| Second, Miguel, Thank you for pointing out that the gender gap exists all over the world. You propose the Wikipedia site itself might be a problem, because women don't want to work with it because it isn't WYSIWYG. <*sigh*> The reasons being: 1. "men are a bit more obsessive in their work than women" 2. "maybe it's the look of the site, not attractive enough" 3. "women tend to focus their attention on people, instead of things, as men do" #1 & #3 have been stated about women and work for over a century. #2 --> Has a woman *actually* told you that she won't post to Wikipedia because she finds the interface too difficult? You're proposing that women don't want to post as experts because they don't want to be an expert in using a complex interface. Because of a deficiency with women, they don't want to become experts with a system that would allow them to post their expert opinion. I sense a catch-22 argument here. Reworking the Wikipedia interface is not really addressing the problem. Another reason why "women don't want to ____ because ______" We should have a Wiki page on these bizarre reasons. If we put them in a long list it might not help anyone, but it might be humorous. We could just refer to reason #1054 or #782 or #11659 with links to the Wiki page. Good for a laugh. Women could post any new funnies, like "women aren't as obsessive about their work as men are". This might become the most popular set of pages on Wikipedia. Of course, it would probably attract trolls. So let's not. To have a serious response to the problem, let's have a 'Women Post to Wiki' month, and have a banner about it on every Wiki page during the month. It validates that the world community accepts women as experts, and invites women to post who may have thought about it before, but didn't. I love that Google has different logos every day. Wiki can have a different logo for that month. - Susan Spencer Conklin |