[Foundation-l] Introducing a new mailing list

[Bryan Tong Minh]

The fact that there is a slight male bias on the projects is caused by
the fact that there are simply more male contributers. I think however
that the problem will not be solved by introducing a new list that is
more womenfriendly. If there are problems, segregration will only
enlarge the effect. If there are any problems that people feel
discriminated on a list, the solution is to remove the discrimination,
not the discriminated persons! If women are equal to men, which I
think they are, they should go into discussion rather then flee it. If
men are equal to women, which I think most of us are, then we should
accept that discussion, and make the projects a nice place for
everybody.

Bryan

On 12/4/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> 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
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