Joined the mailing list today. I have a long standing interest in the gender gap on Wikimedia projects.
My view is that the gender gap is real (based on stats and experience ) and harming our content because of the biases introduced from a male heavy culture.
Sydney. Poore (FloNight)
I am Nina (Nina-no) from Norway. I am an Art historian, but have also Sociology and Cultural studies in my background. I have been on the Norwegian Wikipedia from 2004.
Yesterday we had was stories in the press in Norway about motherblogers , and i am wondering why mothers are writing in blogs and Facebook and not on Wikipedia. I think we have to ask this question and try to find the answer.
Nina nina.wikipedia@gmail.com
Den 1. feb. 2011 kl. 13.44 skrev Sydney Poore:
Joined the mailing list today. I have a long standing interest in the gender gap on Wikimedia projects.
My view is that the gender gap is real (based on stats and experience ) and harming our content because of the biases introduced from a male heavy culture.
Sydney. Poore (FloNight) _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Hello,
I'm Lori, a stay at home mom and museum studies graduate student in Indianapolis who has quickly become known as "the Wikipedia girl" in my grad program. I'm a project leader for WikiProject:Public Art, along with Sarah Stierch (thank you for the kind words, Sarah!). I'm also the current Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and I've developed some Wikipedia-related programming for the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Nina made some great points about the Mommy blogger world and the Wikipedia world. I am of both "worlds" and feel that they really should be brought together. Stay at home moms especially utilize technology to feel more connected to the outside world; being a stay at home mom can feel very alienating otherwise. So many moms are extremely well educated and have left their careers to stay home, only to begin to feel restless (*raising hand*). It's very true that if this group was more aware of the altruistic nature of sharing knowledge on Wikipedia, they would jump at the chance to join such a community. I've had many of my fellow Mommy bloggers curiously ask about what I do. There's real interest there. They're also very interested in Wikipedia's role as an educational tool, which is something I'm very interested in too.
This is not all about SAHM's but felt that I should expound on that point, because it's a great one! I also want to reiterate the American Association of Museum (AAM)'s Future of Museum's tweet yesterday that brought together the points of the NYTimes article and Nina Simon's recent posthttp://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2011/01/want-to-get-your-content-out-there-put.htmlthat museum's should put their content on Wikipedia. They made the point that the museum world is very much a female majority, and Wikipedia is a female minority - it makes sense that the cultural sector has been so slow to warm up to sharing content on Wikipedia. I hope to help change that through the Wikimedia GLAM initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM.
This year I intend to complete an Independent Study to research & write a (hopefully substantial) article regarding the role of Wikipedia in museum programming in order to teach 21st century research/technology/collaborative skills to our communities while also sharing museum research and increasing accessibility to collections. I think that the gender gap issue is an important factor to consider in this.
This is certainly an important topic and I look forward to learning & sharing more! As Sarah said - we'll hopefully make a big splash at Wikimania! :)
Lori
Hello Lori and Sarah,
I'm very interested in following the work that the two of you are doing.
My children are grown now (25, 27, 29) but definitely remember the years that I spend mostly as an at home mom and agree that these women SHOULD be a good source of volunteers for WMF.
Currently I live in St. Augustine FL most of the time so also see many older women with loads of free time on their hands who looking for volunteer work that interests them. There are community organizations of primarily women who are involved with saving the cultures jewels in St. Augustine (the oldest city in the United States). It would be great if we could find a way to get them working with WMF.
Sydney
On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 8:51 AM, Lori Byrd Phillips hstryqt@gmail.comwrote:
Hello,
I'm Lori, a stay at home mom and museum studies graduate student in Indianapolis who has quickly become known as "the Wikipedia girl" in my grad program. I'm a project leader for WikiProject:Public Art, along with Sarah Stierch (thank you for the kind words, Sarah!). I'm also the current Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and I've developed some Wikipedia-related programming for the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Nina made some great points about the Mommy blogger world and the Wikipedia world. I am of both "worlds" and feel that they really should be brought together. Stay at home moms especially utilize technology to feel more connected to the outside world; being a stay at home mom can feel very alienating otherwise. So many moms are extremely well educated and have left their careers to stay home, only to begin to feel restless (*raising hand*). It's very true that if this group was more aware of the altruistic nature of sharing knowledge on Wikipedia, they would jump at the chance to join such a community. I've had many of my fellow Mommy bloggers curiously ask about what I do. There's real interest there. They're also very interested in Wikipedia's role as an educational tool, which is something I'm very interested in too.
This is not all about SAHM's but felt that I should expound on that point, because it's a great one! I also want to reiterate the American Association of Museum (AAM)'s Future of Museum's tweet yesterday that brought together the points of the NYTimes article and Nina Simon's recent posthttp://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2011/01/want-to-get-your-content-out-there-put.htmlthat museum's should put their content on Wikipedia. They made the point that the museum world is very much a female majority, and Wikipedia is a female minority - it makes sense that the cultural sector has been so slow to warm up to sharing content on Wikipedia. I hope to help change that through the Wikimedia GLAM initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM.
This year I intend to complete an Independent Study to research & write a (hopefully substantial) article regarding the role of Wikipedia in museum programming in order to teach 21st century research/technology/collaborative skills to our communities while also sharing museum research and increasing accessibility to collections. I think that the gender gap issue is an important factor to consider in this.
This is certainly an important topic and I look forward to learning & sharing more! As Sarah said - we'll hopefully make a big splash at Wikimania! :)
Lori
-- Lori Byrd Phillips | Museums & Motherhood http://hstryqt.tumblr.com/
On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Nina Wikipedia nina.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
I am Nina (Nina-no) from Norway. I am an Art historian, but have also Sociology and Cultural studies in my background. I have been on the Norwegian Wikipedia from 2004.
Yesterday we had was stories in the press in Norway about motherblogers , and i am wondering why mothers are writing in blogs and Facebook and not on Wikipedia. I think we have to ask this question and try to find the answer.
Nina nina.wikipedia@gmail.com
Den 1. feb. 2011 kl. 13.44 skrev Sydney Poore:
Joined the mailing list today. I have a long standing interest in the gender gap on Wikimedia projects.
My view is that the gender gap is real (based on stats and experience ) and harming our content because of the biases introduced from a male heavy culture.
Sydney. Poore (FloNight) _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Hello Nina, (and Aude, Sue, Erik, Sarah, and Fred)
Looking through the archives I see fuller introductions are in order so I'll explain my history with Wikimedia Projects and my reason for joining.
My name is Sydney Poore. I currently spend most of my time in Florida. By eduction is as a Registered Nurse and Sociology.
In the past I worked as Obstetrical and Gynecological Registered Nurse. More recently my husband and I bought a Merle Norman Cosmetic Store and an art gallery in St. Augustine Florida.
I began editing Wikipedia English in 2005 and later started contributing to other projects, primarily Commons, English Wikiquote and Wikisource.
As a volunteer I've gotten very involved with the administrative side of English Wikipedia and to a lesser extent the Wikimedia Foundation. I've helped out by serving time on the Wikipedia English Arbitration Committee and hold Oversight and Checkuser tools there. Also have assisted with the WMF Strategic Planning Project as facilitator of the Community Health task force (which looked at ways to help the WMF projects grow and thrive). Currently I hold a seat on the WMF Ombudsmen Commission (reviews complaints about the violation of the WMF privacy policy).
My frequent contact with women in my daily work is in sharp contrast to the number of women who I encounter on WMF Projects and I think this makes me especially sensitive to the gender issue.
Sydney
On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Nina Wikipedia nina.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
I am Nina (Nina-no) from Norway. I am an Art historian, but have also Sociology and Cultural studies in my background. I have been on the Norwegian Wikipedia from 2004.
Yesterday we had was stories in the press in Norway about motherblogers , and i am wondering why mothers are writing in blogs and Facebook and not on Wikipedia. I think we have to ask this question and try to find the answer.
Nina nina.wikipedia@gmail.com
Den 1. feb. 2011 kl. 13.44 skrev Sydney Poore:
Joined the mailing list today. I have a long standing interest in the gender gap on Wikimedia projects.
My view is that the gender gap is real (based on stats and experience ) and harming our content because of the biases introduced from a male heavy culture.
Sydney. Poore (FloNight) _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Hello everyone,
My name is Evangeline Han and I am currently residing in Malaysia. I edit Wikipedia under the username Bejinhan. I joined Wikipedia in June 2009 and have been editing actively since then. Irl, I am a student and journalist intern.
The reason why I joined this mailing list is because I was appalled at the stats of female contributors. 13% only? I want to help improve that number.
Also, If we can have a goal/aim of a percentage we want to reach, that would be really great.
Looking forward to collaborating more on this project.
Best, Evangeline Han
On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 9:31 PM, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Nina, (and Aude, Sue, Erik, Sarah, and Fred)
Looking through the archives I see fuller introductions are in order so I'll explain my history with Wikimedia Projects and my reason for joining.
My name is Sydney Poore. I currently spend most of my time in Florida. By eduction is as a Registered Nurse and Sociology.
In the past I worked as Obstetrical and Gynecological Registered Nurse. More recently my husband and I bought a Merle Norman Cosmetic Store and an art gallery in St. Augustine Florida.
I began editing Wikipedia English in 2005 and later started contributing to other projects, primarily Commons, English Wikiquote and Wikisource.
As a volunteer I've gotten very involved with the administrative side of English Wikipedia and to a lesser extent the Wikimedia Foundation. I've helped out by serving time on the Wikipedia English Arbitration Committee and hold Oversight and Checkuser tools there. Also have assisted with the WMF Strategic Planning Project as facilitator of the Community Health task force (which looked at ways to help the WMF projects grow and thrive). Currently I hold a seat on the WMF Ombudsmen Commission (reviews complaints about the violation of the WMF privacy policy).
My frequent contact with women in my daily work is in sharp contrast to the number of women who I encounter on WMF Projects and I think this makes me especially sensitive to the gender issue.
Sydney
On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Nina Wikipedia nina.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
I am Nina (Nina-no) from Norway. I am an Art historian, but have also Sociology and Cultural studies in my background. I have been on the Norwegian Wikipedia from 2004.
Yesterday we had was stories in the press in Norway about motherblogers , and i am wondering why mothers are writing in blogs and Facebook and not on Wikipedia. I think we have to ask this question and try to find the answer.
Nina nina.wikipedia@gmail.com
Den 1. feb. 2011 kl. 13.44 skrev Sydney Poore:
Joined the mailing list today. I have a long standing interest in the gender gap on Wikimedia projects.
My view is that the gender gap is real (based on stats and experience ) and harming our content because of the biases introduced from a male heavy culture.
Sydney. Poore (FloNight) _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Olá! :-D
I'm Béria Lima Lima, 25 years old, brazilian but now living in Portugal.
I edit Wikipédia since 2007 and I always dream about a Wikimeeting with more than 2 girls :D (the only meeting with more than that was the 1º General Assembly of Wikimedia Portugal - when we had the big number of 3 girls)
Like Evangelline says: We need to improve that 13% :D
All the best, _____ *Béria Lima* Wikimedia Portugal http://wikimedia.pt (351) 963 953 042
*Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer.*
2011/2/1 Evangeline Han bejinhan@gmail.com
Hello everyone,
My name is Evangeline Han and I am currently residing in Malaysia. I edit Wikipedia under the username Bejinhan. I joined Wikipedia in June 2009 and have been editing actively since then. Irl, I am a student and journalist intern.
The reason why I joined this mailing list is because I was appalled at the stats of female contributors. 13% only? I want to help improve that number.
Also, If we can have a goal/aim of a percentage we want to reach, that would be really great.
Looking forward to collaborating more on this project.
Best, Evangeline Han
On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 9:31 PM, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.comwrote:
Hello Nina, (and Aude, Sue, Erik, Sarah, and Fred)
Looking through the archives I see fuller introductions are in order so I'll explain my history with Wikimedia Projects and my reason for joining.
My name is Sydney Poore. I currently spend most of my time in Florida. By eduction is as a Registered Nurse and Sociology.
In the past I worked as Obstetrical and Gynecological Registered Nurse. More recently my husband and I bought a Merle Norman Cosmetic Store and an art gallery in St. Augustine Florida.
I began editing Wikipedia English in 2005 and later started contributing to other projects, primarily Commons, English Wikiquote and Wikisource.
As a volunteer I've gotten very involved with the administrative side of English Wikipedia and to a lesser extent the Wikimedia Foundation. I've helped out by serving time on the Wikipedia English Arbitration Committee and hold Oversight and Checkuser tools there. Also have assisted with the WMF Strategic Planning Project as facilitator of the Community Health task force (which looked at ways to help the WMF projects grow and thrive). Currently I hold a seat on the WMF Ombudsmen Commission (reviews complaints about the violation of the WMF privacy policy).
My frequent contact with women in my daily work is in sharp contrast to the number of women who I encounter on WMF Projects and I think this makes me especially sensitive to the gender issue.
Sydney
On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Nina Wikipedia nina.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
I am Nina (Nina-no) from Norway. I am an Art historian, but have also Sociology and Cultural studies in my background. I have been on the Norwegian Wikipedia from 2004.
Yesterday we had was stories in the press in Norway about motherblogers , and i am wondering why mothers are writing in blogs and Facebook and not on Wikipedia. I think we have to ask this question and try to find the answer.
Nina nina.wikipedia@gmail.com
Den 1. feb. 2011 kl. 13.44 skrev Sydney Poore:
Joined the mailing list today. I have a long standing interest in the gender gap on Wikimedia projects.
My view is that the gender gap is real (based on stats and experience ) and harming our content because of the biases introduced from a male heavy culture.
Sydney. Poore (FloNight) _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Hi All -
I am Anne (User:Risker) from Canada. I am one of three women members of the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. Perhaps somewhat unusually, I don't really have much STEM background - I work in healthcare administration - but I have a particular interest in organizational functioning.
As I've mentioned in some other venues, I suspect that many of the issues that make Wikipedia participation unappealing to women generally are the same as the ones that make it difficult to attract new members generally.
This has the potential to be useful and interesting. Thanks for setting things up.
Risker/Anne
Hello all,
I'm a woman who works primarily on the English Wikipedia. I'm an active user and an admin, but not under this name. I guess I'll be doubly anonymous. I've experienced sexism while working on Wikimedia projects, in the form of sexist personal attacks and dealings with users who were frank in their belief that women was less than them as a Wikipedian and as a human being. I'm currently "passing", so I can't get into details.
Nepenthe
Hello all, I'm Joseph and have been follow issues of gender imbalance at WP since 2006 (with the launch of wikichix), and this is actually the focus of my work this year.
Hi everyone...
I'm Christine, and i'm an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation. I work in the Community Department in Reader Relations. I'm particularly interested in issues surrounding new editors and am following several initiatives we've got going to try and increase our numbers of editors in general. I'm a fairly infrequent editor on the projects as a volunteer.
I'm also a graduate student in Applied Anthropology, writing my thesis on Stakeholder Relations in Web 2.0. It's a fancy way of saying i'm studying how online communities interface with the company (or companies) who own/run their web homes. I'm not studying Wikipedia in particular, but i think the information i'm gathering will be useful to all different kinds of online communities.
Looking forward to the discussions on the list!
-christine
--------- Christine Moellenberndt Community Associate Wikimedia Foundation
christine@wikimedia.org
Hi all, I'm Sage. I've been a Wikipedian since 2005, and I've been thinking and talking with other Wikimedians about the gender gap since around early 2009, when the first results from that survey came out.
Right now, I work for the Wikimedia Foundation as part of the team working on the Wikipedia Ambassador Program, a project that makes connections between the Wikipedia community and academic experts and their students. One thing that's nice about this project is that when you're working with classes full of students who have been assigned to contribute to Wikipedia, the gender ratio is a lot closer to even. We're also finding, I think, that the people drawn to the Wikipedia Ambassador roles end up having less of a gender gap than Wikipedia contributors overall, and a lot of our Campus Ambassadors are people who totally new to the community.
Building off of Kat's ideas about Wikipedia attracting people with specific traits and not others, I think there's a lot of potential for attracting talented and enthusiastic people with different sets of traits if we do more to define specific roles they can step into. There's a ton of specialization within the community, but the gateway is pretty narrow: you have to like the part that comes right after you click [edit] on an article or a talk page enough to stick around. Once you've learned the ropes, you may find some other important part of the project (besides editing articles or commenting on them) is what keeps you interested, but if you don't like that first step enough, you'll never discover the other roles you could take on. So creating and drawing attention to other entry points into the community is an area where I see a lot of potential.
-Sage
HI, I'm Stasie (user:Lvova) from Russia. I'm 22 years old, studying psychology and management, working in PR, in Wikipedia since 2007. I don't see in ruwiki any real gender problems except for motivation (for example, study of women entrepreneurs has shown that women in Russia are beginning business in order to maintain the family, and their work's fields related to fashion and crafts mostly; so how related Wikipedia and family?).