[WikiEN-l] NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors

[Nathan]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 11:18 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31 January 2011 15:30, Charles Matthews
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>> I have stated my views on site politics on this list not so long ago.
>> Basically the "reform" party comes over as the "complacent" party as far
>> as the gender gap is concerned (sadly). So I'd like to see people
>> standing for ArbCom being asked what they intend to do about it.
>
>
> It's January. ArbCom could start enforcing civility amongst admins
> now, bring it off successfully and have huge success to talk about by
> voting in December.
>
> (I outlined a version of this to FT2 and Chase Me Ladies at the 10th
> Anniversary bash and neither shrieked in horror. A complaints
> procedure would be a crank magnet. Keep it to "going forward", nothing
> past; require asking the admin nicely first; vexatious complainants
> told to go away after. Admin behaviour will rapidly modify as they'll
> do *ANYTHING* to keep the bit. Admins get more crap than they deserve
> from the querulous, but this is hardly an onerous proposal. Anyone
> feel up to pushing it through? Arbcom could start this now based on
> WP:NPA and WP:BITE as policies, but will probably prefer to get at
> least a little explicit buy-in.)
>
>
> - d.


They could but they won't; anyone on this list knows that it's been
tried before. Making admins the "civility police" as some folks like
to call them is too difficult a nut for the Wikipedia community to
crack. Either the admins are bad, the rules are bad, or the whole idea
is bad - many prominent, longtime 'pedians would argue all three are
true.

Nathan