One way of doing this might be a simple one - pushing awareness of the Mediation Committee. Right now, people seem to go to ArbCom and ArbCom only, when there's a similar body for content disputes. On anthere's point, this could be the case. One of our problems here is the lack of information - of the people who leave, what percentage are women? Is it *specifically* women driven off, or a greater proportion of women than men? We need to find some way of answering these questions. On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 8:04 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

On 2/10/2011 4:00 PM, Fred Bauder wrote: Well, let me say it this way. I am regularly taking time of from Wikipedia because of petty content disputes. Like whether 9000 out of 21000 news articles mentioning that the organization is conservative is sufficient to add it to the lead of the article, and whether that absolutely should be balanced with the only 2 mentions out of 17,000 news articles that can be found mentioning that the other organization is liberal. This kind of petty POV pushing is so childish. And sorry, but this is something man do far more often than women and I have seen sufficient woman just leave after two or three rounds of rule bending stubbornness. I think the way to get a feel on the WHY are women not at wikipedia is to have a survey asking women why they have left. There is just one question to be asked: "Have you or would you like to edit Wikipedia, and if so, why not /not anymore?" Kim

I have seen over last 10 days a lot of challenging and denial of women's experience here, which I don't think is helpful for coming up with solutions. As others have said, a next step for the foundation may be to do a study of why women leave wikipedia (either as newbies or experienced users) and a number of reasons have been given here from individual womens' experience which might help create a check box format. (With "other" being give lots of room.) Some examples may represent the experience of 40%, some of only 3%. But if women are going to be challenged every time they discuss a problem they've had, it's going to make it pretty hard to get them to say much else here or to encourage them to help forward the project of getting more women involved. So think before you write. Thanks! Carol in dc

To add, it won't be difficult to find all the women that have not edited for the say last 3 months and send them an e-mail if they have one on the system. Kim On 2/10/2011 6:30 PM, Kim van der Linde wrote: -- http://www.kimvdlinde.com

When this list was started, there was a Chica who said she lived right outside NY,. However, I would appreciate it if any NY chic reaches out to me. I have a friend who works at an web org that has a high percentage of females - and have a speaker series. She said we could prob present there and recommended many hacker spaces in the area that we could present as well (she is a programmer) So looking for a bunch of NY chicas to organize a presentation. And don't be nervous about public speaking - I am so loud and bicultural that I usually do something to soak up all the embarrassment of the group. Lololl I also promise that you have to do anything u don't want to do...but for this to work, we need a robust group. Come on NY chicas!! Let's focus on solidarity and empower others together!!! So contact me!! Now!! Hit reply -!! Lolol come on!! We can be like a female version of transformers, and we combine our strengths, we can sing (insert transformer melody) "wiki chicas, more than meets the eyes. Wiki chicas, awesome robettes who gets females to share knowledge." Lololol Okay i promise not to be corny - but let's get together!!! Sandy Sent from my iPhone On Feb 11, 2011, at 4:37 AM, Oliver Keyes <scire.facias(a)gmail.com> wrote: