Re: [Gendergap] Wikinews and women's topic on the front page :)
On 20 March 2012 23:42, Laura Hale wrote: > woot woot. :D There have been two news stories about women on the front > page of Wikinews in the past two days. (Both are sport stories about > softball.) It is nice to see front page coverage for them. > > If you haven't written for Wikinews, I highly encourage you to do so. The > style guide can be found at http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Style_guide > and if you follow the directions, it is pretty easy to get your article > published, have it appear in Google News searchers and appear on the front > page. I wrote up my first editing experience at > http://editors.wikinewsie.org/2012/03/writing-for-wikinews-for-the-first-time/laura-on-mainpage/ > . I found the process much easier, especially for original research, than > English Wikipedia. The expectations are very clear. There is a review > process to let you know issues. The people helping have been fantastic and > are pretty accessible for asking questions. If you do an interview with > some one or some other original reporting, you can use the source you create > for Wikipedia as an article source. (Though sadly, not for notability.) > > It would be great to see a wider variety of women's topics covered on > wikinews. :) > On the Wikinews front, I'd like to make an offer to any female editors: I'm an experienced Wikinews editor, and have both reviewer rights and adminship on there. If you have any questions about Wikinews that you want to ask off-wiki and off-list, feel free to email me and I'll do my best to answer them. If you've got any questions about it on-list, I can also have a shot at answering. Finally, if you submit something to Wikinews and it doesn't get reviewed quickly, feel free to email me and I'll try and review them (subject to being awake, London-time). Just to give some idea of what is possible on Wikinews, I wrote the following four articles. One is a featured article, another is an interview with Sue Gardner, and two others are original reporting from events. https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/UK_Parliament_to_vote_on_tuition_fee_rise_on_Thursday https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Knight_Foundation_and_Mozilla_send_geeks_into_newsrooms https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/%27Stop_being_so_damn_respectful%27_say_free_speech_supporters_in_London https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews_Sue_Gardner_on_Wikipedia_blackout If you are going to an event, a protest, or pretty much anything interesting and newsy, please, grab a camera, grab a notebook, interview, photograph, video and help improve Wikinews. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] Newsflash: sexism in geek communities demeans everybody - by Tom Morris
On Friday, 23 March 2012 at 18:39, Sarah Stierch wrote: > Hi everyone. I wanted to share a blog that came across my radar today. I've > always been one to channel my rage into action, more than comfortably > verbally expressing myself through blogs. So, it's always nice when I read a > blog that basically verbalizes my own personal frustrations and rage, and > well, I didn't have to write it. :) > Thanks, Sarah. "Rage" might be a bit too strong a description. More "gasping open-mouthed at unashamed idiocy". ;-) Just as background for the post: I've been involved with planning BarCamp London. Things like BarCamp and hack day events tend to be run by clueful people who see exactly why things like 'booth babes' are a bad idea. It is precisely when those type of events exhibit cluelessness that it is a problem. I expect the big sales events to have booth babes, but that's because the audience is different. They are selling primarily to male businessmen, whereas BarCamps and hack days are designed for an audience of the actual technical people who do the work, specifically the subset of those who are dedicated or weird or passionate enough to spend their weekends talking about their geeky obsessions. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] Photo accreditation for the Lesbian Spring in Toulouse (France)
Caroline, I've responded on the talk page with some further advice on how to do OR notes. Pi zero is giving you accurate advice about Wikinews original research publishing. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
[Gendergap] Asking Reddit's /r/asktransgender about Wikipedia
Earlier today, I posted a thread on Reddit's AskTransgender group asking for feedback on how Wikipedia handles transgender issues, specifically BLP and pronoun issues. http://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/tejwl/is_wikipedia_handling_transgender_identity_well/ Feel free to respond here or there. This followed discussions relating to the widely-reported announcement by Tom Gabel, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the punk band Against Me!, of their intention to transition, and also previous discussions I've had by email with a UK-based transgender non-profit. It almost feels like how we handle gender identity and transgender issues on-wiki is a nice little litmus test for the community's wider attitudes to inclusion (as well as handling of sensitive BLPs). -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
[Gendergap] Austin All-Girl Hack Night
This just came across my radar: http://www.meetup.com/Austin-All-Girl-Hack-Night/ It's an event for female coders in Austin, TX. I wonder if there are technically-inclined female MediaWiki developers and assorted Wiki[pm]edia code slingers in the Austin area who might want to attend. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
[Gendergap] Fwd: [Wikimediauk-l] Election and resolution results
Just thought I should pass this on. Today, Wikimedia UK elected its first female director: Joscelyn Upendran is the Public Project Lead for Creative Commons UK. In addition, three other women stood for election to the board. -- Forwarded message -- From: James Farrar Date: 12 May 2012 18:50 Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] Election and resolution results To: wikimediau...@lists.wikimedia.org Dear all, Here are the results of the resolutions and elections held at the Wikimedia UK AGM today: Resolutions 1. Change of name: passed with 2 votes against and 4 abstentions 2. Registration in Scotland: passed with 1 vote against and 5 abstentions 3. Increasing the term of Board members: passed with 46 votes in favour, 10 against and 5 abstentions 4. Membership fees: passed without objection (1 abstention) 5. Appoint Board members: passed without objection (2 abstentions) 6. Approve 2011 accounts: passed without objection (7 abstentions) 7. Approve 2012 accounts: withdrawn 8. Re-appoint auditors: passed without objection (6 abstentions) Please note that for all resolutions except number 3, the actual tally of votes in favour was not kept as the show of hands and number of proxy votes given to the Tellers was sufficient to show an overwhelming majority in favour. Election of Board members The number of votes given for each candidate was as follows: Christopher Keating 52 Michael Peel 50 Ashley Van Haeften 49 Joscelyn Upendran 48 John Byrne 46 Roger Bamkin 46 Doug Taylor 40 Steve Virgin 38 Saad Choudri 34 Roshana Gammampila 27 Katie Chan 26 Alison Fayers-Kerr 11 Christopher Allen 10 Thomas Nichols 6 Gary Hayes 2 Junior Campbell 1 The total number of votes cast was 61, and therefore candidates required a minimum of 31 votes to be eligible for election. Therefore Christopher Keating, Michael Peel, Ashley Van Haeften, Joscelyn Upendran,John Byrne, Roger Bamkin and Doug Taylor have been duly elected to serve as Directors of Wikimedia UK. James Farrar For and on behalf of the Tellers ___ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] The Dell Summit
On Sunday, 13 May 2012 at 03:20, Sarah Stierch wrote: > Dell held their annual summit this week in Europe. They hired a moderator for > the opening day named Mads Christensen who is a media personality that is > described as "very conservative" and this also is regarding his views towards > women. Wait, what? This is the same Dell that back in 2009 decided to produce a line of netbooks called "Della" specifically targeted towards women, and were promptly savaged for being retrograde sexist idiots. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Della_computers http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1137328/dell-marketing-tactic-sexism http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/11/dell-unveils-della-website-to-help-women-choose-which-totally-cu http://blog.laptopmag.com/dear-della-sexism-doesnt-sell-laptops So after that drubbing, they have what the Reddit post describes as a "well-known Danish misogynist commentator" to emcee their event. This isn't so much shooting themselves in the foot as machine gunning their whole leg off. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] The Dell Summit
On 13 May 2012 23:36, Cynthia Ashley-Nelson wrote: > I would think it could certainly be added to the Mads Christensen article on > Wikipedia, found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mads_Barner-Christensen. > Have we any sources other than the blog post? -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] Larry Sanger's blog post: Should there be a Wikipedia boycott over the lack of an image filter?
On Thursday, 31 May 2012 at 04:38, Kim Osman wrote: > I am a new contributor to Wikipedia and read Larry's blog post and the > subsequent discussion on this list with great interest. > > My first thought was that this indeed is a red herring in terms of addressing > the gendergap, however in my limited editing experience I do at times feel > like Wikipedia is a boys' club, and perhaps the prevalence of pornography > goes some way to an imagining of what is hanging on the clubhouse walls. > Although not apparent in the course of normal browsing and editing (I've yet > to stumble on anything particularly offensive), it may contribute to the > culture which has resulted in a such a participation skew between genders. > I think everyone recognises the problems. I'm pretty much against censorship, but I still find it icky looking at certain images on Wikipedia. When I was involved in the Wikimedia UK outreach event at Cancer Research UK, I saw some fairly grisly images. I've occasionally had to deal with the BADIMAGES list on-wiki qua my role as admin. The problem is that Larry and others who are banging on about the sexual images is that they are conflating two things: the discussed opt-in image filter and an adult content filter. The former is what the Wikimedia community discussed (and seems to have rejected). The latter is what Larry seems to want. The latter has never been on the table. The point of the opt-in image filter is to let people choose what images they don't want to see, whereas an adult content filter would have to prevent children from accessing material their parents don't want them to see. The latter is a much, much harder job, and comes with great risk of over-filtering: if someone opts-out of seeing sexual images and we go a bit too far and hide the Venus de Milo, an opt-in image filter lets the user click the box and see it again. But a filter intended for preventing children from seeing naughty pics by definition cannot allow this. Therefore we'd have to be especially careful with false positives. I wrote something about this a while back: http://blog.tommorris.org/post/11286767288/opt-in-image-filter-enabling-censorware > I do think it is worth further exploring the idea of the > "techno-libertarians" who dominate policy-making as being young males without > children. I know that my views on any number of things has changed since I > have had children of my own - as my ability to donate time to discussing such > issues! > I find it sad that Larry uses a term like "technolibertarian". The fact that a word like that can encompass anyone who opposes censorship technologies and the Peter Thiel/singularity crowd who think that technology is going to help bring about some kind of government-free paradise (basically Somalia with iPhones) shows the term to be basically meaningless. The problem with all enforced filtering systems is that they aren't going to stop kids getting to porn (15-year-old boys have both a lot of time, technical expertise and will find creative ways to get their hands on porn), but they often will over-censor. Back in the 90s, GLAAD put out a report called "Access Denied" that described how filtering technology was restricting access to LGBT information sites. My university used to prevent students (adults!) from accessing the Wikipedia article on "Same-sex marriage" because, well, the URL contains the word "sex". Breast cancer awareness/information sites get hammered for the word "breast". What message does this send to young people? We care so much about "protecting" you from something you can probably get anyway, that we'll suggest to you that breast cancer or being LGBT is some kind of sexual or pornographic topic. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
[Gendergap] Guns, Girls and Games
The BBC broadcast a half hour documentary on Saturday called 'Guns, Girls and Games' which deals with sexual harassment in video games. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00s9jly> Two of the women interviewed in the programme run websites which try to highlight harassment and misogyny in online games: <http://fatuglyorslutty.com/> <http://www.notinthekitchenanymore.com/> They also briefly discussed the homophobia and racism present in some gaming communities. Incidentally, Xbox Live's response to homophobia is a perfect example of how to not solve these kinds of problems. They simply made it so users couldn't express their sexual orientation on their profiles. 'Cos, you know, the best way to make gay users feel like comfortable and welcome members of a community is to force them back in the closet for their own protection… -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] what follows from "most editors do not gender-identify"
On 18 June 2012 15:36, Sarah Stierch wrote: > Well, I'll be honest: > > I don't really care about detailed research unless it shows our numbers > changing at this point :-) (better or worse)... > > I am focusing my energy on taking action versus research investment. So > perhaps I shouldn't even bother with this conversation. We all know we have > few women editing :-/ > I agree with Sarah. The difference between 9% (the lowest estimate I've seen) and 13% (the highest) is pretty irrelevant compared to the difference between trying to go from 9-13% to something more like 25%. Further research seems kind of pointless: we know there's an issue, so let's fix it. A more useful avenue of research would be trying to find out what interventions might actually be useful in fixing the gender gap. It seems that a fair few people come to the gender imbalance and have a solution. Funnily enough, the solutions always seem to be solutions to problems they have with the wiki more generally (whether it's dodgy images on Commons or lack of civility or problematic notability standards). It's almost as if they have their hobby horse and they want to use gender as a new battleground for said issue. I'm glad that a lot of what the Foundation seem to be doing is trying to be evidence-based and are analysing the effectiveness of the various interventions (Teahouse, FeedbackDashboard, AFT5). One thing that probably ought to be done is to demand of the Foundation and of chapters that any studies they do into the effectiveness of outreach and intervention programmes include gender inclusiveness as a measure in stats-gathering where possible. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
[Gendergap] LGBT mailing list
I'm happy to announce that a new Wikimedia LGBT mailing list has been setup. For the time being, it is being hosted on lists.wikiqueer.org. http://lists.wikiqueer.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lgbt The list is for discussion of possible future LGBT outreach and partnership work, increasing the coverage of LGBT history, issues and culture, and any other issues that specifically affect LGBT editors. You don't have to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender to join. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] LGBT mailing list
On Sunday, 1 July 2012 at 22:30, Tom Morris wrote: > I'm happy to announce that a new Wikimedia LGBT mailing list has been setup. > For the time being, it is being hosted on lists.wikiqueer.org > (http://lists.wikiqueer.org). > > http://lists.wikiqueer.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-lgbt > > The list is for discussion of possible future LGBT outreach and partnership > work, increasing the coverage of LGBT history, issues and culture, and any > other issues that specifically affect LGBT editors. > > You don't have to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender to join. A barely discernible amount of time after Gregory launched it on the WikiQueer servers, Wikimedia have decided to allow the list to be created on lists.wikimedia.org instead. Please feel free to join here instead: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/lgbt Sorry about the confusion. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] recognition of gender gap*s* (in the plural) Re: LGBT mailing list
On Monday, 2 July 2012 at 06:24, koltzenb...@w4w.net wrote: > Hi Tom, hi @all > > > Wikimedia have decided to allow the list to be created > > since we are addressing not only one gender gap but, seemingly quite a few, > including those that come alonf > the lines of what has come to be called sexual orientarion, I have a question > about the creation process of > the new list. I recently heard elsewhere that > > it was difficult to bring WF to "allow" the list to be created in the frame > of lists.wikimedia.org (http://lists.wikimedia.org)? > how come? You can see the discussion that led to the creation of the mailing list here: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37888 I disagreed rather strongly with the suggestion made that two of the proposed list administrators (Varnent and Fae) would have a "POV"*, but agreed to be a list admin instead. Eventually, there was not really any "difficulty", just confusion and miscommunication. All's well that ends well. I'm not sure I agree that LGBT is another gender gap. The point of the list isn't that it's dealing with a clear need to increase participation like gendergap is. It's based on two things: dealing with problematic editor interaction issues if and when they occur and trying to increase outreach to LGBT communities and organisations – sort of like GLAM: there are historical and cultural organisations Wikimedians can work with to counter systemic bias etc. (As with women's history, LGBT history is often written out of the literature, and thus out of Wikipedia.) There's obviously some overlap given that gender, gender identity and sexual orientation are all bound together, but I wouldn't otherwise want to draw comparisons with what gendergap is doing and what the LGBT list is doing. * To quote Lady Gaga: if I have a POV or a COI, I was born that way. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] LGBT mailing list
On Friday, 6 July 2012 at 04:56, Gillian White wrote: > The GenderGap list is about the gender gap - the gap in representation, > involvement, participation, and acceptance of women on Wikipedia. We are > concerned about it because of its impact on the encyclopaedia and on some > people working in good faith on it. The sexual orientation and indeed, the > sex life of those women and men is irrelevant. Individuals who are concerned > to remedy the gender gap for the sake of the encyclopaedia might be male (gay > or straight) or female (gay or straight) or anything else for that matter. To > repeat, this gender gap list is about the gender gap. It is not about sub > groups or sexual identification. I don't think anyone involved in this has suggested to the contrary. The point of the lgbt list is to provide an opportunity to discuss potential LGBT-related outreach and cross-wiki projects, and to provide a space for discussion of issues affecting LGBT editors including harassment/abuse issues if and when they occur. There is no "orientation gap" that needs fixing: there's no evidence that there is a systemic bias here. Instead, it's simply a space for co-ordination and collaboration. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] recognition of gender gap*s* (in the plural) Re: LGBT mailing list
On Friday, 6 July 2012 at 07:11, koltzenb...@w4w.net wrote: > On Mon, 2 Jul 2012 09:47:58 +0100, Tom Morris wrote > > I'm not sure I agree that LGBT is another gender gap. > > > > my impression is that there certainly are gender gaps in LGBTIQA* communities > - if ever non-heterosexual > people are happy to be lumped together just because of not identifying > non-heterosexual, that is ... - There may be gender gaps in LGBT communities, but that's not the issue at Wikimedia. This list is about what we can do on Wikimedia regarding LGBT issues: outreach, support and editor assistance. As I have pointed out on gender gap, there isn't an "LGBT gap". It's not that we need more LGBT-identifying people to make up the numbers or to avoid some kind of heterosexist systemic bias. There's a gender gap within the LGBT wiki community, sure: in the #wikimedia-lgbt IRC channel, it tends to be dominated by a few men. On some areas of the wikis, non-male LGBT voices don't get heard for any number of reasons. There are currently issues related to BLP, related to editor behaviour and civility: the way that Wikipedia handles transgender people's identities, transitions and so on that offends and annoys many transgender people. Personally, I think this is mostly down to ignorance. Take Lana Wachowski, formerly Larry Wachowski, one of the creators of The Matrix. The average person who is likely to want to write about The Matrix on Wikipedia probably doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about issues faced by transgender people or how to sensitively and maturely handle LGBT-related issues. To them, whether they are described on-wiki as Larry or as Lana doesn't matter too much compared to when the next movie comes out. English Wikipedia's handling of BLP policy can often be very hasty and writes off any claim about sexual orientation as "irrelevant", and a crowd of "BLP warriors" often seem to think that anyone who attempts to say that a person is LGBT is 'defaming' them. English Wikipedia is sometimes behind the curve in switching over to using a transgender person's preferred name and pronouns. And finally some LGBT editors have reported problems of harassment and homophobia. Those are the issues specific to LGBT as I see them. The flip side is that a lot of people on-wiki who aren't LGBT see us as essentially "single-issue voters". That we are here to bang on about whether some celebrity is gay or not and probably infringe BLP while doing so. There have been LGBT-focussed editors in the past who have been disruptive and difficult to work with. There is some community mistrust here to overcome. My personal interest is to work productively on outreach and editing, and handling issues maturely and calmly rather than this list becoming a social justice talking shop. Having a long and intricate argument about whether, say, asexuals are members of the LGBT community or whether to use the term "LGBT" (or an extended version thereof) or "queer" (although I have my opinions) and whether they get to join the club is far less way to spend one's time than actually improving and expanding what we cover on the wiki. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] LGBT mailing list
On Friday, 6 July 2012 at 09:20, Michelle Gallaway wrote: > Also agree with the bit that the LGBQ list should not just be "gender gap for > gays", if only because no special outreach is really required there, but > there are still many issues that can be discussed. Except that we're all > talking about that list here, rather than posting on it over there! Outreach can mean different things: gender-gap-style outreach of "increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects" (to quote the list title) and cultural outreach more like GLAM. There's definitely scope for people to work with LGBT cultural, historical and community organisations much like we work with GLAMs. Not all outreach has to start from the position of "there's a problem that needs fixing"; outreach can start from "there's an opportunity to make the wiki better" too. (Not that those are mutually exclusive, obviously.) -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] women on wikiHow (talk at #wikimania)
Just as an interesting note on the community engagement front: Krystle is amazing. I once wrote a featured article for WikiHow. [1] I was later contacted by email by Krystle who asked if I would be happy to get a gift from WikiHow. A few weeks later, a WikiHow-branded USB stick and a card arrived. Next time I'm in the mood for writing an instruction guide, WikiHow has my undying loyalty. It's a great community and I know a few female editors who are extremely comfortable at WikiHow but find Wikipedia intimidating. They are a pretty good litmus test for efforts like the Teahouse and other editor engagement projects. [1] http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Philosophy-Paper -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] uk chairman band
On Thursday, 2 August 2012 at 02:53, Pete Forsyth wrote: > In this case, I consider it highly relevant information, considering that > someone in a position of trust in our community (chair of the UK board) was > found by English Wikipedia's highest authority: > > * (unanimously) to have violated important policies meant to protect the > health of the community (failing to disclose information about his past > accounts that he was required to disclose) > * (by a slim majority) to have made "unacceptable personal attacks" > * (unanimously) to have made "ad hominem attacks to discredit others" > * to have "attempted to deceive the community" on more than one count > * was banned (indefinitely, with opportunity for appeal starting in 1 year) > from editing the encyclopedia You seem to have omitted the bit about how he was subject to a relentless campaign of vicious homophobic abuse. Or, indeed, ArbCom's complete failure to understand the importance of how such abuse and bullying occurs. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SilkTork&diff=498427414&oldid=498418358 Given the numerous instance of female editors I've spoken to who have been the subject of painful stalking incidents, and the ongoing risk to women and other minority groups on-wiki, I'd suggest ArbCom's failure to understand the nature of such harassment ought to be rather concerning... This is not to excuse what Fae has done. Two wrongs don't make a right. But let's not pretend that there's not another side to this sad tale. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
[Gendergap] List of celebrity hairdressers
We have an AfD nomination for 'List of celebrity hairdressers', on the basis that it is "trivial". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_celebrity_hairdressers Can't remember the last time that a list article on baseball was nominated for deletion on the basis of triviality. Apparently, stereotypically masculine trivial things are fine but stereotypically feminine trivial things aren't. Le sigh. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] List of celebrity hairdressers
On Wednesday, 10 October 2012 at 01:36, Juergen Fenn wrote: > 2012/10/9 Tom Morris mailto:t...@tommorris.org)>: > > We have an AfD nomination for 'List of celebrity hairdressers', on the > > basis that it is "trivial". > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_celebrity_hairdressers > > > > Can't remember the last time that a list article on baseball was nominated > > for deletion on the basis of triviality. Apparently, stereotypically > > masculine trivial things are fine but stereotypically feminine trivial > > things aren't. > > I agree, but isn't such a list OR? Not particularly. There are celebrities, their livelihood depends quite a lot on their image, so they have stylists and hairdressers. There are sources that discuss their stylists and hairdressers. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
[Gendergap] Violentacrez and civility
Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web https://gawker.com/5950981/ "One reason Violentacrez continued to occupy such a high-profile position on Reddit was of course his free speech rhetoric. But Violentacrez has historically had a close relationship with Reddit's staff, a fact far less well-known than his controversial behavior." "For all his unpleasantness, they realized that Violentacrez was an excellent community moderator and could be counted on to keep the administrators abreast of any illegal content he came across." Wow, it's like Wikipedia's civility vs. established editors dynamic but with more misogyny, homophobia and racism... -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
[Gendergap] Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines
Thought that some people on this list might find this interesting (given that some women on Wikipedia have sadly suffered harassment because of their gender). Mozilla have just passed a new set of guidelines, the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines. https://www.mozilla.org/about/policies/participation.html "The Mozilla Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone. It doesn't matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact constructively with our community, including, but not limited to people of varied age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views." -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] You Guys Made Me Smile
On Friday, 8 March 2013 at 01:43, Sandra ordonez wrote: > Hey Guys, > > So tonight I'm at an event, and begin to chat with two amazing women...at > the end of the evening one of them mentions: > > Did you hear that there is a feminist take over of wikipedia event on the > 15th? Does anyone know if there is going to be an online component? I'd be happy to sit in IRC and help people remotely and/or do en.wp adminnish things as needed to help the sisterhood in their takeover of Wikipedia. ;-) -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] Topless image retention -don't give up
On Friday, 10 May 2013 at 15:23, Pete Forsyth wrote: > I think it's easier to discuss the challenges associated with the board > resolution in question, if we can leave aside the question of nudity for a > moment. Here is a simple example of an ordinary portrait taken in a > (presumably) private setting in a library: > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Karen_Stollznow_2.jpg > > The subject of the photo (as far as we know) explicitly stated she did *not* > give consent. But the closing administrator didn't consider that compelling > enough. > > What would be a good outcome in this case? The only problem I have in this situation is that anyone could come on, register a username on Commons and say "Hi, I'm XYZ, I didn't consent to my image being taken and used on Wikipedia, please delete." Ideally, we'd do this through OTRS rather than on-wiki so we can confirm that the people requesting deletion are who they say they are. Until we have enough people to handle these issues, we should err on the side of caution - in this case, probably deleting. -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] Topless image retention -don't give up
On Friday, 10 May 2013 at 15:48, Pete Forsyth wrote: > Well said, Fluff. I actually don't think the verification is necessary in a > case like this; there's no compelling reason to suspect the person is lying > about her identity. And given the scale of how many files are proposed for > deletion in a day, I don't think we can afford to set the bar so high that it > requires OTRS in a straightforward case like this. In the case of the Stollzow case, I'd exercise a little caution only because she's from the skeptic community and there's been a lot of back-and-forth about feminism and gender equality in that community. It wouldn't put it past people to sock to nominate women skeptics for deletion. It'd be nice if we had OTRS agents more active in Commons who could proactively deal with these kinds of things. (They might be made to feel as welcome as Christians in lion enclosures, but that's another matter...) -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] Sexuality-related userboxen: give me your thoughts!
"Straight but not narrow" is not necessarily fetish/philia related: people
saying they are straight but not narrow often means they are straight but
support gay rights. But that's just a side issue.
I have a gay userbox/category on my user profile for a few reasons: because I
use it as a litmus test of whether I want to participate in Wikipedia (if the
community cannot accept me as I am, I'll find something else to do with my
time), because I try and practice a life of openness (I edit in my real name,
and take the extra risk that comes with that, so why the fuck shouldn't I be
out?) and because I hope that if there are users who are LGBT and need support
or just a kind ear from an admin who can empathise with them, they can find me
and email me.
