Nice idea in principle, but there are still two hurdles to be overcome

 

1.      How do you get the cheatsheet to the new female editor? How do you
spot new female editors? By what mechanism do you communicate with them? Can
you assume they know about User Talk (my almost entirely unsuccessful
attempts to communicate with new users in a friendly way to offer help
suggests many don't see the message.

 

2.      People don't read user manuals, cheatsheets, etc. Every new
Wikipedia user already gets one of those "Welcome to Wikipedia" on their
User Tal which points them to a morass of information (which is admittedly
written in the language of the expert Wikipedian not the new user) and I
think these days they are also offered the "onboarding experience" (or
whatever precisely it is called) which aims to teach them to do basic
editing. However, generally what people (men and women) really want is "the
answer to the question I have here and now" to get them past the immediate
barrier to achieving their mission (whatever it was that motivated them to
click that Edit button), not a set of lessons nor a set of documentation.
Part of the problem we have created for ourselves is that all the policies
and processes and technologies have set the bar far too high for many new
editors to get started on their own. :-( 

 

Kerry

 

 

  _____  

From: gendergap-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:gendergap-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Carol Moore dc
Sent: Thursday, 31 July 2014 10:24 AM
To: Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the
participationof women within Wikimedia projects.
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] [Spam] Re: Sexualized environment on Commons

 

On 7/30/2014 5:51 AM, Marie Earley wrote:


>Things that I think might help:

Help pages wise, I'm sure they'd love to see you at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Help

I know I wasted a couple years learning the hard way because the Help pages
didn't seem intuitive enough.

However one trick we have to remember is to go to the search box and type
WP:_____ whatever the topic of interest is. One often gets a search return
that get one just where one wants to go.

A "cheat sheet" of editing and conflict resolution tips for women would be a
great addition to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias
/Gender_gap_task_force

Which is slowly but surely coming along. 

CM



_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

Reply via email to