On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 7:43 PM, LB <lightbreather2@gmail.com> wrote:

Why abandon it? Let's reclaim it. Just ignore those who try to distract and derail. There are sanctions so no nastiness, but nastiness is not my usual style anyway.

I don't know whether it's better to abandon, reclaim or move it. But it has been a lesson in how deep Wikipedia's sexism runs. Any journalists in future wanting examples of it need only read those archives and the dispute-resolution threads that failed to deal with it (which one of us ought to compile at some point).

Marie, I saw the suggestion on GGTF that women might prefer to edit "[f]ashion, cookery, domestic affairs, childrearing". Is it worth continuing with it when that's what we have to deal with?

Sarah

On Dec 30, 2014 10:25 AM, "Marie Earley" <eiryel@hotmail.com> wrote:

We're abandoning the GGTF on Wikipedia? Fair enough.

It was just that I had an editor accused me of radical feminism POV pushing on GGTF via my talk page (I dared to say that it was "interesting" that the example topics that he thought women would be interested in editing, other than feminism, might be "fashion, cookery, domestic affairs and childrearing" rather than "science, business, filmmaking or politics"). There was then this follow-on swipe on GGTF.

> "...one of the reasonable first steps toward seeing what women in wikipedia thinks needs to be done most would be to actively ask women who have self-identified as women what content of particular interest to women might be underrepresented or undercovered here. Those women would presumably be in a better position to clearly state their concerns than would be individuals who can only speculate on them or draw potentially flawed assumptions based on limited previous personal experience."

So, my potentially flawed assumptions and limited previous personal experience are surplus to requirements at the GGTF. The plan now seems to go out and find answers that fit a pre-existing narrative about what is causing the Gender Gap.

So... "I believe the Gender Gap is caused by women who want to write about knitting thinking that Wikipedia does not welcome articles about knitting." I will create a skewed survey to fit this narrative and get the "right kind of women" to fill it in and prove my pre-conceived notions correct.

I really don't see the point of it. If you ask 1,000 female editors, "What kind of articles do you like to edit?", then you'll get 1,000 answers with a wide variety of topics. What would that prove? Suppose you find 90% of them edit traditionally feminine topics, what conclusion would you draw from it? Would it prove that they clearly prefer to edit those topics, or those are the topics that they feel less likely to encounter intimidation, or a combination of the two? I just think the GGTF board is currently being used to promote a truly pointless exercise.

Marie