On 10/21/2013 2:41 AM, Sarah Granger wrote:
I could see some women's organizations getting
really angry once they
understand the problem, and blaming men for sexism, when the problem,
as all of us on this list know, is much more complex and not an
outright issue like that.
It may not be as much an issue in getting women initially involved and
editing.
It becomes a primary issue once they edit articles where they start to
run into aggressive young males who act like Wikipedia is an
intellectual video game where the goal is to win at all costs and
frustrate/annoy/attack one's "opponent". And see how much "free speech
fun" you can have if you suspect the opponent is young and female. (Even
we sexegenarians run into some of that.)
Then a significant number - majority? super-majority? - run for the hills.
Being a tough old bird it took me seven years to get sufficiently fed
up, but I'm almost there and have removed myself from articles where
battleground behavior by major and macho POV pushers exist. The
encyclopedia may be more absurdly biased in a number of articles I
worked on, including BLPs I used to try to keep NPOV, but enough is
enough...
A greater willingness to admit the problem of young male
aggression/gamesmanship, and replacing it with collaboration, mentoring,
wikilove -- and firmly dealing with abusers with lots of short blocks to
rethink their behavior -- would help.
CM