Hey folks,
Erik Moeller, my deputy, created this group at my request, and so I'm its owner. To recap for anyone who doesn't know: this list was prompted by a January 31 New York Times story about Wikipedia's gender gap. The NY Times story prompted a lot of discussion among experienced Wikipedians, new editors, and external people such as researchers and academics. We created this list so that the discussion had somewhere to go -- because people wanted to help, and we wanted to give their energy and momentum a place to grow.
Thus far, I haven't made any attempts to moderate or shape the conversation here in any way. People who are used to Wikimedia lists probably are finding the experience here pretty familiar -- the conversation is unstructured, wide-ranging, and there's no real quality control. People who are more used to non-Wikimedia lists might find it TOO uncontrolled, too noisy, too wide-ranging: I don't know.
My hope when we started the list was that it would be a place where people could come together to share experiences and information about the causes of Wikipedia's gender gap, and kick around possible solutions. I hoped that, at worst, it could become a sort of talkfest and "centre of expertise" on the gender gap issue --- and at best, it would be a place where real work would happen (e.g., the Women Edit Wikipedia Month type stuff). I assumed it'd be a pretty loose conversation, with plenty of noise to the signal, and it would end up (like many of our lists) being supplemented by work on wiki pages.
And that, I think, is pretty much how it's playing out.
So I'm curious to know from the people here:
1) Is the conversation here pretty much what you expected? Is it better or worse than you expected -- and if so, in what ways?
2) Are you comfortable with this discusson being mostly unmoderated, or would you prefer that we had some simple behavioural rules-of-engagement?
3) Would anyone care to offer to help me moderate? The moderation has been pretty light so far: a few people with questions about how to do something, and a half-dozen posts stuck in the approval queue --- it's very easy stuff to handle. I am often in meetings though, or travelling, so I've felt bad when someone's question or post is pending for hours. If you want to help, let me know off-list :-)
4) Any other comments about what we're doing here -- including, ideas about how we can be more effective.
Thanks, Sue
-- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation
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