[Gendergap] article differentials/unnecessary drama

[Kevin Gorman]

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 1:25 AM, Béria Lima <beria.lima at wikimedia.pt> wrote:

> Hi Erin.
>
> First we are - and we never - discussed "*Content that deals primarily
> with women is systematically underdeveloped throughout the projects*"
> what we did discussed here was 3 or 4 articles *from en.wiki* that Sarah
> thinks need to be remade. As far as I know, we have more than 700
> projects... en.wiki can be the biggest, but is not the only one. And even
> if we changed all the articles in this language, would not do much for the
> other several million woman around the world. And we are trying to solve
> the gender gap in all the projects here, not only in en.wiki and not only
> in USA.
>
> So forgive me if I do believe that discuss 3 en.wiki articles will do
> nothing as far as gender gap solve is concerned. Might be good examples to
> someone when they are doing a presentation, but that is as far as this can
> go.
>

If you don't think that directly addressing three small problems caused by
the gender gap is a worthwhile endeavor I'm confused.  Not everything can
or should be a herculean effort aimed at making everything better at once.
 I think that addressing three or four individual problems is quite
worthwhile, and it does solve a very small part of the problem.

If you have a problem with this list being dominated by English language
stuff, the appropriate thing to do is to start discussions on problems in
other languages.  I'm sure that Sarah would love to see discussions about
how the gender gap effects other language projects, and I know I would.  We
just don't speak any other language well enough to start such a discussion.

Additionally, as I said, the specific examples Sarah has brought up on this
list have been of great use to me in doing physical outreach.  One of her
previous examples emailed to this list piqued a faculty member at UC
Berkeley's interest when they heard about it secondhand - and as a result,
her class will be participating in the education program next semester.
 They'll be shooting to bring thirty articles up to FA or near-FA quality,
and will be focusing on areas where our existing coverage is weak because
of our gender and other demographic gaps, using high quality academic
sources to support their work. This has only happened (and I am being
completely literal) because of one of Sarah's previous emails.

That seems to me to represent a pretty solid reason for Sarah to keep on
posting in the way that she has been. If you disagree or are simply
uninterested in her posts about en.wiki, it would take but a moment for you
to simply delete them.   (And I'm not saying that snarkily.  I delete
probably 75% of foundation-l without reading it most of the time.)

----
Kevin Gorman
User:Kgorman-ucb
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/attachments/20111226/dad6e2c9/attachment.htm