Grants:IdeaLab/Rise to the Challenge

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Rise to the Challenge
Stop all special treatment and campaigns for women and minorities.
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Theaitetos
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created on22:50, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Project idea[edit]

What is the problem you're trying to solve?[edit]

The Wikimedia Foundation constantly infantilizes women and minorities by portraying them as weak, powerless and stupid – unable to contribute unless provided with huge, costly campaigns and special treatment.

Recognize that Wikimedia & Wikipedia contributers/editors are largely from a small demographic of the entire population, mostly younger students and academics – and that this is the same demographic that supports other free open source and knowledge projects. That means that there's not an infinite resource of people around – including women – from which you can attract more contributors; in other words, Wikimedia is in an economic competition for young minds with these other, smaller projects. Costly campaigns with special treatment for women will therefore not simply get more women "out of the blue" into Wikipedia, but instead draw them away from other projects, which then suffer in turn from this brain drain. Donations to the Wikimedia Foundation become detrimental to free software and free knowledge projects around the world, which is the exact opposite of the mission statement of the Wikimedia Foundation.

What is your solution?[edit]

Dismantle the Gender Gap Taskforce.

Stop worrying about the gender gap.

Stop portraying women as inferior/unequal to men.

Recognize that smart women are turned away from contributing to Wikipedia and other projects, if the Wikimedia Foundation considers these women implicitly not up to the task of working on equal levels with men.

Recognize that the Wikimedia Foundation threatens smaller free knowledge projects all around the world by establishing an expensive standard of special treatment campaigns for women, that these small projects simply can not afford financially.


The world recognizes the good intentions and wishes from the Wikimedia Foundation and its leadership already. We've seen all those previous campaigns of the WMF to this "ending the gender gap" fail year after year after year. Einstein said "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results." Don't be insane. End these campaigns. Take a stand and tell the world:

"The Wikimedia Foundation has contributors from all over the world, many from places where these contributions are dangerous to their lives because of harsh political repression, religious persecution, state surveillance, secret police, war and terrorism. These people contributed and continue to contribute to free knowledge for all of mankind. We are honored and humbled by their contributions. And if even these people are able to contribute to our projects, then surely all people in our free and open societies can easily contribute as well. We strongly reject the idea that women are less capable than men to contribute on our projects, and would need special treatment."

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