Caroline,

I apologize if my occasional posting of an "interesting" article in English Wikipedia has been a burden, deterrent, or has went against the "goal" of this mailing list for you. Since I have joined, it has been something we have been doing, and the past month or so the list has been rather quiet compared to other times in the past. In the past, when we have shared articles of questionable matter, subject, sexism, or other issues, we've had great success of working together or independently to improve those articles, and often those improvements have been done by women who are on this list, which is very cool. I of course urge folks in any language to share content, however, with most Wikipedia mailing lists, systematic "language" bias does exist, as many are in English, though I know that was not the main point of your post.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll probably start out discussing it on the talk page of the article and also the project page.

Again, I apologize if my own interests in article improvement in English Wikipedia have deterred or went against the mission of this mailing list. I must say, you are the first person to openly complain, and if others feel strongly about it I can cease sharing content that I think needs urgent help or peer review. As you did state, we could be pointing out issues of sexism all the time, however, sometimes I feel there are things of interest to the broader community, or something that might interest someone. (And while it has mainly been me lately, if you explore the history of the mailing list it's usually not just me flooding up your mailbox =) )

I also must add, my sharing of articles of interest and concern have wielded nothing but positive on.Wiki improvement of these subjects, which for me, means the closing of the gender gap in a different manner - one more subject area related to women or women's history which is covered in a more equal and respectful manner.

We also offer, as you probably know, a digest mode, so, if this list is too busy for you (I think we are rather minimal these days, compared to lists such as internal-l and foundation-l) that might be something to consider. I'm glad you have joined and chosen to participate, and I am really sorry if my posts have been intruding.

Sarah

Sarah Stierch
Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellow
>>Support the sharing of free knowledge around the world: donate today<<

On 12/25/11 5:59 AM, Caroline Becker wrote:

Hi everyone,

I'm sorry that my first post on the gender-gap list is a little mean. I'm a wikipedia-fr admin, active member of Wikimédia France chapter and a member of the OTRS team. Yet, since I've joined gender-gap a week early, I receive more mails from this list than all the other lists together. I'm also not a native English speaker, which means every mail takes me a little longer of my time.

I thought the goal of this list was to discuss about women on wikimedia projects and how to attract new ones. I don't think it is useful to point out every single piece of sexism from en-wikipedia, in articles and discussion pages, for that. Or start http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap/en-wikipedia. I could point out sexism comments from fr-wikipedia every day, but I'm really not sure it is a constructive thing to do.

To come back to Madam vs Pimp, I think you either should start the discussion there : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Sexology_and_sexuality, or stop asking permission to create articles. If it bothers someone, she will ask for a fusion.

Caroline (User:Léna)

2011/12/25 Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch@gmail.com>

Hi everyone,

I'm doing a bit of fiddling with some articles related to sexuality and came across an article about a madam [[Polly Adler]]. The word "madam" was linked to [[pimp]]. While the article opens mentioning that a woman who runs a brothel is called a madam, it's an extremely male dominated article and focuses on the violent and sordid world of "being a pimp," for lack of better words.

I, frankly, would love to see madam have it's own article. Perhaps we should discuss it on the "pimp" page or just BE BOLD. (I don't have time to start a well fleshed out madam article, but, I'd be interested in perhaps collaborating with others to do it.)

Thoughts?

-Sarah

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Sarah Stierch Consulting
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Historical, cultural, new media & artistic research & advising.
http://www.sarahstierch.com

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--
Sarah Stierch Consulting
--
Historical, cultural, new media & artistic research & advising.
http://www.sarahstierch.com