If you want a to write a thread to a supportive group so you might figure how to address a situation that bothers you without being invalidated, Wikichix is more appropriate list this one.

If you want to write a thread about how we might achieve results in narrowing the gender-gap on Wikipedia and seeing some sort of shift happen within an open community this is the list to use.

Those are not value judgments. Both desires are valid and appropriate; just different.

Wikipedia is an open wiki. This means that every element of humanity that you despise, every element that despises what you love, and even elements which you were never really acquainted with before exist there. And none of these elements can be removed. They can be avoided. They can be mitigated. But they will *always* be popping up. If we are going to wait until Wikipedia, or any open wiki, only involves dealing with people who are committed to being "cool" (liberal; in the older sense of the word), it will never happen. We have to shift the participation level on the wikis *as they exist*; not as we would like them to exist. Full of human beings from different cultures, with different understandings, and different capacities for empathy. We need to increase participation of women even as they are offended and confronted with misogyny. Not remove offense and misogyny in order to increase the participation of women. That is just not going to work on an open wiki. You can manage the removal of the most offensive and misogynist elements if you are reasonable and dedicated to doing so. But in an absolute sense it will not make much difference. Those women who are turned off by the things that have been used as examples here these past few day, will still be turned off by what remains when those examples and everything of a similar level has been removed. There are many valid reasons for wanting so see the examples being brought here changed, but increasing the participation of women is not really one of them.

We will not succeed in closing the gender gap by spending our efforts failing to remove everything from an open wiki that turns women off Wikipedia. We will succeed in closing the gender gap when we are able to reach women and bring their attention to things in Wikipedia that will turn them on. Merely seeing an open wiki become somewhat less offensive to women will not make women passionate about Wikipedia. But women who are passionate about Wikipedia will give much less weight to those elements within an open wiki that offend them.

Birgitte SB