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I've started tinkering with body shape and female body shape, but I noticed that there are other articles that could probably need some scrutiny by task force members.
If an article seems okay content-wise, don't hesitate to strike it out.
Peter Isotalo 22:52, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
Peter and other interested editors, I just found these: Human body and Human physical appearance. The photo might be good for some of these article, though I have to ask again: What the heck is it with shaving these models' genitals? Lightbreather ( talk) 20:43, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Also, y'all might want to consider this merge proposal: Proposed merge of Midriff and Waist into Abdomen. Lightbreather ( talk) 20:43, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Glancing over the body part articles it appears they could quickly be made more encyclopedic by cropping images and also deleting unnecessary images. I notice some of the gratuitous images from cleavage (breasts) have been recently removed. Many of the current images appear to be soft core porn and/or some sort of "glamour shot", which do not seem to seriously address the topic in an encyclopedic way (see thigh gap and cleavage (breasts) for a couple examples. I understand that WP is not censored, but it seems like the creators of these articles were trying to create Victoria Secret Catalog-type-soft-core-pornography, which does not address the topic in a serious encyclopedic way. -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 17:47, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
As a long-time woman editor on Wikipedia, I had no idea any aspect of the CSB project was still alive and kicking, and I was relieved to see that this page was still active. But I was unsurprised to see that one of - probably the most - active contributors to this talk page is, of course, a man. One of the reasons Wikipedia will never, ever counter the gender bias in its editor base (and in turn in its article base) is that if you try to create spaces where women's needs are centred to address these issues, men have a tendency to a) not step back, b) get extremely angry about it. Like, this is not even "you shouldn't contribute here at all" but "you should be mindful of not dominating the space and being the most active contributor to the whole page". And so the cycle continues forever. The Drover's Wife ( talk) 00:50, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
I am amazed. The behaviour just demonstrated is exactly why Wikipedia has a problem with women, why it has a gender gap, and exactly why we have this taskforce. Having a discussion about why a project aimed at resolving the gender gap is still dominated by male voices, and how men sometimes unwittingly centre men's experience makes men - who three paragraphs above were insisting how they wanted to be part of the solution - fly into a rage and threaten to use their power as a prominent male user to delete the discussion. This is Wikipedia's "women problem" spectacularly illustrated in one brief discussion. The Drover's Wife ( talk) 13:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
No, the origin of this discussion wasn't I, but Viriditas, who came here yesterday wanting validation for changing redirects of "curvy" and "buxom" from Wiktionary to the WP Female body shape article. As for me, I agreed with SV that, once again on WP, male/man was the default - "V" or "I" shape - from which women deviate - "curvy." Then KK87 gave us permission to create a Male body shape article ("I have no objection if someone wants to make an article on it") followed by a directive to create it ("rather than pointing it out make the article"). When we suggested that he could make it, he didn't have enough medical knowledge to do it and directed us to take it to the medical project. Lightbreather ( talk) 16:07, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
I don't want to detract from Lightbreather's reply (edit conflicts galore), but I wanted to ask this - how can you actually remedy a gap where you have an editorial base that is 90% male with a conversation in which members of the 90% dominate the conversation about how to reduce that gap? I mean this quite seriously and without sarcasm. The fact that a page about reducing the gender gap still has a majority of male contributors, and that those men are pointedly pushing their own perspectives rather than intentionally trying to support women, is pretty clear evidence to most people that there's a problem. If I was ever trying to recruit women editors, and I showed them this page (pre-my addition), I'd strike out every time. The Drover's Wife ( talk) 16:10, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
If this taskforce is on shaky ground, it's because it's near impossible to confirm any Wikipedian's RL gender. GoodDay ( talk) 16:05, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
There are already females already on this project who aren't coming to this page and/or don't want to hear anything about the gender gap because they are offended by the militant feminism.How many? Have you taken a survey? Personally I've avoided participating here because I'm disgusted by how much of the conversation seems to be dominated by militant anti-feminists. Please don't use the silence of other women as presumed support for your own opinions. -- TaraInDC ( talk) 23:35, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
An Ally Skills Workshop, such as the one organized by the Ada Initiative, could really help here. There are many well-intentioned men on this page with a lot to contribute who are getting needlessly frustrated. If we had a few experienced trainers who know how to start the conversation with people who are new to the process of being male allies, many participants here could get some new tools and be up and running in a rather short period of time. I'm hopeful we'll see some of this training soon, either through the Grants:IdeaLab/Gender_Gap_Allies_training proposal, or through some other initiative. For those interested in reading about "being an ally", I actually prefer the allies against racism writing to the feminist material (a bit less annoying jargon). We will all benefit from a happier and healthier atmosphere! -- Djembayz ( talk) 03:19, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
The projects Wikipedia:WikiProject Feminism/Peer review, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's History/Peer review, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Gender Studies/Peer review really need active peer reviewers, so if some people could click on those articles and add their usernames under the Active Peer reviewers section that would be great. Thanks!
Here's a real hole in WP coverage: National Association of Women Lawyers, an organization with a 115 year history. I just bumped into this group in the course of writing a bio. If anybody is making a list of potential topics for edit-a-thons, that would be a great one. Carrite ( talk) 06:53, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
There are also no lists of women lawyers in Category:Lists of women by occupation or in Category:Lists of legal professionals, even though there are plenty of women lawyers in Category:Women lawyers. Ottawahitech ( talk) 20:09, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
There is a discussion at ANI that may be of interest to members of this group:
Porn in users' pages Alleged porn on old user pages Sexually provocative images on user pages.
Lightbreather (
talk) 17:13, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
As a follow-up, two MfDs were created from the discussion, so better to go there if the subject interests you.
-- Lightbreather ( talk) 18:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
I wonder whether we should start a guideline, Wikipedia:Writing about women, on how to avoid inadvertent sexism. Some points to get started:
Sarah (SV) (talk) 20:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
What's an "openly sexist source" considering all articles should be sourced to reliable sources? A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 04:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
What about women hidden on pages with a male title? Here is an example: Michael Mastro, was an American real estate developer who became infamous after he declared bankruptcy. His wife, Linda, received/s as much press coverage as he did/does. The page was already moved once, but Linda Mastro's name remains buried in the article. It is interesting to note that in order to google the correct Michael Mastro one needed to provide additional qualifiers, because the other Michael would show up instead, however the term Linda Mastro required no such qualifiers. Ottawahitech ( talk) 21:47, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
I've started an essay stub at User:GGTF/Writing about women. This is a GGTF page I've set up in user space so that we can work on joint pages that aren't ready for everyone to edit, but anyone is welcome to make constructive edits.
Pinging some people who might want to help write it: @ Karanacs, EvergreenFir, Djembayz, Lightbreather, BoboMeowCat, and FloNight: @ Milowent, Gobonobo, The Drover's Wife, TaraInDC, and Peter Isotalo:
Sarah (SV) (talk) 02:52, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
See: Talk:Ellen_Pao#Trial_-_where_are_the_editors.3F. The page has had a huge increase in the number of page views since the trial started, so readers are obviously looking up to Wikipedia for coverage. . Ottawahitech ( talk) 04:24, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
It appears articles related to sexuality may have issues with systemic bias. These articles seem to be depicting what is seen in pornography (male heterosexual pornography) as normal, mainstream or representative of the topic. For example, a while ago someone posted a link here to the article anal bleaching. Recently, I’ve looked over the sources for it supposedly being “mainstream” and those sources are not actually supporting that it is mainstream, but rather are questioning the notion that it is mainstream outside of pornography (and perhaps not even there that they may use lighting techniques instead of bleach). Also, someone recently linked to the article fisting in discussion regarding censorship, and looking over that article I was really surprised to see it was mostly illustrated with images of women (vaginal fisting), for an article on a topic that seems primarily related to a male homosexual practice. Oddly, the only image of a male was a medical image (like a rectal exam or something). I think sexuality articles are being edited from the POV that what is shown in male-heterosexual pornography is normal and mainstream and also from a POV that is squeamish about gay male sexuality. -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 15:52, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
I placed an Article about the toxic editing atmosphere at Wikipedia on Jimbo's talk page. Please disseminate and feel free to comment but due so in a civil manner as that is my point of the article. 208.54.38.224 ( talk) 04:05, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
Proposed Wikimania talk of possible interest to GGTF readers: How to Pick Up More Women. Topics include "Should we try and avoid English speaking white women so that we increase our benefit?". -- Djembayz ( talk) 00:46, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
I do hope that changing the title to clarify the focus -- content gender gap -- has proved useful. I also wanted to draw you attention to February's Wikimedia Research Newsletter, which points to the "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia" article submission at Cornell's arXiv.org site. -- Rosiestep ( talk) 15:05, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
Surely, everyone (or almost everyone) here will be interested in weighing in on this fourth Violence against men deletion discussion. Flyer22 ( talk) 05:46, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
Jake Orlowitz recently posted this on wikimedia-l. I presume this has been discussed on the gendergap-l but I don't see it here after a quick scan, so (Quoting Jake):
March is an amazing month for raising awareness, excitement, and initiative around broadening the presence women in our community and our content. In that spirit, West Virginia University is hosting a stellar panel through its Talking Publicly symposium series at WVU Libraries and the Reed College of Media.
The panel includes:
supports and advocates for efforts to add entries and posts to Wikipedia that focus on postcolonial studies as well as ethnic/minority and marginalized peoples. Koh is currently an associate professor of literature and the director of the Stockton College Center for the Digital Humanities. She also is a core contributor to the Profhacker Column at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Koh uses Wikipedia research writing assignments in her classes and teaches others how to start activist instructional initiatives of their own.
Foundation where she develops partnerships with educational institutions and academic associations to systematically bring more student editors and high quality content to Wikipedia. Over the last three years, Mathewson has focused her volunteer editing on improving content about women’s issues. Mathewson identifies ways to support partners who are looking to promote the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool on a large scale.
international not-for-profit research organization that provides accessible, credible information to support informed decision-making health care. Poore is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) Fund Dissemination Committee and was a member of the Wikipedia English Arbitration Committee and the WMF Ombudsmen Commission.
and former member of the executive management team of the Wikimedia Foundation. His work primarily has focused on broadening participation and developing the public understanding of Wikipedia, especially among subject matter experts. Schulenburg has been involved with Wikipedia since 2005, both as an author and as a photographer.
The following day WVU will host a 3-hour workshop to address strategies on campuses underway for correcting the gender gap and introduce the protocols of writing for Wikipedia at WVU with ideas for proven course assignments and strategies for adoption in their courses.
This is only the kick-off in a year-long focus at WVU on Women and Wikipedia. WVU Dean of Libraries Jon Cawthorne was touched and inspired after he heard the story of Adrianne Wadewitz and is dedicating this year of discussion, experimentation, and action to her.
For full information about both events:
According to Google, 12:30 pm Tuesday, Eastern Time (ET) is 5:30 pm Tuesday, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
Anthonyhcole ( talk · contribs · email) 15:22, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Alex Wang has announced the launch of the Wikimedia Foundation's Inspire Campaign. See Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire.
Alex writes:
Sarah (SV) (talk) 19:39, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
For anyone interested, there's a new page on meta, set up by the Foundation, Address the gender gap. It lists initiatives and research, and has an interesting FAQ page. Sarah (SV) (talk) 18:08, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
A new Gender Gap Webcast from West Virginia University is available. There is footage of our greatly missed Adrianne Wadewitz, and a panel including Wikimedia Education Foundation representatives. -- Djembayz ( talk) 23:58, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
I've just read the article Rosiestep pointed out above, "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia".
It makes some interesting points, including that articles about "first women to do X" fail the Finkbeiner test, placing a woman's gender above her accomplishments. The paper also says that women's articles on WP contain more words about sexuality, whereas men's contain more about cognitive processes (we've discussed this here before, namely how a woman's appearance or clothing is often mentioned). The researchers also found a minimal presence of women on WP before 1900, as a result of WP:NOTABILITY. Sarah (SV) (talk) 04:26, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Andrew Sherman, Victor Grigas and Fabrice Florin, "Meet some of the women who contribute to Wikipedia", Wikimedia blog, 6 March 2015, in celebration of International Women's Day on 8 March. Sarah (SV) (talk) 06:20, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
The December 2014 WMF metrics meeting includes results of a survey conducted of 96,000 Wikipedia users in 11 countries of the so-called Global South — conducted in 16 languages ( pg. 62). A total of 47,000 people ended up completing the survey, which ran both on desktop and mobile platforms. The survey showed that 21% of readers and 20% of contributors identified themselves as female (with another 2% declining to identify either as male or female and 1% selecting "other.") ( pg. 64)
This indicates that while there is unquestionably a gender gap, the magnitude of the chasm in 2014 seems to be overstated, at least in the Global South — more like 4m:1f than 8m:1f. Carrite ( talk) 02:02, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Voluntary response surveys are crap. Additionally, if you look at page 64 of the PDF, only 35000 of the 96000 who started the survey answered the gender question. NE Ent 17:02, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
The main page here quotes the NY Times: "an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women." It's seems unlikely GGTF is saying a) women are uncomfortable dealing with facts, and b) an encyclopedia should not be concerned with facts. Presumably it's the obsessive aspect that's being emphasized? Anyway it's unclear to me what goal that quote is trying to achieve, and I'd appreciate a clarification. NE Ent 11:44, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
A discussion is underway at ARCA that may be of interest to members of this task force as it concerns gender/gender issues. Lightbreather ( talk) 21:16, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
I would recommend editors in this task force to pay some attention to the In the News (ITN) section on the front page, as well as other frontpage selections. Recently, there was a suggestion to feature India's ban of the film India's daughter in the news section. This proposal failed. Proposals that have since succeeded in getting into the news section are among others stories on the Dawn spacecraft, finding of fossils in Ethiopia and the finding of an old Japanese battleship. While I think the selection process for ITN mostly functions well, I also believe it to some degree reflect the particular interest of those who choose to involve themselves in ITN; for instance a tendency to focus heavily on space issues. More women (and editors interested in women's issues) involved in the process might in some cases lead to other choices. An important part of the process is simply to comment on the various proposals; but even more valuable is to work on relevant article so they will hold acceptable standard for the front page. Regards, Iselilja ( talk) 22:58, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Firstly the serious stuff - https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tips_for_women_travellers could so with some reviewing.
Secondly, As you may be aware Wikvoyage writes about a fantastical or fictional travel-topic or destination for April 1st. This year's article got started a little earlier at voy:Wikivoyage:Joke_articles/Time_travel, some feedback on what to integrate into the article from a female perspective would be appreciated, as I felt there must be something more intelligent than historical romances and so on. ShakespeareFan00 ( talk) 18:25, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
The above graph is derived from the user details on English Wikipedia, and represents monthly ratios of female to male editors. The 100% spike was a month with 2 male and 2 female editors. Early months with no male and no female identifying editors registering are plotted to 0% for clarity.
I think it is clear that the trend is a positive one. There appear to be two distinct steps up, the first I would potentially ascribe to the introduction of edit filters, which meant that recent changes patrol became a little less fraught, and people relaxed a little.
The graph was made quickly and the data may need some refining, so please do not take it as gospel just yet. I hope to include this and other data in Wither the Gender Gap (excuse the pun...).
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 01:12, 4 March 2015 (UTC).
Interesting chart! Wikipedia didn't have the option to pick your pronoun in preferences until a few years into the project, so accounts registered before that time probably have a different type of statistical "bias" in rate-of-selecting-pronouns than accounts registered after that - biased toward people who stuck around as active editors (and fussing with things like their preferences occasionally), instead of just people who registered new accounts. For the earliest days, you might consider this hand-edited list as a supplement for your data: Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians in order of arrival/2001. As another cross-reference, this mailing list thread from January 2002 mentions six active women editors. (I'm one of them) Dreamyshade ( talk) 10:32, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
I was curious, so I looked up when MediaWiki got a gender option in preferences. This paper from 2011 says "the gender preference setting was introduced in January 2009" (page 4), as part of a discussion of confounding factors when analyzing the gender gap. The uptick in the numbers started happening in January and February 2009, which would match with that as a factor. If you look at the MediaWiki release history, MediaWiki 1.15, released in June 2009, seems to be the first with the gender feature, which is a bit confusing, but it's hard to find records of when stuff was deployed to Wikipedia in those years. Wikipedia:Edit filter says the edit filter feature was released in March 2009, and I'm guessing that it didn't have a huge impact on the numbers, since both February and March 2009 are 20.5% according to the data. I'd be curious to read a more detailed history of the gender gap, especially the years before 2010-2011 when it started getting widespread attention (according to Gender bias on Wikipedia). Dreamyshade ( talk) 21:36, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
FYI, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Twilight fandom seems to be an amusing case. Wikipedia notoriously contains large amounts of fannish material and we have articles about Trekkies, Browncoats, Star Wars fandom, &c. But, in this case, a mostly female fandom is dismissed as lacking organisation... Andrew D. ( talk) 08:58, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
...I think
Beatlesmania could be a very interesting topic about an early female-dominated fandom. If anything, it would be interesting to see if could be covered in a manner similar to
Deadheads, ie about a fandom rather than a "mania".
Peter
Isotalo 12:41, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
I'd like to add my name to the Participants list but I'm not able to do so. Can someone add it for me? Thanks! Grrrlriot ( ♠ ♣ ♦ ♥ †) 01:34, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
The article at Nyotaimori (about sushi served on women) needs a lot of work on being sourced much more carefully, verifying historical claims, and figuring out whether the images are acceptably representative of the practice. Dreamyshade ( talk) 07:08, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Listings of articles about women needing cleanup have been added to the project page.
Improve the quality of existing articles:
There's a request pending for a similar listing for WikiProject Women artists. -- Djembayz ( talk) 02:37, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
FYI, there's a historical event tomorrow as the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race will have women's teams competing over the same course and on the same day as the men, for the first time. I started several relevant articles for this including Amy Gentry, Women's rowing and the Women's Boat Race but haven't had time to polish them up and there hasn't been a great deal of interest yet. I'll be doing what I can tomorrow but my main priority will be getting some photos. Andrew D. ( talk) 18:01, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
African American men in computer science is at AfD; as is African American women in computer science.-- Djembayz ( talk) 12:19, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
As some of you may remember, last year in April, a RM was launched to move Hillary Rodham Clinton to Hillary Clinton. This was only one in a long series of such requests. There was a moratorium on new move requests, and it has since expired. As a result, it seems that a group of editors is preparing to launch new move discussion. My personal opinion is simple: there is no justification for stripping a woman of her name. Many of the arguments have boiled down to fact that some editors believe that it is "merely her maiden name" or "unnecessary". This struck me as being the result of systemic bias, and in my view is not compatible with the BLP policy. In fact, the preference of the subject was confirmed by Jimbo. I'm no fan of Jimbo, but I appreciated his action in this case. Regardless, I've brought this here as I think that it may worthwhile to discuss what can be done to protect the names of women. RGloucester — ☎ 14:20, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
There's a current deletion discussion regarding performance tour of female recording artist Meghan Trainor-- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 04:10, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
More eyes are needed on this article as I’ve noticed an influx of vandalism and BLP violations since Nungesser announced he is suing Columbia University. [17], [18] Also, editorial bias seems to be manifesting in this article in multiple ways. The most glaring example is that the current bio section for Paul Nungesser is about 4 times as long as the current bio section for Emma Sulkowicz.-- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 21:57, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
"Meaningful change, the anonymous woman behind the site told me over email, requires not just tweaking but reinvention from the top down: “It’s virtually impossible to change a sick system without being the one in charge.” -- Djembayz ( talk) 22:56, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
For anyone interested in commenting, this has now opened: Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request. Sarah (SV) (talk) 02:28, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
There was a grant proposal on meta that has been declined for now that seems like a potential point of interest for the GGTF. The proposal is focused on team editing. I think the initial approach was flawed (the proposer seems unfamiliar with the collaborative editing that already occurs), but at its core is a decent idea. Some of the studies say women prefer a more collaborative editing environment, and I think there is a lot of potential for finding ways to partner people who want to edit collaboratively, and perhaps even match them up with volunteer "project managers" who can help organize the division of labor and outline the article. Some of my most enjoyable moments as a WP editor have been because of an editing collaboration, but often it is difficult for people to find collaborators. (Just yesterday, actually, I saw a post on another editor's talk page from someone who wanted advice on what to do in topic X. I was able to ping 2 editors that I knew worked in that area, and they pinged in 3 or 4 more, and now the initial poster has the contacts to get started.) Is this type of focus something that this group would be interested in looking at? Karanacs ( talk) 19:01, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
There's a current deletion discussion regarding female gospel recording artist Casey J.-- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 00:03, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
Opposition to a Wiki Women Edit-A-Thon at the University of Cincinnati has raised Title IX concerns. -- Djembayz ( talk) 14:00, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
The parody posters were reported to the university’s Title IX office. Although they do not automatically constitute a Title IX violation, UC Title IX Coordinator Jyl Shaffer confirmed the Title IX office is assessing the report to see if the posters are part of a pattern of behavior that needs to be addressed in other ways.Ca2james ( talk) 17:01, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
Has anyone compared and contrasted the gender gap in blog writing to that in Wikipedia editing? Is the participation percentage similar? If they are not (i.e., if women blog a lot), then everything in common between blogs and Wikipedia would be ruled out as a significant reason for the gender gap in Wikipedia -- both being digital media, requiring big time commitment, etc. It'd also support adapting blogging features in the Wikipedia interface (e.g., moderated comments). Your thoughts? Fgnievinski ( talk) 14:23, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
I am not really sure if this subject has been brought up before in the context of this debate or discussion or project. I will read more about this later when I get the time. But I wanted to suggest my ..observation regardless.
This observation simply pertains to the technical aspects of using the system.
The idea is this:
Wikipedia is HARD
Simply put, it is too difficult to use it. And with using I mean writing, editing.
There are three categories that make Wikipedia hard to write for:
The short conclusion is that Wikipedia editorship is not intuitive enough and men are more willing to suffer the hardships of technical details and requirements. Adhering to policy is also really a technical aspect. Writing becomes something technical rather than something freeflowing. There are too many constraints.
A more detailed description would be:
Wikipedia attracts less women because of the requirement to use masculine-only qualities in dealing with the technical details of the system as it is constructed to allow editors to interface with the whole of the community and the work.
Dryden xx2 ( talk) 14:27, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment - Utterly flawed reasoning, in my experience some of the most technically qualified and even superior workers in various situations were women. The creative industries prove this over and over again, I've known numerous Editors and Artists that use software tools like Photoshop or Illustrator in extremely impressive ways. These are programs that many spend years to learn or master. -- Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 16:20, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Dryden, do you have particular examples of policies or guidelines that you feel are counter-intuitive? — Sarah (SV) (talk) 16:50, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Hey Sarah. First the whole nature of encyclopedic writing means that you have to subject yourself to a system. The system is something that requires consistency. Consistency is something that is coded into rules regarding how something should be written or formatted. Formatting requires a large knowledge regarding flags. Tags are not very intuitive. There are tags that exist in one language domain, but not in another. Finding tags even is hard. Tags set in motion community disputes or resolution processes. It seems to happen in a void. The new editor wonders where people come from, how do they find it. The new editor seems to hit a brick wall. The wall is invisible. The wall is things you want to do, and you can't do them. Or it is not allowed. Your own intentions are not supported by the system.
— Dryden xx2 ( talk) 20:19, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
To the extent that Wikipedia requires masculine qualities in order to adhere to policy, it's probably due to cultural norms. While these norms did originate from biological realities, they have been exaggerated beyond what is inherent and what other animals do, and recent developments present a clear case against the idea that technical and intellectual ability is "masculine-only". In fact, the "biological realities" are more to do with reproduction than ability. Also, I find most policies and guidelines intuitive, or at least logical. ekips39 ( talk) 20:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Masculine-only doesn't mean "male only". Actually the phrase is meaningless from my point of view: something is either masculine or feminine, but not both, so "masculine only" doesn't mean anything in actual fact. But just consider the development of the brain. In newborn children the halves of the brain are not any specialized. As the child grows the brain quickly starts offloading "structural" elements to the left hemisphere and "nonstructural" elements to the right.
— Dryden xx2 ( talk) 22:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Still not useful. — Dryden xx2 ( talk) 23:54, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Dryden xx2, to address "The short conclusion is that Wikipedia editorship is not intuitive enough and men are more willing to suffer the hardships of technical details and requirements", I recommend reading this gender gap FAQ answer about why so few women edit Wikipedia, with important reasons including: less available time, lack of confidence/assertiveness, less confident with technology, difficult-to-navigate rules, aggressive and unwelcoming behaviour, and harassment. To quote from the section about "less confident with technology": "This under-representation is not due to any inherent inability, but to a complex range of social factors including discouragement from computing at an early age, lack of access to technology, bias in education, bias in recruitment and hiring in the technology industry, and a wide range of factors making the technology industry less attractive to them. However, all these factors combine to make women less likely to take up technical careers and hobbies, or to continue them." In other words, it is a known factor that technical difficulty can disproportionately discourage potential women editors, but it's not as simple as men being more willing to deal with technology. Dreamyshade ( talk) 00:36, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee has opened a case against GGTF member Lightbreather, in case anyone here wants to take part. Evidence can be supplied on the evidence page and opinions/proposals at the workshop, where comments have already begun. Sarah (SV) (talk) 05:56, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
The notice seems a bit odd, but I don't see what part of the policy it violates; it's not spammy and is neutrally worded. It's arguable either way, I think. ekips39❦ talk 02:47, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
A discussion on Karanacs talk page - Tip of the iceberg? - refers to this task force, the gendergap mailing list, and Karanacs' ArbCom against me. Further, Karanacs added that she believes that the private ( Systers-hosted) mailing list that I started for women Wikipedia editors may also be involved in discussing the ArbCom. [19] (For the record: It is not.)
I believe these concerns should be discussed here, or on one of the ArbCom case pages. Feedback, anyone? Lightbreather ( talk) 18:46, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Why is it that when I don't see the same editors obsess with everything Jimbo it is about you and the GGTF? I know editors here aren't going to get along with everyone but the going out of the way just to target the person just has to stop. Im not saying this to you LB im saying this in general. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 18:57, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
According to Jon Ronson, the author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,
“In all shamings, women have it way worse than men. It’s no coincidence that my book is filled with women."
There is much material for reflection in Mr. Ronson's interview, which describes how sad, vicious episodes of public shaming are facilitated by the use of the Internet.
Far too many people, men and women, old and young, people about whom we know nothing but an IP address, have experienced trauma, shame, and in some cases, negative real life consequences as a result of their voluntary or involuntary participation on the Internet, or as a direct result of their attempts to contribute to the Wikipedia encyclopedia projects.
I would urge those who are having a hard time on this website, anyone who is or who wants to become an administrator here, and all of us who get frustrated with the other editors on this site, to consider listening to this .mp3, and to reflect on what it would take to help us remember that there is a real, living person reading the words we type on our computer, someone who may actually be a good-faith volunteer attempting to make a positive contribution, and some real person, who no matter how difficult or obnoxious they may be, deserves a kinder fate than an avalanche of public social rejection and verbal abuse. -- Djembayz ( talk) 02:19, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
There is a discussion at meta, Grants:IdeaLab/Community discussion on harassment reporting, that may be of interest to members of the group. Lightbreather ( talk) 14:15, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
I was touching up Eurovision Song Contest 2015 and found completely unmotivated references to The Peppermints as a "girl group", [20] as well as in article about the band. [21] I made a similar fix to the lead of 5, 6, 7, 8s a while ago. [22] The gender of the band members clearly had no contextual relevance in these cases.
Might be worth keeping tabs on Category:All-female bands in this regard. In some instances, like AC/DShe, specifying gender in the lead seems more relevant.
Peter Isotalo 11:29, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
The Peppermints? You mean the ones whose official page, http://www.thepeppermints.eu/, has a site description of "Sito ufficiale della girl band The Peppermints"? -- GRuban ( talk) 14:59, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
The new Statesman has an article on "The Wikipedia wars: does it matter if our biggest source of knowledge is written by men?" which might be worth a read. My feeling though is that it's time to do rather than to read. One thing that might be worthwhile is to organize a "thematic organization" aka a thorg - which is an organized group similar to a Wikimedia chapter, which can get funding from the WMF through the Funds Dissemination Committee in fairly large amount via an annual grant (i.e. not one little project at a time). Please do consider this. Smallbones( smalltalk) 22:33, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
@ Rosiestep: Here are a few places to start, all on Meta:
Basically it's a chapter, except it is not organized by geography or nationality. The only existing thorg is Amical Wikimedia, which organizes and represents Catalan speakers. This is perhaps a bit different from what the original thorg idea was, but I think it shows that the thorg idea is very flexible. Go for it! Smallbones( smalltalk) 16:45, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
An .mp3 BBC Radio Woman's Hour interview on Wiki's Gender Gap, with Jenny Kleeman, author of the New Statesman article mentioned above, and Daria Cybulska of Wikimedia UK. Begins at 16:45. -- Djembayz ( talk) 11:58, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Hm, again with the 10%...
For anyone interested in addressing the Sex and the City issue:
Note: Box (with alterations) courtesy of Sex and the City Wikia.
Some of the above are redirects, for example They Shoot Single People Don't They (was this stub, which was deemed not notable. Some point to dab pages or articles on different topics. And one ( To Market, to Market (SATC episode) has existed for eight years, presumable being the only one sufficiently well referenced to survive redirection.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 14:16, 1 June 2015 (UTC).
A new project is being set up in case anyone would like to join. Sarah (SV) (talk) 18:23, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
The top of this page contains a link to a twitter account that has retweeted highly dubious claims of a wikipedia editor "threatening violence against women," while naming and shaming him. This seems like an inappropriate page to link to. Would people be fine with the link being removed/would whoever runs that twitter account be willing to delete that retweet? Bosstopher ( talk) 23:45, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
I started a stub on Tahera Ahmad. I'm not the strongest writer but she appears to be quite a notable feature if her teaching profile is to be believed she has been on several national level news figure. Thought maybe a few of the stronger writers may want to look this up and improve the article. Hell in a Bucket ( talk) 02:45, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Plange has launched WikiProject Romance to improve Wikipedia coverage of romance novels. We are soliciting members now. Wikipedia's coverage of these topics is absolutely atrocious - only a tiny percentage of the articles that should exist actually do. I believe this is one of the more visible examples of the gender gap at work. We welcome all members who are interested in helping us fill this gap. Karanacs ( talk) 14:26, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
In the study " It's a Man's Wikipedia? Assessing Gender Inequality in an Online Encyclopedia", the researchers made an effort to assess gender bias in Wikipedia. Their model for determining "visibility bias" compared the proportions of men and women on the main page. I think it would benefit this task force to have access to up-to-date data for gender representation on the main page.
As Today's featured article, Did you know, In the news, On this day, and featured pictures all are products of different workflows, I think it would make sense to consider each separately. Trends like the bump in DYKs during Women's History Month could be visualized through a graphical representation of the data. What would be the easiest way to retrieve and present this data? Are there other metrics from the main page that would be useful to this task force? gobonobo + c 02:28, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
The article 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman appears to need attention from editors familiar with the subject. The reception section is currently entirely criticism. I don't recall the coverage of this video being exclusively critical. I've been going through the sources and have only gotten through the lead, and it seems some sources have been misrepresented. -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 22:02, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
The section describing this video on the Hollaback! wikipage also appears to need attention from editors familiar with the video and familiar with the reliably sourced coverage of it. The section is exclusively critical. [30] -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 17:22, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm waiting out my ArbCom case by improving the Luby's shooting article. One of its sources side-tracked me to the Sarah Brady article. I made a couple of improvements, but I'll be retiring soon, so if anyone is interested, that bio could use some work. Lightbreather ( talk) 02:07, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
The gender gap isn't all about physicists! Doing toilet service, I found that Dressing-table redirects to an almost entirely different topic. We need a proper article, and there is an ideal source for early/expensive versions fully free online: Adlin, Jane, with contributions from Lori Zabar, Vanities: art of the dressing table, reprint from the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fall 2013, Volume LXXI, number 2, 2013, Metropolitan Museum of Art, downloadable PDF Johnbod ( talk) 20:22, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
This is a link to the 2012 article, "The Worrying Consequences of the Wikipedia Gender Gap", published by MIT Technology Review. Is anyone aware if there's a more recent study on this topic (best connected biographies across various language Wikipedias)? -- Rosiestep ( talk) 17:52, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
The task force created Women's rights in 2014 has been nominated for deletion. [31] -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 16:33, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
There's currently an open RfC concerning this article, which was mentioned in the task force created article - Women's rights in 2014-- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 03:21, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | → | Archive 13 |
I've started tinkering with body shape and female body shape, but I noticed that there are other articles that could probably need some scrutiny by task force members.
If an article seems okay content-wise, don't hesitate to strike it out.
Peter Isotalo 22:52, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
Peter and other interested editors, I just found these: Human body and Human physical appearance. The photo might be good for some of these article, though I have to ask again: What the heck is it with shaving these models' genitals? Lightbreather ( talk) 20:43, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Also, y'all might want to consider this merge proposal: Proposed merge of Midriff and Waist into Abdomen. Lightbreather ( talk) 20:43, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Glancing over the body part articles it appears they could quickly be made more encyclopedic by cropping images and also deleting unnecessary images. I notice some of the gratuitous images from cleavage (breasts) have been recently removed. Many of the current images appear to be soft core porn and/or some sort of "glamour shot", which do not seem to seriously address the topic in an encyclopedic way (see thigh gap and cleavage (breasts) for a couple examples. I understand that WP is not censored, but it seems like the creators of these articles were trying to create Victoria Secret Catalog-type-soft-core-pornography, which does not address the topic in a serious encyclopedic way. -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 17:47, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
As a long-time woman editor on Wikipedia, I had no idea any aspect of the CSB project was still alive and kicking, and I was relieved to see that this page was still active. But I was unsurprised to see that one of - probably the most - active contributors to this talk page is, of course, a man. One of the reasons Wikipedia will never, ever counter the gender bias in its editor base (and in turn in its article base) is that if you try to create spaces where women's needs are centred to address these issues, men have a tendency to a) not step back, b) get extremely angry about it. Like, this is not even "you shouldn't contribute here at all" but "you should be mindful of not dominating the space and being the most active contributor to the whole page". And so the cycle continues forever. The Drover's Wife ( talk) 00:50, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
I am amazed. The behaviour just demonstrated is exactly why Wikipedia has a problem with women, why it has a gender gap, and exactly why we have this taskforce. Having a discussion about why a project aimed at resolving the gender gap is still dominated by male voices, and how men sometimes unwittingly centre men's experience makes men - who three paragraphs above were insisting how they wanted to be part of the solution - fly into a rage and threaten to use their power as a prominent male user to delete the discussion. This is Wikipedia's "women problem" spectacularly illustrated in one brief discussion. The Drover's Wife ( talk) 13:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
No, the origin of this discussion wasn't I, but Viriditas, who came here yesterday wanting validation for changing redirects of "curvy" and "buxom" from Wiktionary to the WP Female body shape article. As for me, I agreed with SV that, once again on WP, male/man was the default - "V" or "I" shape - from which women deviate - "curvy." Then KK87 gave us permission to create a Male body shape article ("I have no objection if someone wants to make an article on it") followed by a directive to create it ("rather than pointing it out make the article"). When we suggested that he could make it, he didn't have enough medical knowledge to do it and directed us to take it to the medical project. Lightbreather ( talk) 16:07, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
I don't want to detract from Lightbreather's reply (edit conflicts galore), but I wanted to ask this - how can you actually remedy a gap where you have an editorial base that is 90% male with a conversation in which members of the 90% dominate the conversation about how to reduce that gap? I mean this quite seriously and without sarcasm. The fact that a page about reducing the gender gap still has a majority of male contributors, and that those men are pointedly pushing their own perspectives rather than intentionally trying to support women, is pretty clear evidence to most people that there's a problem. If I was ever trying to recruit women editors, and I showed them this page (pre-my addition), I'd strike out every time. The Drover's Wife ( talk) 16:10, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
If this taskforce is on shaky ground, it's because it's near impossible to confirm any Wikipedian's RL gender. GoodDay ( talk) 16:05, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
There are already females already on this project who aren't coming to this page and/or don't want to hear anything about the gender gap because they are offended by the militant feminism.How many? Have you taken a survey? Personally I've avoided participating here because I'm disgusted by how much of the conversation seems to be dominated by militant anti-feminists. Please don't use the silence of other women as presumed support for your own opinions. -- TaraInDC ( talk) 23:35, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
An Ally Skills Workshop, such as the one organized by the Ada Initiative, could really help here. There are many well-intentioned men on this page with a lot to contribute who are getting needlessly frustrated. If we had a few experienced trainers who know how to start the conversation with people who are new to the process of being male allies, many participants here could get some new tools and be up and running in a rather short period of time. I'm hopeful we'll see some of this training soon, either through the Grants:IdeaLab/Gender_Gap_Allies_training proposal, or through some other initiative. For those interested in reading about "being an ally", I actually prefer the allies against racism writing to the feminist material (a bit less annoying jargon). We will all benefit from a happier and healthier atmosphere! -- Djembayz ( talk) 03:19, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
The projects Wikipedia:WikiProject Feminism/Peer review, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's History/Peer review, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Gender Studies/Peer review really need active peer reviewers, so if some people could click on those articles and add their usernames under the Active Peer reviewers section that would be great. Thanks!
Here's a real hole in WP coverage: National Association of Women Lawyers, an organization with a 115 year history. I just bumped into this group in the course of writing a bio. If anybody is making a list of potential topics for edit-a-thons, that would be a great one. Carrite ( talk) 06:53, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
There are also no lists of women lawyers in Category:Lists of women by occupation or in Category:Lists of legal professionals, even though there are plenty of women lawyers in Category:Women lawyers. Ottawahitech ( talk) 20:09, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
There is a discussion at ANI that may be of interest to members of this group:
Porn in users' pages Alleged porn on old user pages Sexually provocative images on user pages.
Lightbreather (
talk) 17:13, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
As a follow-up, two MfDs were created from the discussion, so better to go there if the subject interests you.
-- Lightbreather ( talk) 18:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
I wonder whether we should start a guideline, Wikipedia:Writing about women, on how to avoid inadvertent sexism. Some points to get started:
Sarah (SV) (talk) 20:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
What's an "openly sexist source" considering all articles should be sourced to reliable sources? A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 04:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
What about women hidden on pages with a male title? Here is an example: Michael Mastro, was an American real estate developer who became infamous after he declared bankruptcy. His wife, Linda, received/s as much press coverage as he did/does. The page was already moved once, but Linda Mastro's name remains buried in the article. It is interesting to note that in order to google the correct Michael Mastro one needed to provide additional qualifiers, because the other Michael would show up instead, however the term Linda Mastro required no such qualifiers. Ottawahitech ( talk) 21:47, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
I've started an essay stub at User:GGTF/Writing about women. This is a GGTF page I've set up in user space so that we can work on joint pages that aren't ready for everyone to edit, but anyone is welcome to make constructive edits.
Pinging some people who might want to help write it: @ Karanacs, EvergreenFir, Djembayz, Lightbreather, BoboMeowCat, and FloNight: @ Milowent, Gobonobo, The Drover's Wife, TaraInDC, and Peter Isotalo:
Sarah (SV) (talk) 02:52, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
See: Talk:Ellen_Pao#Trial_-_where_are_the_editors.3F. The page has had a huge increase in the number of page views since the trial started, so readers are obviously looking up to Wikipedia for coverage. . Ottawahitech ( talk) 04:24, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
It appears articles related to sexuality may have issues with systemic bias. These articles seem to be depicting what is seen in pornography (male heterosexual pornography) as normal, mainstream or representative of the topic. For example, a while ago someone posted a link here to the article anal bleaching. Recently, I’ve looked over the sources for it supposedly being “mainstream” and those sources are not actually supporting that it is mainstream, but rather are questioning the notion that it is mainstream outside of pornography (and perhaps not even there that they may use lighting techniques instead of bleach). Also, someone recently linked to the article fisting in discussion regarding censorship, and looking over that article I was really surprised to see it was mostly illustrated with images of women (vaginal fisting), for an article on a topic that seems primarily related to a male homosexual practice. Oddly, the only image of a male was a medical image (like a rectal exam or something). I think sexuality articles are being edited from the POV that what is shown in male-heterosexual pornography is normal and mainstream and also from a POV that is squeamish about gay male sexuality. -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 15:52, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
I placed an Article about the toxic editing atmosphere at Wikipedia on Jimbo's talk page. Please disseminate and feel free to comment but due so in a civil manner as that is my point of the article. 208.54.38.224 ( talk) 04:05, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
Proposed Wikimania talk of possible interest to GGTF readers: How to Pick Up More Women. Topics include "Should we try and avoid English speaking white women so that we increase our benefit?". -- Djembayz ( talk) 00:46, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
I do hope that changing the title to clarify the focus -- content gender gap -- has proved useful. I also wanted to draw you attention to February's Wikimedia Research Newsletter, which points to the "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia" article submission at Cornell's arXiv.org site. -- Rosiestep ( talk) 15:05, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
Surely, everyone (or almost everyone) here will be interested in weighing in on this fourth Violence against men deletion discussion. Flyer22 ( talk) 05:46, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
Jake Orlowitz recently posted this on wikimedia-l. I presume this has been discussed on the gendergap-l but I don't see it here after a quick scan, so (Quoting Jake):
March is an amazing month for raising awareness, excitement, and initiative around broadening the presence women in our community and our content. In that spirit, West Virginia University is hosting a stellar panel through its Talking Publicly symposium series at WVU Libraries and the Reed College of Media.
The panel includes:
supports and advocates for efforts to add entries and posts to Wikipedia that focus on postcolonial studies as well as ethnic/minority and marginalized peoples. Koh is currently an associate professor of literature and the director of the Stockton College Center for the Digital Humanities. She also is a core contributor to the Profhacker Column at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Koh uses Wikipedia research writing assignments in her classes and teaches others how to start activist instructional initiatives of their own.
Foundation where she develops partnerships with educational institutions and academic associations to systematically bring more student editors and high quality content to Wikipedia. Over the last three years, Mathewson has focused her volunteer editing on improving content about women’s issues. Mathewson identifies ways to support partners who are looking to promote the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool on a large scale.
international not-for-profit research organization that provides accessible, credible information to support informed decision-making health care. Poore is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) Fund Dissemination Committee and was a member of the Wikipedia English Arbitration Committee and the WMF Ombudsmen Commission.
and former member of the executive management team of the Wikimedia Foundation. His work primarily has focused on broadening participation and developing the public understanding of Wikipedia, especially among subject matter experts. Schulenburg has been involved with Wikipedia since 2005, both as an author and as a photographer.
The following day WVU will host a 3-hour workshop to address strategies on campuses underway for correcting the gender gap and introduce the protocols of writing for Wikipedia at WVU with ideas for proven course assignments and strategies for adoption in their courses.
This is only the kick-off in a year-long focus at WVU on Women and Wikipedia. WVU Dean of Libraries Jon Cawthorne was touched and inspired after he heard the story of Adrianne Wadewitz and is dedicating this year of discussion, experimentation, and action to her.
For full information about both events:
According to Google, 12:30 pm Tuesday, Eastern Time (ET) is 5:30 pm Tuesday, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
Anthonyhcole ( talk · contribs · email) 15:22, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Alex Wang has announced the launch of the Wikimedia Foundation's Inspire Campaign. See Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire.
Alex writes:
Sarah (SV) (talk) 19:39, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
For anyone interested, there's a new page on meta, set up by the Foundation, Address the gender gap. It lists initiatives and research, and has an interesting FAQ page. Sarah (SV) (talk) 18:08, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
A new Gender Gap Webcast from West Virginia University is available. There is footage of our greatly missed Adrianne Wadewitz, and a panel including Wikimedia Education Foundation representatives. -- Djembayz ( talk) 23:58, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
I've just read the article Rosiestep pointed out above, "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia".
It makes some interesting points, including that articles about "first women to do X" fail the Finkbeiner test, placing a woman's gender above her accomplishments. The paper also says that women's articles on WP contain more words about sexuality, whereas men's contain more about cognitive processes (we've discussed this here before, namely how a woman's appearance or clothing is often mentioned). The researchers also found a minimal presence of women on WP before 1900, as a result of WP:NOTABILITY. Sarah (SV) (talk) 04:26, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Andrew Sherman, Victor Grigas and Fabrice Florin, "Meet some of the women who contribute to Wikipedia", Wikimedia blog, 6 March 2015, in celebration of International Women's Day on 8 March. Sarah (SV) (talk) 06:20, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
The December 2014 WMF metrics meeting includes results of a survey conducted of 96,000 Wikipedia users in 11 countries of the so-called Global South — conducted in 16 languages ( pg. 62). A total of 47,000 people ended up completing the survey, which ran both on desktop and mobile platforms. The survey showed that 21% of readers and 20% of contributors identified themselves as female (with another 2% declining to identify either as male or female and 1% selecting "other.") ( pg. 64)
This indicates that while there is unquestionably a gender gap, the magnitude of the chasm in 2014 seems to be overstated, at least in the Global South — more like 4m:1f than 8m:1f. Carrite ( talk) 02:02, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Voluntary response surveys are crap. Additionally, if you look at page 64 of the PDF, only 35000 of the 96000 who started the survey answered the gender question. NE Ent 17:02, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
The main page here quotes the NY Times: "an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women." It's seems unlikely GGTF is saying a) women are uncomfortable dealing with facts, and b) an encyclopedia should not be concerned with facts. Presumably it's the obsessive aspect that's being emphasized? Anyway it's unclear to me what goal that quote is trying to achieve, and I'd appreciate a clarification. NE Ent 11:44, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
A discussion is underway at ARCA that may be of interest to members of this task force as it concerns gender/gender issues. Lightbreather ( talk) 21:16, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
I would recommend editors in this task force to pay some attention to the In the News (ITN) section on the front page, as well as other frontpage selections. Recently, there was a suggestion to feature India's ban of the film India's daughter in the news section. This proposal failed. Proposals that have since succeeded in getting into the news section are among others stories on the Dawn spacecraft, finding of fossils in Ethiopia and the finding of an old Japanese battleship. While I think the selection process for ITN mostly functions well, I also believe it to some degree reflect the particular interest of those who choose to involve themselves in ITN; for instance a tendency to focus heavily on space issues. More women (and editors interested in women's issues) involved in the process might in some cases lead to other choices. An important part of the process is simply to comment on the various proposals; but even more valuable is to work on relevant article so they will hold acceptable standard for the front page. Regards, Iselilja ( talk) 22:58, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Firstly the serious stuff - https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tips_for_women_travellers could so with some reviewing.
Secondly, As you may be aware Wikvoyage writes about a fantastical or fictional travel-topic or destination for April 1st. This year's article got started a little earlier at voy:Wikivoyage:Joke_articles/Time_travel, some feedback on what to integrate into the article from a female perspective would be appreciated, as I felt there must be something more intelligent than historical romances and so on. ShakespeareFan00 ( talk) 18:25, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
The above graph is derived from the user details on English Wikipedia, and represents monthly ratios of female to male editors. The 100% spike was a month with 2 male and 2 female editors. Early months with no male and no female identifying editors registering are plotted to 0% for clarity.
I think it is clear that the trend is a positive one. There appear to be two distinct steps up, the first I would potentially ascribe to the introduction of edit filters, which meant that recent changes patrol became a little less fraught, and people relaxed a little.
The graph was made quickly and the data may need some refining, so please do not take it as gospel just yet. I hope to include this and other data in Wither the Gender Gap (excuse the pun...).
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 01:12, 4 March 2015 (UTC).
Interesting chart! Wikipedia didn't have the option to pick your pronoun in preferences until a few years into the project, so accounts registered before that time probably have a different type of statistical "bias" in rate-of-selecting-pronouns than accounts registered after that - biased toward people who stuck around as active editors (and fussing with things like their preferences occasionally), instead of just people who registered new accounts. For the earliest days, you might consider this hand-edited list as a supplement for your data: Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians in order of arrival/2001. As another cross-reference, this mailing list thread from January 2002 mentions six active women editors. (I'm one of them) Dreamyshade ( talk) 10:32, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
I was curious, so I looked up when MediaWiki got a gender option in preferences. This paper from 2011 says "the gender preference setting was introduced in January 2009" (page 4), as part of a discussion of confounding factors when analyzing the gender gap. The uptick in the numbers started happening in January and February 2009, which would match with that as a factor. If you look at the MediaWiki release history, MediaWiki 1.15, released in June 2009, seems to be the first with the gender feature, which is a bit confusing, but it's hard to find records of when stuff was deployed to Wikipedia in those years. Wikipedia:Edit filter says the edit filter feature was released in March 2009, and I'm guessing that it didn't have a huge impact on the numbers, since both February and March 2009 are 20.5% according to the data. I'd be curious to read a more detailed history of the gender gap, especially the years before 2010-2011 when it started getting widespread attention (according to Gender bias on Wikipedia). Dreamyshade ( talk) 21:36, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
FYI, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Twilight fandom seems to be an amusing case. Wikipedia notoriously contains large amounts of fannish material and we have articles about Trekkies, Browncoats, Star Wars fandom, &c. But, in this case, a mostly female fandom is dismissed as lacking organisation... Andrew D. ( talk) 08:58, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
...I think
Beatlesmania could be a very interesting topic about an early female-dominated fandom. If anything, it would be interesting to see if could be covered in a manner similar to
Deadheads, ie about a fandom rather than a "mania".
Peter
Isotalo 12:41, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
I'd like to add my name to the Participants list but I'm not able to do so. Can someone add it for me? Thanks! Grrrlriot ( ♠ ♣ ♦ ♥ †) 01:34, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
The article at Nyotaimori (about sushi served on women) needs a lot of work on being sourced much more carefully, verifying historical claims, and figuring out whether the images are acceptably representative of the practice. Dreamyshade ( talk) 07:08, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Listings of articles about women needing cleanup have been added to the project page.
Improve the quality of existing articles:
There's a request pending for a similar listing for WikiProject Women artists. -- Djembayz ( talk) 02:37, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
FYI, there's a historical event tomorrow as the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race will have women's teams competing over the same course and on the same day as the men, for the first time. I started several relevant articles for this including Amy Gentry, Women's rowing and the Women's Boat Race but haven't had time to polish them up and there hasn't been a great deal of interest yet. I'll be doing what I can tomorrow but my main priority will be getting some photos. Andrew D. ( talk) 18:01, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
African American men in computer science is at AfD; as is African American women in computer science.-- Djembayz ( talk) 12:19, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
As some of you may remember, last year in April, a RM was launched to move Hillary Rodham Clinton to Hillary Clinton. This was only one in a long series of such requests. There was a moratorium on new move requests, and it has since expired. As a result, it seems that a group of editors is preparing to launch new move discussion. My personal opinion is simple: there is no justification for stripping a woman of her name. Many of the arguments have boiled down to fact that some editors believe that it is "merely her maiden name" or "unnecessary". This struck me as being the result of systemic bias, and in my view is not compatible with the BLP policy. In fact, the preference of the subject was confirmed by Jimbo. I'm no fan of Jimbo, but I appreciated his action in this case. Regardless, I've brought this here as I think that it may worthwhile to discuss what can be done to protect the names of women. RGloucester — ☎ 14:20, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
There's a current deletion discussion regarding performance tour of female recording artist Meghan Trainor-- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 04:10, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
More eyes are needed on this article as I’ve noticed an influx of vandalism and BLP violations since Nungesser announced he is suing Columbia University. [17], [18] Also, editorial bias seems to be manifesting in this article in multiple ways. The most glaring example is that the current bio section for Paul Nungesser is about 4 times as long as the current bio section for Emma Sulkowicz.-- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 21:57, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
"Meaningful change, the anonymous woman behind the site told me over email, requires not just tweaking but reinvention from the top down: “It’s virtually impossible to change a sick system without being the one in charge.” -- Djembayz ( talk) 22:56, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
For anyone interested in commenting, this has now opened: Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request. Sarah (SV) (talk) 02:28, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
There was a grant proposal on meta that has been declined for now that seems like a potential point of interest for the GGTF. The proposal is focused on team editing. I think the initial approach was flawed (the proposer seems unfamiliar with the collaborative editing that already occurs), but at its core is a decent idea. Some of the studies say women prefer a more collaborative editing environment, and I think there is a lot of potential for finding ways to partner people who want to edit collaboratively, and perhaps even match them up with volunteer "project managers" who can help organize the division of labor and outline the article. Some of my most enjoyable moments as a WP editor have been because of an editing collaboration, but often it is difficult for people to find collaborators. (Just yesterday, actually, I saw a post on another editor's talk page from someone who wanted advice on what to do in topic X. I was able to ping 2 editors that I knew worked in that area, and they pinged in 3 or 4 more, and now the initial poster has the contacts to get started.) Is this type of focus something that this group would be interested in looking at? Karanacs ( talk) 19:01, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
There's a current deletion discussion regarding female gospel recording artist Casey J.-- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 00:03, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
Opposition to a Wiki Women Edit-A-Thon at the University of Cincinnati has raised Title IX concerns. -- Djembayz ( talk) 14:00, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
The parody posters were reported to the university’s Title IX office. Although they do not automatically constitute a Title IX violation, UC Title IX Coordinator Jyl Shaffer confirmed the Title IX office is assessing the report to see if the posters are part of a pattern of behavior that needs to be addressed in other ways.Ca2james ( talk) 17:01, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
Has anyone compared and contrasted the gender gap in blog writing to that in Wikipedia editing? Is the participation percentage similar? If they are not (i.e., if women blog a lot), then everything in common between blogs and Wikipedia would be ruled out as a significant reason for the gender gap in Wikipedia -- both being digital media, requiring big time commitment, etc. It'd also support adapting blogging features in the Wikipedia interface (e.g., moderated comments). Your thoughts? Fgnievinski ( talk) 14:23, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
I am not really sure if this subject has been brought up before in the context of this debate or discussion or project. I will read more about this later when I get the time. But I wanted to suggest my ..observation regardless.
This observation simply pertains to the technical aspects of using the system.
The idea is this:
Wikipedia is HARD
Simply put, it is too difficult to use it. And with using I mean writing, editing.
There are three categories that make Wikipedia hard to write for:
The short conclusion is that Wikipedia editorship is not intuitive enough and men are more willing to suffer the hardships of technical details and requirements. Adhering to policy is also really a technical aspect. Writing becomes something technical rather than something freeflowing. There are too many constraints.
A more detailed description would be:
Wikipedia attracts less women because of the requirement to use masculine-only qualities in dealing with the technical details of the system as it is constructed to allow editors to interface with the whole of the community and the work.
Dryden xx2 ( talk) 14:27, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment - Utterly flawed reasoning, in my experience some of the most technically qualified and even superior workers in various situations were women. The creative industries prove this over and over again, I've known numerous Editors and Artists that use software tools like Photoshop or Illustrator in extremely impressive ways. These are programs that many spend years to learn or master. -- Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 16:20, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Dryden, do you have particular examples of policies or guidelines that you feel are counter-intuitive? — Sarah (SV) (talk) 16:50, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Hey Sarah. First the whole nature of encyclopedic writing means that you have to subject yourself to a system. The system is something that requires consistency. Consistency is something that is coded into rules regarding how something should be written or formatted. Formatting requires a large knowledge regarding flags. Tags are not very intuitive. There are tags that exist in one language domain, but not in another. Finding tags even is hard. Tags set in motion community disputes or resolution processes. It seems to happen in a void. The new editor wonders where people come from, how do they find it. The new editor seems to hit a brick wall. The wall is invisible. The wall is things you want to do, and you can't do them. Or it is not allowed. Your own intentions are not supported by the system.
— Dryden xx2 ( talk) 20:19, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
To the extent that Wikipedia requires masculine qualities in order to adhere to policy, it's probably due to cultural norms. While these norms did originate from biological realities, they have been exaggerated beyond what is inherent and what other animals do, and recent developments present a clear case against the idea that technical and intellectual ability is "masculine-only". In fact, the "biological realities" are more to do with reproduction than ability. Also, I find most policies and guidelines intuitive, or at least logical. ekips39 ( talk) 20:31, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Masculine-only doesn't mean "male only". Actually the phrase is meaningless from my point of view: something is either masculine or feminine, but not both, so "masculine only" doesn't mean anything in actual fact. But just consider the development of the brain. In newborn children the halves of the brain are not any specialized. As the child grows the brain quickly starts offloading "structural" elements to the left hemisphere and "nonstructural" elements to the right.
— Dryden xx2 ( talk) 22:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Still not useful. — Dryden xx2 ( talk) 23:54, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi Dryden xx2, to address "The short conclusion is that Wikipedia editorship is not intuitive enough and men are more willing to suffer the hardships of technical details and requirements", I recommend reading this gender gap FAQ answer about why so few women edit Wikipedia, with important reasons including: less available time, lack of confidence/assertiveness, less confident with technology, difficult-to-navigate rules, aggressive and unwelcoming behaviour, and harassment. To quote from the section about "less confident with technology": "This under-representation is not due to any inherent inability, but to a complex range of social factors including discouragement from computing at an early age, lack of access to technology, bias in education, bias in recruitment and hiring in the technology industry, and a wide range of factors making the technology industry less attractive to them. However, all these factors combine to make women less likely to take up technical careers and hobbies, or to continue them." In other words, it is a known factor that technical difficulty can disproportionately discourage potential women editors, but it's not as simple as men being more willing to deal with technology. Dreamyshade ( talk) 00:36, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee has opened a case against GGTF member Lightbreather, in case anyone here wants to take part. Evidence can be supplied on the evidence page and opinions/proposals at the workshop, where comments have already begun. Sarah (SV) (talk) 05:56, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
The notice seems a bit odd, but I don't see what part of the policy it violates; it's not spammy and is neutrally worded. It's arguable either way, I think. ekips39❦ talk 02:47, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
A discussion on Karanacs talk page - Tip of the iceberg? - refers to this task force, the gendergap mailing list, and Karanacs' ArbCom against me. Further, Karanacs added that she believes that the private ( Systers-hosted) mailing list that I started for women Wikipedia editors may also be involved in discussing the ArbCom. [19] (For the record: It is not.)
I believe these concerns should be discussed here, or on one of the ArbCom case pages. Feedback, anyone? Lightbreather ( talk) 18:46, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Why is it that when I don't see the same editors obsess with everything Jimbo it is about you and the GGTF? I know editors here aren't going to get along with everyone but the going out of the way just to target the person just has to stop. Im not saying this to you LB im saying this in general. - Knowledgekid87 ( talk) 18:57, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
According to Jon Ronson, the author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,
“In all shamings, women have it way worse than men. It’s no coincidence that my book is filled with women."
There is much material for reflection in Mr. Ronson's interview, which describes how sad, vicious episodes of public shaming are facilitated by the use of the Internet.
Far too many people, men and women, old and young, people about whom we know nothing but an IP address, have experienced trauma, shame, and in some cases, negative real life consequences as a result of their voluntary or involuntary participation on the Internet, or as a direct result of their attempts to contribute to the Wikipedia encyclopedia projects.
I would urge those who are having a hard time on this website, anyone who is or who wants to become an administrator here, and all of us who get frustrated with the other editors on this site, to consider listening to this .mp3, and to reflect on what it would take to help us remember that there is a real, living person reading the words we type on our computer, someone who may actually be a good-faith volunteer attempting to make a positive contribution, and some real person, who no matter how difficult or obnoxious they may be, deserves a kinder fate than an avalanche of public social rejection and verbal abuse. -- Djembayz ( talk) 02:19, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
There is a discussion at meta, Grants:IdeaLab/Community discussion on harassment reporting, that may be of interest to members of the group. Lightbreather ( talk) 14:15, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
I was touching up Eurovision Song Contest 2015 and found completely unmotivated references to The Peppermints as a "girl group", [20] as well as in article about the band. [21] I made a similar fix to the lead of 5, 6, 7, 8s a while ago. [22] The gender of the band members clearly had no contextual relevance in these cases.
Might be worth keeping tabs on Category:All-female bands in this regard. In some instances, like AC/DShe, specifying gender in the lead seems more relevant.
Peter Isotalo 11:29, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
The Peppermints? You mean the ones whose official page, http://www.thepeppermints.eu/, has a site description of "Sito ufficiale della girl band The Peppermints"? -- GRuban ( talk) 14:59, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
The new Statesman has an article on "The Wikipedia wars: does it matter if our biggest source of knowledge is written by men?" which might be worth a read. My feeling though is that it's time to do rather than to read. One thing that might be worthwhile is to organize a "thematic organization" aka a thorg - which is an organized group similar to a Wikimedia chapter, which can get funding from the WMF through the Funds Dissemination Committee in fairly large amount via an annual grant (i.e. not one little project at a time). Please do consider this. Smallbones( smalltalk) 22:33, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
@ Rosiestep: Here are a few places to start, all on Meta:
Basically it's a chapter, except it is not organized by geography or nationality. The only existing thorg is Amical Wikimedia, which organizes and represents Catalan speakers. This is perhaps a bit different from what the original thorg idea was, but I think it shows that the thorg idea is very flexible. Go for it! Smallbones( smalltalk) 16:45, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
An .mp3 BBC Radio Woman's Hour interview on Wiki's Gender Gap, with Jenny Kleeman, author of the New Statesman article mentioned above, and Daria Cybulska of Wikimedia UK. Begins at 16:45. -- Djembayz ( talk) 11:58, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Hm, again with the 10%...
For anyone interested in addressing the Sex and the City issue:
Note: Box (with alterations) courtesy of Sex and the City Wikia.
Some of the above are redirects, for example They Shoot Single People Don't They (was this stub, which was deemed not notable. Some point to dab pages or articles on different topics. And one ( To Market, to Market (SATC episode) has existed for eight years, presumable being the only one sufficiently well referenced to survive redirection.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 14:16, 1 June 2015 (UTC).
A new project is being set up in case anyone would like to join. Sarah (SV) (talk) 18:23, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
The top of this page contains a link to a twitter account that has retweeted highly dubious claims of a wikipedia editor "threatening violence against women," while naming and shaming him. This seems like an inappropriate page to link to. Would people be fine with the link being removed/would whoever runs that twitter account be willing to delete that retweet? Bosstopher ( talk) 23:45, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
I started a stub on Tahera Ahmad. I'm not the strongest writer but she appears to be quite a notable feature if her teaching profile is to be believed she has been on several national level news figure. Thought maybe a few of the stronger writers may want to look this up and improve the article. Hell in a Bucket ( talk) 02:45, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Plange has launched WikiProject Romance to improve Wikipedia coverage of romance novels. We are soliciting members now. Wikipedia's coverage of these topics is absolutely atrocious - only a tiny percentage of the articles that should exist actually do. I believe this is one of the more visible examples of the gender gap at work. We welcome all members who are interested in helping us fill this gap. Karanacs ( talk) 14:26, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
In the study " It's a Man's Wikipedia? Assessing Gender Inequality in an Online Encyclopedia", the researchers made an effort to assess gender bias in Wikipedia. Their model for determining "visibility bias" compared the proportions of men and women on the main page. I think it would benefit this task force to have access to up-to-date data for gender representation on the main page.
As Today's featured article, Did you know, In the news, On this day, and featured pictures all are products of different workflows, I think it would make sense to consider each separately. Trends like the bump in DYKs during Women's History Month could be visualized through a graphical representation of the data. What would be the easiest way to retrieve and present this data? Are there other metrics from the main page that would be useful to this task force? gobonobo + c 02:28, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
The article 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman appears to need attention from editors familiar with the subject. The reception section is currently entirely criticism. I don't recall the coverage of this video being exclusively critical. I've been going through the sources and have only gotten through the lead, and it seems some sources have been misrepresented. -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 22:02, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
The section describing this video on the Hollaback! wikipage also appears to need attention from editors familiar with the video and familiar with the reliably sourced coverage of it. The section is exclusively critical. [30] -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 17:22, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm waiting out my ArbCom case by improving the Luby's shooting article. One of its sources side-tracked me to the Sarah Brady article. I made a couple of improvements, but I'll be retiring soon, so if anyone is interested, that bio could use some work. Lightbreather ( talk) 02:07, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
The gender gap isn't all about physicists! Doing toilet service, I found that Dressing-table redirects to an almost entirely different topic. We need a proper article, and there is an ideal source for early/expensive versions fully free online: Adlin, Jane, with contributions from Lori Zabar, Vanities: art of the dressing table, reprint from the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fall 2013, Volume LXXI, number 2, 2013, Metropolitan Museum of Art, downloadable PDF Johnbod ( talk) 20:22, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
This is a link to the 2012 article, "The Worrying Consequences of the Wikipedia Gender Gap", published by MIT Technology Review. Is anyone aware if there's a more recent study on this topic (best connected biographies across various language Wikipedias)? -- Rosiestep ( talk) 17:52, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
The task force created Women's rights in 2014 has been nominated for deletion. [31] -- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 16:33, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
There's currently an open RfC concerning this article, which was mentioned in the task force created article - Women's rights in 2014-- BoboMeowCat ( talk) 03:21, 28 June 2015 (UTC)