[Gendergap] Sesame Street articles

[Christine Meyer]

This may not qualify as appropriate for this list, but in the little bit of
time I've been in this mailing list I've seen that articles written by women
are fair game.  I also believe that this would be appropriate because the
subject, the children's television show "Sesame Street," is a
female-oriented subject.  These articles have been largely neglected, I
think, because The Show's viewers are small children and their parents, a
demographic that doesn't tend to edit Wikipedia.  For that reason, I think
that they also fulfill the systematic bias.  (I also edit other articles
that apply, including articles about other children's television shows such
as Blue's Clues--a GA, and The Wiggles--my first FA).

BTW, Sesame Street (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street) is currently
up for FA.  This article was delisted in 2008, for good reason, and I've
been working on it ever since.  It's been quite a journey.  I've become an
expert on The Show, have amassed a small library of SS books, and have
experienced a great amount of joy in the process.  FA is so close!  All
weekend, I'm thinking, "C'mon!  It's a holiday weekend; surely you have the
time to pass it!" ;)  If it passes, it will be my 9th FA, and my 1st to pass
in only one FAC.

The interesting thing about this article is that it's essentially a series
of summaries of forked articles, all of which I created or re-wrote.  The
first of these forked articles, "History of Sesame Street", was the first of
these articles to become an FA.  Many of the others are also FAs or GAs.
Currently, I'm helping someone write "Sesame Street in the U.K." (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street_in_the_U.K.) that demonstrates
the need for improvement for these articles.  I'm thinking that the creator
is either a member of the demographic mentioned above or a second-language
learner.  At the very least, he's a horrible writer.  I was going to just
let it go (there are scores of badly-written articles on WP, you know), but
I decided that if I did, I'd be embarrassed by the association.  Ugh, what a
pain!

For the most part, other than this fellow and maybe two other editors in all
of WP, I've been mostly alone in this endeavor.  That's why it's taken three
years to get "Sesame Street" to FAC.  There are benefits to working this
way; I've experienced very little of the drama that I've seen with other
editors who tend to edit high-profile and controversial articles. I've also
had, for the most part, very positive experiences as a content editor.

OTOH, the articles I focus on tend to be highly vandalized.  (Don't get me
started on "Steve Burns"!)  Personally, I think that's the key to becoming
indoctrinated to become a "successful" WP editor; begin with articles that
don't get a lot of attention and ones you can learn from and have the
freedom to make mistakes.

Christine
User:Figureskatingfan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/attachments/20110905/1c638bf9/attachment.htm