As a wikiHowian, I can speak to this a bit. Although I can't speak for Jack,
I have my own aversions to purple girly welcome messages and I think this
reasoning is seen on other wiki projects.
On wikiHow we have struggled to have professional looking welcome messages.
I think the worst of it was one that had a picture of a bunny and said
"follow the bunny to wikiHow" or something like that. So, I think that view
may have (at least for me) trickled down even to welcome messages that are
a "girly" color", since I am concerned that girliness and even just girly
colors will cause wikiHow to be taken less seriously as a project.
The funny thing, however, is that one of the "girlier" welcome messages
I've
seen (pastel background, '<3') is one that was created by a male wikiHowian
and no one seems to have any problem with it so far that I know of.
As one of the females in the male-dominated wiki world, I have sometimes
felt that I've had to put my girliness aside in order to be taken seriously.
I also feel that there is a backlash against girly pink userpages and the
like on wiki projects and that generalizations are made about people based
on their username or userpage and not on their contributions to the wiki.
On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 4:08 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On 14 September 2011 10:03, Michael J. Lowrey
<orangemike(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 10:41 AM, Sarah Stierch
<sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> I do like this though (scroll down to
badges), not the portraits..but
the
> round badges. I'd love to see something
like this developed for
Wikipedia.
Really???? I find them loathsome in the extreme; very Facebooky.
Soooo funny: everyone is different, and that is fine.
I remember Jack Herrick seeming flustered and a little embarrassed one
day by a purple girly welcome message on WikiHow. But I loved the
purple girly welcome message, personally :-)
Thanks,
Sue
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