New subject: Wikiml-l Digest, Vol 54, Issue 78

15 Feb 2013


      Congrats Netha, you raised the gender issue of wikipedia out of the walls
and we the men are bound to listen more from u :)
It is not a silly thing that the prominent
huffingtonposthttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/netha-hussain/wikipedia-towards-closing-gender-gap_b_2654019.htmlaccepted
your article. We the malayalm community also proud of your
achievement.
Sujith
2013/2/15 wikiml-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
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Today's Topics:

Fwd: [Wmfcc-l] [PRESS] Wikipedia: Towards Closing the Gender
Gap (Huffington Post UK - guest blog by Wikipedian Netha Hussain)
(noopur)

---------- കൈമാറിയ സന്ദേശം ----------
From: noopur noopur@cis-india.org
To: Wikimediaindia l wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, Wikiml l <
wikiml-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc:
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:05:31 +0500
Subject: [Wikiml-l] Fwd: [Wmfcc-l] [PRESS] Wikipedia: Towards Closing the
Gender Gap (Huffington Post UK - guest blog by Wikipedian Netha Hussain)
**
Dear all,
I am not sure if this was forwarded to the India list but Huffington post
has a guest blog post from Netha this week. Congratulations Netha! :)
Best,
Noopur
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sarah Stierch sstierch@wikimedia.org
Date: Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 11:54 PM
Subject: [Wmfcc-l] [PRESS] Wikipedia: Towards Closing the Gender Gap
(Huffington Post UK - guest blog by Wikipedian Netha Hussain)
To: wmfcc-l@lists.wikimedia.org
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/netha-hussain/wikipedia-towards-closing-gend...
WikiWoman Netha Hussain wrote a guest blog for Huffington Post UK


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[image: Netha Hussain] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/netha-hussain
 Netha Hussain http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/netha-hussain
A medical student, blogger and Wikipedian
  GET UPDATES FROM NETHA HUSSAIN
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    Wikipedia: Towards Closing the Gender Gap
Posted: 09/02/2013 21:49
  Follow
 Wikipedia  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/wikipedia, Gender Gap http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/gender-gap
, Wikipedia Editors http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/wikipedia-editors
, Ada Lovelace  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/ada-lovelace,
Equality  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/equality, Open Knowledge http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/open-knowledge
,Women  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/women, UK Tech Newshttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/uk-tech
   Submit this story
Most of us know Wikipedia as the free online encyclopedia, written
collaboratively by millions of volunteers from around the world. I am onehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netha_Hussain
 of those writers for the last 3 years. It was by writing articles about
medical sciences that I started contributing to Wikipedia. Later, I was
intrigued by the enormous volume of information available on Wikipedia, and
was curious to find out who actually write them - which made me delve into
the editor demographics. It really made me upset when I figured out that
only around 9%http://grouplens.org/system/files/wp-gender-wikisym2011.pdf
 of the contributors to Wikipedia are women. In fact, I knew that so few
women write on Wikipedia, but I hadn't expected the figure to be as low as
9 percent.
Diversity of opinion is the essence of any encyclopedia. Having equal
representation from women will bring in wider perspectives, and increase
the neutrality of the articles on Wikipedia. With men creating most of the
content for Wikipedia, certain subjects might be covered more than a
subject that may be of interest to women. Women not writing on Wikipedia
mean that certain subjects may not be receiving the attention they
rightfully deserve.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the not-for-profit organization that hosts
Wikipedia, had recognized this problem sooner than I did. The Wikimedia
Foundation has launched various programs to bridge the gender gap, and the
latest addition to the list is the WikiWomen's Collaborativehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomen%27s_Collaborative
.
The WikiWomen's Collaborative was created in September 2012 by women
around the world who edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and want
to encourage others to do the same. The project was aimed at helping women
and transwomen to support one another and engage in programs that help the
Wikimedian community to bring in new women editors. A variety of eventshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:WikiWomen%27s_Collaborative/Final_report,
like edit-a-thons, interviews and wikiwomen parties were conducted as a
part of the collaborative.
In May 2012, a WikiWomenCamphttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp
 was organized for women in the Wikimedia movement to get together and
discuss about the various issues related to being women involved in the
Wikimedia community with like-minded women. Over 20 women from different
countries participated in the camp to brainstorm solutions for existing
problems that concern women, and suggest future plans to collaborate with
one another. It is customary to conduct a WikiWomen's luncheonhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiChix_2011_Lunch
 at Wikimania https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/, the global
gathering of Wikimedians, exclusively for the women participants.
Organizations like the Ada Initiative http://adainitiative.org/, named
for the world's first programmer Countess Ada Lovelace, support women
working with open knowledge projects like Wikipedia by creating resources
for women in open stuff, conducting conferences and advising organizations
on supporting women.
Many outreach programs were conducted in women's universities all over the
world to encourage students to participate in the Wikimedia movement. The
Women's History month edit-a-thons conducted every year, attracts both male
and female editors to write biographies of notable women on Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia Foundation has set a goal to raise the share of female
contributors to 25% by 2015. Given the good response from the community to
various events conducted for women, it is likely that the foundation will
achieve its goal within the set time limit.
*If you would like to get engaged in various activities for women in
Wikipedia, you are welcome to write to me nethahussain@gmail.com or
join us here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomen%27s_Collaborative.


--
*Sarah Stierch*
*Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellow*
...
...
Mind the gap! Support Wikipedia women's outreach: donate todayhttps://donate.wikimedia.org/
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Re: [Wikiml-l] Wikiml-l Digest, Vol 54, Issue 78