Now that there's room in the discussion for a new topic :-), I'd like to ask for help from some of you experienced Wikipedians in bringing a new group of women to the project.
I'm a professor of Women's & Gender Studies, and for their senior capstone project, I've had a group of WSG majors students working on WP articles for the WikiProject Feminism. They've selected articles from the list of requested articles and stubs from WP:Feminism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Feminism), and have been researching, writing, and revising in their sandbox pages for the last few weeks. We're planning to post the articles in class today (a few make take a little longer, but this week for sure -- it's the last week of the term).
It's been a wonderful experience for them, learning about how to present research for the Wikipedia audience compared to an academic audience, and to make feminist ideas accessible to larger audience, and more. It's given them a new appreciation of Wikipedia -- most of their professors tell them not to use it, so it was a big shock the first day of class when I announced we'd spend the quarter working on it. It's also been very challenging for many, especially the technical aspects of working with wiki markup and Wikipedia.
Will those of you who volunteer in this area help shepherd them into the fold? I'm not expecting my students to be treated with kid gloves, but we've watched a few edit wars, and they're nervous. As with any group of students, some are stronger writers than others, and some of these pieces will need more help than others. Here's the list of articles that will soon be added/updated:
American women's firsts Feminism in Thailand Feminism & BDSM Metaformic theory Women's shelters Genderfuck Feminist pedagogy
Thank you for the work that you, and for any help you can provide to my students.