[Gendergap] Hello and ten specific recommendations for increasing the number of female editors

[James Salsman]

Lvova asked in reply to my suggestions:

>> 1. Ask chapters to compete to nurture the greatest number of female
>> administrators;
>
> Why do you think that chapters has a right to influence it?

It is not just a right but a responsibility for every single one of us
who cares about improving the quality of the Foundation's projects to
take a stand in support of solutions to the most serious problems
facing them.  The number of active English Wikipedia adminstrators was
down 12% in 2010 (from 869 to 768), compared to down 8% in 2009 and
down 6% in 2008.  Last year, the time to archive sections on WP:AN/I
was halved.  How do you think that affects the ability of
administrators to resolve disputes in the ways that produce the best
outcomes for contributors?  I have asked senior Foundation officials
to address this problem for at least a year now, and I was given
assurances that attempts would be made to address the issue which I am
not entirely sure have been upheld.  If we can't count on the
Foundation and leadership to do anything about the most serious
problems, then the responsibility falls even more heavily to the
volunteer community.

> What do you think about gender check on the vote page and sock puppetry?

One of the many reasons I like to edit logged out is because people
treat me on a gender neutral basis most of the time.  When people try
to improve the encyclopedia with a gender-ambiguous pseudonym, sexism
and gender bias issues are less likely to arise. When I was in high
school, I was a member of a puppeteer troupe as well as the debate
team.  I knew that there was a stigma attached to forensics, but I
never expected that people would try to attach a stigma to
puppetteering.  If it were up to me, all disputes would be resolved
through anonymous review, through a combination of flagged revisions,
pending changes, and offline editing.  I am glad that members of this
list have decided to use Meta instead of the Strategy wiki for
proposals because the Strategy wiki administration insisted on
implying that limiting anonymous editing could improve the quality of
the encyclopedia.  Not only do the statistics firmly disagree with
that implication, but limiting anonymous editing could make things
substantially more difficult for female editors, given the reality of
the current editing culture.

Towards that end, I have created
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_increasing_female_editors
-- please, everyone, have a look and feel free to improve, correct,
move things back and forth from the Uncontroversial and Controversial
sections as you believe more correctly reflects their status (please
include a link to the rationale) and most importantly: please add more
ideas!  I have probably missed some idea proposals, although I did
include replacing Wikipe-tan with Puzzly.

>> 2. Bring all the articles on birth control to featured status;
>
> A scientific article vs phorums? :) In a scientific article will be
> information about physiology, statistic from different countries, but
> willn't features of different maternity hospital, so how can article
> may be more attractive in this topic?

I do not understand these questions, Lvova.  Please consider using
automatic back-translation (e.g. use Google translate to convert your
questions from Russian to English and then back to Russian) to make
sure you are asking the questions you are trying to ask.

> And about other 8 points - I'm a woman and I don't understand how it
> related to gender and how it can help at all.

Don't worry, both men and women often find my proposals difficult at
first, until they spend sufficient time thinking about them.  Usually
the more time people spend thinking about my proposals increases the
esteem in which they are held.  I hope my explanations are clear and
persuasive.  Please tell me which parts aren't and why they aren't if
they aren't.

Did anyone else notice that Richard Stallman wrote in support of Gnash
in Huffington Post this past Monday?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-stallman/protect-your-friends-prot_b_816438.html
-- I hope Erik will withdraw his objections to Gnash for speex audio
upload. They are in stark contrast to Mediawiki's support of Java and
Commons' support of PDF formats, which are certainly more encumbered
in practice.  How can we expect to attract mothers and other educators
to the wiktionaries for beginning language learning when they are so
far behind commercial offerings?

Best regards,
James Salsman