On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 2:37 PM, Angela <beesley@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Laura Hale <laura@fanhistory.com> wrote:
> I'd like to propose that the gendergap be forked.  The main list would be
> for women and transgendered who want to work together to help increase
> female participation on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects.
> The fork list would be for male allies who want to work towards a similar
> goal.

There already is the WikiChix [1] list just for female editors. There
were two problems with it. One was the difficulties in ensuring only
females joined, and the other was inactivity. How would a fork of the
gendergap list avoid those issues?


Is the purpose of WikiChix to increase female participation on Wikipedia or does it have a different goal?  My understanding is that gendergap and wikichix have two different missions.

I don't necessarily have a problem with men joining the list.  My own issues are male involvement as participants.  Fantastic that they want to help increase women's participation on Wikipedia.  It is a great goal.  I just don't think that you can successfully get female participants (with the general goal being increase female participation, not say increase educator participation or sport participation) that is dependent on male involvement.  My experience has been that men and women have different responses.  It can be a bit nerve wracking to post to the list, because I'm worried about saying things that will offend men.  I don't feel as free to participate as I might otherwise would if men weren't involved as participants.

The issue of inactivity on this list could be dealt with by having an administer who will try to post often.  What events are being planned?  Wikipedia4Women is doing things.  I'm trying to do my own thing.  There is a group in New York doing things.  RecentChangesCamp tries to do things.  These can be starting points.  It's a matter of having an admin commit to that.

Beyond that, I feel like it would be much easier to get participation on the list if it could be defined less as a space for general conversation about general wiki issues (which, when men start participating in general discussion, that's what it feels like it devolves to for me) but about having a safe space where women can be advocates, talk about what they are doing, talk about their plans.  I feel that the list should be about empowering women to empower other women to get involved.

The men can have their own list, where they are free to discuss.  All current list members can be moderated, asked to identify their gender to the admin and if they are female, given unmoderated access to the list.  If they are male, they can be urged to join the men's list or informed that they won't be allowed to post but they are free to watch.


Sincerely,
Laura Hale


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