Hello, My name is Nicole Willson and I have been editing wikis for the past 5 years, mostly wikiHow. Some of you know me and some of you don't so I figured I'd write a brief intro first. I also was one of the organizers for Recent Changes Camp in Boston (which had a high percentage of female attendees), have taught wikis to middle schoolers and worked/interned at various feminist organizations including the New York City Chapter of NOW and the YWCA in Princeton.
I've been lurking on the list and have almost participated in some of the conversations, but wanted to get a feel for the culture here first. I considered contributing to the conversation about what motivates women to edit but didn't for the following reasons: - I am not sure that my motivations are that different from that of men. - I am not sure how much of my motivation has to do with my gender and how much of it has to do with my personality or past experiences. - I was afraid that someone would take my reasons and turn them into some broader stereotype about women, like what happened with most women editors being wiki gnomes. - I could have responded with information about women editors based on personal experience and stats from the Poynter, but didn't want to detract from the current conversation about how to get more female involvement in the WMF projects. I don't mind that there are men on the list. Personally, I believe that men can be feminists and work against sexism. I do think that they have something to offer. For example, there's the National Organization for Men Against Sexism which is very active in Boston and does talks in conjunction with NOW and they work together on events to discuss how to eliminate sexism. I just wish to be asked things directly, instead of having people make assumptions about my experience as a woman with wikis. It's great that the men on this list know women who edit and are in discussion with them, but I'd rather hear directly from those women if at all possible. I was encouraged to join this list by folks on #wiki in freenode and I do think I could help. I wish there was a list of things I could do to help (which was actually one of my barriers to entry for Wikipedia, not being able to figure out the roles I could take on right away). For example, half of the female admins that we know the gender for on wikiHow are female, and I'm sure some of them would be happy to talk about why they are involved with wikiHow as opposed to Wikipedia (where many of them have accounts) if they were asked. I also have some theories about why wikiHow has more women (NOTE: nobody involved in the wikiHow project ever intentionally designed the site so that there would be more women, it just happened that way). I may be able to help with this and with the efforts going on in NYC. Lastly, I had a question about Fred's statement about rules. If following rules isn't that important in the beginning, how come I have only gotten feedback once about what I've done wrong with date formatting and never gotten a message about what I've done right on Wikipedia? I've made at least 150 edits, so one of them must have been good, right? Instead I get a message about date formatting (which someone else could probably fix easily) and told to look at the MoS (which assumes that I know that it stands for Manual of Style). It seems to me that there may be a disconnect here. On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Fred Bauder <fredb...@fairpoint.net>wrote: > > > > > I don't edit Wikipedia because I've never taken the time to learn the > > system > > and I'm afraid I'll screw up. I assume it would feel like making a big > > mistake in a newspaper and having the whole neighborhood scoff, and I > > think > > that becomes a part of my Wikipedia profile forever and ever. I'd like to > > find a YouTube video to walk me through basic involvement. If it's that > > cute > > guy from Portland who is now a Wikipedia community manager presenting it, > > well all the better. I could also be encouraged to edit if the community > > had > > an offline component that included meeting for microbrews. > > > > Thanks, > > Carissa > > One of the original meanings of Wikipedia:Ignore all rules addressed > that. It's current formulation is laconic and opaque to anyone but an > insider. The original formulation was "If rules make you nervous and > depressed, and not desirous of participating in the Wiki, then ignore > them and go about your business." > > I remember getting off to a pretty rough start. > > As to beer, I think you need to live in London for that. > > Fred > > > _______________________________________________ > Gendergap mailing list > Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap >
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