WikiWomen

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WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Fri Aug 09, 2013 4:08 pm

Wikipedia: Towards closing the Gender Gap
dna, 9 August 2013 link
Only about a tenth of Wikipedia's contributors are female. Here's what the Wikimedian community and the Wikimedia Foundation are doing to bridge the Gender Gap.

By Netha Hussian, a Wikimedian from Kozhikode, India.

It really upset me when I figured out that only around 9 percent of all the contributors to Wikipedia are women. I knew that very few women contribute to Wikipedia, but I hadn't expected the figure to be as low as 9 percent.

[...]

The Wikimedia Foundation, the not-for-profit organization that hosts Wikipedia, had recognized this problem sooner than I did. The Wikimedia Foundation has launched various programmes to bridge the Gender Gap. The latest addition to the list is the WikiWomen's Collaborative.

The WikiWomen's Collaborative was created in September 2012 by women around the world who edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and want to encourage others to do the same. The project was aimed at helping women and transwomen support each another and engage in programmes that help the Wikimedian community bring in new women editors. A variety of events such as edit-a-thons, interviews, and Wikiwomen parties were conducted as a part of the Collaborative's activities.

In May 2012, a WikiWomenCamp was organised for women in the Wikimedia movement to come together and discuss with like-minded women various issues related to women in the Wikimedia community. Over 20 women from different countries participated in the camp to brainstorm solutions for existing problems that concern women, and suggest future plans to collaborate with one another. It is customary to conduct a WikiWomen's luncheon at Wikimania, the global gathering of Wikimedians, exclusively for the women participants.

[...]

The Wikimedia Foundation has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015. Given the good response from the community to various events conducted for women, it is likely that the Foundation will achieve its goal within the set time limit.
Last edited by Mancunium on Fri Aug 09, 2013 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by DanMurphy » Fri Aug 09, 2013 4:17 pm

The Wikimedia Foundation has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015. Given the good response from the community to various events conducted for women, it is likely that the Foundation will achieve its goal within the set time limit.
Well, that's settled then.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Fri Aug 09, 2013 4:28 pm

DanMurphy wrote:
The Wikimedia Foundation has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015. Given the good response from the community to various events conducted for women, it is likely that the Foundation will achieve its goal within the set time limit.
Well, that's settled then.
The easiest way to reach their goal would be to permaban 90 percent of the WikiMen.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Vigilant » Fri Aug 09, 2013 4:29 pm

Mancunium wrote:
DanMurphy wrote:
The Wikimedia Foundation has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015. Given the good response from the community to various events conducted for women, it is likely that the Foundation will achieve its goal within the set time limit.
Well, that's settled then.
The easiest way to reach their goal would be to permaban 90 percent of the Wikimen.
This would solve so very many of their goals.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Aug 09, 2013 7:14 pm

Vigilant wrote:
Mancunium wrote:The easiest way to reach their goal would be to permaban 90 percent of the Wikimen.
This would solve so very many of their goals.
It's a lovely ideal, but it would drastically reduce the number of sditors, which wouldn't make the WMF happy at all. Don't forget that this number is the most important metric of how well the project is doing.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Vigilant » Fri Aug 09, 2013 8:19 pm

Outsider wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Mancunium wrote:The easiest way to reach their goal would be to permaban 90 percent of the Wikimen.
This would solve so very many of their goals.
It's a lovely ideal, but it would drastically reduce the number of sditors, which wouldn't make the WMF happy at all. Don't forget that this number is the most important metric of how well the project is doing.
This whole "We need lots of editors" vs "We don't want asshole editors" vs "We need more women editors" seems a bit of a conundrum for the WMF, doesn't it?
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Poetlister » Sat Aug 10, 2013 4:37 pm

Vigilant wrote:This whole "We need lots of editors" vs "We don't want asshole editors" vs "We need more women editors" seems a bit of a conundrum for the WMF, doesn't it?
I'd bet that they come down on the "lots of editors in the short term" side.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Sun Aug 11, 2013 3:22 pm

According to various news reports, in the past three days the percentage of WikiWomen editors of Wikipedia has increased from 9% to 13% and now to 20%.

Wikipedia fails to bridge gender gap
Just 20pc of Wikepedians who update the web site are women, and outgoing executive director laments her failure to solve the imbalance
South China Morning Post, 11 August 2013 link
Search "abortion" on Wikipedia's English version and you will find a page called "Abortion-rights movements". It has been edited 40 times since it was created - mainly by men.

"C'mon, guys are arguing about what's in that pregnancy article - are you kidding me?" said Sarah Stierch, 32, a former Wikimedia Foundation member who was given the task of examining the gender gap within the Wikipedia world.

There is a similar story for the entry on rape. Indeed, men dominate Wikipedia when it comes to most topics.

The lack of women's contributions has been a hot topic at this year's Wikimania conference in Hong Kong, which ends today.

Stierch was recruited in 2011 by Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which employs 150 people to run 13 non-profit information-sharing projects, including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wiktionary.

Gardner, the organisation's highest-ranking woman, yesterday confirmed she will leave the foundation in December because she believes there is a bigger job at hand, protecting the freedom of the internet.

That stubborn gender gap, however, remains a disappointment.

"I didn't solve it. We didn't solve it. The Wikimedia Foundation didn't solve it. The solution won't come from the Wikimedia Foundation."

Instead, she said, it had to be solved by the community it served, with women stepping forward to take a more active role.

Gardner accepted the job in 2007 and had no idea of the gender imbalance in the Wikipedia world until a Wikiwomen gathering in Taipei later that year.

She was shocked to find there only 11 of the 400 participants were women, and only one was a parent. "It seemed likely that the kind of women who got involved with Wikipedia were in some ways not similar to the population of women as a whole," Gardner said. "There was something unusual about them."

According to organisers of this year's Wikimania, by July 30 women accounted for only 20.9 per cent of registrations online.

Gardner thinks that with the medium dominated by highly educated males and relying on word-of-mouth to expand, it will never "naturally grow to be as diverse as it otherwise could have been".

Also, she said in the very limited leisure time women had, they tended to be more involved in social activities instead of editing Wikipedia.

"Women see technology more as a tool they use to accomplish tasks, rather than something fun in itself," Gardner said.

The Wikipedia Foundation has tried various ways to encourage women's participation. It developed Visual Editor - a more blog-like, user-friendly editorial tool - and created GLAMWiki targeting women working in galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Gardner has even written editorials on the gender issue.

But to little avail.

