10 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, the idea is to be extra inclusionary by reaching out to all these
>>>> groups explicitly, and in particular to representing different cultural
>>>> identities in rather non-monolithic African American / African Diasporic
>>>> communities.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Pharos
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 11:48 AM, Jeremy Baron <jeremy(a)tuxmachine.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Mar 23, 2015 11:25 AM, "Neotarf" <neotarf(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> > I've never seen editithons that exclude people before. I've been to
>>>>> a couple of black history events, and all were welcomed, although of course
>>>>> there was a very high proportion of African descent.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think the point was actually to be extra inclusionary: to cover all
>>>>> of the above not just a subset when recruiting new editors. So potential
>>>>> recruits don't think but I'm not really {{label}} and exclude themselves.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm pretty sure others won't be excluded but these events will be
>>>>> *focused* on topics related to those groups and editors with some sort of a
>>>>> connection to Africa. To address biases similarly to women focused outreach
>>>>> but with a twist thrown in: adding a new language to Wikipedia too, they
>>>>> started already Garifuna Wikipedia on incubator.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/cab
>>>>>
>>>>> -Jeremy
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>> please visit:
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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I worried over this earlier in the month, then I got a brief vacation with
my sisters. Now I'm back and I need to make up my mind whether or not I
want to pursue the WikiProject Women proposal that I made back in January.
(Since there are only five days left in the Inspire Campaign.)
Here's a link for those who aren't familiar, or who haven't thought about
it in awhile:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/WikiProject_Women
The original proposal was for a women-only Wikipedia (English) project, but
because of the hostility of some in opposing the idea (and the
Kaffeeklatsch test area), I'm leaning now toward a women-only area at meta
(right term? I mean at wikimedia.org).
Feedback? Suggestions? There was lots of support, but there was also, as
most of you know, plenty of opposition.
Lightbreather
Articles about women are getting lost. Lost that is, to Google searches.
For the last two days, Afghanistan has been exploding in demonstrations
over Farkhunda, a Kabul woman who was beaten to death and torched by a mob.
Even though every major news source has done a piece on her, I can't find
an article for her yet in Wikipedia. When it does get written, and finally
starts showing up in the search engines, what will it say? "Farkhunda", the
logical search term? Or more likely, the more common format: "the
murder/lynching/battering/victimization/humiliation of [insert woman's name
here]".
For quite some time, the article for Ozgecan Aslan was hidden from Google
searches as well, because due to the English Wikipedia's unique naming
conventions, the article was called "Murder of Özgecan Aslan".
Maybe it's time to reconsider naming articles about women for the horrible
things that were done to them, and give them the simple dignity of their
own names. I'm not sure the victimization narrative is the right one
anyhow. The Farkhunda story seems to be about her death becoming a
rallying point for the way women are treated in Afghanistan, much as Aslan
was in Turkey.
What else? Iraqi lawyer Samira Salih al-Nuaimi still comes up 6th in a
Google search, *after* the entry for the Daily Mail, because of the
idiosyncratic spelling of her name in the article title. But at least you
can find her (very, very short) article now.
And since I've already written this much, the article on fistula
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fistula>, a problem for a huge number of
girls in parts of the Global South, is not very well explained. Compare Female
genital mutilation or even Women's rights in 2014
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Women%27s_rights_in_2014&redirect…>.
(thx, SV). Also reference the short article on Fatimata Touré
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatimata_Tour%C3%A9>, whose group in Mali
works against fistula.
Note: for Farkhunda, see Twitter photos
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Farkhunda?src=hash and WaPo http://
www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/23/afghan-woman-beaten-t…
Hi folks,
Can you help us pick quality articles about women and gender diversity on Wikipedia and sister projects?
Here are the community suggestions we’ve received so far:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Women_and_gender_diversity_on_Wikimedia <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Women_and_gender_diversity_on_Wikimedia>
Please add your +1’s on that page — and tell us why you recommend your favorite articles.
Our goal is to surface factual, well-written and insightful articles, as part of our month-long focus on women and gender diversity.
Based on your feedback, we’ll publish the top picks tomorrow on the Wikimedia blog.
Many thanks to all the folks who contributed to this community-curated experiment!
Regards as ever,
Fabrice
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Movement Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)