I worried over this earlier in the month, then I got a brief vacation with my sisters. Now I'm back and I need to make up my mind whether or not I want to pursue the WikiProject Women proposal that I made back in January. (Since there are only five days left in the Inspire Campaign.)
Here's a link for those who aren't familiar, or who haven't thought about it in awhile: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/WikiProject_Women
The original proposal was for a women-only Wikipedia (English) project, but because of the hostility of some in opposing the idea (and the Kaffeeklatsch test area), I'm leaning now toward a women-only area at meta (right term? I mean at wikimedia.org).
Feedback? Suggestions? There was lots of support, but there was also, as most of you know, plenty of opposition.
Lightbreather
@Lightbreather, if you go back to your original problem, it was "a place where a woman can go to be able to participate in discussions without being dominated by men's voices". That problem still exits.
But I have given a great deal of thought to this, and I don't think getting rid of all men is the answer. This mailing list is the proof of that. Women are heard, and the mailing list is richer indeed for the contributions from the men's voices. And don't forget the men like Tony1 and Rich Farmbrough who made valuable contributions to GGTF. Male speech is not always hate speech. What you need is a *moderated* space, or a *safe space*.
After what everyone has been through on en.wp and with Arbcom, it is only natural to be a bit shellshocked. It would have been easy enough for the Arbcom to say that hate speech against women is unacceptable. They would never have tolerated anti-Semitic comments on a Jewish history project, or conspiracy theorists on the 9-11 article, or anti-global warming theorists trashing a climate change talk page. And they certainly did not tolerate gay-bashing in the Manning case. Given the WMF's terms of service, you would not expect that the tail would be able to wag the dog. But it is important here not to go into reaction mode, and return hate for hate. The focus must be on making a space where women will not be excluded from participation.
The basic idea of a moderated space is sound, and I believe the Foundation should be asked to provide one. It would not have to deal specifically with women's issues, either. How many powerpoints are floating around, that have been used for successful editathons? Why not put them in one place, so someone who is preparing an editathon can see them? And a place to discuss best practices. Or help with collaboration/translation between different language wikis? And what happens to all the red links after an editithon. Do they just get abandoned on a project page somewhere? Where can you set up such microprojects, in a central place? There are probably even more educational uses for such a safe work space.
There is some precedent for such a space as well. The WMF spent, what, a million dollars for WikiVoyage, https://www.wikivoyage.org/ which is unlikely to ever be able to compete with Wikitravel? And what about WikiNews, https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page, expecial which only has a handful of users.
A women-only forum could easily fit inside such a project, especially if there was a men-only forum as well. Forums like Majoob.com come to mind, where the more conservative religious groups do not allow women and men to mingle, even in cyberspace. http://mahjoob.com/ This is now unfortunately password protected, but it used to have one large forum with multiple topics, and two small forums, one for men and one for women.
I would re-purpose the proposal, and make it broader. Make it very simply a place where new women editors can go to be welcomed and find mentors, irrespective of gender. As they say, "Build it, and they will come".
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 3:31 PM, LB lightbreather2@gmail.com wrote:
I worried over this earlier in the month, then I got a brief vacation with my sisters. Now I'm back and I need to make up my mind whether or not I want to pursue the WikiProject Women proposal that I made back in January. (Since there are only five days left in the Inspire Campaign.)
Here's a link for those who aren't familiar, or who haven't thought about it in awhile: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/WikiProject_Women
The original proposal was for a women-only Wikipedia (English) project, but because of the hostility of some in opposing the idea (and the Kaffeeklatsch test area), I'm leaning now toward a women-only area at meta (right term? I mean at wikimedia.org).
Feedback? Suggestions? There was lots of support, but there was also, as most of you know, plenty of opposition.
Lightbreather
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