"There are only 1,500 articles about women scientists in Wikipedia. We are missing at least half of them," said Emily Temple-Wood, a 19-year-old student from Loyola University in Chicago. She has been writing about female scientists on Wikipedia since middle school.

Gardner's departure and the likelihood of her successor being a male worries some female Wikipedians. They fear that without her influence and with one less woman on the board, the gender gap will widen.

Gardner disagrees. She sees it as a mission in which everyone has a role to play.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by dogbiscuit » Sun Aug 11, 2013 3:45 pm

Mancunium wrote: South China Morning Post, 11 August 2013 link
That stubborn gender gap, however, remains a disappointment.

"I didn't solve it. We didn't solve it. The Wikimedia Foundation didn't solve it. The solution won't come from the Wikimedia Foundation."

Instead, she said, it had to be solved by the community it served, with women stepping forward to take a more active role.
I can only think Sue means - "Come on girls, get your pants down and start uploading photographs of your lady-gardens."

Why on earth would anyone sane want to do battle with the misogynistic die hards that are hunkered down in Wikipedia, especially as Sue can't see that there is any problem with the behaviour there. The WMF could solve it if they had a will. Sue Gardner is essentiually declaring surrender to the trolls that own Wikipedia.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by DanMurphy » Sun Aug 11, 2013 3:52 pm

Wow. Let us consider:

"The solution won't come from the Wikimedia Foundation." - Sue Gardner.

Wasn't she touting the Wikimedia Foundation's Visual Editor as the solution not so long ago? Wasn't this one of her top priorities?

Full marks for candor though.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Sun Aug 11, 2013 4:09 pm

Between the dishonesty, the inaccuracies, and the apparent lack of fact-checking, this whole article is pretty much laughable. But for the record...
Gardner accepted the job in 2007 and had no idea of the gender imbalance in the Wikipedia world until a Wikiwomen gathering in Taipei later that year.

She was shocked to find there only 11 of the 400 participants were women, and only one was a parent. "It seemed likely that the kind of women who got involved with Wikipedia were in some ways not similar to the population of women as a whole," Gardner said. "There was something unusual about them."
First off, there was no such "gathering" at all, at least not anything listed in the Wikimania 2007 program, schedule or list of social events. The author of the article is probably referring to Wikimania 2007 in general and used the term "Wikiwomen" mistakenly instead of "Wikipedian."

Regardless, if she's going to say things like, "there was something unusual about" women who participate in Wikipedian activities to the press, she's clearly not the sort of person they want spearheading the drive to increase the percentage of female participants - even if they know it can't succeed no matter who's in charge. The statement may be true, but you just don't say that, at least not in public, ever.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Vigilant » Sun Aug 11, 2013 4:10 pm

dogbiscuit wrote:
Mancunium wrote: South China Morning Post, 11 August 2013 link
That stubborn gender gap, however, remains a disappointment.

"I didn't solve it. We didn't solve it. The Wikimedia Foundation didn't solve it. The solution won't come from the Wikimedia Foundation."

Instead, she said, it had to be solved by the community it served, with women stepping forward to take a more active role.
I can only think Sue means - "Come on girls, get your pants down and start uploading photographs of your lady-gardens."

Why on earth would anyone sane want to do battle with the misogynistic die hards that are hunkered down in Wikipedia, especially as Sue can't see that there is any problem with the behaviour there. The WMF could solve it if they had a will. Sue Gardner is essentiually declaring surrender to the trolls that own Wikipedia.
This is correct.
Sue could wave a magic wand and the problem would disappear.

"From this day henceforth, in the interest of a project more inviting to women, we shall be expelling from our servers anyone who violates the following tenets: ..."

It takes no real effort on the part of the WMF.
It makes things clear for the admins and ARBCOM.
It starts immediately.

Guess she just couldn't be bothered.

As I've said of her before. Coward.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Sun Aug 11, 2013 4:12 pm

DanMurphy wrote:Full marks for candor....
It's more candor than usual, but if she'd been strictly honest about it, she would have said "the solution can only come from the Wikimedia Foundation, but since it won't come from there, there will be no solution."

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Mon Aug 19, 2013 12:38 pm

Women Contributors Still Face Hurdles at Wikipedia
Wall Street Journal, 19 August 2013 link
For all its efforts, Wikipedia has been unable to attract more women to its ranks of contributors.

Wikipedia has come a long way since its inception in 2001, but the proportion of female contributors at the online encyclopedia remains stubbornly low. Men still account for an overwhelming 87% of Wikipedia’s contributors, co-founder Jimmy Wales said recently while in Hong Kong for the organization’s annual Wikimania conference.

Barriers for women contributors have remained high despite Wikipedia’s efforts, which have included adopt-an-editor programs, women’s online and offline communities and scholarships for women.

“I wish we had solved the problem, but we didn’t,” Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, said at the Wikimania conference in Hong Kong. Ms. Gardner is leaving the organization soon and has written a well-publicized blog on the hurdles that women contributors face at the organization; chief among which is a systemic bias against women.

Sydney Poore first started editing Wikipedia in 2005 when she noticed articles about drugs, medical procedures and diseases were generally male-oriented. Ms. Poore was then an obstetrics nurse in Lexington, Kentucky, and her early contributions were articles about women’s health.

When Ms. Poore later accepted a spot as the only female member of a Wikimedia fund dissemination committee she didn’t want to be a “token.” Still, she felt it was important for the group to include a woman. She had already been on a predominately male Wikimedia arbitration committee, where she recalls, “I felt like I was living in the 1980s.” While her peers treated her well, “it still felt wrong.”

Members say the main difference today is that there is more recognition of the problem. A few years ago, Sara Stierch, who works at the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, says she was called a “feminazi” for discussing gender issues in Wikipedia.

Today, there are more programs and discussions around gender, says Silvia Stieneker, a German Wiki editor who taught herself to edit so that she could teach other women how to participate. But this has come with mixed results, as some say too much discussion of the gender problem can scare away new female editors who fear the atmosphere will be misogynistic .

Wikipedia’s “deletionist” culture toward entries submitted by or about women exacerbates the situation. Articles about women scientists, biographers and women’s issues get flagged for speedy removal more often than other types of articles.

“They say neutrality is the principle, but I can’t find it neutral when there are lots of articles about porn stars but articles on female authors get deleted,” says Ms. Stieneker. “It’s not fair, and not neutral.”

To find new ways of getting more women to join as contributors, Wikipedia said it will host a conference in Berlin in November.
Wikimedia Diversity Conference: link
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by thekohser » Mon Aug 19, 2013 1:12 pm

Mancunium wrote:Women Contributors Still Face Hurdles at Wikipedia
Wall Street Journal, 19 August 2013 link
I left a comment there:
9:10 am August 19, 2013
Gregory Kohs wrote:
I’m a bit tired of the media simply republishing the PR pablum offered up by the Wikimedia Foundation, while ignoring the core items that are really driving the reason why women (and men) are less and less likely to want to edit Wikipedia. It’s because of a baked-in culture of tolerance for strange and offensive people in the highest ranks of Wikipedia leadership. For example, it was pointed out to executive director Sue Gardner that one of her contractor staff members was gabbing online with other Wikipedians, and wrote: “You should however have instead taken your pen, punched a hole in her windpipe and looked on as her attempts to wave for help got increasingly feeble.” What did Sue Gardner have to say about this horrifyingly misogynistic comment? She said she didn’t feel the need to familiarize herself with the case, and that it was just an “informal jokey exchange”. Women are smart. They can see when an organization is rotting from the top down, and they simply choose not to participate in such an organization.

As for the media like Wall Street Journal, I suggest that you investigate — truly dig in and *investigate* Wikipedia. Throw away everything you’ve been spoon-fed by the Wikimedia Foundation and Jimmy Wales, and start observing what people outside the project have to say about it. And simply observe it for yourself. Try editing an article or creating a new article — do you feel “welcomed” by the Wikipedia community?
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by EricBarbour » Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:24 pm

As a longtime critic of Wikipedia, and co-author of a planned book about its foundation, I can tell you innumerable stories about its internal corruption, its institutional sexism and misogyny, its paranoia and intolerance. Yet people continue to pretend that Wikipedia is “fundamentally good” because they like what content they see, and choose to ignore the bad parts (of which there are many).

And just by the way: quoting Sue Gardner simply proves the point, because she has already turned in her resignation. She lasted an unusually long time in the toxic world of the WMF for a female, more than 6 years. There are many dark rumors about how she managed that feat (a hint: they did not involve her “organizational skills”).

WMF hired a female CTO, Danese Cooper, and she only lasted one year (2010-2011). Ask her what she thinks of Wikipedia’s institutional sexism. Florence Devouard, the successor to the ever-nauseating Jimmy Wales as Chair of the WMF Board of Trustees, only lasted two years in that position. Women in high positions at the WMF tend to be “figurehead” personalities, with little power over the organization itself.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Tue Aug 20, 2013 11:04 pm

Wikipedia’s Gender Gap Persists: Why Don’t More Women Contribute To The Online Encyclopedia?
International Business Times, 19 August 2013 link
Wikipedia’s women problem isn’t going away.

Speaking in Hong Kong at the annual Wikimania conference on Aug. 9, Jimmy Wales said that the vast majority of Wikipedia contributors -- 87 percent -- are men, according to the Wall Street Journal. The number is frustratingly high, given recent grassroots campaigns by Wikipedia users and efforts by the website itself to encourage more women to create and edit articles.

Those efforts include the WikiWomen’s Collaborative, a volunteer-run project to “inspire, engage and support more women to be involved in the Wikimedia movement,” and Wikipedia’s Adopt-a-user programs, which pairs inexperienced users with more seasoned Wikipedia editors.

Elsewhere, virtual events such as the “Global Women Wikipedia Write-In” and the “Feminists Engage Wikipedia” meet-up sought to increase not only the number of articles written by women but also the number of articles written about women.

Noam Cohen, a columnist for the New York Times, brought greater attention to Wikipedia’s gender discrepancy in January 2011, noting that Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, had set a goal to boost the number of women contributors to 25 percent by 2015. But the Journal reported Monday that Gardner all but admitted at the conference that such efforts have, so far, not been as successful as she’d hoped. “I wish we had solved the problem, but we didn’t,” she said.

The question of why more women don’t contribute to the world’s largest encyclopedia isn't an easy one to answer. Sarah Stierch, program evaluation and design community coordinator for Wikimedia Foundation, told International Business Times in an email that there's no single, magic-bullet reason that can account for the disparity.

“Women are believed not to contribute for a variety of reasons,” she said. “Some of it involves the way women are raised in this gendered society -- we are more adverse to conflict, and the Internet is full of jerks. You’re less prone to finding women engaging in heated conversation on the talk pages of hot subjects like abortion and pregnancy." Stierch said the latter is "a hot subject on Wikipedia -- 95 percent of the writers are male and arguments often erupt as to whether to feature a naked hot model shot of a pregnant woman or a clothed 'normal' photograph of a pregnant woman as the main image."

It’s probably for similar reasons, Stierch added, that you’ll find fewer women on Reddit, whose Wild West-like atmosphere attracts twice as many men as women, according to Pew Research. That discrepancy separates Reddit from social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, where women tend to outnumber men.

The bluntness of Wikipedia editors can be off-putting to anyone. (If you make an incorrect edit, they’ll let you know, often without any sense of tact.) But Stierch said research shows that men are more prone to keep “pushing the buttons” until they get it right, while women are more likely to give up early. She added that women are also more likely to say their lifestyles are simply too hectic to allow for time spent editing Wikipedia.

“I’ve had women tell me they are too busy,” Stierch said. “That’s often the most popular.”

Despite ongoing hurdles, the Wikimedia Foundation isn't giving up. In November, the organization’s German branch will host a “Diversity Conference” in Berlin, where it's encouraging participants to discuss ideas to foster gender diversity.

Stierch, too, thinks it’s possible to focus too heavily on why fewer women contribute without exploring the options necessary to remedy the problem.

“I’m sort of beyond dwelling on why women don't edit,” she said. “I focus now on trying to engage women and inspire them to contribute. You can’t provide the world with the sum of all knowledge for free when only about 9 percent of the population is providing that knowledge. It’s a systemic bias that has existed since the written word.”
What a load of sexist stereotypes. Sarah Stierch is a male chauvinist pig.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 20, 2013 11:09 pm

I'd venture that there's an element of underlying cause that goes to why there are more men gamers than women gamers.

Much of en.wp is World of Warcraft level grinding.
Vandal patrol, gnoming, ANI shitstorms, 3RR and POV warriors camping articles.

Most sane people won't put up with it.


Perhaps there are just more men than women who are insane in this particular regard.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Tue Aug 20, 2013 11:37 pm

Vigilant wrote:I'd venture that there's an element of underlying cause that goes to why there are more men gamers than women gamers.

Much of en.wp is World of Warcraft level grinding.
Vandal patrol, gnoming, ANI shitstorms, 3RR and POV warriors camping articles.

Most sane people won't put up with it.


Perhaps there are just more men than women who are insane in this particular regard.
Men on the average are physically stronger than women; that's why there are gender-segregated professional and Olympic sports. Men used their strength to create patriarchal "public" boys-only clubs: trades, businesses, banking, educational institutions, governments, the law, political parties. Wherever right of access and participation has been extended to women, they have proved to be the equal to men in every field of human endeavor. Women can even be power-mad tyrants and master criminals.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by thekohser » Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:09 am

Mancunium wrote:Women can even be power-mad tyrants and master criminals.
Come on, could we please stop bashing Sue Gardner?
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by EricBarbour » Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:34 am

thekohser wrote:
Mancunium wrote:Women can even be power-mad tyrants and master criminals.
Come on, could we please stop bashing Sue Gardner?
Especially since Sue is a second-rate amateur, next to real maniac ladies. Elonka, Orlady, KillerC, etc.
They overcompensate for their femininity by being worse than nearly all the males.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Wed Aug 21, 2013 1:29 pm

Wikipedia Needs More Female Contributors
The organization hopes its upcoming conference will find ideas to
bring more female editors on board.
Fast Company, 20 August 2013 link
When it comes to the Internet's encyclopedia, men rule the ranks, making up 87% of Wikipedia's contributors.

Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales dropped that little factoid at the Wikimania conference in Hong Kong. As a result of this imbalance, the collaboratively edited encyclopedia has been looking for ways to attract more female editors and hopes its upcoming Wikimedia Diversity Conference in Berlin will bring forward ideas to diversify the organization's user base.

“They say neutrality is the principle, but I can’t find it neutral when there are lots of articles about porn stars but articles on female authors get deleted,” Silvia Stieneker, a German editor, told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s not fair, and not neutral.”

It's not just Wikipedia that skews heavily male. Despite the "Gray Lady" sobriquet, a recent analysis has found that men make up most of The New York Times' front-page bylines. The newspaper also quotes male sources three times more than women--six times more on international affairs, four times more on politics, and even twice as much on style issues.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Wed Aug 21, 2013 2:20 pm

Mancunium wrote:“They say neutrality is the principle, but I can’t find it neutral when there are lots of articles about porn stars but articles on female authors get deleted,” Silvia Stieneker, a German editor, told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s not fair, and not neutral.”
Hmm... it's like the message is getting out, but somehow people are misinterpreting the nature of the problem, in this case almost completely. It's true there are lots of articles about porn stars, and that "notability requirements" are sometimes used to delete (or more accurately, prevent the development of) BLP articles on female authors, but as far as gender imbalance among the user community is concerned, those things are symptoms, not causes. Instead it has everything to do with the internal culture of WP, its overweening rule-set, the nexus between anonymity and narcissism... just to name a few of the things that we've discussed at length already.

Normally I'd say that people (women or otherwise) should be relieved that their BLP articles are getting deleted, but struggling authors of both genders need all the exposure they can get, and it should at least help prove to them (not that they're listening) that an opt-out policy would result in very few article deletions.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Poetlister » Wed Aug 21, 2013 9:16 pm

“I’m sort of beyond dwelling on why women don't edit,” she said. “I focus now on trying to engage women and inspire them to contribute. You can’t provide the world with the sum of all knowledge for free when only about 9 percent of the population is providing that knowledge. It’s a systemic bias that has existed since the written word.”
What is 9 percent supposed to mean? Surely nothing like that many people have ever edited Wikipedia. Anyway, why would everyone in the world need to? What information is there that couldn't be contributed by a total of say 100 million people, assuming that they were carefully selected?
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Wed Aug 21, 2013 9:37 pm

Outsider wrote:What is 9 percent supposed to mean? Surely nothing like that many people have ever edited Wikipedia. Anyway, why would everyone in the world need to? What information is there that couldn't be contributed by a total of say 100 million people, assuming that they were carefully selected?
Not only that, the "written word" actually didn't have that kind of "systemic bias" - in most societies throughout history, educated women have been able to write things down, and even publish those writings, with relatively little fear that someone would go and destroy every copy of what they wrote simply because it didn't meet some sort of "inclusion criteria."

Bias traditionally existed (and still does) in the form of wealth disparity, in that wealthy people could afford to publish when poor people could not... but that's not the same thing, though it's true that in most societies wealth (and power) has always been held mainly by men.

But as for the population stuff, 9 percent of the world's population would be about 650 million people (give or take), and it's extremely unlikely that more than 1 million people have made one or more Wikipedia edits. Moreover, the vast preponderance of activity on Wikipedia is non-constructive, or at least non-additive. The number of people who have actually "contributed knowledge" is likely to be well under 100,000, and I might even say under 50,000.

What this statement by Ms. Stierch proves is, basically, what most of us have been saying all along: the Wikimedia Foundation cares mostly - if not exclusively - about user-count, and they're perfectly willing to make all sorts of ridiculous and absurd statements to the effect that they need more registered users. In this case they're saying it would be nice if a higher proportion of those users were women, which is marginally better than flat-out saying they don't really care. But by all appearances, they really don't care, and never have.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by EricBarbour » Wed Aug 21, 2013 9:50 pm

Midsize Jake wrote:The number of people who have actually "contributed knowledge" is likely to be well under 100,000, and I might even say under 50,000.
I suspect less than 10,000 people have written any substantial quantity of content. Not even Malleus or Giano
levels, just 3-5 complete articles of more than 15k bytes. Writing is hard, grinding trivial changes and corrections
is easy.
What this statement by Ms. Stierch proves is, basically, what most of us have been saying all along: the Wikimedia Foundation cares mostly - if not exclusively - about user-count, and they're perfectly willing to make all sorts of ridiculous and absurd statements to the effect that they need more registered users. In this case they're saying it would be nice if a higher proportion of those users were women, which is marginally better than flat-out saying they don't really care. But by all appearances, they really don't care, and never have.
Wikipedia is the ultimate lie--a monster of Web 2.0, wedded to traffic figures. The "content" is nothing but
a traffic honeypot. There is no "quality" or "value", there is only one consideration: maximizing traffic figures.
Any "value" is a mass delusion, useful in attracting traffic but serving no other purpose. And people wonder why
there are so many dick photos on Commons, and insane arguments on noticeboards and talkpages. It's just traffic.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Malleus » Wed Aug 21, 2013 9:55 pm

Midsize Jake wrote:What this statement by Ms. Stierch proves is, basically, what most of us have been saying all along: the Wikimedia Foundation cares mostly - if not exclusively - about user-count, and they're perfectly willing to make all sorts of ridiculous and absurd statements to the effect that they need more registered users. In this case they're saying it would be nice if a higher proportion of those users were women, which is marginally better than flat-out saying they don't really care. But by all appearances, they really don't care, and never have.
Stierch is one of those who try to make a career out feminism. I'd be interested to know though in what way WP's coverage would be different if the claimed gender ratios were reversed.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Wed Aug 21, 2013 10:35 pm

Malleus wrote:I'd be interested to know though in what way WP's coverage would be different if the claimed gender ratios were reversed.
Reversed? That is indeed an interesting question, actually, in ways that might not have occurred to you or, for that matter, most people.

