English Wikipedia tends to have more specific portals than many of the other Wikipedias. For example, Women's sport, Feminism, Jane Austen, and even Celine Dion have their own portals. Typically, portals are created by corresponding WikiProjects. Although English Wikipedia has several women-related WikiProjects (Women's history, Women's sport, Women scientists, Feminism, etc.), there is currently no "Women" WikiProject. There are arguments for and against creating such a project...
For:
* Would facilitate communication between the more specific women-related WikiProjects
* Would facilitate the creation and maintenance of a Women Portal
* Could potentially spin-off other women-specific WikiProjects
Against:
* The scope of the project would be enormous and potentially difficult to organize
* Parent or "meta" WikiProjects tend to have lower levels of participation than more specific WikiProjects
* Considering the small number of active female editors on Wikipedia, it might cannibalize energy from the other women-specific WikiProjects.
I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

Ryan Kaldari

On 1/15/13 2:43 PM, Sylvia Ventura wrote:
Hello fellow Wikipedians, 

Disclaimer: I'm a newbie (please be gentle)

I'll be brief. I've made my first (minor) edit on Wikipedia in December and have since then try to learn as much as possible about the movement and the various projects. I'm still a long way to go. 

I'm particularly interested in the work done around Women's Participation (contributors) and Women's Voices (the actual content covering women topics/work). I believe the teaHouse and WikiWomen Collaborative are a huge step in helping onboard women contributors. While perusing other language Wikis to see how the "Women participation/content" is handled, I found the French Portal Femmes and the Portuguese Portal Mulheres to be well designed and a useful gateway for content, it clearly catalogues and consolidates women related knowledge in one space. I didn't find an equivalent portal in the English version, is there a reason not to have something like this on the english Wikipedia? 

I see a couple of valid reasons to having a Women Portal in English (particularly while the topic is being built and major gaps are being identified/filled). One is to offer a quick inventory of content, where one can see what's already covered and what's missing (without having to actively search for it). The other is that 'forcing' some level of content structure will help rally the community around specific topics to focus on (gaps), and possibly identify new ones. A successful example is Sarah Stierch WikiProject Women Scientists, it's a great project and it should sit in a larger portal with other master headers to Women in History, Women in Art, Women in Politics, Women in Academia, Women in Technology....  all of which features the names, photos, bios, subgroups, and links to their work. This structure applies to any group/topic that is underrepresented - it makes it easier for newcomers (intimidated) and experts (busy) to identify areas they can contribute to right the way. How do I go about doing this?

So much for being brief :)

Sylvia



_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap