Hi, I've been lurking this list for some time and have been getting a bit depressed by the direction it's taking as of late. It was all cha-cha-cha in the beginning, but now I've seen references to women not wanting their children exposed to vulgarity, women and transgendereds needing a separate list to feel comfortable, and women on Wikipedia being compared to rural Africa as served by NGOs.
As a chick that likes computer stuff, I've encountered this before in looking for peer groups and it makes me feel double alienated--I don't even *like* children and now they're part of a conversation about me as a female on the internet.
Personally, broad statistics about women nearly never ring true, and that's a conversation block. Nerdy guys have taught me Wordpress, torrenting, and heaps of other useful internet skills. In turn, I have taught some lady friends. It would be more encouraging to get back to what we know and how we can share it.
I don't edit Wikipedia because I've never taken the time to learn the system and I'm afraid I'll screw up. I assume it would feel like making a big mistake in a newspaper and having the whole neighborhood scoff, and I think that becomes a part of my Wikipedia profile forever and ever. I'd like to find a YouTube video to walk me through basic involvement. If it's that cute guy from Portland who is now a Wikipedia community manager presenting it, well all the better. I could also be encouraged to edit if the community had an offline component that included meeting for microbrews.
Thanks, Carissa
2011/3/15 Carissa Wodehouse carissawodehouse@gmail.com:
I don't edit Wikipedia because I've never taken the time to learn the system and I'm afraid I'll screw up. I assume it would feel like making a big mistake in a newspaper and having the whole neighborhood scoff, and I think that becomes a part of my Wikipedia profile forever and ever. I'd like to find a YouTube video to walk me through basic involvement.
What do you (and others in the same position) think of this video? http://www.howcast.com/videos/317521-How-To-Edit-a-Wikipedia-Article
I'm asking because it's one of the higher production quality ones I've seen - unfortunately not under licensing terms we can use, and now a bit outdated (still shows the old look&feel). But would be interested if this is a format that makes sense to you, if it's too basic, etc.
Or this one: http://www.commoncraft.com/wikipedia-video? Also very basic and a little outdated
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From: erik@wikimedia.org Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2011 01:25:32 -0700 To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Proposal: Forking gendergap: Main list for women and transgender, sublist for male supporters
2011/3/15 Carissa Wodehouse carissawodehouse@gmail.com:
I don't edit Wikipedia because I've never taken the time to learn the system and I'm afraid I'll screw up. I assume it would feel like making a big mistake in a newspaper and having the whole neighborhood scoff, and I think that becomes a part of my Wikipedia profile forever and ever. I'd like to find a YouTube video to walk me through basic involvement.
What do you (and others in the same position) think of this video? http://www.howcast.com/videos/317521-How-To-Edit-a-Wikipedia-Article
I'm asking because it's one of the higher production quality ones I've seen - unfortunately not under licensing terms we can use, and now a bit outdated (still shows the old look&feel). But would be interested if this is a format that makes sense to you, if it's too basic, etc.
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I don't edit Wikipedia because I've never taken the time to learn the system and I'm afraid I'll screw up. I assume it would feel like making a big mistake in a newspaper and having the whole neighborhood scoff, and I think that becomes a part of my Wikipedia profile forever and ever. I'd like to find a YouTube video to walk me through basic involvement. If it's that cute guy from Portland who is now a Wikipedia community manager presenting it, well all the better. I could also be encouraged to edit if the community had an offline component that included meeting for microbrews.
Thanks, Carissa
One of the original meanings of Wikipedia:Ignore all rules addressed that. It's current formulation is laconic and opaque to anyone but an insider. The original formulation was "If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the Wiki, then ignore them and go about your business."
I remember getting off to a pretty rough start.
As to beer, I think you need to live in London for that.
Fred
Hello,
My name is Nicole Willson and I have been editing wikis for the past 5 years, mostly wikiHow. Some of you know me and some of you don't so I figured I'd write a brief intro first. I also was one of the organizers for Recent Changes Camp in Boston (which had a high percentage of female attendees), have taught wikis to middle schoolers and worked/interned at various feminist organizations including the New York City Chapter of NOW and the YWCA in Princeton.
I've been lurking on the list and have almost participated in some of the conversations, but wanted to get a feel for the culture here first. I considered contributing to the conversation about what motivates women to edit but didn't for the following reasons:
- I am not sure that my motivations are that different from that of men. - I am not sure how much of my motivation has to do with my gender and how much of it has to do with my personality or past experiences. - I was afraid that someone would take my reasons and turn them into some broader stereotype about women, like what happened with most women editors being wiki gnomes. - I could have responded with information about women editors based on personal experience and stats from the Poynter, but didn't want to detract from the current conversation about how to get more female involvement in the WMF projects.
