[Gendergap] wikisource

[John Vandenberg]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 11:17 PM, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes! I have never edited or contributed anything to wikiquote. I have
> contributed to Wikisource, and I'm starting to think I'm the only woman who
> ever has, even though it was two documents. I don't even think there is much
> of anything related to women's history on Wikisource...

Ahhh, a topic worth talking about!  If we want more women in our
community, I very strongly believe that wikisource is our greatest
chance of bringing them in.  librarians and local studies in Australia
are mostly women, and they are usually led by women as well, who can
be good champions for our community.  It is a nice quiet environment,
the editing tasks are 'simpler', which provides a nice training ground
for newbies, and the ability to shine new light on old information
gels well with information workers who prefer to blog about insights
into old texts rather than fight to have their text added to
Wikipedia.

FloNight is active whenever she can find time.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:FloNight
(i.e. I am confident you can twist Sydney's arm to help you on Wikisource)

One of the two 'crats on English Wikisource is a women.  She is very
active in moderating the tone of the community.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:BirgitteSB

There are many more ladies who have been very involved over the years,
and they usually arnt far away.
(people dont rage-quit Wikisource.  Wikisource looses contributors
because they rage-quit English Wikipedia, and they stop editing
Wikisource at the same time.)

If you're looking for a topical place to start, we have portals such as
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Portal:Women

When preparing for a training sessions for Australian
librarians(mostly women) in Miles, Queensland, I extracted a list of
women from a book of notable Australians
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index_talk:Johns%27s_notable_Australians_1908.djvu
Sadly the Wikipedia training session went over the allocated time and
we didnt look at this.  We have another training session for
Queensland librarians coming up soon.

-- 
John Vandenberg