This is the new user mentoring program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Co-op
on English Wikipedia
On 12/31/2014 12:32 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote:
This is the new user mentoring program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Co-op
on English Wikipedia
This is great!
Also, I agree that a woman's space will be shut down much more quickly than GGTF could be, and through an actual Misc for Deletion. The (male dominated) "community" won't put up with it. And it would might be somewhat duplicative of the numerous relevant projects that exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias...
And another email list probably not needed unless it is for very specific projects. One of which might be:
A woman's "practice Wiki."
Even if it only used somewhat more rudimentary technology and had scaled down policy/help pages. And if it only included a few thousand initial articles across a variety of topics and grew only as woman chose to create articles not on Wikipedia and/or move articles over and practice on them.
*Editors would have to register but only would be verified as women if they became disruptive. And then once verified, usual relevant practices would apply. Advantages:
*We have to get women hooked and avoiding the most obvious problems of immediately deleted edits and hostility would give them a chance to get hooked.
*New editors could move back and forth between the two and it would be a place women having problems on regular wikipedia could go back to until they were ready to try again, without feeling the only alternatives is to quit.
*It's main/news pages would be of interest to women
*If it grew fast and became popular, Wikipedia might have to look at their policies. Even if it doesn't, it still helps create a strong and larger number of women who can make changes to the "community" policies.
*I'm sure others can come up with advantages.
This sort of thing probably could be done with just a couple employees and various donations as necessary.
Thoughts?
CM
No one says we can't make "our own" wiki - MediaWiki is free, after all.
I do hate having to have a practice wiki... it's like here are your training wheels then you graduate and can go on to write on the "real man's version" of Wikipedia.
It's like articles for creation :P
-Sar
On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Carol Moore dc carolmooredc@verizon.net wrote:
On 12/31/2014 12:32 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote:
This is the new user mentoring program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Co-op
on English Wikipedia
This is great!
Also, I agree that a woman's space will be shut down much more quickly than GGTF could be, and through an actual Misc for Deletion. The (male dominated) "community" won't put up with it. And it would might be somewhat duplicative of the numerous relevant projects that exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_ Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_gap_task_force#Related_WikiProjects
And another email list probably not needed unless it is for very specific projects. One of which might be:
A woman's "practice Wiki."
Even if it only used somewhat more rudimentary technology and had scaled down policy/help pages. And if it only included a few thousand initial articles across a variety of topics and grew only as woman chose to create articles not on Wikipedia and/or move articles over and practice on them.
*Editors would have to register but only would be verified as women if they became disruptive. And then once verified, usual relevant practices would apply. Advantages:
*We have to get women hooked and avoiding the most obvious problems of immediately deleted edits and hostility would give them a chance to get hooked.
*New editors could move back and forth between the two and it would be a place women having problems on regular wikipedia could go back to until they were ready to try again, without feeling the only alternatives is to quit.
*It's main/news pages would be of interest to women
*If it grew fast and became popular, Wikipedia might have to look at their policies. Even if it doesn't, it still helps create a strong and larger number of women who can make changes to the "community" policies.
*I'm sure others can come up with advantages.
This sort of thing probably could be done with just a couple employees and various donations as necessary.
Thoughts?
CM
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To me, a "practice wiki" is NOT the answer. But it's what looks like an answer when you frame the issue as "let's fix the problem with women" instead of "let's fix the problem with Wikipedia". I do not think a retreat to various "off-WMF" platforms is anything other that, a retreat.
I think the place to start is with the next WMF Strategic Planning cycle. Although I have not noticed anything being mentioned on-wiki yet, it's being talked about in the Metrics & Activities meetings as something that has started with WMF. I presume soon it has to engage with the community. Let's push for a target for female participation (the current one has one at 25% so just retaining that would be fine).
But let's push for the things that WMF didn't do last time in support of that goal.
1) Have a means to measure it. Create a demographic database within WMF and encourage new and existing users to provide information about themselves (by default or as a user-specified option, this information should be kept totally private and only used for statistical purposes to maximise people's willingness to provide the information). Then with this information, we can track various kinds of diversity and therefore be able to produce "active women editor" graphs (or for any other group) as easily as "active editor graphs". There's no point having a target if you have no way of knowing if you've reached it or not! I would also suggest this demographic database invited users to provide an email address to be used for other WMF-internal survey purposes. The primary one would be if their participation ceased for an extended period so they can be contacted for survey purposes. We need more information on why people leave because of editor decline more generally. I think the details of all this could be left in the hands of the WMF Analytics and Research team.
2) Experiment with platform-changes (usual A/B testing) to see if we can "design in" more gender-friendly solutions. As an engineer, Lila Tretikov probably understands this. It is very hard to change people's behaviours (culture) *but* it is a lot easier to change the platform through which the behaviours/cultures are manifested to make some behaviours easier or harder. As a simple example, Facebook took away the "dislike" (thumbs down) button a long time ago. Today, you can only "like" someone else's posting but have to bother to write a comment to express disagreement. That's a good example of making a "socially-positive" behaviour easy and a "socially-negative' behaviour harder. I suspect on Wikipedia, even ignoring vandalism, there are a lot more reverts than thanks. Is that socially-positive or socially-negative? If we have the user profiles (above), then changes to the platform (whether for gender-equity purposes or any other reason) can track the impact on editor behaviour (or more simply, does participation by women rise or fall or remain unchanged as a result).
