What it would take to close the gender gap?
That WMF would realize itself that Wikipedia misses social software to give female contributors a comfortable feeling because of the social environment.
Giving many workshops for new female contributors, we notice that they experience Wikipedia as a difficult place to start and a difficult place to collaborate easily with other users. The collaborating they expect is more than only editing an article and writing messages on talk pages, that is our current primitive situation that is not sufficient to retain many contributors, and especially female contributors. They expect a social environment, with easy interaction, where they are stimulated and can form groups to be able not to feel alone on the wiki and to work together, where they can get constructive feedback, where they can follow easily what colleagues, friends and other people they know personally are doing on Wikipedia.
As example, there is no way for people to follow friends/colleagues on what they have written.
There is no easy way to say to a group of users (friends/colleagues) you have written a new article and you like suggestions. Or answer to a question.
It is time for Wikipedia to go to the next generation. It is time for Wikipedia getting social.
Romaine
Read more at:
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/January_2015/Contents/Belgium_report#FOSDEMhttps://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/02/11/wikimedia-at-fosdem-2015/