[Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 4:02 AM, Noein <pronoein at gmail.com> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Some ideas to increase the social aspect of Wikipedia:
> - - insert a small chat with channels for each chapter (for example where
> the interwiki links were ;) )
> - - make a tab for personal comments for articles, where people can
> express their feelings
> - - show the last 10 comments on the right side of the article
> - - soften the notability criterion
> - - make a reward system for spell correction (automatically attributed by
> bot unless reverted), for adding references (must be validated by
> moderator or voted by users)
> - - associate galleries of sounds and/or photos that you can expand or
> browse with one click
> - - create challenges or games for wikipedia: charades pointing to an
> article to be discovered, collections to be completed (find ten articles
> with x or y characteristics), create fantasy articles only useful for
> the game with a warning that it's only RPG, etc.
> - - allow a friend system and allow to import them from facebook
> - - develop the homepage of wikipedia and wikinews so that they combine
> major news with the major updates of the pages we are watching, and more
> information about your friends
> - - allow a button "recommend this article to a friend" with feedback from
> the friend, like a karma count, a thank you count, or the likes
> etc.


My jaw just dropped.  While I know these are ideas intended to help increase
the socialization, this is turning Wikipedia into youtube.  The day that
happens I'm resigning all my permissions and packing my bags.  Softening
notability?  Fantasy articles?  Games?  Live comments?  No thanks.

I don't think the idea of encouraging women to participate needs these
things.  I have a fierce dislike for what I consider to be the mind-numbing
distraction that social networking sites provide.  I'd rather use Wikimedia
projects to stimulate my mind, not kill time.
-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan