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