I don't mind that there are men on the list. Personally, I believe that men can be feminists and work against sexism. I do think that they have something to offer. For example, there's the National Organization for Men Against Sexism which is very active in Boston and does talks in conjunction with NOW and they work together on events to discuss how to eliminate sexism.
I just wish to be asked things directly, instead of having people make assumptions about my experience as a woman with wikis. It's great that the men on this list know women who edit and are in discussion with them, but I'd rather hear directly from those women if at all possible.
I was encouraged to join this list by folks on #wiki in freenode and I do think I could help. I wish there was a list of things I could do to help (which was actually one of my barriers to entry for Wikipedia, not being able to figure out the roles I could take on right away). For example, half of the female admins that we know the gender for on wikiHow are female, and I'm sure some of them would be happy to talk about why they are involved with wikiHow as opposed to Wikipedia (where many of them have accounts) if they were asked. I also have some theories about why wikiHow has more women (NOTE: nobody involved in the wikiHow project ever intentionally designed the site so that there would be more women, it just happened that way). I may be able to help with this and with the efforts going on in NYC.
Lastly, I had a question about Fred's statement about rules. If following rules isn't that important in the beginning, how come I have only gotten feedback once about what I've done wrong with date formatting and never gotten a message about what I've done right on Wikipedia? I've made at least 150 edits, so one of them must have been good, right? Instead I get a message about date formatting (which someone else could probably fix easily) and told to look at the MoS (which assumes that I know that it stands for Manual of Style). It seems to me that there may be a disconnect here.
On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.netwrote:
I don't edit Wikipedia because I've never taken the time to learn the system and I'm afraid I'll screw up. I assume it would feel like making a big mistake in a newspaper and having the whole neighborhood scoff, and I think that becomes a part of my Wikipedia profile forever and ever. I'd like to find a YouTube video to walk me through basic involvement. If it's that cute guy from Portland who is now a Wikipedia community manager presenting it, well all the better. I could also be encouraged to edit if the community had an offline component that included meeting for microbrews.
Thanks, Carissa
One of the original meanings of Wikipedia:Ignore all rules addressed that. It's current formulation is laconic and opaque to anyone but an insider. The original formulation was "If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the Wiki, then ignore them and go about your business."
I remember getting off to a pretty rough start.
As to beer, I think you need to live in London for that.
Fred
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Hello,
My name is Nicole Willson and I have been editing wikis for the past 5 years, mostly wikiHow. Some of you know me and some of you don't so I figured I'd write a brief intro first. I also was one of the organizers for Recent Changes Camp in Boston (which had a high percentage of female attendees), have taught wikis to middle schoolers and worked/interned at various feminist organizations including the New York City Chapter of NOW and the YWCA in Princeton.
I've been lurking on the list and have almost participated in some of the conversations, but wanted to get a feel for the culture here first. I considered contributing to the conversation about what motivates women to edit but didn't for the following reasons:
- I am not sure that my motivations are that different from that of men.
- I am not sure how much of my motivation has to do with my gender and
how much of it has to do with my personality or past experiences.
- I was afraid that someone would take my reasons and turn them into some
broader stereotype about women, like what happened with most women editors being wiki gnomes.
- I could have responded with information about women editors based on
personal experience and stats from the Poynter, but didn't want to detract from the current conversation about how to get more female involvement in the WMF projects.
I don't mind that there are men on the list. Personally, I believe that men can be feminists and work against sexism. I do think that they have something to offer. For example, there's the National Organization for Men Against Sexism which is very active in Boston and does talks in conjunction with NOW and they work together on events to discuss how to eliminate sexism.
I just wish to be asked things directly, instead of having people make assumptions about my experience as a woman with wikis. It's great that the men on this list know women who edit and are in discussion with them, but I'd rather hear directly from those women if at all possible.
I was encouraged to join this list by folks on #wiki in freenode and I do think I could help. I wish there was a list of things I could do to help (which was actually one of my barriers to entry for Wikipedia, not being able to figure out the roles I could take on right away). For example, half of the female admins that we know the gender for on wikiHow are female, and I'm sure some of them would be happy to talk about why they are involved with wikiHow as opposed to Wikipedia (where many of them have accounts) if they were asked. I also have some theories about why wikiHow has more women (NOTE: nobody involved in the wikiHow project ever intentionally designed the site so that there would be more women, it just happened that way). I may be able to help with this and with the efforts going on in NYC.
Lastly, I had a question about Fred's statement about rules. If following rules isn't that important in the beginning, how come I have only gotten feedback once about what I've done wrong with date formatting and never gotten a message about what I've done right on Wikipedia? I've made at least 150 edits, so one of them must have been good, right? Instead I get a message about date formatting (which someone else could probably fix easily) and told to look at the MoS (which assumes that I know that it stands for Manual of Style). It seems to me that there may be a disconnect here.
