WikiWomen

[Cla68]

I have seen what appeared to be some feminist activity in some of the Islamic/Taliban articles in WP, along the lines below. I'm surprised that there hasn't been more of it.

[Poetlister]

Wow, what a total clusterfuck of misunderstandings, misinterpretations, distortions, and outright lies. I'm not even sure if there's any point in explaining how badly this has been distorted, especially by the right-wingers involved.

I might add that as a non-conservative, I wholly support right-wing efforts to take over Wikipedia, since such efforts might (hopefully) distract them from their efforts to wreck the economy, the environment, and the US Constitution, among other things.

If there's a thoroughgoing war between the rabid right and the current house POV, it could lead to lots of "bipolar" articles with two different viewpoints stuffed in. That will improve NPOV (in the usual Wikipedia sense).

[EricBarbour]

I have seen what appeared to be some feminist activity in some of the Islamic/Taliban articles in WP, along the lines below. I'm surprised that there hasn't been more of it.

Links?

[Midsize Jake]

Just a few hours ago, an Indian author named Sushmita Banerjee was murdered by the Taliban, and an IP in India posted the same basic info about this to two different articles. There was no BLP on Ms. Banerjee, but there was a redirect from her name to the article on a movie about her called Escape from Taliban (T-H-L). Clearly the Taliban don't like the idea of people escaping from them, especially women they're looking to murder. (I suppose it also doesn't help when the women in question write books about it that are then made into movies, but I would tend to discount this somewhat because the Taliban generally avoid all movies, as well as most books other than the Q'uran.)

[Mancunium]

BCS Women invites you to their Festival of Wikipedia for Ada Lovelace day
Computer Weekly, 11 September 2013 link

BCS Women, part of the Chartered Institute for IT, will be holding a Festival of Wikipedia to celebrate Ada Lovelace day this year. The festival will see volunteers adding and update Wikipedia entries on women in computing.

Taking place in association with Wikimedia UK and Suw Charman-Anderson of Finding Ada, the event will take place on 3 October in London and Edinburgh, and 5 October in Southampton. Ada Lovelace day will take place on 15 October.

Gillian Arnold, chair of BCS Women, said: "The lack of women entering the profession is a very real threat for the industry and UK plc. This Festival, which will see the volunteers adding, updating and improving Wikipedia entries of women in computing, is just one element of the work that BCS does in setting the gold standard for diversity in the profession.

"It's vital that we reach out to more young women to encourage them to see what an amazing career IT offers and to build the pipeline of skills in the industry. With a diverse mix in the working population, the UK IT sector can capitalise on the promise of additional profits and innovation that diversity can bring."

Sarah Burnett, the event organizer from BCS Women adds: "The festival creates a record of all the good work that women in IT do which is important for helping to inspire the next generation of women IT professionals. We are grateful for Wikimedia UK and Finding Ada for their help and cooperation with the events."

BCS Women events:link

I don't understand why doing unpaid work for some ephemeral project will encourage women "to see what an amazing career IT offers".

[Midsize Jake]

I don't understand why doing unpaid work for some ephemeral project will encourage women "to see what an amazing career IT offers".

It won't, at least not in itself. But I do think this is a fairly good idea; they did it last year too, only most of the (non-living-person, thankfully) biographies they worked on - 20 listed for the London event alone - were not IT-related.

The thing about it is, if you just put on an event "for women in IT" with no ostensible purpose beyond "networking," then guess what, most of the attendees will be men looking for women to hit on. Women will see that immediately and not show up. Saying that they'll be working on WP articles gives the event an underlying purpose that most men aren't going to be interested in, so at least in theory, that keeps away some of the riff-raff, and improves attendance for the desired demographic.

The only real problem, as I see it, is that IT is still a new-enough field that most of the biography subjects will still be alive, so the event really boils down to having women ("virtually") stab other women in the back just for having worked in the wrong profession.

[Mancunium]

I think it would be more satisfying to the participants, and make more women see what an amazing career IT offers, to hold a ladies-only Festival of Vandalizing and Trolling Wikipedia.

[Ming]

Can These Students Fix Wikipedia's Lady Problem?

So what's a tech-savvy woman to do? "Storming Wikipedia," a project of the feminist organization FemTechNet and an assignment given to students participating in FemTechNet's new online course, is designed to fix this imbalance. During these exercises students edit Wikipedia en masse, "with the goal being to collaboratively write feminist thinking into the site," says Alexandra Juhasz, professor of media studies at California's Pitzer College and one of the course facilitators.

[Cla68]

I wonder if they realize that once the get involved with doing that, they will have to join the other activist groups in the Wikipedia Hell of constantly watching their articles to make sure they stay on message.

[Hex]

This topic is already addressed in this thread. Merge please, mods?

[Alison]

This topic is already addressed in this thread. Merge please, mods?

Yep - done!

[Ming]

I wonder if they realize that once the get involved with doing that, they will have to join the other activist groups in the Wikipedia Hell of constantly watching their articles to make sure they stay on message.

Is there any evidence that they are actually doing it?

[thekohser]

Judging from her appearance on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News, it would seem that activist Katherine Timpf, a reporter with CampusReform.org, is none too impressed with the WikiStorming campaign for feminist women.

I have to say, I loved her quote at 1:35:

"Wikipedia isn't even factually correct. We're so concerned about making it politically correct, now? -- Katherine Timpf

[Vigilant]

Judging from her appearance on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News, it would seem that activist Katherine Timpf, a reporter with CampusReform.org, is none too impressed with the WikiStorming campaign for feminist women.

I have to say, I loved her quote at 1:35:

"Wikipedia isn't even factually correct. We're so concerned about making it politically correct, now? -- Katherine Timpf

Jesus, that's brutal.

[Midsize Jake]

Jesus, that's brutal.

It's a classic example of what Fox News does, though - they find an attractive blonde conservative (and in this case, anti-feminist, and I'll bet the glasses aren't even prescription), bring her on as an "expert," and she then proceeds to admit flat-out that she doesn't know what's going on (because to explain what they're actually doing wouldn't support their basic agenda), and then they spend the rest of the segment talking about how it's an example of how liberals are destroying the American way of life, which conservatives have already pretty much destroyed.

All these FemTechNet people doing is getting some women to write biographical articles about other women, and post them to WP. That's it. Colleges should not be offering credit for it, and in cases where the articles are BLPs there's that additional bad aspect to consider - but it's not "injecting feminist bias" at all, and they're not editing articles about "the microwave oven" or any other household appliance. And even if they are injecting bias to even a small degree, Wikipedia is so male-biased as it is, nobody other than Fox News could seriously blame them from trying it. And of course this is Wikipedia, so they'll fail anyway.

Admittedly, I'm still royally pissed at them for referring to me as a "Wikipedian" when quoting me in that article about the Bradley/Chelsea Manning brouhaha.

[thekohser]

...an attractive blonde conservative (and in this case, anti-feminist, and I'll bet the glasses aren't even prescription), bring her on as an "expert," and she then proceeds to admit flat-out that she doesn't know what's going on

She's pretty sharp, I think... maybe just not on Fox News.

[Randy from Boise]

...an attractive blonde conservative (and in this case, anti-feminist, and I'll bet the glasses aren't even prescription), bring her on as an "expert," and she then proceeds to admit flat-out that she doesn't know what's going on

She's pretty sharp, I think... maybe just not on Fox News.

+1

A good schtick.

RfB

[Midsize Jake]

A good schtick.

I've seen worse, but it just reinforces my point - comedians don't do 5-minute acts about how utterly impoverished they are if they aren't, well, at least somewhat impoverished. She did stand-up comedy until about a year ago, unsuccessfully I might add, but then WHEEEE! she got a nice paying job working for Morton Blackwell, the notorious propagandist who spends millions every year to promote conservative causes on college campuses all over the US. So now, suddenly she's a "journalist" and an "expert" on... well, whatever Fox News says she's an expert on. Meanwhile, legitimate experts on these subjects, many of whom are female, are ignored, and the right-wing Fox-News-watching public hears whatever lies and distortions Blackwell wants them to hear.

Seriously, it's bad enough that they're exploiting women to write Wikipedia articles, but at least the events and the courses, however bogus they might be, give the participants a chance to network and feel a little less isolated, and maybe get a relatively easy passing-grade during a tough semester if they need one. But for Fox News to come in and distort the whole thing into some sort of liberal-feminist conspiracy, that's just beyond the pale.

[HRIP7]

A good schtick.

