[Foundation-l] Introducing a new mailing list

[Yann Forget]

Hello,

Angela a écrit :
> Following recent discussions on wikien-l where a number of women said
> they were not comfortable contributing to the discussion, a new
> mailing list has been created for female wiki editors to discuss
> issues of gender bias in wikis and ways to encourage more female
> editors, and just as a place that females can feel more comfortable
> posting to.
> 
> It's called WikiChix - named after LinuxChix, the women-oriented
> community for Linux users. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxChix
> 
> If you are female and interested in wikis, I would like to encourage
> to join the mailing list at
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikichix-l
> 
> There's also a wiki at http://wikichix.org/ - let me know your
> username if you'd like an account there. Some of the pages are openly
> editable, so even if you're not female, you are welcome to post your
> comments at http://wikichix.org/wiki/Comments
> 
> The FAQs for the related communities at
> http://wikichix.org/wiki/WikiChix#Related_communities answer a lot of
> questions about why this was created, so please read those for more
> information until we have our own FAQ.

They are always been a gender bias in Wikipedia, first by the simple
fact that there are much less women editors than men. This is
particularly obvious on the French Wikipedia from the start, so it is
not specific to one language. I think the numbers of women editors has
increased lately, but women are still far from being about the same
number as men.

Until recently, I thought that the problem would solve itself over time,
when Wikipedia becoming more mainstream. I read the thread on wikien-l
and I think that the problem is more serious than I thought. The first
problem is when people (men only ?) do not see that the problem exists.
It remembers me of the tale of the fish and water. When asked its
opinion about water, the fish said: "Please show me some water. I don't
see any water."

It is sad that women feel the need for a separate list, but denying them
this tool will not help solve the problem. So I hope that the list will
serve its purpose and helps women feel more confident on Wikimedia projects.

> Angela

Regards,

Yann