Grants:IdeaLab/Bring positive discrimination to Wikipedia

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Bring positive discrimination to Wikipedia

Establish a minimum quota of female administrators, bureaucrats and arbitrators.

idea creator• Langus-TxT

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created on13:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

Only 13% of Wikipedia contributors identify themselves as female. Women's point of view is severely underrepresented.

What is your solution?

The gender gap has been successfully addressed by parliaments and political systems around the world by establishing a minimum quota of female candidates/members. If we imitate this schema in our own system of administrators, bureaucrats and members of the arbitration committee, we would give visibility and relevance to women's role in Wikipedia. New female editors would get the message that this is not a gentlemen's club. Also, because of an increased feminine involvement in conflict resolution, Wikipedia is likely to slowly tone down its current testosterone-driven aggressiveness, which I believe is a major deterrent to female editors and newcomers in general. It would be a virtuous circle, which would come along with an improved retention rate of new editors.

Goals

Long term goal is to increase female participation rate in Wikipedia's active editors count.

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Endorsements

1. Edorse! Like has happened (and still is happening) in big companies, after giving them lots of time to include women at top positions on voluntary basis, it is now time for an obligation and for positive discrimation. Ellywa (talk) 16:15, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
2. Endorse; let's not throw out ideas here. I note with a mixture of amusement, despondence and impending alcoholism that a proposal attempting to correct for testosterone-driven aggressive culture has been opposed, on the grounds that it's solving a problem that doesn't exist and is too far, by people whose feedback includes comments like "Insane idea" and "feminist crap". The cognitive dissonance, it burns. Ironholds (talk) 18:29, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
3. Endorse, hey, just dropping in for the first time in months. Men suck; it seems obvious to establish explicitly progressive policy in order to resolve the translated suckiness (i.e., there are a lot of men, so let's make it fewer of them). I couldn't agree more with Ironholds' observation. Blurpeace 20:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Opposition

1. Affirmative action is an unmitigated disaster. Women just dont want to be involved in editing or administrating as much as men. There is no need to force a quota, which will yield inferior administration. There is no objective reason why there should be 50% men and 50% women in everything. Its time to stop giving in to feminist crap.--Metallurgist (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
2. The Wikipedia community is composed of volunteers. It doesn't make sense to establish a quota system when there's no limit to the number of administrators and/or bureaucrats we can promote: we'd end up either unfairly limiting men willing to contribute in administrative roles, or unduly promoting women simply for the sake of representation (which could backfire given how easy it would be to, ah, digitally crossdress). It isn't even worth talking about the Arbitration Committee, since those positions are elected. This doesn't seem in the interest of the projects. I would appreciate encouragement and support for women interested in greater permissions, but outright discrimination is not something I can silently tolerate. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 17:59, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
3. Positive discrimination is still discrimination. Discrimination, especially that which comes at the detriment of others, is always bad. JoshuaKGarner (talk) 18:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
4. Insane idea, not only that, it's against Foundation policy (wmf:Resolution:Nondiscrimination).--AldNonymous^Bicara? 18:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
5. This is the wrong approach to take. Editors should be getting access to the admin tools, getting elected to Arbcom, etc. because they are qualified for the position (which even now many are not). We should not be selecting people for these, male, female or other, just because of some self directed requirement. Reguyla (talk) 18:30, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
6. Absolutely no, per Reguyla et al.. Positive discrimination is treating the womens as idiots. People should be chosen because his or her is qualified, not because of his or her sex. -- M\A 18:38, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
7. There is no such thing as positive discrimination. Discrimination is discrimination. This is not "Brave New World". Propaganda and forced compliance to asinine nonsense is never the way to make things better. It is sick and twisted to do such things. I much prefer some of the other proposals than I do this one. Tharthan (talk) 18:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
8. That statistic is depressingly-low, but the other dissidents are right; if women are not drawn to the community as it is now, establishing a quota is not going to spontaneously create more women who are drawn to the community. The likely outcome is that some of the (qualified) male administrators will be removed from their positions in favor of less-motivated female administrators. Futur3g4ry (talk) 19:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
9. Firstly, we don't know how many women are actually here - only the reported number; much of the difference between the number of self-identified men and self-identified women may simply be tht men prefer to tell everyone, and women prefer not to. And, of course, the fact that some user claims to be a woman (or a man, as the case is) doesn't mean that they are. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:42, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
10. Positive discrimination? I can't think of discrimination being positive. Let's not turn the wiki into a social experiment. Affirmative action is not a good idea for Wikipedia. It doesn't promote the most successful candidates in the real world and would reduce admin quality. As far as I am aware, Wikipedia is edited by anonymous volunteers and I don't really care what gender folks are. Editors here tend to be type-A, not testosterone-driven.--NortyNort (talk) 20:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

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