Greetings, A group of us have been working on a project to explore the possibility of oral citations on Wikipedia, and inadvertently (and happily), it turns out that there is a really interesting gender dimension that came up during the course of it.
The central problem we were trying to address was the lack of scholarly printed material outside the Anglo-European world, and how it affects knowledge production on Wikipedia. In the course of our work (and this may just be a coincidence) many of the foremost experts on oral culture turn out to be women; for e.g. Isabel Hofmeyr in South Africa and Urvashi Butalia in India. They both have a host of interesting points to make in the film, and Urvashi has one in particular worth nothing (described below, at point 38:35). She talks - from experience as a feminist publisher over the years, and as an oral historian, primarily of the stories of women from the partition of India - about how she finds that, often, the women who know don't think that what they know is noteworthy. I am aware of the research and debates that sparked off the creation of this list; I think there are several points in this project's trajectory (many of which are explained in the film) that have some bearing - tangential and direct - on the 'gender gap'. We'd be delighted if you might check out the project page, watch the film and give us your feedback. Cheers, Achal -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:38:20 +0530 From: Achal Prabhala <aprabh...@gmail.com> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org> Dear friends, At the beginning of 2011, a group of us began working on a project to explore alternative methods of citation on Wikipedia. We were motivated by the lack of published resources in much of the non-Anglo-European world, and the very real difficulty of citing everyday aspects of lived reality in India and South Africa. We are now at a stage where the project is almost complete, and we'd like to share our work with the broader movement, especially within India and South Africa. There are three languages we worked within: Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi. The project page documents the process and logistics employed, as well as the findings and results: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations A film made on the project is available here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv?withJS=MediaWiki:MwEmbed.js http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv or http://vimeo.com/26469276 There have been discussions on oral citations for some time now within the language communities we worked with for the duration of the project. At this stage, we are really interested in *your* feedback, either on this list, or on the Discussion section of the project page. There are still some things to come, namely: - Updates on events, meetings and discussions held around the project (as they happen) - Updates on articles created in Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi as a result of the project (as they happen) - English transcripts of the interviews and a full English subtitle track for further translation (we could use some help here). We would be very grateful to hear your feedback, and begin a broader discussion. Best wishes, Achal _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