I've seen worse, but it just reinforces my point - comedians don't do 5-minute acts about how utterly impoverished they are if they aren't, well, at least somewhat impoverished. She did stand-up comedy until about a year ago, unsuccessfully I might add, but then WHEEEE! she got a nice paying job working for Morton Blackwell, the notorious propagandist who spends millions every year to promote conservative causes on college campuses all over the US. So now, suddenly she's a "journalist" and an "expert" on... well, whatever Fox News says she's an expert on. Meanwhile, legitimate experts on these subjects, many of whom are female, are ignored, and the right-wing Fox-News-watching public hears whatever lies and distortions Blackwell wants them to hear.

Seriously, it's bad enough that they're exploiting women to write Wikipedia articles, but at least the events and the courses, however bogus they might be, give the participants a chance to network and feel a little less isolated, and maybe get a relatively easy passing-grade during a tough semester if they need one. But for Fox News to come in and distort the whole thing into some sort of liberal-feminist conspiracy, that's just beyond the pale.

+1.

Appalling item from Fox.

[Mancunium]

These Ivy League Colleges Will Give Students Credit For Making Wikipedia More Feminist
policymic, 16 September 2013 link

Ivies Yale and Brown have found themselves on the receiving end of intense criticism for their course "Wikistorming: Feminists Engage Wikipedia.

The online course — which will be tailored by instructors at each school using provided materials — was created by FemTechNet, a self-described “activated network of scholars, artists, and students who work on, with, and at the borders of technology, science, and feminism.” The group alleges that Wikipedia articles are “skewed toward male participation.” Unsurprisingly, the idea has generated backlash. While Fox News predictably accuses the group of "personal bias," they miss the point in favor of the soundbite. Here's the truth: the program is aimed at technology-related articles in particular, and was created in part in response to a sexist New York Times article with the telling title, “Men Invented the Internet.

With links to "intense criticism", "charges", "backlash", and "accuses".

[Zoloft]

These Ivy League Colleges Will Give Students Credit For Making Wikipedia More Feminist
policymic, 16 September 2013 link

Ivies Yale and Brown have found themselves on the receiving end of intense criticism for their course "Wikistorming: Feminists Engage Wikipedia.

The online course — which will be tailored by instructors at each school using provided materials — was created by FemTechNet, a self-described “activated network of scholars, artists, and students who work on, with, and at the borders of technology, science, and feminism.” The group alleges that Wikipedia articles are “skewed toward male participation.” Unsurprisingly, the idea has generated backlash. While Fox News predictably accuses the group of "personal bias," they miss the point in favor of the soundbite. Here's the truth: the program is aimed at technology-related articles in particular, and was created in part in response to a sexist New York Times article with the telling title, “Men Invented the Internet.

With links to "intense criticism", "charges", "backlash", and "accuses".

a sexist New York Times article with the telling title, “Men Invented the Internet.

...which was about the Kleiner Perkins—Ellen Pao sexual harrasment lawsuit.. by the way, the Ellen Pao (T-H-L) article is quaintly antique.

[Mancunium]

Scientists Organize Mass Wikipedia Edit in Honor of Ada Lovelace Day
The Mary Sue, 10 October 2013 link

I’ll admit, the first thing that springs to my mind when people mention organized Wikipedia edits is Wikipedia vandalism, perhaps because it’s just a bit more exciting than the alternative. That is, getting a bunch of people together with viable sources and references and collaborating on expanding or creating Wikipedia entries on subjects that are often overlooked by the core community of Wikipedia editors.

That’s what Maia Weinstock and Anne Fausto-Sterling do every October 15th: they organize an edit-a-thon to improve the encyclopedia’s coverage of female scientists. And it’s that time of year again.

Wikipedia has struggled with finding solutions to both its male dominated editorial community and the significant lapses in coverage that that can produce. Take this year old visualization of Wikipedia articles by equality of gender ratio of the editors that contributed to them as an example: of the 3,000 random articles analyzed for it, only one, Cloth Menstrual Pad, had a female majority (nine women and seven men worked on it). At the same time, Weinstock and Fausto-Sterling believe that there are real tangible benefits to increasing the visibility of historical female scientists. Fausto-Sterling recalls beginning her career as an assistant professor of biology at Brown in the 1970s:

"At one point I was taken out to lunch by a senior history professor. I think he meant well and was trying to be encouraging but the way he encouraged me was to say, ‘It’s really exciting that they’ve hired a woman scientist but this is the first time it’s been possible because before your generation there were none."

Thirty years later, Weinstock found a mirrored experience when she went looking through Wikipedia for historical events by day. Professor Uta Frith, who has organized similar efforts for the Royal Society, also cites her own experience with the assumed invisibility of female scientists in history as motivation:

" It is shameful that when you ask people, including scientists, to name well known female scientists and engineers, they can barely get past Marie Curie. I think this is very much because they are not in our consciousness, or they have not been given high enough profile for their work. Wikipedia is one of the first places that many people go for information, but if it’s not there how will we ever learn about our scientific heroines. This event is a very small but important step towards putting these very special women in the spotlight they deserve."

Wikipedia:Meetup/Ada_Lovelace_Edit-a-thon_2013_-_Brown (T-H-L)

[Mancunium]

Can a 6-Hour Editing Party Fix Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance?
Mashable, 11 October 2013 link

Next week, students, faculty and members of the public will gather in a room at Brown University. They will sit down, open their laptops—enjoy some light snacks and drinks—and then, for five and a half hours, edit Wikipedia.

Specifically, they’ll be editing Wikipedia to add and improve entries about women in science, technology, and math. Their “Edit-a-Thon,” reported today by the Chronicle of Higher Education, will fall on the fifth annual Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of women’s contribution to technology. Lovelace worked on and wrote algorithms for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine in the early 19th century, a mechanical predecessor to the computer, making her the world’s first computer programmer.

The Lovelace-themed Edit-a-Thon will help those unused to editing the encyclopedia: Its first hour will focus on the basics of Wikipedia writing. And the event’s homepage already has a long list of articles which need improvement or don’t exist yet. No Wikipedia entry exists, for instance, for Ingeborg Homchair, who won the 2013 Lasker Award for co-inventing the modern cochlear implant, the first device to “substantially [restore] a human sense with a medical intervention.”

Wikipedia has historically struggled with a gender imbalance that mars both its content and its editors. A 2011 New York Times story suggested only 15% of its editors might be women. When data researcher Santiago Ortiz scoured Wikipedia to find articles edited by more women than men, he could only locate “Cloth menstrual pad.” (His research made for a great if unfortunate visualization, though.)

Since then, Wikipedians have tried to close the gender gap more directly. A meet-up and edit-a-thon earlier this year in Washington, D.C., for instance, sought to add and improve the entries of women in the arts en masse. Next week’s Edit-a-Thon will again chip away at the imbalance, albeit slowly. But Wikipedia, unlike other knowledge sources, can be edited by the public, and its errors and shortcomings can be ameliorated—incrementally, but surely—by the same public.

Celebrate Ada Lovelace Day by adding more female scientists to Wikipedia
Boing Boing, 10 October 2013 link

October 15 is Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of women in science and engineering, centered around the lady who is credited with publishing the first computer programs ever written. What does one do for Ada Lovelace Day? How about spending some time editing Wikipedia? There's an official edit-a-thon in honor of the holiday, aimed at improving and increasing Wikipedia's coverage of women in the sciences.

[Mancunium]

Ada Lovelace Day, 15 October 2013
Finding Ada
Celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths link

Our annual celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and maths is hosted this year by Imperial College London and features a stellar line up. With live demos, biomedical wonders, neuroscience, inspiration, laughter and song, Ada Lovelace Day Live on 15 October 2013 is an event not to be missed!

Our amazing performers include:
Fran Scott, a science communicator who designs demos for CBBC, live stage shows and the Science Museum.
Prof Molly Stevens, a leading bioengineer from Imperial College London whose work includes growing human bones in the lab.
Hazel Gibson, a geologist studying how geological processes affect our lives, and who is out to prove that women and geology is a combination that rocks!
Chi Onwurah, engineer, MP for Newcastle, and Shadow Cabinet Office Minister with responsibility for cybersecurity.
Leila Johnston, a comedy writer, technologist, maker and broadcaster who encourages us to ‘do things we’re not supposed to’.
Prof Sophie Scott, a cognitive neuroscientist and standup scientist who studies laughter, from brain scanners to comedy clubs.
Dr Bernadette Byrne, a molecular membrane biology researcher at Imperial College London, who is exploring the science of our own cells.
And not forgetting our host and compere, comedian Helen Arney!

Tickets are £15 for general entrance, £5 for concessions, plus we have a pre-performance reception tickets including drinks.

Find out more on our events page and get your tickets now from Eventbrite!
Eventbrite - Ada Lovelace Day Live 2013
Tickets will be available on the door at £15, or £5 for concessions, until the performance begins at 7pm.

[Mancunium]

Ada Lovelace day: share your stories of women in science and technology
Help us celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths around the world
The Guardian, 9 October 2013 link

The annual Ada Lovelace day, which this year falls on 15 October, aims to raise the profile of women working in STEM subjects across the globe. It’s a chance for the STEM community to talk about the achievements of the women they most admire. So we’d like to know who inspires you: who is today’s Ada Lovelace?

To get involved and help celebrate Ada’s legacy, here’s what to do:
• Show us a photo that illustrates the work you do
• Tell us a little bit about your work and why it matters to you
• Suggest one woman you consider to be a role model for the STEM community

Whether you want to share a picture of you or a colleague at work, your favourite science or tech project, or an inspirational quote, help us honour the women that embody Ada’s pioneering spirit today. To take part, click on the blue 'contribute' button.

Closes Wednesday 17 October 2013 at 6pm

[Mancunium]

Moar!

Wikipedia Editing Party at Brown University! Woohoo!
Slate, 11 October 2013 link

Happy Beer Friday before Beer Long Weekend, guys! Still searching for day-after-Columbus-Day plans? May we suggest: crashing a Wikipedia editing party at Brown University?

Organized by Maia Weinstock, who works for an educational kids’ website called BrainPOP, Tuesday's Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2013 will be a marathon editing session during which volunteers/party animals will gather at Brown’s Pembroke Hall and tune up the Wikipedia entries for women in the STEM fields. Guests of honor include Anne Fausto-Sterling, a gender studies and biology professor, and Michael Umbricht of the Ladd Observatory. Partygoers, who can also rage remotely (and live tweet everything using the hashtag #AdaWikithon), will create, expand, and improve Wiki articles about scientifically savvy ladies like archaeologist Martha Rhoads and engineer Ingeborg Hochmair. The overall objective? Bringing women’s scientific achievements to the Web’s attention and involving more women in the Wikipedia editing process. Wild!

Here's why you should skip your SoulCycle class and go to this party: As my colleague Torie Bosch wrote in 2012, Wikipedia is not exactly a paradise of gender equity. There are about 13 male editors for every female editor on the site—and those female editors make fewer changes, on average, than their male counterparts. Topic bias means that issues of concern to geek dudes (such as Linux distributions) are rated as important, while issues women might find compelling (the design of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress, say) are deemed trivial and flagged for deletion. Bosch reports that the last time Wikipedia gender gurus held an edit-a-thon—culling forgotten female scientists from Smithsonian records—the posts they added were quickly dismissed as too inconsequential for an encyclopedia that devotes pages and pages to obscure Marvel comics. (Luckily, the editors were able to make a case for the new articles, which exist to this day.)

“When you are a minority voice, you begin to doubt your own competencies,” Catherine Orenstein of the OpEd Project told the New York Times in 2011. That could be one reason that women editors are underrepresented on Wikipedia. Or maybe, like Bosch, they find the community “legalistic and uninviting”; women do tend to prefer social online pursuits to solitary ones. Which is why—astonishing capabilities of us ladies aside—it sounds pretty fun to grab a beer and go hang out with some university students and tech veterans who want to make the Internet a more balanced, knowledgeable place for everyone. CAWLEGE! EQUITY! SNACKS! BYOPC! (Bring your own power cords.)

Solving Wikipedia’s woman (scientist) problem
Boston.com link

Things have changed for the better since then, but subtle biases remain. Next week, working with a former student, Maia Weinstock, Fausto-Sterling will host an event on the Brown campus to help reclaim territory online: a Wikipedia edit-a-thon. They hope to gather a few dozen people in a room to create and flesh out entries that describe the contributions and lives of women scientists.

“Many contemporary women scientists are either absent entirely, or there is just a stub," Fausto-Sterling said. She first noticed the information gap when looking up a historian of science who helped break open the field of gender studies, Margaret Rossiter. Rossiter had won a coveted MacArthur genius grant and coined the term “Matilda effect” to describe the phenomenon of men getting credit for the contributions of women scientists. But her entry was just two sentences long.

The more Fausto-Sterling looked, the more examples she found. Vera Kistiakowsky, a nuclear physicist who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology starting in the mid-1960s, was virtually absent from Wikipedia. At a moment in history when that website is often the first place people look when starting a search for basic information about a topic, that makes many women’s contributions virtually invisible.

Kistiakowsky was a pioneer; a Mount Holyoke College web page describing her contributions called her “one of the country’s outstanding scientists of the 20th century.” Meanwhile, Fausto-Sterling noticed, many of her male contemporaries and colleagues have lengthy Wikipedia entries. Why, then, were a trailblazer’s contributions virtually unmentioned?

Lady Scientists Organize Mass Wikipedia Edit to Honor Ada Lovelace Day
Jezebel, 11 October 2013 link

All the way back in 1842, when humans still spent all their time huddled around in the dark, gnawing on potatoes and reveling in abject confusion (basically), brilliant genius Ada Lovelace penned the world's first computer program. Nowadays, Ada Lovelace is a women-in-STEM hero; annually, we honor her and celebrate the achievements of all women in STEM.

Sadly, though, Lovelace stands out as a glaring exception to the rule: in most accounts of the history of scientific achievement, there's a striking paucity of female names. So, very fittingly, Anne Fausto-Sterling and Maia Weinstock (both of whom are women scientists) are hosting a mass Wikipedia edit this Ada Lovelace Day. The event is meant to improve the online encyclopedia's coverage of female scientists.

[...]

On October 15, Brown students have been invited to gather in order to expand upon and create Wikipedia entries detailing the accomplishments of women in STEM. The event has its own Wikipedia page (of course), with a long and respectable list of articles that need to be written and fleshed out/cleaned up. Says Fausto-Sterling, "[The edit-a-thon] has a kind of guerilla warfare aspect to it that appeals to me... Anybody can do it, but in addition to having metaphoric value it has a real corrective value.”

Not only will it make valuable information about women scientists more readily available, the event will also ostensibly train women how to edit and create articles of their own. You know the old saying: address a historical tendency to overlook accomplished women alone, and you laugh in the face of patriarchy for a day; empower young women to do the same whenever they please, and you dance on the grave of male-centric bias for life.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Wikipedia:Meetup/Ada_Lovelace_Edit-a-thon_2013_-_Brown (T-H-L)

[thekohser]

Have these numerous and distributed women-oriented efforts fixed Wikipedia's gender bias yet? If not, could I please ask the women what is taking so long, and could you make me a sandwich while you're up?

[Mancunium]

Have these numerous and distributed women-oriented efforts fixed Wikipedia's gender bias yet? If not, could I please ask the women what is taking so long, and could you make me a sandwich while you're up?

They should just delete all the articles on male scientists.

Wikipedia:How_to_delete_a_page (T-H-L)

[Mancunium]

Check out the gams on this story.

University Hosts Wiki 'Edit-a-Thon' to Add Women in Science Entries
LiveScience, 11 October 2013 link

In the name of gender equality, students and faculty at Brown University in Providence, R.I., will host a Wikipedia "Edit-a-Thon" next week to add and improve entries about prominent female figures in science and technology.

[...]

Wikipedia has more than 4.3 million articles in English posted on its site, but a 2010 study conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation found that only about 13 percent of women make up its contributor base, according to the New York Times. Weinstock calls this an "unintentional slant," but hopes the Edit-a-Thon will help draw attention to the scientific and technological achievements of women.

The five-and-a-half hour editing party will be held on Oct. 15, coinciding with the fifth annual Ada Lovelace Day, an international event that celebrates the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and math. Lovelace was a English mathematician who wrote algorithms in the mid-19th century for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a mechanical predecessor to the computer. Because of her groundbreaking work, Lovelace is commonly recognized as the world's first computer programmer.

Brown University Trying to Fix Wikipedia’s Gender Gap
New York Magazine, 11 October 2013 link

At this point, Wikipedia’s gender issues are well documented — men account for 87 percent of the site’s contributors, and content tends to skew accordingly. But here's a step in the right direction: The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (h/t the Atlantic) that next week, Brown University will host a five-hour edit-a-thon aimed at adding and improving entries about women’s achievements in science, technology, and math. The first hour will include a tutorial on Wikipedia writing, after which attendees will get busy on their laptops. (The event’s Wikipedia page includes a starting list of women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) whose entries are either nonexistent or inexcusably cursory.)

