FYI: I found this discussion really interesting: http://www.metafilter.com/100081/Wikipedia-Snips-and-Snails-Sugar-and-Spice
Metafilter is a really interesting online community. I am guessing it's 2/3 male, which is more gender-balanced than we are. In recent years, it's made a serious effort --with strong support from its moderation staff-- to stomp out talk that women there find alienating and marginalizing (e.g., rape jokes). As a reader I think those efforts are succeeding: the rest of the community there seems to have stretched itself to accommodate those women's perspectives.
Metafilter is very different from us (we're not a discussion forum, etc.), but I think their core community has lots of attitudinal/demographic overlap with ours. The women there presumably could potentially have become Wikipedians, and in theory still might. They are geeky, internet-centric, smart. So they're worth listening to.
* One of the takeaways for me from the thread: the women there say they don't want to have to repeatedly make a case for topic notability in the face of what they are perceiving as clueless male "obnoxious gatekeepers." They clearly find it exhausting, and many explicitly say that they deliberately sought more friendly environments that were receptive to their work.
* And -- a lesson from Metafilter's own experience, described in that thread: "I'm reminded of how painful and drawn-out it was to remove "I'd hit it!" from the basic lexicon here at MetaFilter. Changing a basic, organically-grown aspect of a community's culture is really hard to do, and requires smart and dedicated people willing to get in your face about it."
There's some other good stuff there; that's just two bits.
Thanks, Sue
-- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation
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