3) Demand a higher proportion of self-identified women on committees etc. How high? Higher than the current self-identified female active editor proportion (because we are trying to lift the game) but not so high that female editors willing to serve on such things are exhausted by the workload. Maybe track it at 5% above the current female editor level or something like that. Did all the women on this list vote in the WMF Board of Trustee elections and any other elections that you were eligible to? No (and I confess I won't always bother either) so
If we want change at a massive scale, we need scalable solutions. Hand-to-hand combat over specific issues is unlikely to achieve this. We need to lift our focus to winning the war, not winning the battle.
Kerry
I suggest that interested people create an Individual Engagement Grant to create a women's space on Wikipedia. This can engage women through events, activities, recruitment, social media (incorporate WIkiWomen's Collab) and so forth.
You'd get funding from WMF, if approved, to hire a designer to make it cool looking (not ugly Wikipedia) and create the right team to make it happen.
I think it's the logical step. Just "doing it" is fine, but, I think creating a space with the back up of the community (WMF and editors) is ideal.
-Sarah
On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 3:16 PM, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
To me, a “practice wiki” is NOT the answer. But it’s what looks like an answer when you frame the issue as “let’s fix the problem with women” instead of “let’s fix the problem with Wikipedia”. I do not think a retreat to various “off-WMF” platforms is anything other that, a retreat.
I think the place to start is with the next WMF Strategic Planning cycle. Although I have not noticed anything being mentioned on-wiki yet, it’s being talked about in the Metrics & Activities meetings as something that has started with WMF. I presume soon it has to engage with the community. Let’s push for a target for female participation (the current one has one at 25% so just retaining that would be fine).
But let’s push for the things that WMF didn’t do last time in support of that goal.
Have a means to measure it. Create a demographic database withinWMF and encourage new and existing users to provide information about themselves (by default or as a user-specified option, this information should be kept totally private and only used for statistical purposes to maximise people’s willingness to provide the information). Then with this information, we can track various kinds of diversity and therefore be able to produce “active women editor” graphs (or for any other group) as easily as “active editor graphs”. There’s no point having a target if you have no way of knowing if you’ve reached it or not! I would also suggest this demographic database invited users to provide an email address to be used for other WMF-internal survey purposes. The primary one would be if their participation ceased for an extended period so they can be contacted for survey purposes. We need more information on why people leave because of editor decline more generally. I think the details of all this could be left in the hands of the WMF Analytics and Research team.
Experiment with platform-changes (usual A/B testing) to see ifwe can “design in” more gender-friendly solutions. As an engineer, Lila Tretikov probably understands this. It is very hard to change people’s behaviours (culture) **but** it is a lot easier to change the platform through which the behaviours/cultures are manifested to make some behaviours easier or harder. As a simple example, Facebook took away the “dislike” (thumbs down) button a long time ago. Today, you can only “like” someone else’s posting but have to bother to write a comment to express disagreement. That’s a good example of making a “socially-positive” behaviour easy and a “socially-negative’ behaviour harder. I suspect on Wikipedia, even ignoring vandalism, there are a lot more reverts than thanks. Is that socially-positive or socially-negative? If we have the user profiles (above), then changes to the platform (whether for gender-equity purposes or any other reason) can track the impact on editor behaviour (or more simply, does participation by women rise or fall or remain unchanged as a result).
Demand a higher proportion of self-identified women oncommittees etc. How high? Higher than the current self-identified female active editor proportion (because we are trying to lift the game) but not so high that female editors willing to serve on such things are exhausted by the workload. Maybe track it at 5% above the current female editor level or something like that. Did all the women on this list vote in the WMF Board of Trustee elections and any other elections that you were eligible to? No (and I confess I won’t always bother either) so
If we want change at a massive scale, we need scalable solutions. Hand-to-hand combat over specific issues is unlikely to achieve this. We need to lift our focus to winning the war, not winning the battle.
Kerry
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Re: my idea for "practice" women's wikipeida, it's only good if someone does it and it succeeds. At least Tim and friends can’t “Misc. For Delete it! Just brain storming...
Also, keeping track of all good ideas like those from Kerry...
Not sure what the difference between Sarah's idea below and LB's idea for a "Wikipedia project that's open to women" would be. I.e., is Sarah's idea less likely to be put up for deletion??
Thanks
On 12/31/2014 6:23 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote:
I suggest that interested people create an Individual Engagement Grant to create a women's space on Wikipedia. This can engage women through events, activities, recruitment, social media (incorporate WIkiWomen's Collab) and so forth.
You'd get funding from WMF, if approved, to hire a designer to make it cool looking (not ugly Wikipedia) and create the right team to make it happen.
I think it's the logical step. Just "doing it" is fine, but, I think creating a space with the back up of the community (WMF and editors) is ideal.
-Sarah