On 18 February 2011 23:24, aude <aude.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Heather Ford, a former Wikimedia advisory board member
and researcher/writer
in South Africa has written an essay, "The Missing Wikipedians" about
systematic bias on English Wikipedia (especially) against new users and
topics pertinent to Africa and other diverse places/people.
As an example, she cites the English Wikipedia article [[Makmende]] and the
deletion request made, biting the newbie.
http://hblog.org/2011/02/16/the-missing-wikipedians/
Please read and discuss.
Author appears to be living in 2006 (deletionists vs inclusionists)
and apparently this represents a clash between the two groups:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Makmende
Where in practice it's a pretty standard if rather one sided AFD.
What might we do to help make Wikipedia a more
welcoming place for newbies
Since they seem to be determined to read the listing on AFD process as
deletion not much we can do. Some changes to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Article_for_deletion/dated
perhaps but keeping it within the current length could be tricky.
and for such diverse topics?
Drop a prompt to add sources into the article creation process and
make adding sources easy.
--
geni