The difference between having a "This user is gay" userbox and a "This user is
single and wants to find a girlfriend" userbox is the underlying point of
mating that declaration. The motivation for having the former on my userpage
isn't to, say, find sexual or romantic partners. (Not that having someone in my
life with an encyclopedic knowledge of something wouldn't be useful at times…)
Even though I can see a very worthwhile point in listing that I am gay on my
userpage (as listed above). I can't quite see how a userbox proudly proclaiming
my sexual activities serves any great goal in building an encyclopedia. Nobody
is actually going to get a date from a userbox, and beyond that, I can't quite
see any real use for them. I just hope that we don't throw the useful baby
(things like LGBT userboxes) out with the bathwater.
Yours,
--
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>
On Tuesday, 14 May 2013 at 16:01, Katherine Casey wrote:
> I've noticed that enwp has a lot of sexuality-related userboxen. Some of
> these are innocuous or positive (i.e.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/LGBTsupport), some seem to be a bit
> over-share-y (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence_reluctant),
> and some seem downright creepy to me
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/girlfriendwish). When you put them
> together (for example, as found on the - real but anonymized - userpage
> excerpt here (http://gyazo.com/fa31a70c0b5bf29600a3058ae6dc4d6e)), you can
> very easily end up with what feels like a very, very sexualized userpage,
> which means a very, very sexualized user experience for anyone who visits
> that page. Reading the userpage that screenshot came from, for example, gave
> me the feeling that anyone female who speaks to that user is going to be
> evaluated for their sexual usefulness to the user.
>
> Userboxen can be a sensitive issue, historically speaking, and everyone seems
> to draw the line differently between appropriate ones and inappropriate ones.
> I'm interested in getting some thoughts on where the line is, and on whether
> the ones that cross the line inappropriately sexualize the atmosphere on the
> project. My personal feeling is something along the lines of "Speaking out
> about your sexual identity is good, but I don't want to hear about what
> specific sexual characteristics you have or want your sexual partners to
> have". I'd welcome the lists's thoughts on whether any, some, or none of the
> following userboxen (not an exhaustive list of sexuality-related ones, just
> some I've pulled out as good examples of the question) are appropriate to
> have hosted and used on our projects:
>
> Abstinence:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence ("This user practices
> abstinence but still has a healthy sex drive thank you very much.")
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence_sex_drive ("This user
> practices abstinence but still has a healthy sex drive thank you very much.")
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence_not_SRT ("This user
> practices abstinence for religious reasons, but disagrees with the Silver
> Ring Thing.")
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence_unsure ("This user practices
> abstinence but is not sure whether through shyness or through moral choice.")
> Fetishes/philias/sexual identity:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/aquaphile ("This user is an aquaphile.")
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dark_Tichondrias/Userboxes/User_Cross-dressing
> ("This user enjoys cross-dressing.")
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ISD/Userboxes/Dominant ("This user is a
> dominant." - also available in sub)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Oxguy3/myboxes/Straight_not_narrow ("This
> user is straight, but not narrow.")
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cadwaladr/Userboxes/Pornography (&qu
Re: [Gendergap] how sewing circles became secret queer celebrity love fests
On Monday, 3 June 2013 at 08:32, Sarah Stierch wrote: > Where I expected to read about sewing circles and sewing bees... > > I get an article about lesbian/bisexual actresses secretly having > relationships? > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewing_circles > > The best part is I just linked it off of an article about Sarah Allen, the > "Founding Mother" of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. I almost feel > like I should remove the link until the article is improved. Nothing wrong with us having both, but really, we ought to split out sewing circles used in the original sense from sewing circles used in the lesbian sense... -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] coverage of women philosophers on ENWP
Looking at that list, it is utterly depressing how few of the names I know despite having studied philosophy at university. I'd heard of Georgia Warnke and Rae Langton. I'm happy to copy-edit or help out at some point. Bit busy at work at the moment. But rock on, Kevin! On 24 August 2013 at 07:13:11, Kevin Gorman (kgor...@gmail.com) wrote: Hi all - Lately, after noticing how few biographies of women philosophers ENWP has, I have started trying to address the gap in some small way. Until this week (when I wrote it) we didn't even have a bio on Alison Jaggar, the person who was largely responsible for the first women's studies department in the world, and the person who probably taught the first class in feminist philosophy *ever*. I would like to eventually create a new Wikiproject on the model of Keilana's Wikiproject Women Scientists, but for now I've started a coordination page in my userspace [1] aimed at trying to improve our coverage of notable women philosophers. I would invite any of you who have the time to help improve our coverage to do so, either by writing an article about a notable woman philosopher who currently doesn't have one, improving the article of one who does, adding another name to the list of redlinks currently on my page, or in any way you can think of. Thanks, Kevin Gorman [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kevin_Gorman/philosophers (WP:ACADEMIC and WP:AUTHOR are the generally relevant notability guidelines.) -- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/ ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