Yes, we're definitely running on one cylinder with respect to positive feedback. If the Metaverse Mod Squad http://www.metaversemodsquad.com/ were hired to evaluate and improve our operation (actually possible, but I have no idea what the terms would be) I'm pretty sure that would be one of the first of many things they would advise and organize.
There is a lot of resistance to some simple game-like reward system, points even like you get on Yahoo Answers. No one has ever taken such suggestions seriously. I remember when I was playing on Northern Lights, a game, another player would chat and occasionally give me a cookie. And you can do that on Wikipedia, a barnstar or a whole cheesecake, see Wikipedia:Awards Of course, there, on Northern Lights, there was a real time chat system inside the game. We might or might not benefit from that.
I think further development of our anemic reward system is something we could do.
The great userbox row relates to this somehow as it was a sort of social media devise which made user pages into a sort of defining portrait of the editor, see Wikipedia:Userbox policy poll
These: Wikipedia:Userboxes/Politics#Feminist_movement may be interesting, btw.
Fred
On 3/15/11 9:34 AM, Nicole Willson wrote:
Lastly, I had a question about Fred's statement about rules. If following rules isn't that important in the beginning, how come I have only gotten feedback once about what I've done wrong with date formatting and never gotten a message about what I've done right on Wikipedia? I've made at least 150 edits, so one of them must have been good, right? Instead I get a message about date formatting (which someone else could probably fix easily) and told to look at the MoS (which assumes that I know that it stands for Manual of Style). It seems to me that there may be a disconnect here.
Yes, there is definitely a disconnect. I proposed adding some positive user feedback templates to the widely-used Twinkle gadget a while back, but was shot down due to concerns that it would be "abused"(?!). So instead, I created a new "WikiLove" user script and have proposed it as a new gadget. This script makes it just as easy to add barnstars, cookies, kittens, cupcakes, etc. to user talk pages as it is to add warning templates via Twinkle. The response to my proposal was baffling: "doesn't seem to have any practical purpose", "I don't think most people would be pleased to see an increase in barnstar-giving", "the current level of barnstar-giving is sufficient". Apparently the community puts little to no values in positive user feedback. This is probably a symptom of the Eternal September effect mentioned by Sue in the March Update. I think the culture can change, but it's going to take a sustained and concerted effort.
Kaldari
On 3/15/11 9:34 AM, Nicole Willson wrote:
Lastly, I had a question about Fred's statement about rules. If following rules isn't that important in the beginning, how come I have only gotten feedback once about what I've done wrong with date formatting and never gotten a message about what I've done right on Wikipedia? I've made at least 150 edits, so one of them must have been good, right? Instead I get a message about date formatting (which someone else could probably fix easily) and told to look at the MoS (which assumes that I know that it stands for Manual of Style). It seems to me that there may be a disconnect here.
Yes, there is definitely a disconnect. I proposed adding some positive user feedback templates to the widely-used Twinkle gadget a while back, but was shot down due to concerns that it would be "abused"(?!). So instead, I created a new "WikiLove" user script and have proposed it as a new gadget. This script makes it just as easy to add barnstars, cookies, kittens, cupcakes, etc. to user talk pages as it is to add warning templates via Twinkle. The response to my proposal was baffling: "doesn't seem to have any practical purpose", "I don't think most people would be pleased to see an increase in barnstar-giving", "the current level of barnstar-giving is sufficient". Apparently the community puts little to no values in positive user feedback. This is probably a symptom of the Eternal September effect mentioned by Sue in the March Update. I think the culture can change, but it's going to take a sustained and concerted effort.
Kaldari
Obviously a gendered response...
Perhaps a backslapping or high-fiving bot...
Fred
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 9:02 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Obviously a gendered response...
Perhaps a backslapping or high-fiving bot...
I'm trying to assume good faith here... but I want you to know, that reading a statement like that from a man on this list, makes it feel uncomfortable for me as a female. The comment reads to me like you're not taking these issues seriously and that you have an agenda that does not necessarily connect with "increasing female participation on Wikipedia." In my opinion, this type of response, the lack of thinking as to why women might not want to hear men making these comments is why men should fork off.
The community does have an offline component; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup and its list of cities.
I don't edit Wikipedia because I've never taken the time to learn the system and I'm afraid I'll screw up. I assume it would feel like making a big mistake in a newspaper and having the whole neighborhood scoff, and I think that becomes a part of my Wikipedia profile forever and ever. I'd like to find a YouTube video to walk me through basic involvement. If it's that cute guy from Portland who is now a Wikipedia community manager presenting it, well all the better. I could also be encouraged to edit if the community had an offline component that included meeting for microbrews.
Thanks, Carissa
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