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

[Risker]

On 31 January 2011 13:01, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 31 January 2011 17:49, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I do find it ironic that former members of the Arbitration Committee are
> > proposing that Arbcom go around enforcing "civility" on admins (and
> everyone
> > else?) when they know perfectly well that it's far outside the scope of
> the
> > committee to do so.
>
>
> The problem is that the other two-thirds of Wikimedia are having their
> reputation adversely affected by en:wp's reputation.
>
> e.g. Tim Starling feels there's no point working on technical measures
> to attract newbies until en:wp's terrible newbie-biting is fixed:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2010-December/050843.html
>
> e.g. on the internal list, when I pushed WYSIWYG, the *first* reaction
> (from a board member) was "that's pointless to think about when people
> are treated so badly on en:wp."
>
> Crossing the streams of project autonomy would be bad, but a good way
> to leave others feeling they need to is to make excuses to avoid
> solving the problem in question. So you may want to not do that.
>
>
> > The so-called "civility issue" is only one thing that turns off female
> > participants. Another is the need to master significant amounts of
> technical
> > information before being able to edit.
>
>
> As noted above, even the paid employees amongst the techies want the
> civility problem fixed before they'll work on that. I believe that
> puts the ball back in your court.
>
>
>
In what way, David? I'm sorry, but the Arbitration Committee isn't Wikipedia
Governance Central.  I share the same frustration as the WMF staff and
techies, and indeed many new and even experienced users, but you know as
well as I do what the response of the community is when Arbcom tries to
"make policy", let alone starts swooping down from on high on matters that
the community has not brought to it.  Meanwhile, over at RFA, this is the
first time in donkey's years that we have four candidates all doing well, at
least two of whom would have been getting a rough haul only a month ago; we
seem to be going through a "nice" period there because more and more people
are realising that we aren't getting the kind of admins we need for the
project to succeed.  There are still dozens of highly qualified editors who
would make excellent admins, but refuse to participate in the nastiness that
RFA has been for most of the last two years. I can only hope that this
week's new trend continues for long enough to break the pattern of behaviour
that had become endemic, so that other good candidates will be more willing
to take the leap.

I have no idea what the board members are saying on the internal-L mailing
list; however, if they're expressing concerns about behaviour there,
they might want to actually mention it onwiki on the projects  where there
are concerns.  Themselves. Wearing their Board hat, rather than their "I'm
just an editor" hat. They're actually selected to be leaders of the WMF, and
it would make it a darn sight easier to change community practices if the
Trustees would be much more public in their pronouncements and sharing their
experiences and observations.  Internal-L is the last place where that will
be helpful, with its extremely restrictive distribution and chapter-heavy
membership.

Risker/Anne