Re: [Gendergap] presentation about MediaWiki's participation in Outreach Program for Women

Hi Sumana, [CCing the English Wikipedia mailing list]. sorry for the late response. On Fri, 08 Feb 2013 08:03:11 -0500 Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Thanks for making the slides available, but I was annoyed by the fact that I had to switch to every page individually, and could not figure out a way to download the .pdf itself (but there should be). Your talk seems like a good initiative, and I will encourage it. Like I said earlier, I think part of the problem is that many people (predominantly women, but naturally not only those) have very thin skin and lack persistence and will give up after every social obstacle they encounter. So what I suggest is: 1. Make sure to phrase the issues you have using constructive criticism, telling what should be done instead of what is wrong. Leave comments on the page, etc. 2. Make sure to contact the person who did the change and instruct them that there is a problem, even using E-mail if necessary. 3. Tell people that have not followed this to have to know better and come to the defence of people who are trying to contribute. 4. Thanks contributors of worthy changes (even small ones) for their changes on their talk pages. 5. Enlighten people whose changes have been labelled as bad as to the correct way. 6. Avoid mentioning too many acronyms and weird jargon in your comments, and instead explain in plain English. ----- All of this seems like much more work, but it will eventually pay in spades in much less resentment and less hard feelings, more contributors, better happiness and joy from all parties, and eventually much more useful edits. I think we should change the templates on wikipedia to read something more like “Please find citations from reliable sources for this article.” instead of the much less constructive and more frightening “This article lacks citations from reliable sources. It may be challenged and removed.”. Does anyone agree? Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ "Humanity" - Parody of Modern Life - http://shlom.in/humanity Trust in God, but tie your camel. — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helps_those_who_help_themselves Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .