My reaction to "fellow" is pretty much the same as Christine's. I read it as an academic term (ie, a fellow is a person who has a fellowship), which is as gender neutral as one can be in academia. Then again, that's my environment, so I don't know how others interpret it.

I'm not sure where the Foundation refers to "chicks", so I can't comment on that.

Nepenthe


On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud@fairpoint.net> wrote:
> Is it appropriate for the Foundation to refer to women as "chicks" and
> use the title "fellow" for staff positions?  I'm not adamantly opposed
> to either, but I am convinced we can do much better.
>
> On the issue of noticeboards, does anyone know of any actual reasons
> that any noticeboard has not tended to help solve the problem it was
> intended to address?  All of them seem to have been relatively
> successful to me, and certainly have been lesser drama magnets than
> the general WP:ANI noticeboard which they tend to relieve by moving
> quality responsibilities from the administrators to the wider
> community.
>
> It seems to me that the English Wikipedia would be far better with a
> systematic bias noticeboard to cover both gender and geographic
> concerns.
>

I've raised the general question of a gender-based notice board at
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Gender_issues

Women chose Wikichix themselves and can change it if they wish. "Fellow"
is pretty much standard; what would be your alternative?

Fred



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