--- On Tue, 22/2/11, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote:
Given the
demographic imbalance
in our community, and the resultant risk
of systemic bias in our editorial decisions, it
might
make sense to
create a Women's issues noticeboard in en:WP
and other
Wikipedias, where
related matters can be brought up for review.
Thoughts?
Andreas
Please create it and inform everyone.
Fred
Stephen Walling wrote:
Noticeboards are huge magnets for drama.
There are longtime English Wikipedia editors already
starting to grumble
about this effort. If we're going to make progress by bringing the
community along with this, rather than having them fight us, we should try
to minimize the potential for drama, especially of the accusatory kind
that gets performed on incident noticeboards.
I would suggest we not create not a noticeboard for
this issue
specifically.
Women's views are too often drowned out on talk pages, simply because of
their numerical inferiority. A noticeboard would help.
While I understand the concern about the potential for drama, I think
any method used to make Wikipedia more gender-neutral will attract a share
of drama. Having an institution to look at women's issues is a pretty
mainstream idea.
The UK has a [[Minister for Women and Equalities]] (a poorly researched
article at this time); there is a [[Minister responsible for the Status of
Women (Canada)]]; a [[Minister for the Status of Women (Australia)]]; even
Afghanistan has one: [[Ministry_of_Women's_Affairs_(Afghanistan)]].
Denmark has a [[Minister_for_Gender_Equality_(Denmark)]]; Sweden has a
[[Ministry of Integration and Gender Equality (Sweden)]], etc.
The United States have affirmative action. We should not fear controversy,
or grumbling; our democratically elected governments don't let that stop
them either. If the Wikipedia community cannot support something that is
standard in democratic society, then we do have a problem with our
demographics, and whatever problem we have will become readily apparent.
I wouldn't mind calling it a gender issues noticeboard. (That would be
[[WP:GIN]] as opposed to [[WP:WIN]].)
Andreas