English Wikipedia tends to have more specific portals than many of the
other Wikipedias. For example, Women's sport, Feminism, Jane Austen, and
even Celine Dion have their own portals. Typically, portals are created
by corresponding WikiProjects. Although English Wikipedia has several
women-related WikiProjects (Women's history, Women's sport, Women
scientists, Feminism, etc.), there is currently no "Women" WikiProject.
There are arguments for and against creating such a project...
For:
* Would facilitate communication between the more specific women-related
WikiProjects
* Would facilitate the creation and maintenance of a Women Portal
* Could potentially spin-off other women-specific WikiProjects
Against:
* The scope of the project would be enormous and potentially difficult
to organize
* Parent or "meta" WikiProjects tend to have lower levels of
participation than more specific WikiProjects
* Considering the small number of active female editors on Wikipedia, it
might cannibalize energy from the other women-specific WikiProjects.
I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this.
Ryan Kaldari
On 1/15/13 2:43 PM, Sylvia Ventura wrote:
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
Disclaimer: I'm a newbie (please be gentle)
I'll be brief. I've made my first (minor) edit on Wikipedia in
December and have since then try to learn as much as possible about
the movement and the various projects. I'm still a long way to go.
I'm particularly interested in the work done around Women's
Participation (contributors) and Women's Voices (the actual content
covering women topics/work). I believe the teaHouse and WikiWomen
Collaborative are a huge step in helping onboard women contributors.
While perusing other language Wikis to see how the "Women
participation/content" is handled, I found the French Portal Femmes
<https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portail:Femmes> and the Portuguese
Portal Mulheres <https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Mulheres> to be
well designed and a useful gateway for content, it clearly catalogues
and consolidates women related knowledge in one space. I didn't find
an equivalent portal in the English version, is there a reason not to
have something like this on the english Wikipedia?
I see a couple of valid reasons to having a Women Portal in English
(particularly while the topic is being built and major gaps are being
identified/filled). One is to offer a quick inventory of content,
where one can see what's already covered and what's missing (without
having to actively search for it). The other is that 'forcing' some
level of content structure will help rally the community around
specific topics to focus on (gaps), and possibly identify new ones. A
successful example is Sarah Stierch WikiProject Women Scientists
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_scientists>,
it's a great project and it should sit in a larger portal with other
master headers to Women in History, Women in Art, Women in Politics,
Women in Academia, Women in Technology.... all of which features the
names, photos, bios, subgroups, and links to their work. This
structure applies to any group/topic that is underrepresented - it
makes it easier for newcomers (intimidated) and experts (busy) to
identify areas they can contribute to right the way. How do I go about
doing this?
So much for being brief :)
Sylvia
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