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 <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portail:Femmes> and the
Portuguese Portal Mulheres
<https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/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<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_scie…ts>,
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