I very much like this idea, not only for the womany aspect, but for the public outreach aspect. Bloggers might be the go to people for this sort of thing; blogathons and "blog for X" type events are pretty common.
It would be paramount to have a bunch of experienced editors to staff any such events, to deal with markup and biting. (Something like this just strikes me as a buffet for newbie eaters; must have bouncers.)
If it works here, we could do it with other undercovered and under-represented groups. (First Peoples' Wikithon? Wikithon for Disability?)
Nepenthe
On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 12:18 PM, Sandra ordonez sandratordonez@gmail.comwrote:
if we decide to do this, i totally will volunteer with pr/marketing, even. (ie, like a edit-athon day, so everyone in the world can do it.???) Maybe it can be like a weekly thing: Thursday Women Wikithon ...ofcourse we would need a rotation of people to man it, so they can provide guidance and answer questions.
- A virtually area where we can meet as a group (ie, to talk to new people,
and answer their questions, and provide guidance. If we decide it would be IRC, then we would need very clear instructions so that people would know how to sign up.) Maybe we can even create a facebook page or group! 've seven see people answer questions in real time by uploading video answer, which is very personable.
- Post describing guidelines, as well as detailed directions on how to
edit. (i'm sure this exists somewhere, and we can borrow and massage text).
- A landing page that we can link to social sites, and send to people...ie,
where we announce the event(s) and have links to above docs too.
- A twitter/facebook schedule, so we can get word out. Maybe if we write
the tweets, the foundation can send out for us? (i'm sure they have some type of twitter manager) ie, so we don't have to create a twitter account, cultivate followers, etc.
- Research contact info for various women groups/organizations that we can
start reaching out to. For example, women in biology ass., or women in medieval history org.....We can even have different groups be our "guest" for a particular day. Ie, "this thursday our guest is "women in biology." who will be editing biology articles." This is kind of personal, and community like :) !
Just some ideas.......
On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Although this is both US and English-centric (as usual), I would like to advertise that the current US Collaboration of the Month is Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (which gave women the right to vote). If anyone is blogging on the gender gap issue, this would be a good suggestion for where people could jump in. Until recently, the article was barely more than a stub.
Regarding Patricia's suggestion, I think this is a great idea. The new WikiProject Women's History is already making good headway on identifying articles that would be of interest. WikiProject Feminism also has a few worklists that could be added to the pot.
Ryan Kaldari
On 2/9/11 1:21 AM, patricia morales wrote:
Dear friends,
Thank you for this inspiring dialogue. Inspired by the convergence of opinions, I believe it would be good to make a concrete difference in Wikipedia.
A suggestion I would like to share is to develop a number of articles (100,000? -in total in various languages) in 1 or 2 years (?) related to women. These articles may receive a symbol (eg an F inside a circle in red, pink?) Similarly (not in the procedure) to articles with a star. They could also be on a list, and that list, if possible, be composed of several languages.
For example: existing articles on Maria Curie, etc. articles with more biographies of women) articles on women's rights articles on the role of women in indigenous religions (Pachamama, etc) or concepts (motherland, matria, etc)
A cross-sensitive women's proposal, which is poorly represented at editorial as well as thematic level.
Wikipedia would be proactive inviting both women and men to break this gap. At the same time this initiative can feminize Wikipedia progressively attracting more women as editors and have more female readers.
Patricia University of Leuven (projects on solidarity at UNESCO Chair on Building Sustainable Peace)
--- On *Tue, 2/8/11, Susan Spencer /susan.spencer@gmail.com/* wrote:
From: Susan Spencer <susan.spencer@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] A pet peeve / cliche To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2011, 11:55 PM First, Sandy, I totally agree with you - the few men who use negative locker room talk about women have caused the downfall of many women in management. The majority of men don't make statements like this, but they do let them be discussed. So good guys, stop being a part of the problem. Tell the insecure guys to shut up, that nobody wants to hear that stuff anymore. Second, Miguel, Thank you for pointing out that the gender gap exists all over the world. You propose the Wikipedia site itself might be a problem, because women don't want to work with it because it isn't WYSIWYG. <*sigh*> The reasons being: 1. "men are a bit more obsessive in their work than women" 2. "maybe it's the look of the site, not attractive enough" 3. "women tend to focus their attention on people, instead of things, as men do" #1 & #3 have been stated about women and work for over a century. #2 --> Has a woman *actually* told you that she won't post to Wikipedia because she finds the interface too difficult? You're proposing that women don't want to post as experts because they don't want to be an expert in using a complexinterface.
Because of a deficiency with women, they don't want to become experts with a system that would allow them to post their expert opinion. I sense a catch-22 argument here. Reworking the Wikipedia interface is not really addressing the problem. Another reason why "women don't want to ____ because ______" We should have a Wiki page on these bizarre reasons. If we put them in a long list it might not help anyone, but it might be humorous. We could just refer to reason #1054 or #782 or #11659 with links to the Wiki page. Good for a laugh. Women could post any new funnies, like "women aren't as obsessive about their work as men are". This might become the most popular set of pages on Wikipedia. Of course, it would probably attract trolls. So let's not. To have a serious response to the problem, let's have a 'Women Post to Wiki' month, and have a banner about it on every Wiki page during the month. It validates that the world community accepts women as experts, and invites women to post who may have thought about it before, but didn't. I love that Google has different logos every day. Wiki can have a different logo for that month. - Susan Spencer Conklin -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org </mc/compose?to=Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
-- Sandra Ordonez Web Astronaut
"Helping you rock out in the virtual world."
*www.collaborativenation.com*
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap