It seems very interesting to create a female-friend space for overcoming gradually the gendergap. Some women would like to participate suggesting new topics, their interests (for example more articles on the women´s role in the African microeconomy, or female Nobel Awards, etc). They can provide some opinions or suggestions on the undercovered male-oriented use of language in articles or pictures of Wikipedia, etc. I believe that the leadership of this process has to be in various female hands, taking solidarity as a major principle. When we take a look at history, we can see that women primarily avoid the use of violence and war. Matriarcal peoples or ctonic religions (where there is an identification between the Earth and the woman) are interesting examples. I suggest 100.000 female-sensitive articles with a visible symbol (from sciences, history, literature, arts, ea). That would be good for the media and have a good impact for promoting women´s rights worldwide. Patricia
--- On Wed, 2/9/11, redacted null@null wrote:
From: redacted null@null Subject: Re: [Gendergap] [Gendergap : A suggestion: Towards 100.000 F. articles in Wikipedia To: "Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects" gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 1:02 PM
I very much like this idea, not only for the womany aspect, but for the public outreach aspect. Bloggers might be the go to people for this sort of thing; blogathons and "blog for X" type events are pretty common.
It would be paramount to have a bunch of experienced editors to staff any such events, to deal with markup and biting. (Something like this just strikes me as a buffet for newbie eaters; must have bouncers.)
If it works here, we could do it with other undercovered and under-represented groups. (First Peoples' Wikithon? Wikithon for Disability?)
Nepenthe
On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 12:18 PM, Sandra ordonez sandratordonez@gmail.com wrote:
if we decide to do this, i totally will volunteer with pr/marketing, even. (ie, like a edit-athon day, so everyone in the world can do it.???) Maybe it can be like a weekly thing: Thursday Women Wikithon ...ofcourse we would need a rotation of people to man it, so they can provide guidance and answer questions.
- A virtually area where we can meet as a group (ie, to talk to new people, and answer their questions, and provide guidance. If we decide it would be IRC, then we would need very clear instructions so that people would know how to sign up.) Maybe we can even create a facebook page or group! 've seven see people answer questions in real time by uploading video answer, which is very personable.
- Post describing guidelines, as well as detailed directions on how to edit. (i'm sure this exists somewhere, and we can borrow and massage text).
- A landing page that we can link to social sites, and send to people...ie, where we announce the event(s) and have links to above docs too.
- A twitter/facebook schedule, so we can get word out. Maybe if we write the tweets, the foundation can send out for us? (i'm sure they have some type of twitter manager) ie, so we don't have to create a twitter account, cultivate followers, etc.
- Research contact info for various women groups/organizations that we can start reaching out to. For example, women in biology ass., or women in medieval history org.....We can even have different groups be our "guest" for a particular day. Ie, "this thursday our guest is "women in biology." who will be editing biology articles." This is kind of personal, and community like :) !
Just some ideas.......
On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
Although this is both US and English-centric (as usual), I would like to
advertise that the current US Collaboration of the Month is Nineteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution (which gave women the right
to vote). If anyone is blogging on the gender gap issue, this would be a
good suggestion for where people could jump in. Until recently, the
article was barely more than a stub.
Regarding Patricia's suggestion, I think this is a great idea. The new
WikiProject Women's History is already making good headway on
identifying articles that would be of interest. WikiProject Feminism
also has a few worklists that could be added to the pot.
Ryan Kaldari
On 2/9/11 1:21 AM, patricia morales wrote:
Dear friends,
Thank you for this inspiring dialogue. Inspired by the convergence of
opinions, I believe it would be good to make a concrete difference in
Wikipedia.
A suggestion I would like to share is to develop a number of articles
(100,000? -in total in various languages) in 1 or 2 years (?) related
to women. These articles may receive a symbol (eg an F inside a circle
in red, pink?) Similarly (not in the procedure) to articles with a
star. They could also be on a list, and that list, if possible, be
composed of several languages.
For example:
existing articles on Maria Curie, etc.
articles with more biographies of women)
articles on women's rights
articles on the role of women in indigenous religions (Pachamama, etc)
or concepts (motherland, matria, etc)
A cross-sensitive women's proposal, which is poorly represented at
editorial as well as thematic level.
Wikipedia would be proactive inviting both women and men to break this
gap.
At the same time this initiative can feminize Wikipedia progressively
attracting more women as editors and have more female readers.
Patricia
University of Leuven (projects on solidarity at UNESCO Chair on
Building Sustainable Peace)
--- On *Tue, 2/8/11, Susan Spencer /susan.spencer@gmail.com/* wrote:
From: Susan Spencer susan.spencer@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] A pet peeve / cliche
To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2011, 11:55 PM
First, Sandy,
I totally agree with you - the few men who
use negative locker room talk about women have
caused the downfall of many women in management.
The majority of men don't make statements like this,
but they do let them be discussed.
So good guys, stop being a part of the problem. Tell the
insecure guys to shut up, that nobody wants to hear that
stuff anymore.
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
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