Sue Garner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, has many theories about why more women don’t edit Wikipedia, ranging from speculation that they find the overall atmosphere of the site to be misogynistic to that they don’t feel sufficiently self-confident, or even that the site’s interface isn’t user-friendly enough. While none of the company's initiatives to close the gender gap have been particularly effective thus far, an edit-a-thon at least looks like progress. Someday perhaps we can have a comprehensive online resource where “cloth menstrual pad” isn't the only article edited by more women than men.

To Fix Wikipedia’s Gender Imbalance: A Big Editing Party?
The Atlantic, 10 October 2013 link

Wikipedia has historically struggled with a gender imbalance that mars both its content and its editors. A 2011 New York Times story suggested only 15 percent of its editors might be women. When data researcher Santiago Ortiz scoured Wikipedia to find articles edited by more women than men, he could only locate “Cloth menstrual pad.” (His research made for a great if unfortunate visualization, though.)

Since then, Wikipedians have tried to close the gender gap more directly. A meet-up and edit-a-thon earlier this year in Washington, D.C., for instance, sought to add and improve the entries of women in the arts en masse. Next week’s Edit-a-Thon will again chip away at the imbalance, albeit slowly. But Wikipedia, unlike other knowledge sources, can be edited by the public, and its errors and shortcomings can be ameliorated—incrementally, but surely—by the same public.

Why do I get the impression that these big-city folks are mocking the Wikiwomen?

[EricBarbour]

Why do I get the impression that these big-city folks are mocking the Wikiwomen?

Perhaps because they know how hopeless it is to "change" Wikipedia's culture?

[Zoloft]

... could you make me a sandwich while you're up?

I was at a party (yay local generic sports team!) when a guy said that to a woman he didn't even know. She trotted obediently off to the kitchen, applied mayonnaise to two slices of white bread, came up from behind him, and slapped them on either side of his head.

[Mancunium]

More thoughtless praise for Wikipedia's efforts to close the gender gap.

Wikipedia Closing the Gender Gap
Patheos, 14 October 2013 link

Not long ago I wrote an article about the imbalance of women represented in film, so I was pleased to discover Wikipedia’s concerted effort to address the gender imbalance in its online content. In celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, a gathering will be held at Brown University to edit and expand information of women in science, technology, and math. Earlier this year, a similar meeting was held to address women in the arts content. It’s also well worth noting: “Wikipedia, unlike other knowledge sources, can be edited by the public, and its errors and shortcomings can be ameliorated—incrementally, but surely—by the same public.”

Spotlight on women scientists on Ada Lovelace Day
Museum celebrates women scientists with a live event and a Wikipedia Editathon on the day named after the first computer programmer Ada Lovelace.
WebWire, 14 October 2013 link

Victorian mathematician Ada Lovelace is celebrated on October 15 in events around the world. She has become a figurehead for women working in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Ada Lovelace Day, launched in 2009, has become renowned for sharing inspirational stories about women in science.

Alongside the Nature Live event, Hassett and Herridge have organised a Wikipedia Editathon at the Museum on 19 October. This is part of a worldwide movement to encourage people to add and update the Wikipedia entries for women scientists past and present. ‘We want to add more about their life and achievements, and to make sure their page doesn’t just say who they were married to,’ said Hassett.

Wikipedia's article on Ada_Lovelace (T-H-L) is hardly flattering.

Though Ada Lovelace is often referred to as the first computer programmer, there is disagreement over the extent of her contributions, and whether she can accurately be called a programmer. Allan G. Bromley, in the 1990 essay Difference and Analytical Engines, wrote, "All but one of the programs cited in her notes had been prepared by Babbage from three to seven years earlier. The exception was prepared by Babbage for her, although she did detect a "bug" in it. Not only is there no evidence that Ada ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine, but her correspondence with Babbage shows that she did not have the knowledge to do so."[68] ... Historian Bruce Collier went further in his 1990 book The Little Engine That Could've, calling Ada not only irrelevant, but delusional:

"It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that Babbage wrote the 'Notes' to Menabrea's paper, but for reasons of his own encouraged the illusion in the minds of Ada and the public that they were authored by her. It is no exaggeration to say that she was a manic depressive with the most amazing delusions about her own talents, and a rather shallow understanding of both Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine... To me, [correspondence between Ada and Babbage] seems to make obvious once again that Ada was as mad as a hatter, and contributed little more to the 'Notes' than trouble." [71][page needed]

On the other hand, the article on her husband, the 1st Earl_of_Lovelace (T-H-L), is the usual anodyne forelock-tugging one expects from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Peerage_and_Baronetage (T-H-L).

On his death the title passed to his eldest son, the eighth Baron. In 1838 he was created Viscount Ockham, of Ockham in the County of Surrey, and Earl of Lovelace in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. He later held the honorary post of Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey from 1840 to 1893. In 1835, Lord Lovelace married as his first wife the Hon. Augusta Ada Byron, the only daughter of the famous poet, 6th Baron Byron, and his wife, 11th Baroness Wentworth. In 1860, he assumed for himself by Royal license the additional surname and arms of Noel. His eldest son Byron Noel, Viscount Ockham, succeeded his maternal grandmother as twelfth Baron Wentworth in 1860. However, he predeceased his father, unmarried.

Lord Lovelace had a home in East Horsley and a strong connection with St Martin's Church. He rebuilt the Chancel and the Nave in 1869. He also rebuilt the wall of the churchyard which included a number of interesting architectural features such as the Gazebo in the SW corner. He also planned for his death and 20 years before he died began work on a Mausoleum [1] in the NW corner of the St Martin's Church churchyard. The Mausoleum, which has recently been restored, contains his tomb and that of his second wife. Lord Lovelace was therefore succeeded by his second but eldest surviving son, the second Earl.

Of course, the article on Ada's father, the 6th Lord_Byron (T-H-L), does manage to find the space to include the usual servants' gossip.

As a child, Byron had seen little of his half-sister Augusta Leigh; in adulthood, he formed a close relationship with her that has been interpreted by some as incestuous,[58] and by others as innocent.[22] Augusta (who was married) gave birth on 15 April 1814 to her third daughter, Elizabeth Medora Leigh, rumored by some to be Byron's. Eventually Byron began to court Lady Caroline's cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke ("Annabella"), who refused his first proposal of marriage but later accepted him. Milbanke was a highly moral woman, intelligent and mathematically gifted; she was also an heiress. They married at Seaham Hall, County Durham, on 2 January 1815.[58]

The marriage proved unhappy. He treated her poorly. They had a daughter (Augusta Ada). On 16 January 1816, Lady Byron left him, taking Ada with her. On 21 April, Byron signed the Deed of Separation. Rumours of marital violence, adultery with actresses, incest with Augusta Leigh, and sodomy were circulated, assisted by a jealous Lady Caroline.[58] In a letter, Augusta quoted him as saying: "Even to have such a thing said is utter destruction and ruin to a man from which he can never recover."

[EricBarbour]

Wikipedia's article on Ada_Lovelace (T-H-L) is hardly flattering.

Though Ada Lovelace is often referred to as the first computer programmer, there is disagreement over the extent of her contributions, and whether she can accurately be called a programmer. Allan G. Bromley, in the 1990 essay Difference and Analytical Engines, wrote, "All but one of the programs cited in her notes had been prepared by Babbage from three to seven years earlier. The exception was prepared by Babbage for her, although she did detect a "bug" in it. Not only is there no evidence that Ada ever prepared a program for the Analytical Engine, but her correspondence with Babbage shows that she did not have the knowledge to do so."[68] ... Historian Bruce Collier went further in his 1990 book The Little Engine That Could've, calling Ada not only irrelevant, but delusional:

"It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that Babbage wrote the 'Notes' to Menabrea's paper, but for reasons of his own encouraged the illusion in the minds of Ada and the public that they were authored by her. It is no exaggeration to say that she was a manic depressive with the most amazing delusions about her own talents, and a rather shallow understanding of both Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine... To me, [correspondence between Ada and Babbage] seems to make obvious once again that Ada was as mad as a hatter, and contributed little more to the 'Notes' than trouble." [71][page needed]

Inserted 24 May 2012, by one Yaron K. (T-C-L), who I don't recall seeing before.

He has a vanity website. A consultant for commercial users of MediaWiki. Does he qualify as a paid editor?

[thekohser]

Inserted 24 May 2012, by one Yaron K. (T-C-L), who I don't recall seeing before.

