Laura - Thanks for asking for more contributions. I was wondering what was going on, since the project has seemed a bit quiet lately! Glad to know it's catching steam again. I made some edits a few months ago to the US section.  (See comments below)


On 2/1/12 5:18 AM, Lodewijk wrote:
Perhaps it would be helpful if you could add some explanation why you are collecting this information, what you want to make clear. Because as I explained before to you privately (and I see nothing has changed) at least for the Netherlands the stats that have been put up are almost hilarious. Lots of percentages, but every Dutch person will be able to tell you that many of them are of no meaning (Ripuarian is not a language spoken at any significant level in the Netherlands, Zealandic is considered mainly a dialect and has 1 admin, of course there are no Dutch women in the enwiki arbcom, because to my best knowledge there are no Dutch people in there at all at this moment, and I would wonder why there are no Dutch female admins on the Portuguese Wikinews...) I am not sure if it is just me, but reading this page ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp/FAQ/Perspectives/Netherlands ) I would almost think that this is a parody of something - I can't tell if it is the same in other countries.

I've also been highly confused by these statistics. It confused me so much that I acted boldy and removed them from the United States section. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp/FAQ/Perspectives#United_States      When I started to see information on how there were no Portuguese women involved in Algerian Wikipedia I was like "why would there be? and is this information here?"

I rewrote the majority of the section to just discuss women's roles in the United States - at WMF, as fellows, as researchers, as Wikimedians and active editors, etc. I created a list of people who are active US Wikimedians who are known to be women (didn't want to make assumptions about anyone) and some of the cool things they've been doing. Of course, these are limited to people I know, so I hope others are added (as someone did me). I also removed the "US related on Wikipedia" in regards to the subject matter (which was added back). I wasn't really sure why netball would be featured because it's not popular in America at all, so to me it doesn't really tell us anything, but it's not popular. Same with roller derby. (But other women's sports aren't discussed?) So I guess if someone has interest in discussing American women's sports, this area has room for expansion, or IMHO removal. And the list of popular biographies makes sense - Amy Winehouse died when this data was retrieved and I'm sure her popularity has been replaced. And it's no surprise that "someone from Barbados" is in the top 10 - it's Rhianna, and same for Nicki Minaj (two of the most famous pop stars in the world, at least in the US.)  I just don't' think this shows much about women who contribute to Wikipedia except that people of all genders like reading articles about pop stars and media frenzies.

I'm more curious about how women are active and what women are doing. Who are planning events, have those been successes? Are people being hired by Wiki companies? (Not just Wikimedia.) What is participation like regarding women and other Wiki websites? (This conference is about that right, not just Wikimedia?). Sadly I can't gather data on those, nor do I know how, but it would be cool to know what the most popular Wiki's are for women and so forth.


I am sure your intentions are good though, so perhaps it would be helpful to state somewhere what kind of information you're looking for that is *really* informative, and get rid of the non-relevant parts? I would say that the semi-automated adding of information isn't exactly helpful in at least the Dutch case - again, I can't vouch for other countries. Some information *is* interesting (interest ratios on Facebook or other external websites) and it would be a waste if that gets discarded because of the irrelevance of the rest of the page.

+1. I think this has really cool potential to focus on "original research" - just knowing who is doing what and sharing that information. I took the time on the US section to not only celebrate who is doing what, but, opportunities that women have been given in the movement in the US. I wanted people to see what women were doing in the United States, not what they aren't doing. We already know the statistics are depressing about women's participating - so what are women doing to change that or to be a part of that?

Thanks Lodewijk and Srikanth for sharing your thoughts! I was beginning to think I was the only person who had these thoughts!

And thanks Laura for spearheading a unique and interesting opportunity to learn more about women around the world in the community. I hope people be bold and participate!

Sarah

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Sarah Stierch
Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellow
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