I own a book called called The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker (T-H-L). Prior to writing it, Walker mostly wrote about knitting. It's basically an limited-coverage encyclopedia written from a completely feminist perspective, with an article about nearly every female mythological figure, most religious concepts, and several general-information topics as well. For example, the article about "War" begins like this:
A primary patriarchal contribution to culture, almost entirely absent from the matriarchal societies of the Neolithic and early Bronze Ages. Even when Goddess-worship was giving way to cults of aggressive gods, for a long time the appearance of the Goddess imposed peace on all hostile groups.
Upon reading that, most men would immediately dismiss the author as the purveyor of an absurdly-biased feminist world-view, and I suppose they'd have every justification for doing so - even though the material as written is essentially true. But the thing they might not realize is that having done so, they've just experienced the same feelings, and had the same reaction, that a woman probably has now upon reading what passes for "the sum of human knowledge" on Wikipedia.

Obviously the ideal is to get the gender imbalance improved to something more reasonable - I would imagine a 60-40 split would be close enough that few people would seriously complain. Whereas, actually reversing the imbalance would produce something just as bad overall as what Wikipedia has now, though IMO it would also be quite different.

Definitely less porn, anyway.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by HRIP7 » Fri Aug 23, 2013 2:11 am

EricBarbour wrote:
Midsize Jake wrote:The number of people who have actually "contributed knowledge" is likely to be well under 100,000, and I might even say under 50,000.
I suspect less than 10,000 people have written any substantial quantity of content. Not even Malleus or Giano
levels, just 3-5 complete articles of more than 15k bytes. Writing is hard, grinding trivial changes and corrections
is easy.
What this statement by Ms. Stierch proves is, basically, what most of us have been saying all along: the Wikimedia Foundation cares mostly - if not exclusively - about user-count, and they're perfectly willing to make all sorts of ridiculous and absurd statements to the effect that they need more registered users. In this case they're saying it would be nice if a higher proportion of those users were women, which is marginally better than flat-out saying they don't really care. But by all appearances, they really don't care, and never have.
Wikipedia is the ultimate lie--a monster of Web 2.0, wedded to traffic figures. The "content" is nothing but
a traffic honeypot. There is no "quality" or "value", there is only one consideration: maximizing traffic figures.
Any "value" is a mass delusion, useful in attracting traffic but serving no other purpose. And people wonder why
there are so many dick photos on Commons, and insane arguments on noticeboards and talkpages. It's just traffic.
At any rate, the concern with traffic is what seems to drive management and PR decisions. As far as the quality of the content is concerned, there is a general abdication of responsibility.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Fri Aug 23, 2013 3:31 pm

Can These Students Fix Wikipedia's Lady Problem?
Mother Jones, 23 August 2013 link
Earlier this month, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales told conference-goers in Hong Kong that a whopping 87 percent of the site's editors are men. It wasn't the first time Wikipedia's gender imbalance had played out in the media: In Februrary, staff acknowledged that it affected the online encyclopedia's content, and a New York Times op-ed in April noted that Wikipedia editors had been moving women from the "American Novelists" category to the "American Women Novelists" subcategory.

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.

Students participating in the exercise will create and expand Wikipedia articles on influential women and encourage "feminists, academics, and activists to contribute to Wikipedia and help revolutionize its culture." According to Inside Higher Ed, "students will be given lists of women who have played key roles in science and technology," and will tweak articles to acknowledge their contributions.

FemTechNet, which Juhasz calls "a collective of international feminist scholars, artists, and activists," is launching an online curriculum focused on educating people about the relationship between women and technology. Starting in September, instructors at 15 different colleges, including Brown, Yale, and Penn State University, will be offering "Dialogues on Feminism and Technology." Students taking the course will study technology through a feminist lens using prerecorded videos featuring prominent feminist scholars.

"From a feminist perspective, we think of technology differently than just as objects or applications," says Anne Balsamo, a course organizer and dean of the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York City. "Technology from a feminist perspective is social, cultural, technical objects or arrangements."

And, importantly, it includes women.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by thekohser » Fri Aug 23, 2013 3:55 pm

..."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.
So much for Wikipedia:Advocacy (T-H-L)!

Brought to you by the lady who built a college course around studying YouTube. She sounds exactly like Sue Gardner.

:crying:
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Fri Aug 23, 2013 4:01 pm

thekohser wrote:
..."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.
So much for Wikipedia:Advocacy (T-H-L)!
Have I ever mentioned here that there is no such thing as Neutral Point of View?
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Fri Aug 23, 2013 5:03 pm

It looks like this here page is the "course description" for "Wikistorming."
What gets a Wikipedia article?

While Wikipedia is much larger than any previous encyclopedia because it is not limited by the printed page, not every topic has an article and many are excluded. Wikipedia has a “notability” threshold that topics must reach to be included. Understanding the complex criteria that make up this policy and the debates that surround it is a key part of understanding Wikipedia. In this assignment, students will read the policy, guidelines and debates for one week, analyzing how this decision is made. The focus in this assignment will be “Articles for deletion”, specifically those that have already been deemed worthy of discussion (that is, those that aren’t patent nonsense, copyright violations, etc.). After this week, the students will choose five deletion debates and one section of the Wikipedia Guide to deletion and develop an argument about how deletion/inclusion on Wikipedia operates.
In other words: "The two key components of this online course are {1} a masochistic exercise in futility and {2} the study of red herrings."

However you look at it, I'm afraid they're about to run into a very large obstacle called "The Wikipedia Community," which I suspect will force them to modify the course somewhat. By next year, the course will probably be called "Developing Better Alternatives to Wikipedia."

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Vigilant » Fri Aug 23, 2013 5:51 pm

Midsize Jake wrote:It looks like this here page is the "course description" for "Wikistorming."
What gets a Wikipedia article?

While Wikipedia is much larger than any previous encyclopedia because it is not limited by the printed page, not every topic has an article and many are excluded. Wikipedia has a “notability” threshold that topics must reach to be included. Understanding the complex criteria that make up this policy and the debates that surround it is a key part of understanding Wikipedia. In this assignment, students will read the policy, guidelines and debates for one week, analyzing how this decision is made. The focus in this assignment will be “Articles for deletion”, specifically those that have already been deemed worthy of discussion (that is, those that aren’t patent nonsense, copyright violations, etc.). After this week, the students will choose five deletion debates and one section of the Wikipedia Guide to deletion and develop an argument about how deletion/inclusion on Wikipedia operates.
In other words: "The two key components of this online course are {1} a masochistic exercise in futility and {2} the study of red herrings."

However you look at it, I'm afraid they're about to run into a very large obstacle called "The Wikipedia Community," which I suspect will force them to modify the course somewhat. By next year, the course will probably be called "Developing Better Alternatives to Wikipedia."
If recent event are any indication, the following semester will be comprised of a graduate class in "Wikipediocracy made me cry."
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Fri Aug 23, 2013 7:04 pm

Vigilant wrote:If recent event are any indication, the following semester will be comprised of a graduate class in "Wikipediocracy made me cry."
Back in the WR days, I wanted to put up a top-line blurb saying, You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss your misguided belief in the decency of anonymous internet goons goodbye, but it was too long for the space we had up there.

Anyhoo, getting back to the topic at hand, I took a look at Wikiproject Feminism and their Open Tasks List, as well as the page for SlimVirgin's proposed Gender-Bias Task Force (roughly half of the 11 members of which are, I believe, male). None of these mention FemTechNet or "Wikistorming." It's possible that there really is some activity going on and they haven't revealed themselves yet, possibly for fear of getting the same "3-B's" treatment that others attempting similar non-feminist initiatives have received (i.e., "Block, Ban, Belittle"). I suppose it's possible that the WPers might take a more hands-off approach in their case because they really do need a greater proportion of female users, but personally I'd be rather surprised by that.

And I have to say - and at the risk of sounding extremely sexist here (sorry) - it really doesn't help that literally all of the articles "to be created" on their Open Tasks List are biographies, and almost half of them would be about women who are notable because of their involvement with the "Menstrual Technology" industry. I'm not saying those subjects are undeserving; I'm just saying it won't look good to a male-dominated kommuniti, and at the very least they really do need some non-biographies on that list.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Vigilant » Fri Aug 23, 2013 7:15 pm

Midsize Jake wrote:
Vigilant wrote:If recent event are any indication, the following semester will be comprised of a graduate class in "Wikipediocracy made me cry."
Back in the WR days, I wanted to put up a top-line blurb saying, You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss your misguided belief in the decency of anonymous internet goons goodbye, but it was too long for the space we had up there.

Anyhoo, getting back to the topic at hand, I took a look at Wikiproject Feminism and their Open Tasks List, as well as the page for SlimVirgin's proposed Gender-Bias Task Force (roughly half of the 11 members of which are, I believe, male). None of these mention FemTechNet or "Wikistorming." It's possible that there really is some activity going on and they haven't revealed themselves yet, possibly for fear of getting the same "3-B's" treatment that others attempting similar non-feminist initiatives have received (i.e., "Block, Ban, Belittle"). I suppose it's possible that the WPers might take a more hands-off approach in their case because they really do need a greater proportion of female users, but personally I'd be rather surprised by that.

And I have to say - and at the risk of sounding extremely sexist here (sorry) - it really doesn't help that literally all of the articles "to be created" on their Open Tasks List are biographies, and almost half of them would be about women who are notable because of their involvement with the "Menstrual Technology" industry. I'm not saying those subjects are undeserving; I'm just saying it won't look good to a male-dominated kommuniti, and at the very least they really do need some non-biographies on that list.
Perhaps some members of our favorite commons basement dweller sub-demographic could start a competing men's rights group where they celebrate the sanctity of infinite varieties and positions of the erect penis.

Get both groups in a meeting room with the heat set at 85F, no water and a single donut in the center of the table.

I would watch the ever loving shit out of that show.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Sat Aug 24, 2013 12:00 pm

The Lady Geeks Are Coming For Wikipedia
Jezebel, 24 August 2013 link
Wikipedia's boy's club problem is a vicious cycle; 87 percent of the site's editors are men, so the site's content skews very dude (and sometimes very anti-woman.)

"Storming Wikipedia," a project of the feminist organization FemTechNet, is here to save the day/your insomnia (or am I the only one who Wikipedias famous serial killers/revolutions/snacks when I can't sleep?). From Mother Jones:

["Storming Wikipedia"], 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.

Students participating in the exercise will create and expand Wikipedia articles on influential women and encourage "feminists, academics, and activists to contribute to Wikipedia and help revolutionize its culture." According to Inside Higher Ed, "students will be given lists of women who have played key roles in science and technology," and will tweak articles to acknowledge their contributions.

FemTechNet is also launching an online curriculum about women and technology; starting in September, instructors at 15 different colleges will offer "Dialogues on Feminism and Technology." Awesome.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Poetlister » Sat Aug 24, 2013 3:36 pm

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Hmm, so in Canada, Germany and the USA there are editors who are neither male nor female.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Sat Aug 24, 2013 5:35 pm

Outsider wrote:Hmm, so in Canada, Germany and the USA there are editors who are neither male nor female.
Good catch. The numbers for Germany and the US could just be rounding errors, but that doesn't explain Canada... I'd have to assume it's just too cold up there for them to tell sometimes one way or the other.

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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Sat Aug 24, 2013 5:57 pm

Calling All Feminists: It’s Time to Edit Wikipedia
Truthdig, 24 August 2013 link
It’s no secret the online encyclopedia has a shortage of female editors. Founder Jimmy Wales said 87 percent of the site’s editors are men, and his staff acknowledged that this fact has slanted the content. In response, FemTechNet has started a project in which it urges “feminists, academics, and activists to contribute to Wikipedia and help revolutionize its culture.”
[...]
FemTechNet is also distributing a curriculum for a course titled “Dialogues on Feminism and Technology.” The class will be taught by a number of professors at colleges such as Brown and Yale, and will feature videos by feminist scholars discussing technology. The organization’s aim, it seems, is to imbue this male-driven world with fresh voices, and empower women to take Wikipedia—and technology—into their own savvy hands.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Sat Aug 24, 2013 6:33 pm

If you want to know why WP's "women strategy" is all wrong, you could start by looking at WP's Official Woman, Sarah Stierch (T-H-L).
Sarah Alexandra Stierch was born in 1980. She graduated from Bishop Chatard High School in 1998. In 2002, Stierch began working with May Department Stores as a make-up artist for Chanel and Shiseido products, later specializing in MAC Cosmetics.
[...]
In 1997, Stierch began working in club promotions in Indianapolis, Indiana, with Matt Chandler. Stierch and Chandler were professionally known as "Temporary Structures". Together, they were successful in bringing various national acts to Indianapolis, including Fugazi, Poster Children, U.S. Bombs, and Sweep the Leg Johnny.[4] Stierch also worked under the name DJ Sarah Vain, as a DJ in clubs around the city.[5][1]
Oh look, she has her own website: link
Sarah Stierch
MUSEUMIST
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER
OPEN CULTURE ADVOCATE
Press
2013
Women are not men, Freakonomics
Sarah Stierch, Wikimedia Fellow, Wants to bring more women to Wikipedia, The Huffington Post
Wiki women wanted for Web ‘edit-a-thon’, The Register-Guard
Womenpedia, Eugene Weekly
Women encouraged to use Wikipedia, KEZI 9 ABC News
2012
What has Wikipedia’s army of volunteer editors got against Kate Middleton’s wedding gown?, The Independent
How Kate Middleton’s Wedding Gown Demonstrates Wikipedia’s Woman Problem,Slate
Why have there been no great (Wikipedia articles on) women artists?, Getty Trust
Wikipedia’s dearth of women contributors: An interview with Sarah Stierch, TechRepublic
Smithsonian Institution Archives’ Sarah Stierch fights for women in science on Wikipedia, CBC’s Q
Women Can Do Science Too; Wikipedia ‘Bout to Find Out, Gawker
How Many Women Does It Take to Change Wikipedia?, Around the Mall
Meet Sarah Stierch: The Archives’ Wikipedian in Residence, Smithsonian Institution Archives
The Smithsonian Archives’ Sarah Stierch Will be Working on Wikipedia’s “Women in Science” Problem, The Mary Sue
Ada Initiative’s quest to bring women to open source, Wikimedia blog, written by Sarah Stierch
Interview with Sarah Stierch, Wikimedian-in-residence at the Smithsonian & Wikimedia Fellow, Ada Initiative
SOPA Blackout: Why Wikipedia Needs Women, Huffington Post, written by Sarah Stierch
Announcing Community Fellow Sarah Stierch, Wikimedia Foundation Blog
Ya see? I took the time to click on some of these links, and it's all overblown hype about Sarah Stierch and Sarah Vain and her MAC Cosmetics and her Kate Middleton's wedding gown.

I pity the fool who tries to replace her as The Official Woman.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Vigilant » Sat Aug 24, 2013 11:53 pm

I've read a bunch of her posts. She's pretty vile.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Mon Aug 26, 2013 8:34 pm

'Storming Wikipedia' Project Tackles The Site's 'Women Problem'
Huffington Post, 26 August 2013 link
Wikipedia has a notable woman problem -- but one group of women is determined to start fixing it.

Earlier this month, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales revealed than about 87 percent of Wikipedia editors are men. As a result the site sometimes overlooks notable women, specifically those who have contributed to the science and technology fields.

Here's where women's group FemTechNet has decided to step in. The online network is organizing a program called "Storming Wikipedia," a call for women to edit the site and add important female voices and stories.

According to Inside Higher Education, students participating in FemTechNet's online course "Feminism and Technology" will be asked to contribute to Wikipedia's pages:

"Students will be given lists of women who have played key roles in science and technology, and will study where they are represented (or ignored) in Wikipedia, and draft entries or entry additions to increase the representation of women in discussions of technology."

Previous Wikipedia edit-a-thons focusing on female scientists, such as one organized on Ada Lovelace Day in 2012, have made a significant difference in the number of women represented on the site -- over fifty entries were created or expanded at a London Women in Science event organized by Wikimedia UK.

Here's to more good work.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Mon Aug 26, 2013 8:41 pm

Women Storm Wikipedia to Include Ladies As Authors In the Male-Dominated Site
Bustle, 26 August 2013 link
Is Wikipedia sexist? A staggering 87 percent of its contributors are men. This number resembles the gender gap we expect in traditional print media, but it presents more of a mystery; we can’t blame sexist editors or a misogynistic corporate board when anyone with an Internet connection can make an anonymous contribution.

In spite of Wikipedia's taking initiatives like creating special communities for women contributors both online and offline, the proportion of women contributors has remained stagnant. Enter “Storming Wikipedia”, a project of the feminist organization FemTechNet, which aims to “collaboratively write feminist thinking into the site”, one of the project’s coordinators explained to Mother Jones. Students taking part in FemTechNet’s inaugural online course, “Dialogues in Feminism and Technology”, will edit Wikipedia as part of their homework, with the goal of writing in women who’ve been left out of pages about science and technology. The course will be offered at 15 colleges across North America, including Yale and Brown, next semester.

The gender disparity in Wikipedia’s writers has garnered significant attention as Wikipedia has become one of the most trusted references on the Web, with writers everywhere from the New York Times to Vice weighing in on the lack of female voices. Some of the most common explanations for the gender gap are that women can’t figure out Wikipedia’s user interface, that women have less free time than men, and that women don’t feel confident enough to edit others’ work. (For me, the question isn’t why so few women contribute — it’s why anyone, man or woman, contributes at all. Maybe I’m just not altruistic, but with no pay, no byline, no guarantee that my entry will even last — well, I’ve never been tempted to edit a page.)

The causes of the gender imbalance may be unclear, but the consequences are inevitable: the kinds of people and issues women care about end up getting less space. As the New York Times pointed out in 2011:

"A topic generally restricted to teenage girls, like friendship bracelets, can seem short at four paragraphs when compared with lengthy articles on something boys might favor, like, toy soldiers or baseball cards, whose voluminous entry includes a detailed chronological history of the subject.

"Even the most famous fashion designers — Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo — get but a handful of paragraphs. And consider the disparity between two popular series on HBO: The entry on “Sex and the City” includes only a brief summary of every episode, sometimes two or three sentences; the one on “The Sopranos” includes lengthy, detailed articles on each episode."

