On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:55 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466@gmail.com> wrote:

I remember Robert Harris once saying to me, in an e-mail, something to the effect that one of the main reasons Wikimedia does so poorly at curating sexual content responsibly is its gender imbalance. He expressed the view that the only way this was ever going to change was by Wikimedia having a healthier gender ratio. I thought he was absolutely right.

Yes, that would be an over riding point we came to at WikiWomenCamp.

Want to know what a point of discussion was?

Pornography.

http://www.ludost.org/content/wikipedia-why-few-women-edit

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/WikiWomenCamp_day_2_011.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_from_WikiWomenCamp_2012

http://ozziesport.com/2011/07/why-dont-people-edit-wikipedia-small-survey-results-provide-some-insights/

So yes, systematic bias can be overcome by encouraging the growth of female contributors. The failure to attract women contributors to editing Wikipedia across various languages has little to do with that.

For an example of a woman exasperated by Wikipedia's handling of sexual content, see this post http://www.junkland.net/2011/11/donkey-punch-or-how-i-tried-to-fight.html by blogger Penny Sociologist, which my wife somehow came across.

This has whut to do with the issue? Misogyny and pornography are not the same thing. I'll take the opinion of a global group of women who came to the conclusion on their own that this is a red herring issue that does NOT work in terms of addressing the gendergap by trying to eliminate pornographic material from one white woman from the United States, which I previously stated was a consensus view at an internationally attended conference for addressing the gender gap was not an issue.

If you passionately believe in this issue, I would suggest forking and creating a separate list to remove pornographic material. If you passionately believe this is a FACTUAL issue that makes it harder for global participation of women in Wikimedia because they are offended by the pornographic material, I would suggest you do the research... show this is a problem and that women really are not contributing to Wikipedia in Indonesia, Brasil, Argentina, Cambodia, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Spain, Portugal, India, Canada and Russia amongst other places because of it. I'd guess that if you seriously did the research, you would find pornography falls extremely low on the reasons why women do not contribute to Wikipedia. I'd be extremely delighted to help you with this as I think there is a tremendous opportunity for understanding why women do not contribute to Wikipedia and why women SHOULD edit Wikipedia.

(And pardon for my terseness. It is 4:14am and I'm still jet lagged from my trip to Buenoes Aires where I got to meet some truly wonderful women, and discuss many of these issues for about five days. The ascyrhonous nature of coming back to the list where the discussion is so out of line with all these conversations from those actively involved in the movement is a bit jarring on the brain.)