He has a vanity website. A consultant for commercial users of MediaWiki. Does he qualify as a paid editor?

I wouldn't call him that. He's just a MediaWiki consultant, and I'd say that his editing of Wikipedia is very probably just casually interested. I had several discussions with him over the years, regarding Semantic Mediawiki forms.

[Mancunium]

Help write women scientists into Wikipedia
PBS NewsHour, 14 October 2013 link

Long before the iPhone or Google were part of our everyday lives, Ada Lovelace penned what many consider to be the first computer algorithm. The 19th century programming pioneer made her mark on the early history of computer science 170 years ago, yet today the work by women in science still goes largely unrecognized.

But on Thursday those wanting to write women back into the history books (or at least the web pages of Wikipedia) can gather at Brown University in Providence, R.I., for an 'edit-a-thon' "to increase the representation of women in science and technology." Attendees can take part by writing and editing Wikipedia articles about women in the STEM fields.

The event date -- Oct. 15 -- commemorates Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and math.

Finding Ada
Celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths: link

Have these people actually read Wikipedia's unflattering article on Ada_Lovelace (T-H-L)?

In the 1840s, Ada flirted with scandals: firstly from a relaxed relationship with men who were not her husband, which led to rumours of affairs[32]—and secondly, her love of gambling. The gambling led to her forming a syndicate with male friends, and an ambitious attempt in 1851 to create a mathematical model for successful large bets. This went disastrously wrong, leaving her thousands of pounds in debt and being blackmailed by one of the syndicate, forcing her to admit the mess to her husband.[33]

There seems to have been no Ada Lovelace cult before 1990, when an alternate-history/steampunk novel, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, was published: The_Difference_Engine (T-H-L)

During the story, many characters come to believe that the punch cards are a gambling "modus", a programme that would allow the user to place consistently winning bets. This is in line with Ada Lovelace's historically documented penchant for gambling. Only in the last chapter is it revealed that the punched cards represent a program which proves two theorems which in reality would not be discovered until 1931 by Kurt Gödel.

Steampunk (T-H-L), as we know, is an obsession of those who are unable to understand any technology created since the 19th century.

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's 1990 novel The Difference Engine is often credited with bringing widespread awareness of steampunk.[8][17] This novel applies the principles of Gibson and Sterling's cyberpunk writings to an alternative Victorian era where Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage's proposed steam-powered mechanical computer, which Babbage called a difference engine (a later, more general-purpose version was known as an analytical engine), was actually built, and led to the dawn of the information age more than a century "ahead of schedule".

Sophomoric "feminists" inspired by the same science fiction novel have given us this:

Honor Ada Lovelace Day by Editing Wikipedia!
Tor.com, 14 October 2013 link

Quick, how many female scientists can you name? Yeah, besides Marie Curie. When Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Biology at Brown University, was still a student, most of the people she spoke to—even in science departments—couldn’t name very many.

Five years ago, Fausto-Sterling and her former student, Maia Weinstock (now the News Director at BrainPOP) created the Ada Lovelace Edit-a-Thon to focus more attention on women’s involvement in science, right where the scientists of tomorrow will see it—on Wikipedia. Our friends at The Mary Sue highlighted the project, and we’re excited to share it with you!

This October 15th marks the Fifth Annual Ada Lovelace Edit-a-Thon, and Drs. Fausto-Sterling and Weinstock would like you to join them! Each year the participants edit Wiki entries to reflect women’s involvement in scientific history, which rarely get the same fanfare as the acheivements of male scientists. They also hope to get closer to gender equality on Wikipedia itself, since, as The Mary Sue reported, when the site’s editors were analyzed last year, only one of 3,000 randomly selected articles had a majority of female contributors. So join the Ada Lovelace Edit-a-Thon, and help ensure that women’s contributions to science are remembered!

[Mancunium]

As long as we're deconstructing Ada:
Ada Lovelace Day link

Ada Lovelace Day is an unfunded organisation that is dependent on the generosity of its partners, volunteers and supporters for survival. If you would like to sponsor Ada Lovelace Day, please take a look at the opportunities available and get in touch.

The sponsors include Texas_Instruments (T-H-L), Farnell_element14 (T-H-L), and a company called WPEngine
(no WP article but, "My experience with WPEngine (tl;dr, they sucked)" is available: link.
And, of course, there is money from that inexhaustible source of patronage, Wikimedia Foundation UK.

How generous they are to make it clear that female "Science Technology Engineering Mathematics" people get one day a year, and that the other 364.25 days are reserved for the real, male, STEMs.

This is how Wikipedia sees Ada Lovelace:

File usage
More than 100 pages link to this file. The following list shows the first 100 page links to this file only. A full list is available.

Here is what Ada looked like:



As you can see, she had to be considerably tarted up before Wikipedia's male feminists could find her acceptable. This file is linked to exactly one page in English Wikipedia and one page in Korean Wikipedia.

[Mancunium]

“No More Lawyers Day” more commonly known as “Ada Lovelace Day” is today 15th October 2013
ComputerWorld (New Zealand), 15 October 2013 link

Research conducted by the NZ Careers Service in 2012 showed that parental influence is one of the greatest determinants of subject focus and career selection. Assuming that to be true, if parents do not come from STEM (Science Technology Engineering Maths) backgrounds how are we going to increase the numbers of bright students who are encouraged or directed to choose STEM over careers which reflect the demands of the last century?

Illustrating the extent of this problem, research across the world continues to show law as a prestigious career choice and option, while at the same time unemployment for law graduates increases, as law continues on its path of commoditisation. The challenge then for New Zealand is what do we need to do to educate the parents and encourage the young, so our brightest and best make wise choices for the future world of work that many struggle to imagine.

If there is a problem encouraging bright students into STEM, there is an even bigger problem encouraging young women in. 15 October is the day that has been selected to celebrate the achievements of women in STEM. The need for such a day is partly due to the result of research that showed that women more than men need role models of their own gender.

[...]

Ada Lovelace events are being held across the world this week including a continuation of last year’s very successful Wikipedia update-a-thons. Initiated by Imperial College the aim is to add and update entries for women who had achieved in STEM fields. If there are any New Zealand 2013 events they are not obvious, but maybe next year they will be. Happy to be pointed in the right direction.

Maybe the solution for New Zealand in 2014 is that we also pick 15 October as “No more Lawyers Day” and let the enthusiasm of people signal to your young people and particularly our young women of the wisdom of STEM careers over traditional and dying arts.

Ubergeeke Girl pictured below has been developed to provide a graphical representation of how cool being a woman in technology can be. There is a reason she does not have a wig and gown!

Is there a reason why Ubergeeke Girl has anime eyes?

[EricBarbour]

Is there a reason why Ubergeeke Girl has anime eyes?

The average amateur cartoonist nowadays starts out copying anime facial designs. Deviant Art contains millions of drawings like this,
it's the "standard" for drawing people, especially cute-girl characters. Dave Lovelace has sent me furious rants about it, many other
pro and semipro cartoonists have deplored it, and many art schools will fail students who submit art in this style. Yet it's so damn
popular, they can't stop it.

Another thing young Americans love: Japanese culture. Which goes hand in hand with the anime/manga worship. They don't seem
to get the fact that Japan is not a magical wonderland, it's a country with hidebound social practices and a long-established trend
toward xenophobia. Even the language is one of the world's most difficult to learn, yet if you tell the average teenager that you're
trying to learn Japanese, they will probably suddenly respect you greatly.

Those same young people seem to think Wikipedia is "cool" and "can't be wrong".

[eppur si muove]

There seems to have been no Ada Lovelace cult before 1990, when an alternate-history/steampunk novel, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, was published:

I would suspect that they were influenced by the existence of a computer language called Ada developed in the years around 1980 and, of course, named after Lovelace.

[Mancunium]

There seems to have been no Ada Lovelace cult before 1990, when an alternate-history/steampunk novel, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, was published:

I would suspect that they were influenced by the existence of a computer language called Ada developed in the years around 1980 and, of course, named after Lovelace.

I don't think the pop cult of the feisty Victorian pinup girl was created by the US Department of Defense. My point is that Wikipedia will not change gender-bias by promoting a male fantasy, or empower women by turning them into unpaid workers or, worst of all, by attempting to create a more widespread belief that Wikipedia is an authoritative source of knowledge. Ada_(programming_language) (T-H-L)

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ada compilers had improved in performance, but there were still barriers to full exploitation of Ada's abilities, including a tasking model that was different from what most real-time programmers were used to.[10]

Ada Lovelace and Wikipedia's women
Oxford's 'editathon' aims not only to improve the coverage of women on Wikipedia but increase their academic contribution
The Guardian, 15 October 2013 link

Researchers, students and members of the public are gathering just across the street from the University of Oxford's science buildings to change scientific history. Rather than test tubes or computer models, however, they are armed with stacks of reference material, ready to square up to the online Goliath that is Wikipedia.

Welcome to our latest editathon, which brings together people with an interest in improving Wikipedia coverage of a particular subject. In the spirit of Ada Lovelace Day, which helps spreads the word about the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths, today's editathon focuses on women in science.

Hosted by Oxford's Bodleian Libraries and IT services, alongside Martin Poulter, JISC's recently appointed Wikimedian ambassador, participants will sharpen up the coverage of individuals, events and resources related to women in science – whether that's writing an article from scratch about Margaret Jennings, one of the Oxford team working on penicillin in the 1930s and 1940s, or simply checking that articles have accurate references.

The key factor here is interest rather than experience. Most editathons are open to all regardless of Wikipedia editing skills and many provide editing training for new users. Editathons are growing in popularity with past events covering subjects as diverse as scientific history, English drama and the first world war. This time last year, editors contributed to articles on Mary Somerville, Ida Mann and the Million Women Study, while international Ada Lovelace groups made dozens of other updates.

Events like this also train women to be Wikipedia editors themselves, helping them to add their voices and increase the number of female contributors beyond the 'less-than-15%' suggested by recent surveys. We are directly addressing what has been termed as "Wikipedia's women problem" and in doing so, supporting the university's own aims of advancing the careers of women in academia.

Oxford isn't the only organisation with an Ada Lovelace Day event – celebrations centre around Imperial College, London – and the impact of international efforts to improve coverage is substantial. The importance of hosting a Wikipedia editathon in a university setting goes beyond the articles it generates. Wikipedia is an enormously important resource: estimates suggest Wikimedia sites are viewed around 365 million times each month. It's useless to ignore it or simply tell students not to use it, yet many teachers and academics seem to harbour an extreme distaste for the site.

One of the goals of events like this editathon is to show the academic community that Wikipedia is an extraordinary resource for teaching and learning, bringing together the knowledge of thousands of experts and the opportunity to participate in conversations about how we shape history.

Yes, there are those who post false information (though a study in Nature claimed that Wikipedia's accuracy compares to that of Encyclopedia Britannica). But used correctly, Wikipedia can help develop the very skills universities are trying to impart: critical thinking and reasoning, and the ability to convey information clearly – with references. Contextual information like its 'talk' and 'history' pages help students understand how we arrive at historical consensus and, taken as a whole, the site empowers them to participate in that discussion.

Wikipedia's open nature not only enables the academic community to edit knowledge (and academics are just the types of experts Wikipedia needs), it also makes it possible for that knowledge to flow outside the university walls. Oxford is no stranger to open practice; its academics have produced thousands of materials under the OpenSpires initiative free for reuse, remixing and redistribution in education worldwide. Wikipedia can be a stepping stone to deeper engagement, and we have experimented with blending Wikipedia content with other open resources.

Open content is growing in importance, and JISC's Wikimedian project is providing training to university staff around the country in using Wikipedia, particularly in teaching and impact assessment. If you'd like to get involved or learn more about Wikipedia in teaching and learning, join one of the many Ada Lovelace Day events taking place worldwide. You can also keep an eye on the Wikimedia UK events calendar, which lists upcoming editathons and training opportunities.

Ada Lovelace Day at Oxford: link

[Mancunium]

Happy Ada Lovelace day! Go add some nerdy ladies to Wikipedia.
The Washington Post, 15 October 2013 link

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. Who is that? Oh, just the first computer programmer. Ever. Lovelace's friend Charles Babbage designed a concept for a machine he called the "Analytical Engine" -- essentially a mechanical computer that would have relied on punch cards to run programs. He recruited Lovelace to translate some notes from one of his lectures, but while Lovelace was translating she added to the notes herself. The notes grew to three times their original length, as Lovelace described what many call the first computer program. Because of funding issues, the machine was not built during her and Babbage's lifetimes. But Lovelace's published article on the Analytical Engine later became a source of inspiration for Alan Turing’s work to build the first modern computers in the 1940s.

Women are sometimes considered outsiders in the science and technology fields, but Lovelace and many of the female computer programmers who followed her are proof that this paucity is a function of society, not capability. We forget or never learn about the female "computers" who programmed early mechanical machines in World War II, or that the women's magazine Cosmopolitan once ran articles suggesting that women were perfectly suited for programming.

If the lack of acknowledgement of women's contributions to STEM fields grinds your gears, you can help promote their legacy in Lovelace's honor today. Brown University and Wikipedia have organized a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. From 3 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. ET, participants at Brown and those online will be creating, expanding or updating the Wikipedia pages of female STEM notables and pioneers.

The program aims to serve an additional purpose: Women are substantially underrepresented among Wikipedia contributors; a 2010 survey showed that less than 13 percent of Wiki contributors were female.

I've already chosen the woman I'm going to add to Wiikipedia. Who's your pick?

This woman merits some cutural criticism, I think.

[Mancunium]

A Day to Remember the First Computer Programmer Was a Woman
The New York Times, 15 October 2013 link

In 1842, Ada Lovelace, known as the “enchantress of numbers,” wrote the first computer program.

Fast-forward 171 years to today (which happens to be Ada Lovelace Day, for highlighting women in science, technology, engineering and math), and computer programming is dominated by men.

Women software developers earn 80 percent of what men with the same jobs earn. Just 18 percent of computer science degrees are awarded to women, down from 37 percent in 1985. Fewer than 5 percent of venture-backed tech start-ups are founded by women.

Those statistics, released by Symantec, the security company, and the Anita Borg Institute, which works to recruit and promote women in tech, provide context for recent debates in Silicon Valley, like why Twitter has no women on its board.

Given that girls begin to shy away from computer science when they are young, because of a lack of role models and encouragement from parents and teachers, perhaps a short history lesson on Ms. Lovelace would be helpful.

She was the daughter of Lord Byron, the poet, who split from her mother shortly after her birth. Her mother encouraged her to pursue math to counter her father’s “dangerous poetic tendencies,” according to the University of California, San Diego.

Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, some people sense change in the air.

“There’s a lot more focus than we’ve seen in the past, and a lot more hard conversations,” said Telle Whitney, chief executive of the Anita Borg Institute.

The Symantec and Anita Borg report tried to find a bright side — the wage gap is smaller in technology and engineering than it is in other fields, and the job opportunities are many.

Astia, which offers programs for women tech entrepreneurs, announced Tuesday a partnership with Google to expand its lunch series for introducing women founders to investors.

And two scientists, sponsored by Brown University, are hosting a mass Wikipedia editing session on Tuesday, for people to create and expand upon entries for women in science and technology.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day.

[Mancunium]

Ada Lovelace Day 2013: from nerd cabaret to womenifying Wikipedia
The annual celebration of inspiring women in science and technology is in its fourth year, and bigger than ever
The Guardian, 15 October 2013 link

Maths demands 'tension of mind beyond a woman's strength'

Eugenie Clark’s story is just one of hundreds of stories about the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths that have been shared as part of Ada Lovelace Day. When I started the day five years ago, my goal was to collect these stories not only to inspire girls to study the STEM subjects, but also to provide support to women pursuing careers in these usually male-dominated fields.

Ada Lovelace is the ideal figurehead for this project: She was the world's first computer programmer, and the first person to realise that a general purpose computing machine such as Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine could do more than just calculate large tables of numbers. It could, she said, create music and art, given the right inputs. The Analytical Engine, she wrote, “weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves".

This daughter of “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Lord Byron achieved this distinction despite the fierce prejudices of the 19th Century. Her tutor Augustus De Morgan echoed the accepted view of the time when he said that maths problems presented “a very great tension of mind beyond the strength of a woman’s physical power”.

But Ada persevered in her studies, and De Morgan recognised her brilliance when he said that had she been a man, she would have had the potential to become “an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence”.

From nerd cabaret to Wikipedia edit-a-thons

Ada Lovelace Day is not only about raising Ada’s profile, but also shining a spotlight on the achievements of all women in STEM, both historic and modern. It’s about drawing inspiration from all women, not just the famous ones, and supporting women at every stage of their career, from the choice of what to study at school and university through to often challenging professional milestones.

Our flagship event, Ada Lovelace Day Live! - a nerd cabaret featuring talks, science demonstrations, comedy and song - is a cross-discipline celebration of women in STEM, and will be held at Imperial College London from 6pm, 15 October. Performers include science communicator and demo designer Fran Scott, bioengineer Professor Molly Stevens, Chi Onwurah MP, Shadow Cabinet Office Minister with responsibility for cybersecurity, and technologist and comedy writer Leila Johnston, amongst others.

There will also be 40 independently organised grassroots events across Europe, North and South America, including several Wikipedia edit-a-thons that aim to increase the number of articles in the online encyclopaedia about women in STEM. There are also many other events, including talks, pub meet-ups, conferences and exhibitions covering the work of a plethora of women, from paleontologists to musicians to artists and sewing machine pioneers.

Take part, and share your stories of inspiring women.

Suw Charman-Anderson is the founder of Ada Lovelace Day and a freelance social technologist. Ada Lovelace Day Live tickets are available online or on the door from 6pm, 15 October, Imperial College London, £5/£15. A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention is available from the FindingAda.com website only, for £5.99.

[Mancunium]

Is Lisa Simpson the best ever female mathematician?
The Telegram, 15 October 2013 link

She may be yellow with spiky hair, but Lisa Simpson shows a degree of warmth and character that we rarely, if ever, see in the real-life people we call role models, says Dr Brooke Magnanti, who reviews a new book that finally gives the brainiac the attention she deserves.

Ada Lovelace Day: A celebration of the world’s first computer programmer
Metro, 15 October 2013 link

f you happen to do anything other than sleep in a cave today, chances are you have Ada Lovelace to thank for it. She is responsible for the first ever computer program. And she came up with it long before the computer even existed.

Today is the fifth annual Ada Lovelace Day, celebrating the achievement of a Victorian mother-of-three who would change the world.

[...]

When she was 19, Ada married William King, a baron, who three years later became the Earl of Lovelace. She had three children, but was also the subject of rumours about extra-marital affairs. She also tried to use her maths knowledge to come up with a sure-fire formula for gambling, which only led her into debt. She died of uterine cancer in 1852 and was buried next to her father in Nottingham, as per her request.

What an inspiring story!

Help Fix Wikipedia's Glaring Lack Of Articles About Female Scientists
Today, on Ada Lovelace Day, Wikipedia contributors will have an editing party to address the site's conspicuous omissions of female leaders in science and tech.
Co.Exist, 15 October 2013 link

It can be difficult for a society to shrug off a bad idea it’s been running with for millennia. Unequal treatment of the genders is on its way out, but many of our contemporary innovations still carry the smear of institutionalized discrimination or de facto bias.

Take Wikipedia, for example. Despite the fact that our communal encyclopedia provides a wealth of accessible information, women make up fewer than 15% of the project’s editors. (For further information, see the Wikipedia article “Wikipedia: Systemic bias.”) Oftentimes, the lack of gender parity results in a dearth of articles about, or including, important female figures in society. That’s what science journalist and BrainPOP news director Maia Weinstock found when she started editing Wikipedia articles back in 2007: Women who should be included in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) achievement canon were simply missing from the archives. Or, when they were included, their stories were often stubs that left out the magnitude of their contributions.

Wiki-editors boost entries on female scientists to mark Ada Lovelace Day
Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer, but many other women scientists are invisible, especially on Wikipedia
Al-Jazeera, 15 October 2013 link

Wikimedia, the foundation that runs the online, volunteer-created and -curated reference source, has itself revealed that imbalance in surveys which showed that nine out of ten of its contributors - “editors,” in Wikipedia jargon - were men.
"When that's your mission, you can't do it with only half the population contributing." -Sarah Stierch

It's recognized as a problem. Sarah Stierch had been editing Wikipedia for seven years when she heard about the gender ratios. She joined the foundation and has worked there on outreach.

“The Wikipedia community’s mission is to encompass all the world’s knowledge and provide it to every human being for free,” she said. “When that’s your mission, you can’t do it with only half the population contributing.”

Increasing women’s participation is essential, she said. Even on such entries as pregnancy and abortion, she explained, 80 percent of the contributors and editors are men, debating and deciding on such questions as what the image and subject line should be and how to identify the article.

As research migrated online, Wikipedia rapidly became the first-stop reference source for just about everything. And notable women in science, technology, engineering, and math are not well-represented in its pages.
Who writes the history is key

“Most of history has been written by men about men,” said Maia Weinstock, a science writer who is the co-organizer of the Brown University edit-a-thon. “Many women have contributed important things to history that have been left out of the official records, whether that’s in science or any area of life. Wikipedia is one of - if not the - most popular encyclopedias in the world, so to not have as many women represented in science in particular is a travesty.”

The goal of tuesday’s event is twofold, she said: To increase the number of women involved in editing Wikipedia, and simultaneously to increase the representation of STEM women within it as well.

Fixing the problem of too few female Wikipedia contributors hasn't proved simple, however. Wikimedia's Stierch said that while women do attend the group edit-a-thons, her evaluations show that few of those female beginners continue as Wikipedia editors. Why? The most common thing she hears is: "I'm too busy.''

With multiple family and professional obligations, women tell her, at the end of the day they'd rather relax on Facebook than get involved in editing debates on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia edit-a-thons are a recent addition to Ada Lovelace Day, which British social technology consultant Suw Charman-Anderson launched five years ago after getting frustrated with male technology conference organizers who said that they couldn’t find any women to feature as panelists or speakers.

For the first day, Charman-Anderson corralled thousands of people to write blog entries about women in STEM. The Wikipedia-focused events - seven will be held this year, with five in England and one in Brussels, in addition to the effort today at Brown - make those efforts a little more permanent.

“Love it or hate it,” she said, “Wikipedia is a really valuable resource for a lot of people. It’s the first place they go to if they want to learn about something.”
Changing the real world

In some cases, there have been controversies about whether Wikipedia’s mostly-male editing process causes women’s contributions to get downgraded or erased altogether. When asked whether the Ada Lovelace Day edit-a-thons were in danger of producing entries that might disappear, Charman-Anderson said she thought not.

“In a well-organized edit-a-thon, you do your research first on the women you want to have covered, finding information on them so that the attendees aren’t faced with a completely blank slate,'' she said. "That is a permanent addition to a broader cultural record of women’s achievements and activities.”

For those involved, the wider goal is to change the real world. They hope to inspire young women to enter STEM occupations and to push past obstacles by letting them see the models that have done so in the past. Said Charman-Anderson, “This isn’t about trying to change the minds of misogynists. It's about trying to support women in STEM and girls who think they might want to have a career in STEM.”

For the Brown University edit-a-thon, Weinstock will supply research that will enable attendees - whether attending in-person or remotely - to launch entries on notable STEM women who haven’t been covered yet. The event will include instruction for beginners on how to contribute to Wikipedia, which Weinstock notes “isn’t intuitive.”

“There are so many amazing women who people have just not heard of who have contributed something they use or know,” Weinstock said. “Our efforts are trying to rectify that, one Wikipedia article at a time.”

[Mancunium]

The Problem of Women in Science in Wikipedia
Bloomberg Business Week link

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. If you have to ask who Ada Lovelace is, that’s the point. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was a 19th-century English mathematician and writer who wrote the algorithm to be processed by Charles Babbage’s early computer. As a result, she is often called the world’s first computer scientist. She was also the sole legitimate child of Lord Byron—Ada’s mother encouraged her early interest in mathematics to ward off the madness that had afflicted her father, the famed Romantic poet.

All of this you can find (as I did) on Lovelace’s Wikipedia page, and that is what Ada Lovelace Day is about—not coding, not mathematics, not even Romantic poetry, but history, and setting it straight. It’s the brainchild of Maia Weinstock, a former science journalist and now editorial director of the educational website BrainPOP. She noticed that Wikipedia’s historical entries were notably short on women. To remedy this, she began to organize Wiki-edit-a-thons where Wikipedia contributors (Wikipedians, in their own description) gathered to beef up or add entries about overlooked women. Today’s edit-a-thon focuses on the sciences—Weinstock teamed up with her former undergraduate biology adviser at Brown University, Anne Fausto-Sterling, to organize it. Contributors can participate in person, at Brown, or virtually, and the event’s wiki site has a list of women scientists who, in Weinstock and Fausto-Sterling’s opinion, are given short shrift on Wikipedia.

The concept unites two spheres where gender balance has been a particularly acute issue: the sciences and Wikipedia. This isn’t the first time, of course, that the issue of women in science has been in the news. Larry Summers, in a now infamous 2005 speech, brought more attention than he no doubt intended when he wondered aloud whether the paucity of women in top science jobs had something to do with innate ability (he would eventually lose his job over the comments; his successor, the distinguished historian Drew Gilpin Faust, is a woman). The more women whose accomplishments are included in the official record—and Wikipedia, for better or worse—has become at least one official record, the more girls might be encouraged to go into the field.

Wikipedia itself has wrestled with the issue of gender since a 2010 study found that its contributor base was 87 percent male (with an average age in the mid-20s). This, of course, helps explain the length and detail of the Wikipedia entry on Sauron, especially when compared, for example, to that of Ada Huxtable. The Wikimedia Foundation, which collaborated on the study and runs the site, rightly realizes that as Wikipedia has become the world’s de facto online reference site, this lack of representation has become a problem. Ada Lovelace Day is presumably a way to try to hurry that process along, on both fronts.

Celebrate Ada Lovelace Day With Some Awesome Science-related T-Shirts
Geekosystem, 15 October 2013 link

October 15th is Ada Lovelace day. Do you not know who Ada Lovelace is? For shame! She’s only the the 19th century mathematician who basically invented the world’s first computer, and on her day every year, we celebrate awesome women in science, engineering, and math. Amorphia Apparel decided to do their part with a bunch of awesome T-shirt designs.

Every T-shirt you buy from us will help employ awesome female garment workers in Bangladesh, who work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for $38 a month, to keep our profits as high as possible! How cool is that?! link

[Mancunium]

Ada Lovelace Day is over, the women have been empowered, the role models have been memorialized, the T-shirts have been sold, and Google News has aggregated 44 articles on the main event, held at Brown University, Rhode Island.

Pembroke Center Celebrates Lovelace Day
Students created and fleshed out Wikipedia articles to commemorate female scientists
The Brown Daily Herald, 15 October 2013 link

A University celebration of women in science started with a tweet and culminated in a five-hour website “edit-a-thon” hosted Tuesday afternoonin the Pembroke Center.

Months ago, Maia Weinstock ’99 posted a message on Twitter directed at Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of biology and Weinstock’s former concentration adviser — an exchange Fausto-Sterling said sparked a reunion between the two women.

Fausto-Sterling, knowing Weinstock prolifically edited the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, asked her former student to turn the tables and give her a “private lesson” on editing the site’s pages. Displeased by the encyclopedia’s small entry on science historian Margaret Rossiter — the article was a “stub,” a Wikipedia term for a short or incomplete piece — Fausto-Sterling set out to address the representation of female scientists in Wikipedia.

The two women’s project resulted in their organizing Tuesday’s event, which drew around 30 students and community members, as a part of the international Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration intended to boost the profile of women scientists.

[...]

Weinstock kicked off the event with a lesson on Wikipedia editing, after which students filtered in and out of Pembroke Center 305, quietly creating and altering Wikipedia entries from their own computers based on a list the event’s organizers had posted.

Fausto-Sterling said she hopes training people to edit Wikipedia will create a “ripple effect,” in which people then train others, ultimately increasing the diversity of the site’s editors.

“Wikipedia is not very inviting all the time,” she said, recalling a cold email she once received from a more experienced editor. Only later, she said, did she discover the tone of the email did not reflect the editor’s real personality.

People might also be put off by the technical aspects of editing Wikipedia, which could also contribute to its small number of female editors, though “in reality learning Wikipedia” code does not take that much time, Fausto-Sterling said.

Eliza Cohen ’15, who attended the event, said she was drawn to it because it was hosted by Fausto-Sterling. She worked on expanding the page of Susan Gerbi, a professor of biology and biochemistry who previously served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology. Gerbi’s page was created earlier in the day as part of the event.

By the end of the event, editors had expanded over 20 articles and created 12 others, including pages about Ann McKee, a neuropathologist who was recently featured in a Frontline documentary about brain injuries from contact sports, and Virginia Grace, an archaeologist who won the Gold Medal for Archaeological Achievement in 1989.

[thekohser]

Thank heavens, Wikipedia is now gender balanced!

Virginia Grace (T-H-L)

Ann McKee (T-H-L)

Susan Gerbi (T-H-L)

[Mancunium]

Who is still interested in that plucky working gal and supergeek The Right Honourable Augusta Ada King-Noel, The Countess of Lovelace? I know I am.

Women scientists, Wikipedia under microscope in RI
Associated Press, 16 October 2013 link

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Look up a female scientist or technologist on Wikipedia, and you might not find what you’re looking for. Many don’t have detailed pages or any page at all on the free online encyclopedia created by contributors, the vast majority of them men.

It’s a symptom of a larger problem for women in so-called STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — where men far outnumber women. Even women who have done pioneering work in these fields don’t always get recognition. Since 2009, no woman has won a Nobel Prize in science.

A Brown University biology professor and an alumna hope to help chip away at the problem with a Wikipedia ‘‘edit-a-thon,’’ one of many that’s been held in recent years to help increase the representation of women on Wikipedia.

They gathered dozens of students and some faculty members this week at Brown to train them on how to add and edit pages. They also provided lists of suggestions for women to add, entries to clean up or those who needed more detail, along with links to source material.

Among those listed was Ingeborg Hochmair, who does not have a page even though last month she won the prestigious Lasker Award for medical research for her work developing the modern cochlear implant. By contrast, her husband, Erwin Hochmair, an accomplished engineer who helped develop the device but did not win a Lasker prize, has his own page.

Another is Anny Cazenave, who last year won the William Bowie Medal for outstanding contributions to fundamental geophysics. She’s on Wikipedia in French, but not English.

Maia Weinstock, a Brown graduate, organized the Tuesday event with Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of biology and gender studies. They held the training to coincide with Ada Lovelace Day, an annual observance started in Great Britain in 2009 to highlight women in technology and named for the English mathematician who died in 1852. Lovelace is often described as the world’s first computer programmer.

Weinstock, who has run other edit-a-thons for different fields, said she’s targeting Wikipedia because it’s so influential and is one of the most popular encyclopedias in the world. It’s the first place many people go to find out about a subject.

‘‘You’re helping change what everybody else gets to see on a particular topic,’’ she told trainees.

She said she also hopes to increase the number of women who contribute to Wikipedia. Fewer than 20 percent of Wikipedia editors are women.

Sara Hartse and Jacqueline Gu, both Brown freshmen and computer science students, said they first became aware of gender inequity on Wikipedia during an uproar in the spring when someone began systematically moving female novelists including Harper Lee and Ann Rice off the ‘‘American Novelists’’ page and onto the ‘‘American Women Novelists’’ subcategory.

They've both seen big gender imbalances in science and technology classes and activities and heard their female computer science professor bemoan the fact that talented women often leave the field. Neither had edited a Wikipedia page before this week, but spent the evening cleaning up and adding details to pages for botanist Katherine Esau and oceanographer Sylvia Earle.

‘‘I like this because it’s about empowering women to contribute to this,’’ Hartse said. ‘‘It’s a good feedback loop.’’

Yes, Wikipedia's Villain of the Year 2013 is clearly going to be Gareth_E_Kegg (T-C-L). Women -- indeed, all civilized people everywhere -- will always remember him as the man who "began systematically moving female novelists including Harper Lee and Ann Rice off the 'American Novelists' page and onto the 'American Women Novelists' subcategory", and thereby inspired a feminist uprising.

[Mancunium]

Brown University's Anne Fausto-Sterling and Maia Weinstock are trying to solve Wikipedia's woman problem
News.com Australia, 17 October 2013 link


Dr Blake Wilson, Duke University, Dr Ingeborg Hochmair and Dr Graeme Clark,
University of Melbourne, with their Lasker awards. Despite winning the prestigious award,
Dr Hochmair, and many other women in science, still don't exist on Wikipedia.

Sara Hartse and Jacqueline Gu, both Brown freshmen and computer science students, said they first became aware of gender inequity on Wikipedia during an uproar in the spring when someone began systematically moving female novelists including Harper Lee and Ann Rice off the "American Novelists'' page and onto the "American Women Novelists'' subcategory.

Began systematically moving female novelists off the "American Novelists'' page
and onto the "American Women Novelists'' subcategory.

[Poetlister]

Began systematically moving female novelists off the "American Novelists'' page
and onto the "American Women Novelists'' subcategory.

I'm in two minds about this. Would people complain if someone began systematically moving American novelists off the "Novelists'' page and onto the "American Novelists'' subcategory? Of course, the best thing would be to improve the category system so you had categories of Americans, Women and Novelists and could create their intersection, or that of any two of them, on the fly.