I've been largely lurking on this list due to lack of time to contribute to the discussion and the fact I'm not really a very experienced Wikipedia contributor, but the reason I joined this list is because I very much want to help solve the Wikipedia gender gap problem. I think it's incredibly important and that most people working in digital media have no clue how significant this is. The focus of my work is how digital media affects our lives and our world, and with more people online every day and Wikipedia as the world's online encyclopedia, I think the gender imbalance can only affect digital culture long-term in a negative way.
What I envision is a coalition of like-minded organizations working together on a campaign to build awareness, educate people on the roots of the problem, recruit & train new contributors. I work with a lot of digital media campaigners for women's organizations, with women in tech organizations, and with organizations supporting women in media - and digital media. I also have connections at more traditional feminist organizations. I strongly believe these organizations will help if they can first become aware themselves. Most are just not thinking about how digital media and wikipedia affects gender bias online and in general. But there are literally a few hundred online activists / digital strategists at various organizations who I know would care about this if they are just approached the right way to help.
So I encourage everyone here to think big and outside the box. I founded the Center for Technology, Media & Society with the purpose of taking on issues that have slipped under the radar of other organizations because they're interdisciplinary. This is one of the core areas I want to work on. We don't have c3 status yet, we haven't fundraised. I had to take a break to write a book and just finished the writing part of the process, but I had a pilot project set up with a list of worthy women who should have sites but don't, and I signed up some women willing to try contributing, but we got stuck at the training part because of time and general learning curve. Also, I didn't want to reinvent the wheel on anything the Wikimedia Foundation was doing.
I really want to be a part of this conversation long-term because I think if we do this right, we could make a huge difference. I have a background in national digital campaigns, so my ideas come from that world. A few ideas I had: launching an international wikipedia training week for women &/or having a wikipedia editing week, a regular monthly wikiwomen day where we blast social networks & engage women to add & edit pages, putting together some clever online memes to build awareness, Tweetups, FB buttons, a blog carnival, building a campaign specific website to explain the problem, solutions, recruit participants, etc... especially reaching out to young women in tech. I spoke at a conference of young women in computing in the midwest yesterday and that kind of audience I think would be perfect for recruiting new Wikipedia women contributors.
The one other reason I've been treading cautiously is because I believe that anything done to improve Wikipedia's content should ideally be done with some buy-in from the community, rather than criticizing it. 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. I want to make sure they are invited in as partners and that they are being constructive and proactive. There are always ways to use humor to bridge the gap when working on messaging around the issue, but we really need everyone on board.
I didn't mean to write this much... it's late where I am. I hope this provides some helpful additional thoughts and ideas. I really want to help with this. I think ideally it would be run from within the Wikimedia organization, partnering with all the others I mentioned, so I think the user group sounds like a good plan if that's the right operational entity (not being fully versed in the Wikimedia org structure, I'm deferring to others here), but if that can't be done, for whatever reason, I'd be happy to find the an organization that would be a good fit for that role, or we could take it on in our organization if we have enough support from others (since we're scrappy with zero resources at the moment).
Please keep me in the loop and let me know how I can help best, but count me in for whatever group, organization or coalition.
Hey,
this is the first time I've actually added anything to discussion on this list :)
I agree that trying to address the issue by hiring one or two activists taking on responsiblity for talking about it/acting on it wouldn't address what I consider to be the big problem of "environmental challenges" or systemic bias, as having people focused specifically on the issue can mean that people who don't care or inadvertently contribute to the problem can continue to dismiss it as a niche issue. In my experience I find it more effective to say, for example, that I think open access is really important and I will contribute to open access projects, but if people behave in ways that contribute to systemic bias, I will not contribute further as I prefer to focus my energies elsewhere.
As research about women in engineering shows, benefits-focused recruitment drives won't work if women (or other underrepresented peoples in Wikipedia) get lost along a leaky pipeline, when after acquiring the technical skills to contribute, they come to feel that their contributions aren't valued and they are better off focusing energies elsewhere. I'm working in international development - part of that often involves disaggregating data to see which projects are involving people of diverse genders and ages and ethnicities for example, and which aren't, and refocusing funding to value groups that demonstrate the ability to be inclusive, or that specifically engage people who are often left out in genuine decision-making and empowerment - rather than pushing them to work for little return. Perhaps one strategy is to look at the composition of existing WMF-affiliated user groups, to see what gaps exist in what WMF is endorsing (and giving grants for. I think it would useful to have an activist involved in every single user group, contributing there and raising awareness of issues among other editors, but that's a burden on each of those activists to lead change in those groups. I wouldn't be comfortable joining a group just focused on this issue, for fear of harassment or people being more subtly difficult, knowing I'm focusing energies in this area that they might be opposed to - I'd be more comfortable being part of a project in which women editors contribute to other projects and that WMF works to ensure their contributions are valued and supported, recognizing that systemic bias means value and support is less likely to happen naturally within the system.
Perhaps they're not mutually exclusive though. I'm sharing this hoping it helps to explain why some people, who are activists in this area, aren't necessarily active in the way proposed right now :)
Cheers, Cobi
On Oct 18, 2556 BE, at 6:29 AM, Sydney Poore wrote:
The threshold for being recognized is pretty low., only 3 people, but I would not want to go for affiliation with less than 10 interested people. And I hope we can attract many many more.
I plan to discuss this in Berlin at the Diversity Conference but want to make it clear that the organization is open to every one interested in actively working on the topic. So please spread the word.
I put a sign up space in the thread so we can capture the initial interest that came out of this thread.
One of the key discussion will be the name of the group. So everyone put their thinking caps on so we can make this decision within the next month of so.
Sydney Poore
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