[Gendergap] Wikidata, gamification and gender
Greetings Gendergap-sters, I wanted to tell everyone about a new game that Magnus Manske has created, called 'Wikidata - The game!' http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-game/ As games go, it's not tremendously exciting - it's not going to be peeling too many people away from their Xboxes or Nintendos. There's three sub-games: Person, Merge and Gender. You pick one and then the system asks you questions... forever. These answers end up getting pushed back into Wikidata. I've just been playing the 'gender' game. It shows you a Wikidata object, with a description in a language, as well as possibly a picture. Based on the description, you pick which gender best matches out of male or female (for non-binary genders, you can open up the Wikidata object by clicking on it and editing it directly). If you can't work it out, you can skip it by pressing 'Not sure'. I've now done over 400 of these. The interface is designed to work with touch devices so you should be able to do it with smartphones and iPads and so on. But why bother? Why should we care about making sure Wikidata accurately reflects the gender of its subjects? 1. It builds the future capacity of a replacement to the category system. Currently, we have a category system that turns identity into politics. We saw this on English Wikipedia with the "American women novelists" debacle: articles about female writers being moved from being in the main "American novelists" category into a gender-specific category. Some of the women who were thus moved objected on the basis that this was a form of ghettoisation of women's voices, and also pointed out that men weren't being equally moved to "American men novelists". The categories for discussion debates on English Wikipedia have become a place where identity politics plays out: should we have an "LGBT scientists" category? In come the people to argue that someone being LGBT is somehow a non-essential or non-central part of that person's identity. As it is for gender, so it is for religion and nationality. The flipside to this argument is that having categories based on gender, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity and religion enables readers to find people. The gay kid who thinks all gay men are stereotypically effeminate men working as beauticians can be disabused of that notion by looking through the 'LGBT sportspersons' category; the girl who has been told that women don't go into science or engineering can do similarly by looking in the 'Women scientists' category. Wikidata may give us a way out of these kinds of conundrums by letting us slice up the world on a great number of different axes. Want to see all the gay Buddhist scientists from Morocco? Fire up some future Wikidata powered faceted semantic search system that one day we'll maybe integrate into Wikipedia and you can do just that. 2. It'll enable us to monitor how well we're doing on systemic bias and the gender gap. Wikidata operates across different versions of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. On 'American women novelists', how well is each language doing in covering them? Is English Wikipedia better or worse at covering women novelists writing in English than French Wikipedia is covering women novelists writing in French? If we can make the machine readable data in Wikidata good and comprehensive, we can use it to flag up shortcomings and systemic bias in how Wikipedias in different languages handle these kinds of sensitive identity topics like gender and ethnicity and nationality. Countering systemic bias and the gender gap among article subjects isn't only an English language problem: Wikimedia is a global movement, and finding weak spots and opportunities to improve in all languages is something we should try and do. If you haven't played around with Wikidata, give it a go. Get yourself logged in with an account and go through the OAuth process, then you can start playing the games that Magnus has created and help build a system that can be used to monitor and improve coverage across Wikipedias. Wikidata is still at very early stages and you sort of have to have faith in what it could end up being in a few years time rather than being able to see immediate results now. But getting there might be quite good fun. Yours, -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] Adrienne Wadewitz featured in short piece about Gendergap on the English Wikipedia
That’s really cool. (Just don’t read the comments. Awful misogyny contained therein. Is there any way we can get that crap removed?) -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> - Original message - From: Jane Darnell To: Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects Subject: [Gendergap] Adrienne Wadewitz featured in short piece about Gendergap on the English Wikipedia Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2014 12:54:55 +0200 In case you missed it, the Signpost this week gives a link to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP8QCG7keQw _ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Re: [Gendergap] Tweet on Paula England
I started a stub, but I don't really know anything about sociology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_England Interestingly, there are quite a few redlinks on the list of presidents on the ASA article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sociological_Association#Presidents We also don't have a category for 'Sociologists of gender' or whatever the appropriate term is for sociologists who study the role of gender. Or indeed for sociologists of family or sexuality or race/ethnicity etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sociologists_by_field_of_research Yours, -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