In April, Wikipedia came under fire again when people noticed that the site was relegating female authors to the “American Women Novelists” category — a subcategory of the “American Novelists” page. And, though it'd be nice, it likely won't be the last time the site garners attention for some gender-related controversy.

Although FemTechNet’s goal is certainly commendable, and the problem they seek to address is real, it still seems kind of unethical for professors to ask students to edit Wikipedia to align with their own agenda. (Even if I agree with their agenda.)
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by thekohser » Tue Aug 27, 2013 12:00 pm

What is for certain is that the media will never follow up with how disappointing the results will be for this new wave of women wiki wannabes.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:12 am

OCAD to 'Storm Wikipedia' this fall
Course on feminism and technology aims to alter gender balance on Wikipedia
CBC News, 27 August 2013 link
OCAD University is introducing a new course this fall that aims to bring a better gender balance to Wikipedia — not only in its editors but also its content.

According to statistics gathered by Wikimedia, the foundation that runs the free online encylopedia, almost 90 per cent of its editors are men.

The new university course is Dialogues on Feminism and Technology, a first-of-its-kind collaborative digital course for credit in 16 universities all over the world.

The first assignment is called "Storming Wikipedia." Students in the feminist course will have to write or edit a Wikipedia entry of a prominent woman in science or technology. The idea is to "collaboratively write feminist thinking" into Wikipedia, according to organizers.

That's not the only part of the syllabus that separates it from a regular university course.

The course in itself is a critique of the university model, with one professor or educator giving a lesson.

"That couldn't be more patriarchal," said Anne Balsamo, a course facilitator and dean of the School of Media Studies at the New School, a participating university. "That displays a hubris that is unthinkable from a feminist perspective."

It's what's known as a Distributed Open Collaborative Course (DOCC), an online course that features collaborative education, where there is not one teacher but many. It's designed by FemTechNet, a network of feminist scholars and educators that include OCAD University faculty Paula Gardner, Caroline Langill and university president Sara Diamond.

There are 12 recorded video dialogues featuring pairs of scholars and artists from around the world who "think and reimagine technology through a feminist lens."

The course is offered for credit at 16 universities all over the world, including Rutgers University, Brown University and Yale University.

At OCAD University, Dialogues in Feminism and Technology will be taught by Dr. Maria-Belén Ordóñez.

A public panel discussion and two video dialogues featuring feminist scholars will be recorded live at OCAD U on September 27.
OCAD is the Ontario College of Art and Design, Canada's "university of the imagination", which has been preparing students for careers in the restaurant service and hospitality industries since 1876.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Vigilant » Wed Aug 28, 2013 3:02 pm

I. Cannot. Wait.

Imagine the fun and the furor and the fury.

Comedy rhodium is coming to a parched and tired land.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Wed Sep 04, 2013 5:43 pm

Middle-aged White Men strike back.

Wikipedia and Left’s Propaganda Innovations
FrontPage, 4 September 2013 link
Historically speaking, the left has failed at everything it ever tried to do except destroying countries. The reason that so few know and understand this simple fact is propaganda.

The left is determined to control the future by controlling the past, not to mention the lovely horizontal and vertical parts of your television set. The internet has added new challenges, but the left is responding to them with new techniques, consolidating and extending its power through innovate methods.

While we fall behind.

Case in point. This:

"Fifteen universities worldwide — including Yale University, Brown University, and Pennsylvania State University — will offer college credit to students who “write feminist thinking” into Wikipedia."
Colleges Recruiting Students to Propagandize Wikipedia
FrontPage, 4 September 2014 link
It’s genius.

Conservatives ought to take a page from the feminist movement here. Wikipedia has become a political football, with leftists routinely invading the space to propagandize on behalf of their viewpoints. According to an Oxford University study, the single most-edited page on Wikipedia for English speakers was that of George W. Bush. There’s a reason for that: leftists spammed Bush’s pages, Bush fans fought back, and leftists spammed the page again.

This is what conservatives must understand: the left is interested solely and completely in manipulation of the truth. Leftists will use whatever outlets and tools are most readily available. And the open-sourcing of Wikipedia meets those ends. Because Wikipedia is so high-traffic – it is ranked among the top ten sites in the world – that means that a huge number of Americans get their information on specific political issues and figures from random leftists who spend time editing Wikipedia for free.

Conservatives ought to begin their own effort to impact Wikipedia. It is a powerful tool, and a medium in which conservative have been extraordinarily successful. It is also an area in which conservatives are wildly underrepresented – posts trend heavily to the left on Wikipedia. Perhaps Wikipedia’s approved editors will censor conservatives. If so, that’s a fact that Americans ought to know, too.

Instead of complaining about FemTechNet and company, conservatives ought to do something about it. The truth is just a few keystrokes away.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Mancunium » Wed Sep 04, 2013 5:56 pm

Middle-aged White Men strike back

Storming Wikipedia
Cranach, The Blog of Veith, 4 September 2013 link
Wikipedia depends on readers and volunteer editors to write, edit, and correct its entries. Theoretically, the vast network of contributors will make for an online encyclopedia that is accurate, objective, and self-correcting. But this also leaves Wikipedia open to contributors with an ideological agenda. Which is the plan for an organized effort–for college credit, no less–“to advance feminist principles of social justice” by “writ[ing] feminist thinking” into Wikipedia. The project is called “Storming Wikipedia,” an image from the French Revolution, with the revolutionary masses storming the Bastille. But the feminists doing this could inspire other sans-culottes.

From Katherine Timpf, ‘Storming Wikipedia’: "Colleges offer credit to students who enter ‘feminist thinking’ into Wikipedia: 'Fifteen universities worldwide — including Yale University, Brown University, and Pennsylvania State University — will offer college credit to students who 'write feminist thinking' into Wikipedia."
[...]
What if Christians were to storm Wikipedia, writing their thinking into the entries? I assume that would not be academically acceptable. (Would it be theologically acceptable, since Christianity holds to objective truth and doesn’t need to be advanced by propaganda, as radical ideologies do? Or should Christians also storm Wikipedia?)

I wonder which ideologies would be an acceptable basis for re-writing according to the prestigious universities offering academic credit for this. Could there be a course storming Wikipedia from the perspective of Marxists? (I suspect that would be all right. ) Or libertarians? (I don’t think so.) Or animal rights activists? (Of course.) Or political conservatives? (That would be corporate manipulation!)

Wouldn’t contributors who push an ideological agenda be the death of Wikipedia? The Bastille was not just stormed; it was destroyed.
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Re: WikiWomen

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Wed Sep 04, 2013 6:05 pm

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.

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