Risker/Anne wrote:
I'm not seeing the connection between female editors and multilateral tax havens....
In developing countries the gender pay gap is very often worse than in the developing world. Can you imagine what it would be like to have six kids and be entirely dependent on the generosity of men to feed them? Many women in the developing world face that situation while the richest corporations and individuals in their society reduce their tax bills sometimes more than 90% because they are able to take advantage of tax haven shelters. That lost income is preventing social services to women.
A multilateral tax haven treaty is supported by almost all of the OECD countries with the notable exception of the United States of America. As U.S. citizens and residents we should be profoundly ashamed that we are living in a society which promotes such tax shelters when -- according to the peer reviewed secondary epidemiological sources cited on http://equalitytrust.org -- income inequality is the root cause limiting over 23 quality of life measures including gender pay equality, infant mortality, lifespan, educational attainment, and obesity -- the latter being the most sharply increasing preventable cause of death for both men and women, and which the U.S. government lies about (see http://3.ly/CDClied for further details.)
Please write the U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, President Obama, and your U.S. Senators asking for a multilateral tax haven treaty for greater income equality worldwide. I have a dream where Sue and Jimmy lobby Congress specifically on this issue for a week. I bet Fox News would be unlikely to cover that.
- Revive Esperanza and the Association of Editors' Advocates with a
focus on editor mentoring;
Well, no, let's *not* bring those back.
There are a lot of people who were in favor of them when they were eliminated. Do you think that the Campus Ambassador program is likely to reach more people? I don't. I think the Campus Ambassador program is great, but I would hate to see the on-wiki resources and enthusiasm currently mothballed not utilized to provide mentoring to new people of all ages and genders simply because someone is working on a new off-wiki program for mentoring some people in the higher education community. What do you think the greatest drawbacks of those organizations were?
Fred Bauder wrote:
- Remove WP:NOTHOWTO because it is used to argue against topic
notability but not well respected.
This is a policy I have never agreed with along with the one exiling recipes.
I thought they were the same, or at least were at one time.
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.
Firstly, some females want to know how to fix brakes and use a chain saw. The reason is not always evident, but even if no female ever did those things, it would give them an economic advantage to select brake repair or lumber services to understand the procedures. But the reason I proposed the suggestion is because earlier on this email list someone pointed out how the many rules forbidding topic inclusion were being used to argue against womens' issues. Let's trim those which aren't grounded in a rational basis.
Off-list someone asked privately:
Could you please at least briefly explain on-list the relevance of items 4-10 to the list topic?
Sure, I've already covered numbers 4 (tax haven treaty) and 10 above, so:
5. Less javascript for mobile devices -- Given that mobile devices are often less expensive, and low end mobile devices are less capable of rendering complex javascript correctly, supporting low end, less expensive devices is more likely to benefit women more than men in cultures with a gender income gap.
6. Simple language wikipedias in languages other than English -- Women are more often responsible for raising children so content appropriate for beginning language learners is more likely to benefit women more than men.
7. Low stakes instructional assessment content in Moodle's GIFT -- Assessment questions can be used to guide people to the appropriate level of content, as explained on p. 8 of http://talknicer.com/wm10ca.pdf in addition to providing an automated, background third party process of anonymous review of facts in order to maintain a database of such assessment questions. Therefore, low stakes assessment content will make simple language wikipedias more effective by providing a means to guide learners to their appropriate level content, and prevent male editors from ganging up to influence the outcome of gender-specific disputes concerning the answers to various questions.
8. Audio upload with rtmplite and gnash -- Again, since women are usually disproportionately stuck with child education requirements, content which assists beginning language learners is more likely to help women than men. http://es.wiktionary.org/wiki/hola still doesn't have an audio recording, so how to you expect anyone to learn pronunciation from non-English wiktionaries?
9. Most popular related articles -- this is another feature which can help beginning learners find content appropriate to their vocabulary level, and thus will tend to benefit women saddled with greater educational responsibilities disproportionately. For example, lets say you were confused by the math formulae in the [[Cosine]] article. If a list of most popular related articles were displayed, [[Triangle]] and [[Trigonometry]] might figure prominently on it, and would tend to help you find a much simpler or more comprehensive background article, respectively. This feature was already about half implemented by a student who I recruited for last year's Google Summer of Code, but who was rejected because the other Mentors said that the work would probably be too difficult. (The part that the other Mentors said would be too difficult was already completed by the student I recruited while the decision to reject the project was being made.) I hope the Foundation will kindly accept that student's project this year. I would think that it would be a matter of common decency to apologize when such a mistake is made.
Most popular related articles also addresses two or three of the factors identified on http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:091207_QOTW.png but I expect that those are gender neutral. I tried to sort the ten recommendations roughly by how firstly female editor specific, and secondly gender specific, that their improvement outcomes would likely be.
On the issue of sexualized content being discussed under a different subject heading, I feel compelled to point out that the peer reviewed secondary literature on the topic reports that children exposed to even the very worst pornography are less likely both to be sexually victimized and to commit sexual assault. Please see http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2005to2009/2009-pornography-accep... and http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2010-porn.html That very ironic, sexually charged, gender related information is in fact a subtopic of birth control pertaining to teen pregnancy and parenthood, which is why I hope the Foundation will support a concerted and perhaps paid effort to bring birth control related articles to featured status.
Best regards, James Salsman