Hi, I'm James 'Jim' Salsman. I'm a male wikipedian who got in trouble for not backing down in a dispute about depleted uranium and birth defects. I really want things to be much better than they are for female editors of all ages, because I am sure that would make it easier for people trying to work on the same social problems I had been working on. I believe I have been right to ignore my editing restrictions because they were not serving to improve the quality of the encyclopedia. I am the only editor known to have taken an article to featured status while banned. I think if more people respected improving the quality of the encyclopedia instead of the often opposing policies and guidelines, the encyclopedia would be more welcoming for women and girls.
I've already commented a couple times on http://suegardner.org/2011/01/31/new-york-times-prompts-a-flurry-of-coverage... where I read about this email list. I have a specific set of recommendations, at http://talknicer.com/wm10ca.pdf but I want to make the following overlapping recommendations to specifically address the gender inequality issue:
1. Ask chapters to compete to nurture the greatest number of female administrators;
2. Bring all the articles on birth control to featured status;
3. Revive Esperanza and the Association of Editors' Advocates with a focus on editor mentoring;
4. Support a multilateral tax haven treaty in the US and any other countries that might still be opposing one;
5. Less javascript for mobile devices;
6. Simple language wikipedias in languages other than English (likely using namespace, subpage, or similar methods, not necessarily entire new wikis, if that will help editors share watchlists);
7. Low stakes instructional assessment content in Moodle's GIFT http://microformats.org/wiki/gift ;
8. Audio upload with rtmplite and gnash -- not just "would be nice" but with money sent to gnash developers;
9. Most popular related articles; and
10. Remove WP:NOTHOWTO because it is used to argue against topic notability but not well respected.
Please share your thoughts on these proposals. I am happy to explain how each of them benefits female editors or females in general (and thus female editors) and I hope you agree. Please let me know!
Best regards, James Salsman
- Remove WP:NOTHOWTO because it is used to argue against topic
notability but not well respected.
Best regards, James Salsman
This is a policy I have never agreed with along with the one exiling recipes. But how does it relate to women?
Actually I do know as my mother was a collector of both recipes and household howtos, but I would still like to hear your take. Howto can also be howto fix brakes or use a chain saw.
Fred
Though I'm not seeing the connection between female editors and multilateral tax havens (!), there are a couple of interesting points there to pick up on.
1. Ask chapters to compete to nurture the greatest number of female administrators
I do wonder if the 13% female participation rate is specific to just one or a limited number of projects, if it's an average across all projects, or if there is significant variation between projects.
I'm the first to point out that chapters (which are geographically oriented and usually national) do not really represent the "editorial community" of our projects, and I don't think there are any projects where more than 1-2% of active editors are also active chapter members. However, new editor recruitment and support might be one of the things that chapters should be encouraged to do. This depends on whether or not the chapter members are active and experienced Wiki(?)edians themselves, though.
5. Less javascript for mobile devices;
And not just mobile devices, less javascript period. And a lot fewer templates. And a more organized "help" process.
3. Revive Esperanza and the Association of Editors' Advocates with a focus on editor mentoring;
Well, no, let's *not* bring those back. But a stronger focus on new editor mentoring, such as the Ambassador program currently in development, would be positive.
As an aside, today Arthur Richards posted a link in the Wikitech mailing list relating to how one open source community learned to thrive. Perhaps we can draw some lessons from this as well. http://www.codesimplicity.com/post/open-source-community-simplified/
Risker/Anne
On Wednesday, February 02, 2011, Risker wrote:
I do wonder if the 13% female participation rate is specific to just one or a limited number of projects, if it's an average across all projects, or if there is significant variation between projects.
Hi Anne, the 13% is based on the reported 12.94% based on a survey [1] -- though it, as most surveys, is subject to self-selection bias. It had a massive number of respondents (N=175,000), but still required people already on the WP sites to choose to participate. There was also an earlier survey (N=151) that put it at 7.3% [2]. Neither had a project break-down.
[1]: http://www.wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_Overview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf [2]: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1297798
- Ask chapters to compete to nurture the greatest number of female
administrators;
Why do you think that chapters has a right to influence it? What do you think about gender check on the vote page and sock puppetry?
- Bring all the articles on birth control to featured status;
A scientific article vs phorums? :) In a scientific article will be information about physiology, statistic from different countries, but willn't features of different maternity hospital, so how can article may be more attractive in this topic?
And about other 8 points - I'm a woman and I don't understand how it related to gender and how it can help at all.