Grants talk:IdeaLab/Inspire/Archives/2015/March

Promotion

Interactive map

I am not interested. In the moment I have to see nonsense as the statistic world mab between, I only can put me on my head. People who obviously don't understand history should not do such thing. Unbeleavable. Marcus Cyron (talk) 22:33, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Ditch "diversity"

Forget "diversity" and instead seek out contributors who know how to think, speak and write in a rational manner, AND which are willing to abide by Wikipedia rules of editing. There is nothing rational about awarding any position to someone because of their gender, ethnicity or sexual preferences.

Anyone who has read many pages of the dispute resolution sections, knows that most of Wikipedia's problems are caused by those who fail to think logically and those who are unwilling to abide by the fundamental Wiki rules of editing. Trying to set up diversity quotas merely begs for more and more of those kinds of problems, because "special" people, who are classified as different from the so-called "privileged" classes, sometimes tend to think they can get away with a lot more than the rest of us, because anyone who suggests they be blocked for cause, is sometimes vilified as "racist," or "homophobic," or "misogynist," or some other idiotic phrase, designed to cut off legitimate debate/discussion on legitimate issues.

We need people of logic and willing to abide by the fundamental rules of editing. Not those who are intent upon using Wikipedia to advance their political agendas, as a soap box and extension of their own spam pages; nothing more. Trying to recruit on diversity grounds will just end up encouraging more NPOV, OR and COI violations. If, for instance, one is editing an article about the history of females gaining the franchise, the only thing that counts is if the statements are supported with WP:RS citations and if there is balance to the article (evidenced by valid WP:RS for various historical positions). The personal feelings of the editor involved, should not be a part of that equation. I don't want to know anything about them other than if they are editing in compliance with the well established wiki rules.

Please don't respond with statements about my failure to be politically correct in my comments. That too, tends to discourage rational and legitimate debate/discussion and thus contrary to goals of rational thinking and writing and well-ordered compliance with editing rules. EditorASC (talk) 22:54, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree (see also wikipedia:Wikipedia:Equality). Jacedc (talk) 01:47, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

If we are primarily concerned about advancing the Wikimedia projects, then we only care about the quality of contributions, and not about who makes them. An edit is an edit; its value is not a function of who made it (see the Genetic fallacy). In that case, if we are concerned about who is editing, we would have to believe there are valuable contributions which could only come from members of a particular group. In turn it should be possible to list examples of edits that only women could make, and not men. Has anyone produced such a list?

On the othe hand, we might not be primarily concerned about the welfare of Wikimedia, but rather we might be concerned about women being left behind in some sort of digital divide. In that case we wouldn't need women to bring anything unique to the Wikimedia projects. We would be looking to recruit them for their own benefit - i.e. because they would learn something useful by editing here.

Given that these two possible motivations for concern over the gender imbalance are completely different, the people who are concerned should clarify which of the two concerns they have. If we're worried about what's best for Wikimedia, then show what women can provide that men cannot. If we're worried about what's best for women, and we believe what's best for women is for them to donate their labor to us, then figure out how to persuade more women to take advantage of whatever opportunity for self-improvement that men are more inclined to take here. --Teratornis (talk) 05:25, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Strongly agree. All the matters is the quality of the edits. If we create different classes of editors this will inevitably damage the ethos of Wikipedia, which is that all we are judged on is our actions as editors. RomanSpa (talk) 11:05, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You guys don't get it. You're mistaking a push for quality on the level of the entire encyclopedia for a push for better-quality individual edits.

Yes, any individual edit that an editor belonging to an underrepresented minority might make can be made just as well by a white male editor. But you can't look at each edit in isolation.

There are entire swaths of humanity whose interests and knowledge are not being incorporated into our projects. We cannot provide access to the sum total of human knowledge without the assistance of all sectors of society.

If, say, women are not editing in great numbers, how many topics are being undercovered in Wikipedia? How many women's thoughts are missing from Wikiquote? Are women's safety issues being communicated sufficiently in Wikivoyage?

And how does the predominately white male editor corps affect discussion pages on our projects? Is it not conceivable that the homogeneous makeup of the editors involved contributes to a lack of harmony and collaboration when editors not fitting the white male paradigm attempt to communicate with the rest of us?

-- LtPowers (talk) 16:26, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Banner grammar

That banner that is being placed on the top of wikis reads "Less than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women...", whereas it should read "Fewer than 20%...", because contributors are counted (not measured), so "fewer" is more applicable than "less". Can someone find someone who can change this and ask them to amend it? Rcsprinter123 (talk) 22:56, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Ha, I noticed that straight away too but didn't dare comment on it for fear of being accused of being pedantic. It needs to be changed as it makes Wikimedia look amateurish. People who have no concept of grammar shouldn't be tasked with creating banners which are placed across the whole range of Wikimedia projects. You could of done better.--Xania (talk) 23:32, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Good catch! I've passed that on. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Should be corrected now. Thanks Rcsprinter123, Xania. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I did check on this before putting it up, and "less" or "fewer" in these situations is a matter of debate. Either that or the people at the Chicago Manual of Style have "no concept of grammar" either. the wub "?!" 00:36, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Does the banner need either a reference or a ^{[citation needed]} tag after the first sentence? See WP:PROVEIT. Woodshed (talk) 01:50, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Being accused of being pedantic is like being accused of being beautiful - an accusation one should welcome. The unexamined sentence is not worth writing. --Teratornis (talk) 05:29, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I disagree; "less than 20%" is idiomatic here because we're not talking about precise numbers. LtPowers (talk) 16:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

What's the big fuss?

Maybe women have just better and/or more important things to do + have less time and are less bored? Their interest may also be in other online activities including where to write and Wiki is not everyone's first choice (same for men and others). Try some brainstorming with the former possibilities in mind.

Re. ideas: Try a sweepstake or pay them to waste their time on Wiki. Sounds silly at first but then again, I don't think a different approach would work; you can't "force" people to do something they don't want and for free.

Good luck, TMCk (talk) 23:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely agreed. We can't just forcefully "close the gender gap." What I would like is to see female editors step up and communicate with people. Explain why they edit, why they think most editors aren't women, and explain how they think it should be handled. But we can't just make gender politics more divisive than it already is. If women have a problem with gender disparity in Wikipedia, then women should address that by editing. Everyone has the right to choose if they edit Wikipedia, and those choices are reflected by the "20%" statistic. Most women don't chose to edit Wikipedia, while men do choose. That's just how it is. It can't be that women are ignorant or dumb -- they're fully capable of editing if they wanted to. Jacedc (talk) 02:06, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Maybe women are, on average, less tolerant of having their work deleted. The entire wiki editing model is fundamentally confrontational, hostile, and alienating. You pour your heart and soul into some editing, without any financial reward, and some stranger comes along and obliterates it. You can't rely on normal human relationship-building to find your place. Instead your only defense is to master the complex and abstract rules and guidelines so you can become a kind of Rules lawyer. You see the same thing in real-life situations such as schools and workplaces. The men are constantly ripping each other, and the women have less tolerance for the same kind of criticism, so they tend to avoid confrontations and explicitly challenging other people's beliefs and positions. If the gender imbalance here is a "problem", that means men and women are somehow fundamentally different. But if they are fundamentally different, then the gender imbalance means the Wikimedia projects, by their design, are more interesting to men than to women. (And that would hardly be surprising, considering that these projects were largely designed by men.) --Teratornis (talk) 04:40, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

So we should lower our standard of quality to cater to those who are "less tolerant of having their work deleted"? Maybe they wouldn't be so intolerant of having their work deleted if their work wasn't deleted, i.e., valuable work. You can "pour your heart out" and have all the passion in the world all day long, but if it's unverifiable, original research, or biased, it can't be kept on Wikipedia because that's the only way to gauge whether or not content is legitimate. And your claim that the only way to circumvent having your work deleted is by being a "rules lawyer" is simply not true: I've contributed to Wikipedia before without knowing any of the rules and the content stayed all the same. Not to mention, the only crucial "rules" you have to know is that

1. Content must be verifiable with reliable sources (i.e. you can't make stuff up)

2. Content must have a neutral point-of-view (i.e. you cannot use biased language)

3. No original research (i.e. the content you add must be attributable to reputable sources)

As long as you understand and abide by those you should have no trouble. If you have a problem with those rules, then by all means propose new ways of making sure Wikipedia content is verifiable and unbiased. Readers of Wikipedia couldn't care less if the original writer "poured their hearts out"; readers of Wikipedia want true, balanced content with encyclopedic value. These things that I mention have nothing to do with gender, just with people. Jacedc (talk) 16:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Your devotion to the ideals of verifiability and neutrality are admirable, but unfortunately not all of your fellow editors have the ability to set aside their biases and assess those factors without regard to the person making the edits, or the way the edits are defended on talk pages. No one is suggesting removing those factors as important, but it's also important to recognize that our collaborative processes are inherently biased due to a dominant demographic comprising the majority of collaborators. LtPowers (talk) 16:31, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You can say that there is a dominant demographic comprising the majority of collaborators (males) but you cannot say that the collaborative process is inherently biased because of that. If a fellow editor doesn't have the ability to set aside their bias, then their edits are not constructive (unless sourced properly and proved neutral through said source). If you object to the reliability of that source, that is to be what is discussed. But you can't complain that people aren't being fair if you can always counter it with verifiability and neutrality. It's very black and white. Besides that, not only males are capable of adding unverifiable and unbalanced content: attracting women would all the same, inevitably, attract more editors who fail to recognize their biases. Jacedc (talk) 17:04, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I think you'll find that any homogeneous group is necessarily biased simply by dint of not including alternative viewpoints. Verifiability and neutrality are not panaceas, because without alternative viewpoints, it's impossible to be certain that something is truly neutral. LtPowers (talk) 23:02, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

But you're assuming that it takes two different types of people to propose alternative view points, that is to say, it takes a woman to write about woman things, which is simply untrue. Conflicts arise all the time because of people proposing alternative view points, and of course those are all welcome. Wikipedia does not have a problem with no one proposing alternative view points, in fact, it's full of that, just go to any hot topic. Jacedc (talk) 03:46, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

More that society sociologically conditions groups to (generally) behave in distinct ways, based on demography, and so while anyone can write about "woman things", you're probably not including every perspective if "anyone", statistically-speaking, is unlikely to include people from particular demographic groups. Such as, ooh: women. You seem to be confusing "we have alternative view points" with "we have fair representation of all applicable alternative view points". Ironholds (talk) 15:36, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

They have a choice

Women have a choice just like everyone else. Why is there a need to "close the gap"? Women tend to have bigger social lives, it's been proven that most of Wikipedians are male and that is a natural reflection of society when it comes down to intellectual tasks. I don't believe there is any gender bias other than the one that it's natural to our world. Thanks --Camilo Sanchez (talk) 00:14, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It's in WikiMedia's interest to make its projects more welcoming to all sorts of users in order to keep and develop its user base. It might also be interested to be the change it wishes to see in the world, i.e. advance feminist ideals by stop treating male as its default (and preferred) member. --Pitke (talk) 00:21, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Camilo. Women can edit Wikipedia if they want to, they don't need to be coddled into doing something they don't naturally do. I understand it may be in the better of interest for Wikimedia to make their experience more welcoming, but if that's the case, do that. Address the issue of the usability of Wikipedia: Don't make gender politics any more divisive than it already is. It's like trying to make Call of Duty more welcoming to women because of the gender disparity... Maybe women just don't like Call of Duty? (I understand that there are plenty of women who play that game, but I'm guessing the gender disparity is probably the same. If not, just think of some other example if you have to.) I'm honestly a little tired of this gender war, Wikimedia does have plenty of users, the gender gap should reflect the gender itself, it shouldn't reflect Wikimedia. The thing here is between genders, not between females and Wikimedia. You're putting the focus on the wrong things. Jacedc (talk) 01:54, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually it's not in Wikimedia's interest to become more welcoming to "all sorts" of users. That's the business model of Facebook and Twitter - those sites want to bring in everybody, with the result that the average contribution is dreadful, and the worst contributions are offensive. The flagship Wikimedia project - Wikipedia - is an encyclopedia. The people who belong there are those who read encyclopedias when they were children (waves hand) and were ridiculed for it by their less intellectually inclined peers. And given that few people have been formally trained to write encyclopedias, users have to teach themselves by reading and following the mind-numbingly long and complex rules. It's in Wikimedia's interest to appeal to those types of people, and we do.

In the longer run (>20 years) perhaps we could reduce the dependency on human editors by building or training AIs to edit on Wikimedia projects. For example, if IBM's Watson can beat the best humans at Jeopardy!, we might soon see computers that can write featured articles from scratch with little or no human intervention. That would be one sure way to eliminate gender bias from Wikimedia projects, along with carbon bias. AIs, being tireless, could also work off Wikipedia's enormous technical debt represented by the large and endlessly growing backlogs. The existence of enormous backlogs says we have a much bigger problem than gender imbalance - humans regardless of gender do not enjoy the grunt work necessary to clear those backlogs. --Teratornis (talk) 05:03, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. Wikimedia is in a crowd with several other internet services that have no business trying to pose as a social network. Wikia is a fantastic example of that right now. Jacedc (talk) 16:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

"The people who belong there are those who read encyclopedias when they were children (waves hand) and were ridiculed for it by their less intellectually inclined peers." - I am disgusted by this statement. I'm absolutely one of those people you describe, but the people who belong at Wikipedia are everyone who has knowledge, and ability to contribute that knowledge. Everyone belongs! How can we compile the totality of the world's knowledge without the totality of the world's people? LtPowers (talk) 16:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Your absurd claim that intellectual tasks are principally the domain of males -- and that such is a "natural reflection of society" -- is in serious need of a citation. Otherwise, it's just androcentric bias. LtPowers (talk) 16:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You interpret my words in an interesting way. I meant "all sorts of users" as an opposite of "a needlessly tight demographic slot"; not an indiscriminate mass of people. --Pitke (talk) 13:43, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Whom are you addressing? My comment directly above yours was directed at Camilo Sanchez. LtPowers (talk) 15:08, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Is this another flavor of canvassing?

wikipedia:WP:CANVASS forbids recruiting editors having some identifiable bias to enter an ongoing editing dispute. If only 20% of Wikimedia editors are female, wouldn't eliminating the gender imbalance constitute the largest instance of canvassing in Wikimedia's history? This would require recruiting thousands of new editors specifically on the basis of their gender. For it to not be canvassing, one would have to argue that the new editors would not bring some sort of "female bias" to the projects. But if that is true, then what is the point of recruiting new editors specifically on the basis of gender? This focus on gender seems like a repudiation of what Wikimedia editing is all about - namely, that anyone (regardless of age, sex, national origin, or any other census form classification) can read the rules and usefully contribute. Can someone give an example of a specific constructive edit that could only be made by a woman? --Teratornis (talk) 04:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Teratornis. Please take a look at Grants:IdeaLab/How it works particularly "IdeaLab has its own processes and policies". As you'll see, IdeaLab is not English Wikipedia. On Meta, there is no guideline against canvassing -- in fact, we welcome people spreading the word about initiatives that happen here! --Skud (WMF) (talk) 07:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Well that's quite a shame considering that what Wikimedia does inherently affects Wikipedia and its policies. The canvassing policy may be worth considering here, anyway. There's no reason not to abide by the canvassing policy. Jacedc (talk) 16:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

"For it to not be canvassing, one would have to argue that the new editors would not bring some sort of 'female bias' to the projects. But if that is true, then what is the point of recruiting new editors specifically on the basis of gender?" So, by your logic, any attempt to correct for existing bias is not allowed because it introduces bias in the other direction? How else does one correct for bias if not by introducing the opposite viewpoint? LtPowers (talk) 16:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You are probably thinking that a project to “correct for existing bias” needs canvassing. That is not so. In Wikipedia, efforts are announced in the relevant talk pages including those of Wikiprojects, as it should be; that is not canvassing (by itself, but it can involve canvassing as a separate problem). There is no need to post this unpaid advertisement (the banner) in every WMF project page any more than it is to put that of any Wikiproject. People interested in improving women-specific topics should either simply edit or post their thoughts in the respective WikiProjects, just like any other editor. Wikipedia is also weak on mathematics (pick any university-level book and compare it to what you can find in Wikipedia) and electric machines (we have plenty of articles, but hardly any quality explanation of the physical principles of operation), the places to invite people to improve those articles is likewise, WikiProject Mathematics and WikiProject Engineering, not the whole encyclopedia. Regards. Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 17:10, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

Simple: refer to wikipedia:WP:VERIFY and wikipedia:WP:NPOV. Currently, our editors are only allowed to add content under those policies. By forcing gender equality, you are indeed introducing bias. Sure, it's opposite bias, but it's bias all the same. My point is, we should not be worried about the background of our contributors, but instead only the content of their edits. If their edits fall in line with the aforementioned pillars, then there should be no problem. That's all we should concern ourselves with. If edits don't fall in line with the aforementioned pillars, they are to be swiftly removed. Jacedc (talk) 17:10, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It's not that simple, and you know it. WP:V and WP:NPOV don't account for biases caused by the absence of information or attention; they can only correct what is already present. LtPowers (talk) 23:40, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It's literally impossible to have biased information merely by the absence of such information. If said information doesn't exist, there can be no bias, there can be no anything. You can argue that Wikipedia does suffer from undue weight by not focusing on certain areas, but that's up to the editors. Sure, that can be accounted for by gender disparity, but also cultural disparity, ethnic disparity, lingual disparity, age disparity, religious disparity, disparity in preference, disparity in experience, disparity in political beliefs, the list goes on and on and on. And yes, we can address those issues through campaigns, but not by "fundamentally changing Wiki(p/m)edia." The system is not flawed here, just its exposure to certain groups. Additionally, this project is a volunteer-run operation, we can't force volunteers -- it takes a certain type of person to willfully spend their hours and labor writing about things they are passionate about. And then they do just that: write about what they're interested in. Jacedc (talk) 03:56, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Conveniently, this is not strictly a gender-diversity effort. Do you see these disparities as a problem? Or simply not one worth addressing? LtPowers (talk) 14:50, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

This program goes against neutrality, one of the five pillars that support Wikipedia

I agree with Camilo Sanchez and Jacedc in that there is this effort to “close the gap” is unnecessary (refer to § They already have a choice. Everybody (men, women, kids, teenagers, adults, elders, and so on, by any other classification) who reads Wikipedia online can edit it already. Furthermore, I hold, based on the foundation of Wikipedia that this project is counterproductive. Wikipedia is supposed to be a neutral encyclopedia. Neutrality is among the 5 points (appropriately called the Five pillars) deemed the most essential and fundamental principles of this encyclopedia. This is one reason of why advertisement has been rejected in Wikipedia (and all of the WMF projects) despite that it would be a huge source of income to the WMF and would enable it to pursue projects which would drastically improve the encyclopedia (such as hiring professional writers for topics with bad covering). I agree that neutrality is more important, and so does the Wikipedia community as stated in its official policy. I don't want to see advertisement on Wikipedia. The banner of this project is unpaid advertisement. Let's make things clear: equality is not neutrality; even the concept of what equality is, is subjective and therefore not neutral.

1. Promoting equality entails selecting a metric as relevant, namely, the metric by which the status of groups (dominance or equality) is to be judged. Selecting such a metric is an act of subjectiveness. If several metrics are selected, this carries the implication that those are the worthy metrics and the others are irrelevant (or at least less relevant), which is just as subjective and hence against neutrality, if not worser.
2. Promoting equality implies the underlying belief that the relevant classes of agents for which such an equality is being pursued ought to rank equal, and furthermore, do so in the selected metric.

In our society, most people don't have a major physical disability. Seeking that 50% of representatives in a congress are people having this condition would be giving an unfair advantage to them, and therefore it is called reverse discrimination. Let's see how this project makes the same mistake: The world population is roughly distributed equally between men and women (see sex ratio, and note the difference between the 7% mentioned there and the >400% implied in the banner) and as mentioned in § They already have a choice, equal opportunities are given to everybody to edit Wikipedia already. These facts coupled with the observation (in the current banner) that “Fewer than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women” is–coupled with the fact that they have equal editing opportunities–firm evidence (as firm as the source for the percentage is) that less women than men take the opportunity to edit Wikipedia (or collaborate in a WMF project). To hold that in equality of opportunities, and less aptitude, interest, or whatever other factors are involved (but not a difference in sheer numbers, as noted above) by one group to make use of that opportunity, the results must be equal, is an unfortunate byproduct of political correction at its most exaggerate and misapplied form.

This opinion has no place in an organization like the Wikimedia Foundation or a project like Wikipedia, neither does the associated advertisement. There is a huge numbers of Wikipedians (and contributors to other WMF projects) and there is no way that we can agree in advertising any opinion. We can collaborate in the premise that nobody's opinion will stand before that of the rest, hence the policy about neutrality. I don't want to see Wikipedia turn into a soapbox for the current or past WMF executive directors.

As pointed above, we don't need “diverse” contributors either. We need quality content. Wikipedia an the WMF has never cared about the background of the contributors, only about their contributions, as it ought to be. The better evidence for that is that several administrators intentionally keep their identity secret, and that disclosing that information (of any editor, not just administrators) is against policy and is addressed by serious measures.

Regards.

Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 04:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

Good points about neutrality. Another point is that since Wikimedia editors need not reveal their identities, then presumably we already have a way for editors to avoid gender discrimination. If women are not editing here because they are being singled out for some special kind of abuse, then presumably they can avoid this abuse by editing under genderless pseudonyms (like mine). If on the other hand fewer women edit on Wikimedia projects simply because they don't like the inherently rough nature of the place where all our edits can be "mercilessly" edited by anyone else, then it would seem the only way to make the projects more welcoming to people who don't like this merciless editing would be to fundamentally change how these projects work. Instead of the current model, where you edit something and see if it "sticks", we would have to go to a more organized, hierarchical model where editors are given specific tasks under the expert guidance of senior editors who know what will stick. In other words, we would have to edit our content like all the hierarchical corporations out there. It's hard to imagine such a fundamental change would even be possible in a community of globally distributed volunteers, and if it was, it might drive away most of the people who came here because of the way things have been from the start. --Teratornis (talk) 06:15, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree. Well-written comment. :) Jacedc (talk) 16:38, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Having too few women eds causes a neutrality concern because it means our content is written from a male dominant perspective. That is a neutrality concern, and this initiative is going to address the neutrality concern. This program is for neutrality, not against it.OrangesRyellow (talk) 06:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@OrangesRyellow: Actually, WP:NPOV addresses neutrality concerns. If you have specific cases where you dispute neutrality you may cite that page and be prepared to back it up with verifiable sources, otherwise it's not a neutrality problem it's a whinery problem. I'll concede that Wikipedia may have an undue weight problem, where some topics aren't covered as much, but that's purely a reflection on the interest of volunteer editors as a whole, and can be said not only for gender disparity but age disparity, ethnicity disparity, religious disparity, nationality disparity, etc., etc. Jacedc (talk) 21:02, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Jacedc: Of course I know about NPOV and other policies. NPOV does not address neutrality concerns by itself. It requires actual, living people to apply it, and I alone cannot be expected to check millions of articles for neutrality. If there are too few women, male perspective neutrality problems would not be detected, and even if detected, would get pooh poohed out of town because it did not get consensus in the male supermajority which mostly fails to see the women's perspective. That is why, too few women is a neutrality concern. Yes, the same can be said about age disparity, ethnicity disparity, religious disparity, nationality disparity, etc., etc., but that does not disprove in the least, any part of what has been said about gender disparity. This also causes an undue weight concern, but then, that too does not disprove that it causes a neutrality concern too. Best.OrangesRyellow (talk) 03:56, 7 March 2015 (UTC) BTW, I am a man.OrangesRyellow (talk) 07:15, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Reading these snarky comments above I truly understand why the campaign is needed

Wow, I must admit that reading the thoughts of people above made me somewhat queasy. Go ahead, read all of these again. Were I a woman, I'd be feeling very much unwelcome. One user actually did feel nice enough to post she's happy about this thing happening, but she was put to her place...

What's my point? A) Too many people (not only women of course) turn away from editing Wikipedia because its communities can be obnoxious (it's the same with my local language Wiki, too). B) This campaign is not trying to "shake one of the pillars that Wikipedia is standing upon", nor trying to encourage any kind of "Canvassing"... it's merely an experiment, designed to see if the community has constructive ideas about making Wikipedia contain more voices so it can embody more aspects of human knowledge.

For the life of me, I can't see what could be so offensive about the campaign. I can, however, see the point how such reactions do highlight the need for good ideas and a better environment for women editing Wikipedia. Alleycat80 (talk) 06:58, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I for one find this campaign offensive because it perpetuates the stereotype that any underrepresentation of women must necessarily involve a community intervention to make participation more accessible to women. Why make people assume that we even want special help to get us to do something maybe we aren't that into in the first place? Such reactions should be expected, since this campaign uses the sort of politicized language that anyone who's been spending time online should realize will draw out both sides of the social justice culture war, so to use the reactions as justification for the campaign is circular reasoning. --Euniana (talk) 15:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

If Wikimedia wants to attract more women based off a disparity, then by all means, they should do that. But don't put banners atop every page (Wikimedia needs to stop doing this in general), and don't enforce policies which seek to "exact equality for women." Because that would shake one of the five pillars of Wikipedia. I also still maintain the sentiment that in the past, Wikimedia has never cared about the background of their contributors because that would be counterproductive. To sit there and worry about the gender, ethnicity, nationality, age, etc. of editors presents all nine types of problems and completely goes against the historical nature of Wikimedia, the nature of which has allowed its project to grow beyond the size of any encyclopedia in the history of the world. I strongly support identity concealment on Wikimedia projects (i.e., don't divulge your age, gender, political affiliation, religion, nationality at all.) Jacedc (talk) 16:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree with User:Alleycat80. To be honest, many of the comments on this page make me throw up in my mouth. I think after reading this page, many women will be wondering why they participate in this community at all. I would ask the few editors who are dominating the conversation here to just drop it (e.g. User:Jacedc, User:Teratornis, User:Mario Castelán Castro [1]). You have made your views clear, and this campaign is already in motion. There is nothing that you are accomplishing here besides alienating your female colleagues. I find many of your comments to be highly offensive (in case you don't understand how you are being perceived by me and likely others). For everyone's reading (dis)pleasure, a round-up of the worst so far, not necessarily by the three users called out: "It's like lowering the standards in the military only for women." "Trying to set up diversity quotas merely begs for more and more of those kinds of problems [i.e. problems caused by those who fail to think logically and those who are unwilling to abide by the fundamental Wiki rules of editing], because 'special' people, who are classified as different from the so-called 'privileged' classes, sometimes tend to think they can get away with a lot more than the rest of us..." "If women have a problem with gender disparity in Wikipedia, then women should address that by editing." (clearly women are to blame for their lack of representation here) "So we should lower our standard of quality to cater to those who are 'less tolerant of having their work deleted'?" "it's been proven that most of Wikipedians are male and that is a natural reflection of society when it comes down to intellectual tasks." "Is this another flavor of canvassing?" "Can someone give an example of a specific constructive edit that could only be made by a woman?" (assuming that, so long as it is technically possible for a man to make any edit that could be made by a woman, there is no need to consider the aggregate differences in edits made by men and women) "By forcing gender equality, you are indeed introducing bias." "What do you suggest, lowering the standards of Wikipedia to cater to minorities?" "The only thing any particular user can 'explain' (whether women or men) is how that user feels, but no user is representative of a big group, let alone a group as big as the people of a given sex." (in response to a woman trying to explain her experience as a woman) "Enough with the feminism already" "This nonsense should not even be given the light of day or serious proposal and adspace." Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:48, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• Reading the comments on this page, the detractors come across like this: "If you don't want to edit Wikipedia in exactly the same way *I* do, using exactly the same tone of voice, the same thought constructs, the same terminology, and the same opinions about people who are not like me, then you are not welcome." While the diatribes are focused on women right now, because of the focus of this specific campaign, I cannot help but wonder if the same editors aren't exhibiting the same attitudes toward any editor who doesn't completely agree with them on every aspect of Wikipedia. This would be a method for differentiating general xenophobia from sexist thinking: do the detractors believe that anyone who has disagreed with them on this page must be a woman or a WMF staffer? That is the impression they are leaving. If that is correct (only they can confirm what is in their own minds), then those assumptions are a prima facie example of the existence of a gendergap problem that is adversely influencing Wikimedia projects. Risker (talk) 21:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Although I do agree that some comments are "snarkier" than others, I also see a very strong, if you don't agree then your prejudice, attitude. That may well be the case, I don't know. But these discussions should be about discussing the issues and coming to an agreement. We should be working to fix problems in the project, not dragging them out and pointing fingers at each other and I see a lot of that here as well. Reguyla (talk) 22:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

First of all, your paraphrasing is out of context. Many of the quoted comments were followed up by explanations and preceded by premises; you're cherry picking and trying to display your opponents in a negative light. That said, you cannot ask editors to "drop it" simply because they are "dominating the conversation." If you disagree with me and others, you'd be better explaining why you disagree. I'm a strong proponent of identity concealment on Wikipedia, as the majority of administrators follow themselves. The reason is that the background of contributors does not matter, the only thing that matters is the quality of their edits. If someone feels like a certain area of Wikipedia is being underrepresented, that's one of the exact reasons WikiProjects are facilitated. Join one, start one, or better yet, start editing on your own.

That out of the way, I do apologize if any of my comments seem snarky, rude, etc. It is not my intention to start big arguments, but this is a debate that I feel should be had before the "campaign is already set in motion." I don't believe their is any justifiable bias in Wikipedia's content; if there is, by all means remove it. I do believe that there is a possibility of underrepresentation, but that could be said for women, people of different cultures, ethnicities, religions, politics, nationalities, profession, etc. etc. The list goes on. We shouldn't try to cater to every possible "oppressed minority" by making divisive politics more divisive. Yes we should encourage women to edit, but it's entirely up to them. The phrase "close the gender gap" is counter-productive and completely contrary to the fundamental nature of Wikimedia. Jacedc (talk) 04:17, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Let's just ignore the snarkies. We have too much work in front of us to bother with them, and the cause of gender diversity has widespread support in the movement. Tony (talk) 08:03, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Frankly, I think these snarky threads should just be archived immediately and comments in otherwise constructive threads hatted with "snarky comment hatted" green line. By the way, this article "Think Wikipedia Is Sexist? They Want To Pay You To Help Change That" has a good line appropriate here: The Inspire Campaign is a new initiative by the Wikimedia Foundation designed to diversify its army of editors and make its quest to document "the sum of all human knowledge" less of a white-dude sausage party. There was a lot of discussion of "sausagefests" (and other strange male behavior) in recent en.Wikipedia gender gap-related discussions. Needlesstosay, all such snarkiness just detracts from getting the work done. Carolmooredc (talk) 16:58, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Where is the problem?

I really don't understand, women have the same possibilities to be part of the project, there isn't any kind of direct or undirect discrimination. Furthermore, if it's proved that we have a smaller number of women, it's not clear how that reflects on the quality level of what we do. --Carlomartini86 (talk) 08:05, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes I understand where you are coming from. As a woman, I have become one of the go-to people to explain this stuff. Since I felt somewhat responsible, I decided to dig a little deeper and guess what? Turns out you don't have to dig at all to find the gendergap. Name your corner of Wikipedia and I can show it to you in probably a few minutes. I read on fb that someone felt that "ideas are not gendered", but they certainly are. I think 80% of what is written on Wikipedia is written by people who "just feel like writing an article on that one specific thing". Well there are tons of very specific situations that no man will ever wrangle themselves into, let alone have the idea to write about it. Case in point? Take a look at this article: en:Contraceptive implant and the accompanying video piece. I also love the template that has become a snarky insinuation at the top. Jane023 (talk) 14:26, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

As a woman, I have become one of the go-to people to explain this stuff.

The only thing any particular user can “explain” (whether women or men) is how that user feels, but no user is representative of a big group, let alone a group as big as the people of a given sex. To claim that a single user can “explain”, representing around half the world population (or at least a big part of the audience of Wikipedia or WMF projects) is simply incorrect. Political representatives are continuously criticized saying that they don't represent the people they should, even when it's a few thousands; we are here talking of people with years of experience and often Ph. D degrees in this specific area. Even then, governance is more than “explaining” how one involved group feels.

There is policy involved here. I think that you are not making this claim, but I want to make the clarification: no group (selected based on a personal criterion) is entitled to “explain” how policy works more than the rest.

I read on fb that someone felt that "ideas are not gendered", but they certainly are.

This is unsubstantiated opinion. Furthermore, the fact that you have read the contrary on Facebook is completely irrelevant here. You are entitled to your opinion, whether you want it to be based on (the opposite of what) people says on Facebook or another point, but the WMF and Wikipedia must be neutral. See § This program goes against neutrality, one of the five pillars that support Wikipedia and the other arguments made in this talk page.

Well there are tons of very specific situations that no man will ever wrangle themselves into, let alone have the idea to write about it. Case in point?

False. Knowledge doesn't works like that. We don't need to directly experience something in order to have knowledge about it (in general, regardless of sex). Most knowledge is based on observations (and induction based on them) or deductive arguments, not feelings that the discoverer experiences. Just to name some examples: Hendrik Lorentz and Pieter Zeeman never saw their emission/absorption spectral lines be finely split in presence of a magnetic field (see Zeeman effect). And again Albert Einstein never felt the curvature of spacetime. The spacetime in the vicinity of the earth is curved enough for its effects to be measurable, not experienced (All of the satellite navigation systems including GPS, and several experiments like that of Joseph Hafele and that of Richard Keating depend on this). It is through measurements, inductive and deductive reasoning that those parts of physics were developed. We (again, generic we) can't experience directly how a transistor tens of nanometers wide works, but we know it from indirect observation, and we know it so well that we can carefully arrange hundreds of millions to billions of them in devices with more computing power than the entire humanity using pencil and paper, and fingernail-sized storage devices with more storage capacity than a bookshelf.

Physicians routinely handle diseases that they never have experienced, thousands of men graduate as gynecologists, women as urologists, painters paint scenery that they have never experienced, including surrealists ones, historians write about events that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago, rocket engineers account for forces during launch that they have never felt (most are not astronauts), psychologists write about mental feelings they have never experienced, and treat the associated mental disorders, and so on.

The whole society, including the fact that we are currently using computers in this talk page, depends on the fact that knowledge can be mastered without experiencing in oneself what it entails (see the point about semiconductors above). The assertion that only women can know enough about a handful of topics to write about them, is at best, a misunderstanding of know knowledge works.

Moreover, women are already welcome to edit Wikipedia (or any other WMF project) and there are already projects to improve the coverage of woman-specific topics. Wikipedia has never had anything against women or any other group. I favor that men and women edit in neutrality, not this biased initiative which, as already noted elsewhere in this talk page, implies the viewpoint that there is a sex war and that Wikipedia and the WMF must take a side in it.

Regards. Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 16:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

Hi Mario, I must admit I agree with you in theory, but the reality is never so ideal and is in fact quite messy. Just imagine that someone who is very overworked but who has devoted lots of time to Wikimedia projects has asked you as a valued contributor to present the gendergap on Wikipedia in a short speech of 20 minutes in 2 days time. You are willing to comply with the caveat that you have never looked at it before. I am sure that the experience will change your outlook. The problem is so deeply embedded that drastic measures are necessary. With each month that we move forward this gap is getting bigger and bigger. It's your opinion that matters, but your opinion has only been formed in reaction to what you perceive as "nonsense". You haven't spent any time at all considering your corner of the wikiverse and how that corner handles women-specific topics at all. It's one thing to say everyone is welcome to your table, but if you lock the front door there isn't much weight in your invitation at all. Jane023 (talk) 18:39, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Jane023, what you are saying is (in superficially nice words) that you know better because you have experience with this, rather than giving any actual argument, this is a variation of the argument from authority fallacy and possibly the argumentum ad passiones (which is also a fallacy). Even talking about in terms of a “gender-gap” implies that it is something noteworthy or relevant, and hence against neutrality.. Note that the word “gap” means that something is missing: E.g: “a gap in the ozone layer”, “graphs of continuous functions have no gaps”. Why not race-gap, age-gap or {any demographic group}-gap instead?. to abandon neutrality is a prerequisite to pick one such “gap”. The loaded claim that the “gender-gap” is increasing means in neutral terms, that increasingly more men have, or take the opportunity of editing Wikipedia than women. As pointed already, the opportunity is the same. If more {men, women, kids, teenagers, adults, elders, whites, blacks, Indians, Asians, Europeans} wish to edit Wikipedia I don't see the problem. We have a neutrality policy that make it possible to argue against any bias the people from those groups may carry on equal grounds (not artificially inflated opportunities beyond those that everyone has). Make instead a campaign appealing to editors to be less aggressive in general (not driven by the other person's background). Regards. Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 23:09, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

Thanks @Jane023:, very valuable response, but I think you are not addressing Mario's main assumptions, instead addressing what motivates users like you or I to see this program as valuable.

Hi @Mario Castelán Castro:: in some ways I agree with many of your arguments: there is real value in being able to have knowledge about something that you don't have experience over, and in fact, we should be encouraging people to step outside their lives to assess other community's of experience and their bodies of knowledge. However the campaign is focusing on solving the critical problems created by a homogeneous communities, not the opportunity for minority communities to participate: Will men, or any other majority group, every have enough critical interest or will power to document as extensively something beyond their lives as a group that lives it? Moreover, isn't your knowledge and your perception also coloured by your experience? Do not your perceptions that you have been cultivating your whole life with a very specific set of experiences, create blind spots in your ability to anticipate or even ask questions about those other bodies of knowledge? Collectively, do not these blind spots get reinforced when everyone is talking from the same or similar position(s) of experience? These are the questions and problems we are facing with not having a lot of women in the community: its not that they don't have the opportunities, nor that the community couldn't share that community's knowledge in the current state, but rather whether the community will share this knowledge without the help of women with specific life experiences creating very specific perspectives that are a product of the our cultures diverse definitions of what women experiences should be. Sadads (talk) 21:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

We don't have a gender problem, we have a civility problem

I have said it many times before, the problem we have on the WikiProjects and specifically the English Wikipedia is civility and double standards. When editors are treated like second class citizens regardless of how long they have been on the project and how much they have done, and admins are treated as though they are infallible, it causes problems. People do not want to work in a negative environment no matter how much money they make, let alone as a volunteer project. When people are routinely treated as a throwaway commodity and are under-appreciated, they leave. No matter how much recruiting is done and no matter how much attention is paid to the issues of Gender, ethnic and racial disparity unless someone does something about the underlying problems of civility and admins who are allowed to do whatever they want with impunity, you are not going to fix anything. If you fix those two major problems, and start rebuilding the culture of trust that once existed, you will find things will improve and people will want to edit again. Reguyla (talk) 16:14, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It's funny you say that because one of the leading causes for editor blocking is being uncivil. Civility problems are met with blocks. Editors aren't treated as second-class citizens (I'm just a regular, casual editor), and admins definitely aren't treated as infallible. Although I will echo what Wikipedia's civility guideline says: Raw text is often ambiguous. Raw text does not have facial expressions, vocal inflections, body language, etc., therefore it's hard to gauge whether or not someone is being hostile. For some people, they interpret a comment as hostile before they interpret it as explanatory. But how else are we to make sure that content is held to a quality standard? How else are we to explain to someone why their edit was undone? Jacedc (talk) 17:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I understand what your saying and as a self labelled casual editor you probably just don't see it. When a handful of admins routinely abuse the block tool, are unnecessarily aggressive and provocative in discussions including goading users into confrontations so they can justify blocking them, I see that as a problem. You are right though, editors do get blocked frequently and many of them deserve it. Admins however can pretty much do whatever they want and it takes a month long Arbcom discussion (that nearly always results in no result at all to the admin), to even consider removal of the admin tools. An editor that has hundreds of thousands of edits, years of service to the project and featured content can be tossed out randomly by any admin. Does that seem like a good system to you? As someone who did hundreds of thousands of edits all over the project in various different namespaces I (and others) have seen this problem. I do not recall anything being done or said to the admin that called the whole community "Fucking Morons" for opposing an RFA he submitted on another user. In fact that admin, who has a history of at least borderline abusive behavior with the block tool is applying for the Checkuser and Oversight roles and they will probably get access because the culture on the English Wikipedia allows that conduct with no oversight of admins. That is just one example but I do also admit it is a minority of admins that are the problems. However, when nothing is done about it when they do violate policy, its not encouraging. As long as that sort of conduct is condoned and even encouraged, it is not likely that editors in any demographic are going to stay and edit for extended periods of time. Reguyla (talk) 17:53, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Admins generally don't act on their own accord: They use their user rights after weighing it out with the community, or after a user has repeatedly ignored warnings. I'm not going to say that admins never abuse their powers and never get away with such things, as I know that is clearly false, but I am saying that there currently is no major civility problem. I'm an administrator on a community website very similar to Wikipedia (it's a Wikia project), and that coupled with me being a contributor at Wikipedia (perhaps you misunderstood what I mean by casual: I mean I'm just your average contributor), I know that this is a text-book case of a user who has either witnessed admin abuse or directly experienced it and is forever jaded by the process in general, which is unfortunate. Every process and institution is flawed, but that doesn't mean it's flawed fundamentally (necessarily). Jacedc (talk) 04:25, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Generally your right, they don't but when they do and nothing is done it only enforces that its ok so they continue getting bolder and bolder. Not all, not even most, its only a few that are the problem and I too am an admin on a couple wiki's. The culture there is different than here. I also will admit that I am both "a user who has either witnessed admin abuse and has directly experienced it" and in some respects yes that has probably jaded my viewpoint. But I have advocated civility improvements since before that. I simply got tired of watching it happen and dragging the project down. That is, in fact, what caused me to "experience" the wrath of some of the admins and wanna be admins. Question? Have you ever suggested to your friends, family and coworkers about editing? I have and a lot of them have tried and the majority hated it because it takes time to learn the hundreds of policies, thousands of essays and the unwritten inferences. Some people learn faster than others and we need to be more encouraging to new editors. We also, should not at the same time alienate our current editors. Retention is a problem and so is civility. Both need some attention if any of these Sexism projects are going to bare any fruit. Like I said before, some of these projects have the potential to do some good but I have a problem with spamming all the wiki's and the process of ignoring and hiding all opposition and cherry picking the comments that are wanted to ensure the projects success. These projects should succeed or fail on their own merits not be manipulated into a false success story. Reguyla (talk) 18:51, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Reguyla: -- [2] Jacedc (talk) 21:17, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Enough with the feminism already

Maybe women just have less interest in editing and administrating as men. Is this so wrong? There is no objective reason why the ratios of editors and staff should be equal to the general population. Some things men prefer, Some things women prefer. This nonsense should not even be given the light of day or serious proposal and adspace.--Metallurgist (talk) 17:34, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You're right, women couldn't possibly be interested in learning things, that's only for men. We're only interested in calories and kittens and lipstick. Now, what do you want in your sandwich? Sophie means wisdom (talk) 17:58, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

That answer is a non-sequitur. Metallurgist talked about editing and being administrators. As pointed already, the buttons, history pages, talk pages, interface in general, policy, guidelines and essays are the same for men and women, so women and men that read Wikipedia have the same opportunity to contribute and yet women as a group taken collectively, chose to not to contribute as much as men do. Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 18:08, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

You think the essays and the interface are the only thing that matter? The attitude and implicit and explicit sexism matter. The sociological variation in how different genders are treated in the outside world, and the fact that Wikipedia reflects the outside world, matters.

A thought experiment: the gender-based wage gap and glass ceiling both exist; would you dispute that? Now, if I claimed that they couldn't exist and maybe women just choose to be paid less than men, because after all, the pay slips are all the same colour and size, would you think that's an adequate explanation for the variation? Ironholds (talk) 18:15, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I basically agree with the title of this thread. As I pointed out above, if civility improves, people will edit. There are lots and lots of well respected female editors in the project. Quite a few are admins, some are not. I could leave a long list of them here but that's not necessary. As has been stated in other venues, I support recruiting more editors, I do not support focusing on one group or another. Do we need more women editing? Sure we do, we also need more military people, more Chinese people and more people from India. There are a lot of subjects that are under represented in Wikipedia including China, Indian and African topics. We need more editors in general, not to skew the results by singling out one or two groups. Regardless, as I have stated above and elsewhere, if there are no changes to the environment and civility, people are just going to play World of Warcraft or hang out with their friends on Facebook instead. We need to drop the editors are expendable, we don't need you mentality. We need editors, they do not need us. That isn't to say we shouldn't block some, but blocking large percentages of the worlds internet simply on the assumption that they might be a vandal someday and have never done one edit is just plain stupid. Reguyla (talk) 18:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Note added by request for clarification: This (my comment) is a reply to the comment with one indentation level less by Ironholds:

The analogy is fundamentally flawed: an employer may offer a lower payment for women than men for the same job, or men may be overall more apt or willing to make higher paying jobs. Wikipedia offers exactly the same for women than men and all editors chose what part of the encyclopedia they edit.

Some editors are aggressive, but while they abide to policy, we can't coerce them into being nice. If they are selective regarding to whom they are aggressive, we can't force them to be equally aggressive (or equally nice) to everyone, that's nonsense. Even if such an effort is attempted, there is no reason more to address aggressiveness towards women than there is to address aggressiveness based on any other demographic criterion including race, age, religion, and even level of experience, which is not demographic. By picking a single (or any subset they determine is worthy addressing) of these, the WMF is being impartial, and hence irresponsible.

Also, even if editors were more aggressive to women to men, it's a fallacy to conclude that it's so because they are women. correlation does not imply causation, that's taught in elementary statistic courses (isn't the people who made the studies aware of this elementary result?). If, as some have pointed, women are less willing to go through the same process of being a Wikipedia editor than men, it's no surprise than their edits will more often be against policy (which doesn't distinguishes editors by any demographic criterion) and therefore will be reverted and criticized.

The irresponsible pursuing of supposed “equality” of the WMF should stop. It's not neutral, and there is no objective criterion to determine which groups must be equal and by which metric, I elaborated into this in § This program goes against neutrality, one of the five pillars that support Wikipedia. A change to policy to impose whatever concept of “equality” the WMF people has decided is THE valid one would be disastrous. The WMF is an offspring of Wikipedia and it should oversee Wikipedia, based on it's five pillars, not the WMF staff's political agenda.

AGF is a guideline as it should, because there is no objective measure of what is being “nice” or “aggressive”. Trying to impose any such measure will result in a complete loss of neutrality, and will give administrators yet another tool to deal with users the don't like; they will punish users based on that they are breaking the AGF policy, according to their (the administrator) interpretation, of course. You are free to hold your opinion that “implicit and explicit sexism matter”, and that it's somehow more worthy to fight aggressiveness to a small group of editors than it is to fight the problem of aggressiveness in general (which is, by definition, a bigger problem). but don't make Wikipedia (or WMF) your soapbox for expressing your opinion.

Regards. Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 18:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

Mario, the precedent you're looking for here (and disregarding) is SOPA. The wikis are required to be neutral as to items of content ( and even then, not universally - only on those projects that follow NPOV). We are not required to be neutral on organizational, administrative, or social issues. We may choose to be neutral there, but we are not mandated to. It's probably best to keep that separation quite clear. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I've agreed with practically everything Mario has said in this discussion. To me the evidence is quite unambiguous that making divisive politics more divisive is counterproductive and directly contrary to the nature of Wiki(p)(m)edia. Women can choose to edit if they want to, the policies and buttons read all the same. And for those baselessly asserting that Wikipedia suffers from a "hostile, sexist environment", prove it, because I happen to strongly disagree with you. And no, anecdotal "evidence" and hypothetical instances aren't sufficient. Jacedc (talk) 04:32, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

That's a convenient tautology you've constructed. Isn't it sufficient that numerous editors, would-be editors, and former editors have reported that Wikipedia suffers from a "hostile, sexist environment"? Regardless of whether it meets your personal definition of 'hostile', isn't it enough that numerous people do find it hostile? LtPowers (talk) 15:04, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Attempted forking without consensus

The header of the page says:

This is the discussion page for the Inspire campaign. Got feedback/suggestions about Inspire? Share them here! Got questions about turning your ideas into plans or grant proposals? Add a new topic and ask us!

This was the original header as far as I can tell. Now a staff member attempted to fork this, possibly to give less importance to the criticism received. Does the WMF staff asks for feedback and then move it to a page that almost nobody will read when the provided feedback (that they asked for) is not what they wanted?. Is this a joke?. Is the WMF becoming a repressive government?.

A gentle remainder for the personal reflection of WMF staff: you live off the donations that people pay because we build Wikipedia, Wikibooks and so on. Your task is to keep it running, nothing else. Wikipedia is not a soapbox for your political agenda. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Regards. Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 19:34, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

This is actually a tactic frequently used on many projects (not necessarily WMF staff) and venues to minimize the impact of comments they do not agree with. Don't like how the submission is going, move it and watch the discussion die out. If that's not working you can also block some people for NOTHERE or Disruption. Reguyla (talk) 19:39, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• Hi Mario Castelán Castro, this is a 3 month long campaign, so we need to moderate the discussion to make the page useful. This will involve trimming and rearranging, and archiving discussions. As a volunteer, I fully support making the discussion page useful for people who are collaborating together on the Inspire Campaign. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 19:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

What was attempted here is not simply archiving but poisoning the well by trying to make a second-class talk page for criticism (that the WMF asked for) and let the first-class one be only for what the WMF staff wants. Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 19:48, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

I support the archiving or whatever we are going to call it. This is a campaign that is, as a matter of fact, happening. People who would like to participate in the campaign should have a place to discuss logistics etc. Meta discussions about the merit of the campaign aren't going to make the campaign not happen and are just getting in the way of actual participants being able to find ways to make the best of the campaign that is already in existence. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Correct, the general discussion feedback is being moved together to another page. And the main page is being used for people who want to participate and have questions or want to give suggestions for those working on the campaign. This type of moderating of the pages is helpful for new users to meta or talk pages in general because they get pretty overwhelming to read. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 19:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

That's a remarkably disingenuous comment. It's glaringly obvious that attempts are being made to stifle or de-emphasise criticism of this proposal. RomanSpa (talk) 02:34, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

This page was advertised across en-wiki and who knows how many other sites. Some of the projects proposed here were known to be controversial. If you want to keep your project pages clean, route the discussion of its propriety to a centralized location, don't try to sweep it under the rug. DPRoberts534 (talk) 19:53, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I have no problem with archiving discussions or even moving some to other venues, however there is a right and a wrong way to do that. Blanking the page is not the right way. Blanking the talk page is a way to end criticism of a topic that has more than one point of view involved. Reguyla (talk) 20:17, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Reguyla, nothing was blanked. The discussion was split to two pages: one for "meta" or general-level conversations, and one for specific discussions on this campaign. Both supportive and critical comments were moved. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I do agree that everything was moved and that was part of the problem. Some of the discussions pertain directly to this. But what purpose does it serve to move multiple active discussions relating to the topic to a location no one has watchlisted or is aware of? It doesn't make any sense at all. I understand what you are saying but the only thing it will do is ensure the discussions stop and separate criticism. If this campaign aim's to do what it says it does, then you need discussion on both sides. If you just alienate all the discussions not deemed by you to be related to a remote page then you are defeating the purpose. I also feel like I should clarify, if the information was split to a new page it would show up in the recent changes list. It was simply deleted. Reguyla (talk) 20:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• support forking the discussion. This is not about agreement or disagreement; this is about the project, as DPRoberts notes, being very widely advertised. The result is going to be a lot of traffic and a lot of commentary that we probably want to segment. To those people shouting about sweeping negativity under the rug, I'd point out that positive feedback was also moved. And to people saying "Don't bite the hand that feeds you, WMF!" - this is a complex ecosystem. Each element plays its part. It's ludicrous to claim that any one element can exist without the other, and that includes dismissing the people who run the servers, fund the volunteer-led projects and think hard about meta issues for 8 hours a day. Some of us do quite a bit to build Wikipedia, thank you very much. Ironholds (talk) 20:54, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Says the guy who works for the WMF! I really don't have a problem with forking, but it should be done right. Deleting the entire page and not adding it anywhere, contrary to what was inferred above, isn't the right way. I too have done a lot to build Wikipedia, lets not forget it only matters when its convenient, the moment our views aren't popular the edits are "irrelevant" and we are NOTHERE.n The project loses thousands of edits a month because I can't edit, not to mention the thousands of edits that arent getting done every month because thousands of IP's are blocked preventing woman editors and a lot of others from editing. The bottom line here is there are a lot of reasons why women aren't editing including the lack of access to edit due to unnecessary blocks (IP's, Ranges, etc.), lack of interest and the rather toxic editing environment that is widely known on Wikipedia. If you want to change the project so more women and indeed more editors in general are editing, then you need to address all of those things. Otherwise, you are just ignoring real and fixable issues to address a "pet" project because its popular and interesting at the moment. Reguyla (talk) 21:08, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually, that's not what happened; Siko actively forked to here. The forking could have been more explicit/elegant (we should move the page history when we fork again), but it wasn't deleted and not added anywhere. Ironholds (talk) 21:20, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. I wonder why it didn't show up under recent changes. Reguyla (talk) 21:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• support the fork. It was clumsily done but helps keep the detailed discussion of the proposals separate from general discussion about the gendergap. Dragging in 'Community' vs WMF baggage isn't really helpful. It was a minor hiccup in protocol that was well-meant and did no harm. PatHadley (talk) 21:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• support second page Meta-discussion about the campaign itself--both supportive or critical--should be separated from facilitative discussion about ongoing ideas. This talk page is the primary discussion board for prospective grantees who need many things--support, information, encouragement, inspiration, etc.--and tip-toeing through a political minefield is not one of the many things they need. Moreover, I'm flatly unpersuaded by the criticisms of this campaign and wonder why it is attracting such destructive attention at all. Involving more of any qualified demographic to our diminishing ranks is a good idea. Nobody is being forced to apply for these grants or participate in them. Insofar as grants are micro-experiments subject to demonstrating impact and ultimate community approval, there is little to no risk of harm. So what is this opposition except dismissiveness towards and intimidation of those who support the goal of a more diverse editing community? The root of the Inspire Gender Gap campaign is simple: we are missing people. The inane comments above about women not being present en masse in the intellectual pursuits of society reflects the stodgiest unwillingness to imagine different perspectives--as if this project had no interest in actually advancing the sum of all human knowledge and bringing in on a wide variety of people with access to, interest in, and insight about that knowledge. I'm a walking Wikipedia stereotype--a 30-year old white, college-educated male and I don't take the gender gap as a personal slight that I'm somehow insufficient. Lord knows we have a radically awesome mission and we need all the help we can get to tackle it. The gender gap is about missing people and that is an obstacle to achieving our mission. This campaign is a great way to brainstorm solutions and when I come to the Inspire talk page I want to see discussion about how to get it done. Chit-chat about why it's not worth doing at all is frankly part of a broader 'meta' conversation that can and will inevitably continue--but it certainly doesn't have to happen here. Disclosure: In addition to being a 7-year volunteer, I also now work for the WMF (as a contractor) and have been closely involved with the team putting this campaign together. Ocaasi (talk) 21:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I generally agree with all of that, I only wonder why so much attention and effort is being expended on this one particular project and no effort is being done to addressed issues of civility or keeping editors (all of them, not just one niche). It doesn't matter how much recruiting we do, people do not like political minefields as was said above, so if we fix some of those issues, without polarizing the issue as being about gender, ethnicity, race, etc. it would be a net positive all around IMO. I am not anti female in the least and I hope I am not coming off that way, I am anti abuse and that abuse is what is driving people from the project. Recruiting and Retention go hand in hand and organizations that fail to address both aspects generally do not succeed at either. Reguyla (talk) 21:56, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Reguyla, I'm speaking as someone who for the last 10 years has been shocked by the lack of women volunteers across the wikimedia movement, and for the last 5 years shocked by the lack of dedicated effort to address the issue even though it was a stated priority area in the Wikimedia Foundation 2010 Strategic Plan. As a long time volunteer I support generally making the wikimedia movement better by doing thing such as introducing Friendly Space policies and making the software better and on wiki workflow easier. But additionally, there needs to be a direct appeal to women to invite them to join the movement. It appears that women (as a group) are more likely to see the edit button and not see it as an invitation to edit to create content. But with a direct invitations they are much more likely to respond. Today it is harder for newbies to join many Wikipedias. So, we need to think about ideas to motivate them to join and stay. I support working on the gender gap because it is a global issue and one that directly effect the quality of content. Since having a narrow volunteer demographic base introduces systemic bias, we are directly improving content by getting more women involved. It is also pretty easy to measure impact or change by looking at demographic information, satisfaction with content, satisfaction with editing experience, and also looking at the quality of content. Additionally, the work that is done on the Inspire gender gap campaign can be transferred to other initiatives. So, that's the reason that I'm pleased to see the targeted campaign about the gender gap, and want us to spend more time working on executing the campaign rather than merely talking about it. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 22:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I really don't have a problem with this project, I hope it doesn't seem that way and I think a lot of good can come out of it but this trend of people telling anyone who doesn't agree that they are sexist is unsat. Its also unsat that obvious vote stacking and manipulation of projects is happening. There are several projects that I think would be beneficial and I even volunteered to help on a couple. I do think though, that attention needs to be paid to fixing the cultural editing problems on the site at the same time as or prior to inviting these women to edit if you want to retain them. It is not a coincidence that the majority of women on the project have been here for years. We rarely get a new one to stay because the editing environment sucks and there is zero trust in the projects, especially ENWP. As I mentioned above, Recruiting and Retention must work together. Its like buying a new car without gas. For what its worth, I also have been trying for years to make the editing environment more fair and more civil, we all pretty much know how that worked out because there are some that do not want that. They like the system they way it is because they have control of it. That needs to change if you want these new woman editors to stay long enough to finish an article. Reguyla (talk) 23:40, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• Support forking the discussion. As someone interested in this initiative, I think it's critical to have a place to discuss the goals, scope, and future of projects under this initiative that is separate from what will undoubtedly be an ongoing discussion of the greater campaign. Fisheriesmgmt (talk) 03:23, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose: It would be against neutrality to relegate this criticism to a minimal-visibility page.

  and tip-toeing through a political minefield is not one of the many things they need.

need?. Need for what?. This initiative does not enables anyone to do anything they couldn't have already done before. People interested in this project ought to see that there is opposition, and this opposition is based on policy decided by consensus among the ones who build Wikipedia (the five pillars) not the WMF who started as an organization to support Wikipedia and seems to be forgetting its role but they never forget to ask for donations annually. This is the same as how readers ought to know when there is a neutrality dispute (and therefore we have banner and inline templates to place in articles and make readers aware of the disputed neutrality).

Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 22:33, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

• Oppose forking: It's clear that there is significant opposition to the very idea of the campaign, which is being ignored by its supporters and staff members. A unilateral decision to disrupt the formation of community consensus is not appreciated. Before consensus is clearly established, this campaign needs to be put on hold. --Euniana (talk) 22:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - Here is a perfect example of why splitting is a bad idea. When you look at this proposal someone left all the "endorsements and supports" but removed all the comments and opposes to the talk page where they are sure to not be seen or considered. Now, you folks can talk about this just being an administrative task all you want, but this action shows, clearly, that it is the intent of the WMF and this projects supporters to dismiss any opposition as prejudice and female gender hating. This sort of tactic is absolutely NOT the way to build credibility in the WMF staff nor in the projects themselves. So if that is the case, don't even bother soliciting comments. Just assume that all the guys hate all the women and fund the projects. Don't waste the communities time soliciting comments just to delete anyone who doesn't agree. Reguyla (talk) 23:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

  Hi Reguyla. I want to kindly say that I think you are bringing some assumptions from typical Wikipedia !voting processes into the IdeaLab, which is really a different kind of space. It has always been IdeaLab procedure to have just endorsements on the idea pages and all other commentary--including opposition--on the talk page. This may seem non-neutral to you, but it serves a very important purpose... submitting a new idea to public scrutiny is hard and scary. IdeaLab is a place to experiment, build, refine, and expand an idea, but in this incubator for innovation, there is a certain inherent delicacy to the process. If every new idea had to contend with a sudden whack of 'what-ifs' and 'buts', it would discourage much of the very positive innovation that has come out of this place. Please note again that this is not a gender-idea-specific issue and has always been the nature of IdeaLab. Innovation is hard and while idea-submitters don't need to be 'coddled', they do need to be supported in the boldness of their idea-sharing. I'd like to see a lot more of that in this thread and in this space. Best, Jake Ocaasi (talk) 23:29, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

No,Reguyla, the IdeaLab pages are always created without oppose sections. It is done deliberately for all ideas. Someone added an oppose section and some else removed it to bring it back to the standard format. The talk page is the designated place for feedback. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 04:26, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

If the talk page is designated for comments and feedback then the endorsements and supports, with comments would have also been moved. This has nothing to do with Wikipedia's voting practices, its common sense, if you want all that on the talk page then fine, but you only moved the opposition and comments there and left the supports/endorsements. That is obvious cherry picking. Its pretty clear that you all are going to do what you want to do though so there is no need for me to continue to comment here. I will remove my name as a participant to the 2 I volunteered to help out with and leave these projects to those that don't care about considering all the data and comments and just want to do what they want. Its becoming clear to me that this is less about doing anything for the project and more about being a jobs program. Reguyla (talk) 23:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

No, these pages are structured in a different way than you often see on Wikimedia project discussion. It is different because the environment is made to nurture creativity. Every idea is given a chance to improve with feedback instead of just shutting it down. It is an important but subtle difference that is done to encourage people to collaborate in positive way instead of being oppositional. Setting up a support or oppose fosters divisiveness that leaves people feeling defensive instead of ready to work collaboratively. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 00:28, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

If all you want is positive feedback and kudos then that's fine. But oftentimes, negative feedback is useful too. I understand what you re saying, but giving the submitter a false sense of positivity because you only allow positive comments on the project page isn't very useful IMO. I'm not saying it should be a free-for-all but if comments should be left on the talk page then it should be all comments not just the ones that might hurt the presenters feelings. Honestly, its not like they aren't going to see them on the talk page, your not hiding them from the submitter, your just wasting the time of people who come here to review the projects. You said it yourself, Wikipedia does it differently so you know yourself that people coming here from there aren't going to look at the talk pages. They are going to look at the page and comment. Its unrealistic and again obvious cherry picking and manipulation to think that everyone who comes here is going to know all that. You know they don't know, you expect that and that is why adding the criticisms, opposes and comments to the talk page works. Reguyla (talk) 01:14, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Really? Let's play a thought experiment, then. Reguyla, what would you say the benefit the proposer gets out of a comment that claims their proposal is "Propaganda and forced compliance to asinine nonsense", or "sick and twisted"? What about a comment that describes a proposal as "feminist crap"? What about "silly...obnoxious and simplistic"? And if none, how would you solve for these kinds of comments having a chilling effect on people providing ideas that far outstrips the cost of moving the sort of people who would make them to a different space? I ask, because these were all comments left on the proposal that you brought up as an example of how unfair moving the comments is. Ironholds (talk) 01:50, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm done commenting here especially with these obvious hyperbolic anecdotes about what if scenarios. The bottom line is, allowing only positive comments and support votes on the project page and moving all negative comments to the talk page, when everyone is used to putting both Support and oppose votes on the page, gives the reader an artificially inflated sense of support of the project because you arehiding the opposes. Its a clear manipulation to achieve a goal you desire. Even if it is meant to be a positive motivator for the submitter it is completely dishonest to the voters who you are calling from other projects to vote on these. Do I think those comments could occur? Absolutely, but it would be easy enough to ride herd over those comments. If they are going to do these projects, they are going to find out soon enough what the atmosphere is like anyway. Tricking them into a false sense of kindness isn't doing them any favors either. Reguyla (talk) 02:32, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Except those aren't hyperbolic. Those are all comments that have already been made, on just one proposal. Ironholds (talk) 02:55, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Oh please and creating a project directed at attracting more women called "Dumb it down"(which is obviously insulting towards women eventhough I know the submitter didn't mean it that way) isn't insulting? We can both twist this a dozen different ways and neither of us is going to change the others mind nor is it going to change this process. My recommendation, lets drop this, I'm gonna go to bed, you can go get another tattoo (although I could use one too) and we can all move on. You folks have created an environment here of hiding facts to support your projects. Its fine, your not spending my money so I am not going to worry about it. But its dishonest to both the submitters and the voters and it isn't how a project should be selected or funded. In fact it makes this project submission process look like a joke. Reguyla (talk) 03:16, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• Comment - if WMF doesn't like all the criticism this project is attracting, it shouldn't spam every page with a direct link to this page. If you want to fork the conversation elsewhere, change the link. If the campaign has been going on for three months, then why is the banner up there and why are we just now seeing it? I Oppose forking the comments: You guys would've had no problem with it if the majority of comments didn't attract criticism, but it did. If you don't like it, oh well. As Mario said, "don't bite the hand that feeds you." If you guys don't want a ton of traffic coming here to debate the issue, don't impose an ad wiki-wide with a link to here: because that's exactly what you'll attract. You'll only find what you're looking for, and that is input. Jacedc (talk) 04:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support fork. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:14, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Inspire

The name of this campaign is not well chosen.--Kopiersperre (talk) 22:03, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I thought about that too, but no matter what name they chose there would have been some conflicts with other things. I think the name is pretty good actually, although I would prefer to "Inspire" new editors regardless of what their demographic is. Reguyla (talk)

The failure to actually being neutral, fair and true to its own policy

After seeing this Grants:IdeaLab/WikiProject Women-(gender segregation) that's allowed to exist and not even rejected quickly by WMF, I have no confidence on this IdeaLab, if WMF can't be impartial and true to their own policy (wmf:Resolution:Nondiscrimination), then how can people will give their confidence to this IdeaLab?.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 23:20, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

The policy prohibits discrimination against, which doesn't seem to conflict with promotion/recruitment of underrepresented groups

Agreed. A WikiProject about women would be welcome. A WikiProject that limits its membership to off-wiki criteria is a disaster in the making. It's shockingly irresponsible for WMF to flip the switch on something like this without ensuring that it conforms to the foundation's policies and goals. DPRoberts534 (talk) 23:35, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

And we already have that, so this initiative is not only redundant, it's detrimental. Regards. Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 16:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

The Non discrimination policy does not prohibit grants that focus on addressing the gender gap on Wikipedia. The policy focuses on employment issues like "employee relations, including employment, salary administration, employee development, promotion, and transfer" and prevents the WMF from discriminating against staff and volunteers based on legally protected characteristics. It is not intended to regulate the issuance of grants, particularly as the WMF was not issuing grants back when this policy was adopted. And even if this policy would have been intended for that purpose (which it was not), grants that address the gender gap are given out to applicants under established criteria irrespective of their gender and other legally protected characteristics and so is not the result of discrimination. MBrar (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Patrolling the ideas?

Is there any editorial oversight on these grant proposals? One of them is to "encourage male contributors to have gender reassignment surgery." Eliz81 (talk) 19:44, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Eliz81, thanks for the note about that one. The team is watching for these, but any help from editors is great. Only administrators can actually delete the pages, but any editor can place a "speedy deletion" notice on the page. The markup is {{Delete|reason}}, replacing "reason" with one of the rationales, for instance, "obvious nonsense" or "vandalism". PEarley (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Addressing the wrong issue

20% of contributors being women should show us how inaccessible Wikimedia is to non-technical users. There are so few women editors because the majority of editors are geeks and the majority of geeks are men. Quite simple really. I am well aware that there are many women IT specialists but their numbers are small in comparison with men. If Wikimedia wants to attract more women (or indeed more of any type of person) then it must make it easier to edit. It is still far to much of a pain in the arse to do anything except minor edits unless you can get the toolbar to do what you want it to do or copy and paste useful code from existing pages. The conflict-type discussions on Wikipedia are also a bar to many contributors who don't want to get involved in endless discussions which are 'won' by those with the most experience or those who can spout of policy acronyms. This is more of an issue with en.wikipedia but as a contributor to en.wikibooks it would seem that we have trouble attracting female editors also. I know my comments in no way address the issue being discussed here but I just feel Wikimedia is looking for the wrong solutions.--Xania (talk) 22:51, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Geeky women might well prefer to remain invisible. (See for instance "Geek women don't exist" at GeekFeminism Wiki.) --Pitke (talk) 00:17, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I wholly disagree. It's like lowering the standards in the military only for women. A service should uphold its standards, otherwise, what's the point of the service? Either you can serve, or you can't. Also, I don't think it's right to assume that women need things dumbed down for them. They're plenty capable of editing Wikipedia, it's just that they choose not to. This can be displayed through the 20% of editors that are women that do edit Wikipedia. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jacedc (talk) 01:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Even if we assume the premise is correct - that Wikimedia projects are only accessible to geeks, and most geeks are men - it does not follow that making Wikimedia projects less geeky would automatically eliminate the gender imbalance (or imbalance by any other designated group identifier). Only a tiny minority of men are geeky enough to edit on Wikimedia projects, so perhaps dumbing down the interface would just bring in even more men - the less geeky men. Maybe men in general are just more prone than women to work for free. If that is true, then eliminating the gender imbalance would require not only making Wikimedia projects somehow more welcoming to women, but also less welcoming to men. --Teratornis (talk) 04:10, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Sure, it doesn't automatically follow, but unless you have an accurate distribution of "geekiness" among the sexes, you don't know that making projects "less geeky" would add more men than women. Regardless, if the effort is to get more women editors, and more good editors is something we want anyway, opening up and embracing less technical users would be a win-win. If indeed dumbing down the interface does bring even more men - so that there would be more new men than new women, it is still possible this helps the "20%" mark, so long as men don't account for over 80% of new users. Excluding men is not (**shouldn't be**) a goal. To your suggestion that it is possible that men are more prone to work for free, it certainly doesn't seem to hold up with Facebook, Twitter, etc. Say what you will about social media; it is still users providing free content. Bervin61 (talk) 21:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

My impression is that some if not many women prefer to invest their time in other worthwhile tasks. Improving Wikipedia is lower on their priority list than, say, working to fix imbalance in other areas of life. One reason for this may be that Wikipedia as a whole is perceived as being balanced enough, or at least better balanced than other areas of life. Do we have any data on gender bias in Wikipedia content, and on the perception of bias? --Rainer (talk) 09:13, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Glad this is happening

Thanks for putting this together. I'm glad it's happening. Sumana Harihareswara 04:45, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Sumanah!!! Great to see you here, and I totally agree. Jane023 (talk) 14:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm curious to know why you are glad. Do you believe:

1. The project can actually eliminate gender imbalance on the Wikimedia projects? (can we say snowball?)
2. That there are some constructive edits that only women can make, and not men? (I'd like to see the list of such edits - I suspect it is very short.)
3. That women themselves will benefit from donating their labor to us? (There may be something to this one.)

I'm highly skeptical that this initiative could put a detectable dent in the gender imbalance. People have been trying to address the gender imbalance across the range of STEM fields for decades. That's no reason not to try, but clearly this is a much bigger problem than a Wikimedia problem, and I'm not aware of any STEM field that has figured out how to solve it. It might require some breakthrough in the behavioral sciences. --Teratornis (talk) 05:54, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

There are several areas within STEM that have successfully increased the numbers of women -- in many cases dramatically! For example, just to name two: in the late 1990s to early 2000s, research at CMU by Margolis and Smith raised the number of women studying computer science to around 50%; their work is documented in the book "Unlocking the Clubhouse". More recently, the Python foundation's work has doubled the numbers of women participating in PyCon (a major international Python conference), through following best practices being developed by a number of groups and people in the open source community. Just because you're not aware of successful results at increasing gender diversity doesn't mean they don't exist. There's actually plenty of evidence that there are mechanisms which can effectively increase women's participation in technical fields and communities. The question is, is the Wikipedia community willing to take those steps, or is it going to obstruct them? --Skud (WMF) (talk) 07:36, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't a university, Wikipedia isn't a clubhouse, Wikipedia isn't the Python community. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, its editors choose to edit Wikipedia. The fact that only 20% of editors are women is a reflection on women's choices not to edit Wikipedia, it's not a reflection on Wikipedia itself. You cannot forcefully close the gender gap, either women choose to edit Wikipedia or they don't. Maybe we could point out that whatever percentage of editors are liberals or conservatives, then cater to them based off of the disparity. We could even go so far as to point out that whatever percentage of editors are under the age of 18, or over the age of 50, then cater to them based off of the disparity. Point is, "closing the gender gap" is pointless. If content is neutral like it's supposed to be, there should be no problem with gender disparity, however big that disparity is. Wikimedia should concern itself with giving everyone equal opportunity, not equal result, and as far as I can tell, both females and males are plenty equal in terms of the opportunity to partake Wikimedia projects. There's no bias against women in the Wikipedia editing system that would potentially deter them from editing. The buttons and various guidelines read all the same to both females and males. Jacedc (talk) 16:34, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

"There's no bias against women in the Wikipedia editing system that would potentially deter them from editing." This is just patently false.

"The fact that only 20% of editors are women is a reflection on women's choices not to edit Wikipedia, it's not a reflection on Wikipedia itself." Absurd. If it's not a reflection on Wikipedia itself, then why do women choose not to edit? Are women less capable encyclopedia editors? Seems unlikely. Are they less interested in contributing their knowledge? Maybe, but I don't see any reason to assume that conclusion. Isn't it possible that it's specifically Wikipedia's collaborative processes and environment to which many women object? LtPowers (talk) 16:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

No. Women have the choice to edit. They have the choice not to edit. Males have the choice to edit. They have the choice not to edit. If only 20% of editors are female, it's because the rest of the female population chooses not to edit. Why they choose not to edit is up to them; we shouldn't concern ourselves with the background of our contributors, only the contributions of our contributors. It's simple. And claiming that my statement is "just patently false" is just patently false if you don't explain why you believe it's false. The buttons and policies read all the same to both females and males. What do you suggest, lowering the standards of Wikipedia to cater to minorities? Jacedc (talk) 17:14, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It's not because of policies. Its about the environment. Wikipedia has a "boy's club" environment with "sailor language" profanities being part of normal discourse. Most women would find both these issues undignified, and off-putting -- more than most men would.OrangesRyellow (talk) 19:01, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

How dare you assume that men don't object to "sailor" language. There are plenty of men who object to bad language on Wikipedia, too. It's ridiculous to assume that one gender is more likely than the other to find profanities undignified. It's a nasty, sexist assumption, and I feel strongly that you should withdraw your remark. RomanSpa (talk) 17:48, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

You might want to consider the pressure you are putting on women to conform to your stereotypes. DPRoberts534 (talk) 19:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

No one's pressuring women to conform to stereotypes; the pressure is on women who don't conform to the dominant male editing environment. LtPowers (talk) 23:42, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Your assertion that Wikipedia is a "boy's club" with "sailor language" comes out of nowhere and is baseless. Also I could have sworn I replied to the previous comment but I don't see it here anymore. Jacedc (talk) 04:00, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

It's a fallacy (and rather insulting) to assume that trying to increase our editor diversity requires lowering our standards. On the contrary, I think we should raise our standards -- our standards for collaboration and discourse. LtPowers (talk) 23:42, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Most people have suggested that Wikipedia is too hard to use and that's the reason for the gender disparity. In fact, that's the one of the main topics of conversation. Our standards for collaboration and discourse are working just fine right now, aren't they? Jacedc (talk) 04:00, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

No. "Too hard to use" is a different issue / factor, and whether correct of not, it has no bearing on whether we should focus on standards of collaboration and discourse. That there may be more than one factor does not mean we need to sit back until we can all achieve a global agreement on what percentage of importance should be assigned to which factor, and until we can all agree on those percentage points to the tenth decimal place. Our standards of collaboration and discourse are not fine, by any means. We cannot be expected to collaborate with a discourse which is full of sexualized, undignified expressions like "WTF", "fuck", "dick", "ass", "piss", "cunt" etc. or worse. People seem to think this is normal / dignified / appealing, and even some admins are using such language with impunity, and shamelessly condoning, apologizing and protecting others who do the same, and seem to be using it to establish some kind of pecking order on the site so that disputes will be settled in accordance with this pecking order, rather than what is an improvement. Lots of folks on Wikipedia are trying to protect this sexualized discourse with various forms of whataboutery ( honestly, I am not talking about you ). This does not make for a dignified, welcoming environment for women in particular. To my way of thinking, resorting to whataboutery is a clear attempt to scuttle / fudge the issue, and protect and perpetuate the undignified "boy's club", "sailor language" environment. As I said, there may be other factors, but it does not mean we should neglect this. Best.OrangesRyellow (talk) 06:15, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I have never heard those words or any type of "sailor discourse" in the history of my being at Wikipedia except from trolls/vandals, which are rare and blocked when they pop up. That language is never used in a civil discussion (like this one). Unless you're referring to WP:DBAD, but that's a phrase widely used in nearly every area of collaboration; it's not nearly Wikipedia-exclusive. For you to assert that Wikimedia is scourged with poor/derogatory language at every corner is just wrong, and you know it. Jacedc (talk) 20:58, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Hah, and in fact, they changed it from "don't be a dick" to "don't be a jerk". Don't know when that happened. Jacedc (talk) 21:00, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Really? Then where do you edit? Because we have several invested editors on enwiki who constantly and flagrantly drop the c-word and others. Many, in fact. I'd counter your argument, though; if you've genuinely never seen this I'd question with how much useful knowledge you can comment on ideas to help with the problem. A lot of the more 'meta' areas of Wikipedia are "scourged with poor/derogatory language". Ironholds (talk) 22:11, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Really? Show me. Jacedc (talk) 01:30, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

(Trigger: offensive language, slurs, threats, transphobia):

this, this, this, this, this, and a couple I would've called out except they were so egregiously offensive that they got deleted so only administrators can see them. These are all, you will note, from long-term, established users - unblocked, long-term, established users. So where have you been interacting with users that you've seen none of this? The answer appears to be pretty much nowhere in terms of actual forums and discussion venues, prior to this page. Ironholds (talk) 06:20, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

One of the presenters on this Gender Gap Webcast from West Virginia University suggests something on the order of, "Women should try editing Wikipedia. There's harassment out there everywhere in life, including Wikipedia, so you want to try editing so you learn to deal with harassment earlier rather than later in life." Sure doesn't sound like a way to attract volunteers of any gender, so why is she saying this? Perhaps someone can go find the exact quote and transcribe it for us. --Djembayz (talk) 19:39, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

There is one thing in favor of that statement. It's honest. Better that way than to flaunt policies like WP:BITE, WP:Equality, which we know will be observed exclusively in the breach, and we know any attempt to invoke them will be scuttled with whataboutery etc., and frequently boomerang. I think there is something dishonest about policies like that because they seem to hold out a false promise, so, promising harassment seems more honest.OrangesRyellow (talk) 10:16, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

My idea isn't appearing on the page

I've loaded an idea Grants:IdeaLab/Wellington Wikipedia Meet Up - With Childcare! but it hasn't populated on the page. Could someone help please? Auchmill (talk) 04:09, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

• The bot updates the page from time to time, just wait. As for me i added it manually here: Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire/All, but i would not recommend it to anyone.--Abiyoyo (talk) 04:42, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

That's right, Auchmill - a bot makes those ideas appear on the page, so it isn't instant. But once it runs again today, your idea will show up as well. Thanks for creating your idea! Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks Siko (WMF) !! 09:22, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

User:Null

Many Inspire campaign pages link to the page of User:Null, as this seems to be a default user (see Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Null). However, User:Null is an existing user who is probably unaware of being "author" of already 20 proposals. Probably it is worth replacing User:Null with User:Example who is not a real user — NickK (talk) 18:31, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Good catch, thanks! Pinging Jonathan to coordinate a fix. Siko (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, NickK. I think I know the reason for this. We'll get on it. Cheers, Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Jeph has updated the gadget code, and I have manually de-nullified all of the errant fields. Thanks again for raising this issue. Looks like it's been going on for a while. Cheers, Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

us editors are oddballs in any case...

I asked a few women friends why they thought there would be fewer female than male editors. Notably, these are all non-wikipedians. A common theme in the answers was that most of them can't understand why anyone would edit wikipedia. This makes sense, I read a rule of thumb somewhere that only 10% of people would edit in the first place, and only 1% would write a whole article. So, in a way, any of us who contribute to wikipedia are statistical outliers, let's say we are a oddballs. I wonder if that is a useful perspective from which to look at this. If there are factors that make editorship rare, Do any of those more strongly filter out women? Tenbergen (talk) 20:43, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

the next 5%

The vast majority of people will not edit wikipedia, period. I attended a seminar about increasing active transportation a few years ago, which is subject to low new adoption as well. They made the case of trying to identify the 5% of the population who would be most likely to try active transportation in the next year, and focusing on those. Those 5% may well may well require different changes than the rest, and some changes that would affect this population would be a complete loss to the rest. What marks the 5% of female non-editors who are most likely to become editors? What is stopping them? Tenbergen (talk) 20:43, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Spammed by sexist banner

I can live with the fundraiser banners, but now we get patronising sexism? Something has gone terribly wrong at some point. Can the suits in charge of Wikimedia please see to it that Wikipedians aren't exposed to their politics? We Wikipedians have this saying, don't use Wikipedia's voice when stating opinions. Well, maybe you shouldn't use Wikimedia's voice for random ideological propaganda either?

So the "disparity is reflected in content"? I take this to mean that you assume that women editors would primarily focus on writing about relationships, puppies, babies and fashion, yes?

While in reality, our best editors, male and female, produce encyclopedic content from which you would be completely unable to tell their gender, and that's exactly as it should be.

Or perhaps our "disparity in content" is expressed in the complete over-the-top obsession with categorizing the female gender but not the male one? w:Category:Women in business by nationality (but no w:Category:Men in business by nationality), w:Category:Women in war (no w:Category:Men in war), etc. etc., and gender ideology articles to the point of w:Womyn-born womyn. Yeah, that sounds like a legitimate theory.

I complain about two things, alright?

• The unsubstantianted claim that Wikipedia is somehow not completely overwhelmed by gender ideology (alleged "disparity in content" which you apparently seek to resolve by introducing some kind of politically correct scheme), and
• the implied sexist slur on our female contributors in the assumption that more women editors would somehow reduce this supposed "disparity" (because, clearly, female Wikipedians aren't going to write about physics, amirite?)

Look, if this is your political ideology, you are welcome to it, I don't want to change anyone's view. But the least you can do is keep it out of my face, and if you must shove it in my face, do it in person and not in the name of Wikimedia, an organisation which depends on my good-will as a donor and a contributor. --Dbachmann (talk) 07:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

+ 1 Nasiruddin (talk) 10:08, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Dbachmann: I don't think "women editors would primarily focus on writing about...fashion". I think editors are editors; they are interested in writing a wide arrange of articles. The (known-to-be) female editors I work with most closely like, respectively, medicine, JavaScript libraries and 12th century English historical figures. The point is not what is covered (although there is certainly misrepresentation and underrepresentation there - every time I see an article about a notable female figure which describes her as the wife of X before describing her as the [Dean/Professor/Author] of Y makes me want to drink) but how it is covered. Different people from different groups have different perspectives, and if our goal is neutrality in what our content says as well as what subjects our content covers, we need a wide range of voices to go into the making of an article.

To use a silly example; we're also underrepresented (heavily) in Africa (I know. I just made the maps). Would we say that, by definition, an editor from Africa would be interested in writing about African history and culture? No! That'd be a horrible generalisation. But would we claim that an article about a topic in African history or culture was complete and neutral and represented a worldwide view of the topic if it had been exclusively written by...well, people like me? Middle-class white dudes from Europe and North America, who'd never directly experienced the cultural nuances and historical context? I'd hope not. Ironholds (talk) 15:44, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad you made some maps showing where we are underrepresented. I have been saying for quite a while that we are weak in content from places like Africa, Asia and India but its a lot more obvious when you have some supporting data. Are those maps available somewhere? I do agree with the above though that if you all are going to spam these banners all over the projects and draw people here, you out to expect them to treat the voting and comments here as they would the sites you are drawing them from. Not trick them into thinking that everyone has supported the project by hiding the opposes and comments you don't like or agree with on the talk pages. Reguyla (talk) 15:58, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually they're maps of contributor location (there is also some fascinating work on content location. And contributor location. And reference location, and the intersection of all three! this preprint has a lot of the most recent stuff). Ironholds (talk) 16:02, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

For the most part I have left this discussion and thanks for the link. I will read that with great interest. For what its worth though, you all should be ashamed of yourselves the way you are attacking and pressuring everyone who opposes. All you are doing is helping to prove that there is a negative atmosphere here. If you cannot get along with people who do not share your views you have a long road ahead to make this work. Reguyla (talk) 16:35, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it's the disagreement anyone is taking issue with so much as it is those occasions where the disagreement comes from a place of "this is feminist crap" or...well, see the examples discussed above. Ironholds (talk) 16:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

But those aren't the ones you are targeting, any oppose or comment seems to draw criticism from the supporters that we must be a bunch of sexist males and frankly I take offense to that. Reguyla (talk) 17:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

If you've found my replies to good-faith comments here to be problematic, I'd love diffs; I'd like to improve how I interact in adversarial environments. I'm confused by who "you all" is - people who like the idea? Staffers? If the latter, this isn't commentary I'm leaving as part of my job, to be totally clear. Ironholds (talk) 18:31, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ironholds:: You wrote, "But would we claim that an article about a topic in African history or culture was complete and neutral and represented a worldwide view of the topic if it had been exclusively written by...well, people like me?" But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a blog. Even if women had some secret mystical knowledge to share (that those of us who are currently editing Wikipedia are somehow keeping to ourselves?), guess what--they'd still need to cite sources to corroborate that knowledge. Furthermore, men still outnumber women in journalism and publishing today, so even if Wikimedia somehow manages to reach numerical parity, sources will still be more likely to be written by men than women. That is, unless Wikimedia decides to institute a gender quota in how many authors can be cited by gender? Are you starting to see how ridiculous this sounds?

Moreover, this campaign is talking about giving out grants to get more women to contribute to Wikimedia. What does that say about how much Wikimedia values its current contributors and donors that it would use their contributions to attract an exclusive demographic? Are women who currently edit Wikipedia worth less than potential future female editors? Are men not welcome? Parity could also be achieved by blocking male users, present or future, from editing. The implications are not only absurd but openly sexist. --Euniana (talk) 17:31, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

It might be worth noting that this proposal, and similar ones, make me, personally, feel less welcome here. If Wikipedia is explicitly valuing contributions from people with Y chromosomes lower than those of people without Y chromosomes, which is what this project clearly does - the best test of what people value is where they will spend their money - this is immensely disheartening to me. Perhaps the easiest solution would be to have two Wikipedias, one with the existing unbiased recruitment policy, and one that explicitly seeks out female editors, and see which one is better five years down the line. If females want to be editors, it's already easy to edit. I'm fed up with being less favoured just because I have a Y chromosome. RomanSpa (talk) 15:01, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

So, in order; yes, reliable sources are required, and that's a largely objective thing - but the way you balance contradicting reliable sources? What constitutes "reliable" in the context of say, academia? The language used in content, the terminology? These are all contextual and cultural and subjective questions and so the dynamics of the people writing the content certainly matters. I don't think the grants programme says anything about how valued contributors are - I'm a long-term editor and I don't feel devalued in the slightest. I don't think women who currently edit WIkipedia are worth less than future editors, and I don't think the grants programme says anything about that, too. I think what the grants programme says is that the "wait and hope" approach to improving diversity simply is not working, and regardless of whether you think the implementation is right, I'd hope you'd agree that simply waiting and seeing hasn't led to any substantial change.

No, we're not blocking male editors, and yes, men are welcome, and I'm not sure where you're getting either of those hypotheticals from. It's not a one-in, one-out system. It's an as-many-qualified-smart-people-as-possible-in system. Ironholds (talk) 18:31, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I do respect your viewpoint, as I'm agains any quotas too... All kind of "pushing" is against nature and if work of womans on Wikipedia will be pushed and thus more respected, this will lead to relatively disrespect of work of the second part (this time again the mans). This banner is dehonestation of all mans and therefore it should be canceled! --DeeMusil (talk) 16:41, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree with most comments above, and would like to add that All kind of "pushing" is against NPOV, the most important rule on Wikimedia. Dan Koehl (talk) 18:37, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

NPOV governs content, not the culture within which it's created. To misquote Kat Walsh, "our open knowledge should be neutral; the existence of open knowledge is inherently not". Ironholds (talk) 18:39, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

The point of view of the culture within which is created is wholly irrelevant if the outputted content does have a neutral point of view, which is insured through the NPOV policy (I understand that only applies to Wikipedia, but that is the subject that's on the table). Jacedc (talk) 21:29, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but as I've argued about to Euniana (I await your rebuttal) the culture within which it is created does have an impact on the neutrality of the content unless you believe pure objectivity (or anything close to it) is possible without a diverse range of views, backgrounds and perspectives. Many of the determinations for what to include are very much subjective, even if the goal of that subjectivity is objectivity. Ironholds (talk) 22:16, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I'll agree that objectivity is indeed, and very very ironically, subjective. But here's the thing: The culture in which content is curated can be biased all it wants, as long as the resulting output follows the NPOV policy. If the content does follow the policy, it can stay, if it doesn't, any editor can remove it, citing NPOV infractions. Jacedc (talk) 01:45, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Except the decision as to whether the NPOV policy has/has not been followed is entirely down to the determination of that culture. Sure, any editor can remove it - if there's an editor to remove it. And it'll be back in in a heartbeat unless they can convince the majority of users who care about the subject area that they're right. In which case, the background those users have absolutely does matter. Ironholds (talk) 02:06, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Well said, Dbachmann. If there are issues that are preventing women who would normally contribute to articles, this page/campaign doesn't seem to be the solution. It's more likely to be part of the problem. If this was just an ineffective campaign, then it wouldn't bother me and I would move on, but I actually want women to feel welcome, not insulted, when they contribute. -- Ned Scott (talk) 07:01, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ned Scott: +1! :) Jacedc (talk) 02:08, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I like this discussion. (Myself mostly writing in an African language without grammatical gender, but still female editors probably far below 20%). Was the symbol with its beautiful pink

specially designed for this "inspire" campaign? Kipala (talk) 21:50, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

"Step 2 (of 2). Additional information" cannot be sent

"Step 2 (of 2). Additional information" apparently cannot be sent. When I click the "create my idea" button, its colour changes for a sec, but there is no change on the page, the Step 2 (of 2) window remains as before. In my user contributions list, no update is to be seen, so it has not got through. What to do? Thanks, --08:39, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

done, no problem from a Linux machine. Proposal went through all right. --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 09:06, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

up for adoption by others

hi, how can I signal that an idea I uploaded is up for adoption by others who might want to turn it into a grant proposal instead of me? --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 09:23, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Why I quit

A few years ago, I was becoming more and more active in Wikipedia, put in a lot of effort learning rules and editing, on French and English Wikipedia, but eventually quit due to bullying (worse on the French one). Guys interpreting rules in their favour, and having it seemed infinite time to spend on this. I suspect us females, being more marginalised by income inequity find it harder to spend time among these males who live and rule the site. I've looked at the projects... lots of nice words... but it won't make a difference if the actual male editors simply essentially disrespect the females. I am not hopeful for this campaign.--Tallard (talk) 10:54, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your description of the problem. What would be your solution? Ping me, if you like: together we might come up with something funny, clever, intriguing, and worth its while :-) --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 11:01, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

New comment moved from Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire/Create

(See this diff for the original comment.) Hola soy mujer guatemalteca, tengo una discapacidad razón por la cual soy doblemente discriminada, pero eso no me detiene para ser mas participativa, por esa razón creo que es importante que se realice actividades como esta para que las mujeres podamos exteriorizar nuestro sentir en cuando a a que ya no podemos seguir siendo escondidas y que por lo mismo tampoco debemos quedarnos calladas ante tantas injusticias que se comenten en contra de nosotras mismas, este es un medio de comunicación muy importante que muchas mujeres leen al igual que los hombres deben estar informados y actualizados en cuanto que nacieron de una mujer por lo que los exsorto a que no se hagan los ignorantes cuando del tema se dice algo o se hace algo, creo que para que las mujeres ya no sigan ciendo invisibilizadas deben estar en todos los ambitos sociales habidos y por haber, en todos los proyectos que se realizan en favor de la humanidad alli debemos estar pero no solo ocupando un puesto para recibir una remuneracion sino para tambien tener voz y voto en todo lo que al tema se refiere, votar cion nuestra presencia todos los paradigmas que se tienen de las mujeres, y nunca ver lo que ocurre con las mujeres en otros paises, sino primero ver por nuestro entorno social y cultural. soy una persona, soy inteligente, soy capaz, soy mujer. --181.114.15.94 19:06, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Rough translation (please improve): Hi I am a Guatemalan woman, I have a disability because of which I am doubly discriminated against, but that doesn't keep me from participating, for that reason I think it is important to undertake activities like this so that women can externalize our feelings that [?] we cannot keep being hidden and we should not stay silent either in the face of so many injustices that are committed against us women, this is a very important means of communication that many women read just as men do [men] should be informed and modernized given that they were birthed by women ...[?]... so that they do not look ignorant when they say something or do something on this topic, I think so that women no longer feel that they are made invisible they should be in all social fields that exist or might exist, in all projects undertaken on behalf of humanity we should be there but not only occupying a position to receive remuneration but to also to have a voice and a vote in everything that relates to this topic, to vote with our presence all the paradigms that people have about women, and never to watch what happens to women in other countries, but first see our own social and cultural surroundings. I am a person, I am smart, I am capable, I am a woman. [Translated by Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:50, 13 March 2015 (UTC)]

a Teahouse Pad :-)

I would like to meet other women on a page so I can chat with them about any ideas we might have. At the moment I have no clue if I have hurt and/or discouraged any other woman by having uploaded an idea first. If we have an Inspire teahouse pad for women to share ideas before they are uploaded, I would feel less competitive and more encouraging. Inspire Teahouse for Women Inspire Teahouse for all other genders including women -- with thanks to en:Open Knowledge Foundation --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 08:36, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for this project

There's a mass of negativity above (with some exceptions) so, to break the pattern: thank you for this project. It's a good and necessary project to have. The constant stream of "I don't understand why this is happening, equality of outcome just magically happens" comments are a great argument for why it is necessary. Ironholds (talk) 18:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Hoorah! Couldn't have put it better. The whole point about intrinsic, insidious, endemic barriers (glass ceiling anyone?) is that they're invisible to those who pass right through them. As a white, anglophone, male I have to make constant efforts to address systemic biases in my own views that come about through naivety or over-optimism about my privilege. Reading this, I was shocked that there are so many Wikipedians that share my 'demographic majority status' but can't see the need for efforts to address the clumsy bluntness of empty egalitarian rhetoric. PatHadley (talk) 18:40, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Although I do not share Ironholds negatively towards the comments, I do support his statements that a lot of good can come out of this project. I see several projects to study the data regarding gender data and a couple focused on improving content for women's issues. I do not deny that the project needs more female editors, but I think it needs more editors in general of all types. Reguyla (talk) 18:45, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

As a white, male, geek, who fits the regular demographic of the community: I have to +1 and say I absolutely love the idea of this project. It took me many, many years of schooling to recognize privilege both in my access to knowledge and the skills that allow me to be a contributor to it. As a teacher in a public university, I see the results of unintended, social and environmental biases against underprivilaged demographics (both women and other minorities), that then drag down the quality and variety of perspectives that men and white-folk with homogeneous life experiences encounter (despite claims of diversity), harming their ability to learn about and help support many, many opportunities for community success. The claim above that feminism is somehow a problematic, biased, non-neutral ideology is rather facetious: feminism is an ideology that provides opportunities for everyone to come to the table and start more evenly weighted, neutral conversations, that just happens to focus on a demographic thats alot easier to capture because they participate in 50% of the population, rather than other much smaller, but just as valuable, underprivelaged communities. Keep up the great work! We need this, and the comments throughout this page reinforce the need for this conversation! Sadads (talk) 20:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Are you not seeing the irony in dictating how things should be for women from the perspective of a privileged white man? Why doesn't Wikimedia ask the women who are active on Wikipedia what they think, instead of presuming to speak on our behalf? Women have agency; we're not mere vehicles for anyone to advertise political agendas. --Euniana (talk) 01:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Euniana: Thats a rough comment, with not a lot of explanation, but I will try to respond: I want to be anything but a dictator, but instead an ally feminist. Rereading my comment, I don't understand how I am dictating how women's perspectives look, instead I talk about how the communities and identities I affiliate with are effected by diversity (something that I can know through observation and experience), especially in exposure to structurally underprivileged demographics in healthy academic spaces (which I sincerely believe Wikipedia could become); please advise me of how that comment is problematic, (or clarify if you intended to talk about someone else). Thank you, Sadads (talk) 02:24, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Sadads: here's how: Because you are operating under the presumption that white males have some systematic privilege, thereby trying to articulate exactly how other minority groups should feel, respond, act, and be represented according to such systematic bias. "It took years of schooling to recognize my privilege" can just as well be translated to "it took years of shame to recognize my privilege." I know plenty of black males, Asian women, etc., all very well educated, who find the concept of white privilege not only absurd, but offensive. It is because of white male progressives that minorities are being treated as a vehicle for which actions that force them to conform to and perpetuate certain stereotypes because of their identification are being justified by "there, there, poor fella, we're gonna take care of this for you." Meanwhile, nothing is being done to address the segregation; in fact, it is further counter-productive. And instead of discounting the "comments up there" as just negative and hateful, why don't you read through them and examine them then respond with calculated rebuttals? That's the only way we can come to a conclusion is through the process of debating. Jacedc (talk) 04:41, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I find it confusing that you'd mention above how anecdotal evidence is insufficient to convince you of something, and yet argue that privilege doesn't exist(?!) because you have non-white friends who agree with you. That seems somewhat dissonant. Without delving into the "does privilege exist?" discussion, I would note that the Inspire campaign is largely led by (volunteer and paid) women - describing it as a vector to minimise their input and "[treat them] as a vehicle" is to offensively minimise their contributions here. Ironholds (talk) 15:36, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Anecdotal evidence is not enough to play the white privilege card wherever you want. The concept of white privilege only applies to certain areas of sociological studies, and even then, most of the time it's outdated. White privilege is an age-old testament that is still being clinged on to by white progressives as a vehicle with which they push any sociological idea they feel important to them, as is being applied here. How in the world does underrepresentation of women on a volunteer-run public service at all relate to white privilege? It doesn't. Instead of debating the concept of white privilege, we should address the issue of underrepresentation of all groups on Wikimedia, which applies to age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, culture, etc., etc. But even then I think everyone should consider concealing their identity. Jacedc (talk) 21:26, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

"Anyone can contribute! As long as you don't mention who you are. Then you'll run into trouble". Privilege is wider than race - and, again, anecdotal evidence is either sufficient or insufficient, pick one - and the expectation that "this is an environment I am comfortable with, therefore everyone should conform to it, I as [statistically, a white male] don't have any problems here so what's the issue" - which is a lot of the reactions I'm seeing here - is very much a privilege issue. And FWIW, privilege (which was first described just down the road from me!) is indeed mostly used within sociological studies. Particularly areas of social inequality. So are you arguing that Wikimedia's projects are not a social context, or...? Ironholds (talk) 22:14, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Concealing your identity goes further than "running into trouble." I say people should conceal their identity because your identity does not matter. Or rather, it should not matter, but to the politically correct white privilege advocates, identity and classification is everything. If you can't be identified, you can't be classified, therefore there's no scale to gauge inequality! But wait, what if, on Wikipedia, quality/inequality doesn't matter? What if everyone is, by default, equal? That would be a pretty damn nice editing environment, wouldn't it? And I'm not saying everyone should conform, indeed I'm a very self-described nonconformist, but what I am saying is whining about this issue in particular will only introduce more division, discrimination, and exceptionalism and it is a bad thing and runs directly contrary to the fundamental nature of Wikimedia which has allowed its project grow to the size that it is today. Jacedc (talk) 01:41, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

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If background doesn't matter on Wikipedia then, congratulations! You have found the only space in the world occupied by humans where identity doesn't matter. Do you imagine some universe in which Wikipedia's culture and policies sprung, fully formed, from Jimbo's forehead, like Athena out of Zeus? Because I've been here for a big chunk of the project's history and I can tell you that the tolerance and acceptance a space displays, particularly a space built around consensus of the whole, is (absent concerns from the WMF's lawyers) entirely down to the people who occupy that space. And people don't come to that space free of cognitive biases, and they don't form those rules free of cognitive biases. The internet is not some detached area where people show up utterly without a framing (in the social sciences sense of the term). If you think it is, well...I really don't know what to say.

As an example; if the editors who show up are aggressive? The culture will be tolerant of aggression. The editors are adversarial? The culture will be tolerant of adversarial formats. And sure, if the editors who showed up first were easily cowed we'd have an entirely different set of problems, but !aggressive culture is not actively resistant to change. Aggressive culture is, because the language is one of shouting the loudest, and it's hard to win that fight without buying into the framing of it.

What discrimination will it introduce, exactly? Please provide examples. And how is this contrary to the fundamental nature of Wikipedia? Because I've been here since 2006, which is a darn sight longer than you and leaves me a bit better qualified to talk about "fundamentals" of a space, and I can tell you that Wikipedia's culture is not, and never has been, in support of the idea that people don't matter. And what you're arguing for, when you say that everyone is by default equal and identities don't matter, is not just an absence of individual exceptionalism, which is fine - it's the treating of human beings with feelings and specialities and foibles and strengths and failings and positives as just a set of interchangeable cogs. I'd take being "politically correct" - and I'm going to assume you're using it in the Stewart Lee sense of the term - over treating people as things, any day of the week. Ironholds (talk) 02:15, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

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Another take on privilege here-- we are all privileged in some way, and this is a good thing, because it is what enables us to be of service to others. Supposedly Mother Teresa said something to Lady Di along these lines: "When you are feeling sorry for yourself, extend your hand to someone who is less fortunate than you." Everyone reading this is by definition a person of privilege, especially when you consider the lives of our ancestors. We are alive in a time of modern medical care, and healthy and prosperous enough to be typing here on our computers. Remembering that "From those to whom much is given, much is required," let us extend our hand to those who might want to join us in editing this encyclopedia, but who haven't yet, for whatever reason. This month it's women; another time it will be someone else. If somebody who is having a hard time trots out the currently fashionable line "Check your privilege," let's take it for what it's worth-- they think they're having a hard time, and they're upset because they don't think we have the same problems. This is when that old saying, "May I understand, not seeking to be understood" is useful. Maybe we can be of assistance, maybe we can't, but we can at least acknowledge the situation, "Sounds like you are having a hard time. I don't know if I can do anything about it, but if there there anything specific you'd like me to do about this, what is it?" --Djembayz (talk) 00:19, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Good way of putting in Djembayz, but unfortunately I think most of society has long since abandoned the possibility of thinking that way. They're too caught up in feeling sorry for themselves. Jacedc (talk) 18:32, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Err. I'm glad you agree with the bit where they said "privilege is real and when someone suggests we don't understand their issues, let's take that for what it's worth, seek to understand it, and listen", particularly given your prior statements. Ironholds (talk) 21:23, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't see that quote anywhere. And I'm not saying privilege isn't real, but I am saying the mainstream concept of white privilege is simply a mechanism by which people manipulate and push agendas on the basis of "socioeconomic studies prove that ..." when in reality privilege is indeed a very different social mechanism that forms naturally and by necessity, in some ways for some groups of people and in other ways for other groups of people, be they majority or minority. Jacedc (talk) 16:13, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes privilege is something that exists in society, but that doesn't mean that the privilege should create systemic structural inequalities which prevent others from accessing those spaces typically inhabited by those with "privilege" especially, if the potential members have the a) interest and b) ability. The problem is: we have many women and other minorities, who, if were welcomed, would be interested in helping improve the sum of human knowledge, and if given the tools (skills) to engage in that space, would have the ability to do so. A combination of socio-economic and educational privilege ensured that the skills barrier (cultural capital in the form of internet know-how) allowed a certain minority community (white-western-males in the case of Wikipedia) to exercise significant control over the ability to enter and participate in our community (social capital) early in the game, and have perpetuated that control of the environment systematically, both intentionally in some cases but frequently unintentionally through structural issues, that prevents the success of our mission: to create the "Sum of all human knowledge". These structural issues within our community exacerbate the structural issues found through the rest of society. Acknowledging privilege, being proud of that privilege, and leveraging it to promote cultural opportunities is not a bad thing, but letting it intentionally or unintentionally keep another interested community from participating in society's greatest benefits is ignorant or irresponsible at best and malicious at worst. When I brought up privilege, I was not meaning to define anyone else's abilities, but rather noting my relationship to a power structure, and the need for our community to both a) recognize and b) compensate for that power structure, especially when it prevents us from succeeding in our mission. The best solutions for our mission come from the greatest number of voices participating, Sadads (talk) 23:20, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

There is no proof for the existence of systematic structural inequalities which prevent others from accessing Wikimedia. That's moot. All users who are interest and have the ability are welcome at Wikimedia, always have, always will. The problem with privilege hard-ons is they are quick to interpret a problem where there is none. What if I told you I'm an Arab woman from Egypt? What if I told you I'm a white male from California? It wouldn't make a difference. Anyone with internet access and the ability to read and write is welcome at Wikimedia. There is no skills barrier preventing minorities from editing Wikimedia, it's literally impossible to check a page's history or diff and be able to tell their ethnicity, religion, nationality, or gender simply from their username. All policies and buttons read the same for everyone. Jacedc (talk) 02:06, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Ah! There we go, your real argument: you don't believe that evidence exists. Its fairly clear you have never gone looking for the evidence, or talked to women or other minority editors who would like to join the community but don't feel confident enough or aware enough of the edit button to do so (you would be surprised how many women and other people outside our typical demographic I have met in outreach (some of the world's most competent scholars included), who don't realize how to leverage an edit button, the code revealed behind the edit button, or even the concept of Being Bold that seems to be so intuitive to our demographic). Or talked to the many amazing women who only edit Wikipedia after being told they should, when they realize that their values aren't being covered, or the women who do participate but feel like they don't have a voice in the community or fully acknowledge by the public, even when they would be the best authority. If you don't call those structural issues when they are a common story, heard over and over and over again throughout the community, you quite simply have failed to look or understand those voices that do communicate these issues, Sadads (talk) 04:43, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

From the Gender Gap FAQ: "A 2011 study of new editors on English Wikipedia found that while genders were fairly balanced among low-volume editors, women were a minority among higher volume editors." Your evidence doesn't point to the lack of basic knowledge as a contributing factor to the gap. It's also rather surreal to see a bunch of guys telling women what they should do on Wikipedia, considering that the whole point of Lightbreather's project is to exclude men from the discussion. DPRoberts534 (talk) 06:27, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

It's funny that's your argument because what about places where men are the better authority on such a topic? It doesn't matter. Personal experience does not matter. What does matter is whether or not a topic proves notability through reliable sources. That's not systematic bias; Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate conglomerate of information. Jacedc (talk) 15:55, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I think this project is not necessary and, in fact, it could be deleterious to Wikipedia. See my full explanation here. Nøkkenbuer (talk) 00:53, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

There is obviously clear evidence that there aren't as many female editors as males. I don't think most of us would disagree with that. What I do not think is as clear is why. I think there are several reasons personally but one factor that I personally see as a critical issue is the toxic environment that's been identified in multiple projects. The English Wikipedia is notoriously nasty to new users and even long term editors are run down. Commons has a lot of issues with editor retention, also for a variety of issues. I agree that more female editors are needed but we need more editors in general and targeting one demographic isn't the right way to go about it. We also need to work on retention or all the recruiting in the world isn't going to fix the problem. As it is now only a very small percentage of the new recruits stay. After a year, its an even smaller percentage and as the old adage goes, eventually everyone gets banned. That needs to stop. So if the WMF is at all serious about retaining these ladies after they join for any length of time then they need to do some projects to work on retention too. There is a reason I do not see a lot of women dumping trash, pumping sewage out of septic tanks and other such jobs. Its nasty, dirty work and few women want to do that type of work. That's how many of the projects are perceived. Its a dirty, nasty environment and the WMF and the communities lack of desire to do anything about it, prevents these people from wanting to stay and contribute. If you fix that problem, then attrition will improve, ladies will stay when they get recruited and so will everyone else. Reguyla (talk) 16:40, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Needed: a list of proposals that have started to work on their plan and budget

By nwow there is a large number of project proposals for Inspire. I would like to see how plan and budget are drawn up for other Inspire projects-to-be so I can learn about how to work this out for my own. <be /> Can we have an overview page similar to this one where Inspire proposals are listed that have started to work on their plan and budget? Thanks. --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 08:08, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi C.Koltzenburg, good question! You can find the ideas that have been expanded to proposal length in Category:IdeaLab/Ideas/Proposal. Cheers, Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 16:00, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

help with endorsement process (improvement in navigation)

Hello, could we have the following improvement in navigation: after I have endorsed a project, I would like be able to go back to the list of projects directly and continue working on more projects that I would like to endorse. --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 11:03, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi C.Koltzenburg. It won't be feasible to implement the feature you request before the end of the Inspire campaign, but I have logged in on Phabricator. Thanks! Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Grouping or sub-categories by topic for IdeaLab project ideas

Hello everyone, Are we planning to make subcategories or in some other way group ideas that are similar? It could be helpful to come up with lists of ideas that are so similar that they could be merged at some point. And also looking to see the range of types of topic. Content generating, mentoring/training, editor outreach, editor retention, tool creation are a few obvious ones. Thoughts? Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 21:17, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I think you covered the big ones, Sydney... I would add community events, but that might fall under / replace training. Alleycat80 (talk) 20:30, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

The list looks good to me! I'd maybe add one other piece, which is "research"; there are some proposals under eking out more information about the gender gap in order to more precisely target [other categories]. Ironholds (talk) 20:46, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Subcategories, yes, let's do that! We can use parameters in the probox to create categories, if you'd like. Would you want them to be grouped in mutually exclusive subcategories? Categories like "editor retention" could have a lot of overlap - a tool proposal could potentially be aimed at editor retention, for example. For IEG proposals, 4 subcategories that have worked pretty well in the past for (mostly) mutually exclusive subcategorizing (give or take a judgement call or 2 )is: research, online community organizing, offline outreach and partnerships, and tools. I find method-focused categories like tools and research are also useful because they make them easy to point folks with particular skill sets towards, for review. Siko (WMF) (talk) 04:30, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Siko (WMF), those subcategories sound good. Additionally, we might want to find a way to link the ideas that are so similar and that they could be merged. I hope to foster collaboration instead of competition. :-) Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 11:07, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Good point, Sydney, collaboration is the key! We could all do this by just dropping notes on the talk page when we see similarity. Or, maybe adding a "See also" section to the bottom of ideas when we notice ones with something in common? Siko (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Pinging Jmo, for help w/ Inspire probox category setup. Sydney, some of these pages will always remain just ideas, some will become grant proposals. Since you think the 4 suggested make sense, shall we simply reuse the existing subcategories we have for grants (they're in the form of Category:Grants/Theme/Tools), even on non-grant ideas? We can still use intersections with the other categories to pull separated lists of just grant proposals or just Inspire ideas, but it would reduce the number of new categories created for this campaign. (Not sure how much that matters, really, though, so I'm not opposed to creating new categories either, if needed). Siko (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

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Thanks for getting the jump on this FloNight. I've created a project page for us to use to coordinate the process of building out our cats. I'd rather add categories manually for now, rather than code them into the infobox template, until we have a "stable" set of thematic categories that we don't think will change much. I will start by categorizing some "Research" ideas (Ironholds' suggestion), since there are plenty of them, we use that category for IEG, and it is unlikely to be controversial. I've added some suggestions to the top of the project page to promote coordination and reduce the possibility of confusion/duplicated work as we work, but they're only suggestions. Feel free to go forth and categorize! Cheers, Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi FloNight! Jmorgan and Siko asked me to join this discussion and let you know that we had a chat today about categories and here's what we came up with: Tools and technology (name expanded from "Tools", which is used in IEG, to cover all tech solutions), Research (retained from IEG), Online community organizing (retained from IEG), Offline outreach and partnerships (retained from IEG), Events and training (new, forked off from "Offline outreach"). I'm going to be putting in some time categorising ideas according to these, and would to work with you on this if you'd like to dive in too. --Skud (WMF) (talk) 22:46, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. Let's catch up with each other tomorrow and chat. Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 04:58, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Rescued this from the archives, as it is still being discussed. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for rescuing the thread. :-) Sydney Poore/FloNight (talk) 17:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Idea for increasing female contributors

Here's a novel idea... get rid of the long-term schoolblocks and anonblocks. Two big segments with that would likely have an interest in Wikipedia are school teachers and librarians, many of which are female. Now I can understand blocking out IPs that spew out tons and tons of vandalism day after day, or are frequently abused by long-term vandals, but I often see IPs belonging to schools and sometimes libraries get blocked for 1 year or more over one or two test edits, preventing all of those female school teachers and librarians from editing without an account. Some argue that they can just make an account at home or request an account. Face it, people are not born with a burning desire to get involved at Wikipedia; people get involved because they see something they can improve, make an edit, and just continue improving things. If they are greeted with "To edit, you must log in" they are not going to go home and make an account or go through a complicated process of requesting an account, they are going to sigh and go away.

Sometimes I think some of our sysops at the English Wikipedia think they are mall cops and have to run all of the teenagers away, while IPs belonging to DSL modems and corporations are busy doing far more discrete and disruptive things to the wiki for a half hour before someone actually bothers to look at AIV. Indeed, punks who vandalize are annoying, and in fact, I just joked about all of the vandalism from young girls on another page, but I think most of these schoolblocks and anonblocks are unnecessary overkill. It's starting to carry over to wireless networks too; I just saw T-Mobile USA anonblocked/rangeblocked on the English Wikipedia not long ago; imagine what it will do to the number of new editors when sysops start blocking these carriers long term like they do schools and libraries? PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 03:21, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I completely agree and have argued that for a long time myself. There is absolutely no point in indefinitely blocking an IP or IP range that has either never edited or did one vandal edit 5 years ago. In many cases, there were lists of good edits and then one vandal made one entry and an admin jumped in and implemented a permanent block. Personally, I think range blocks should be limited to stewards and only done by Rare exception. There is actually a policy (or was at one point) that any large range blocks had to be approved by the WMF. So if you wanted to block say, the entire Navy, which is currently the case by the way, you had to get approval from them first. Countless contributions are being prevented in order to prevent a few vandals many of which are irrelevant now with Abuse filters, Cluebot, the IRC monitors and other tools in place that we didn't used to have. Its time to review these rangeblocks and take a serious look at eliminating most of them. Reguyla (talk) 16:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, I'm glad to finally see someone else who understands the problem here. There's several sysops at the English Wikipedia that admittedly block school IPs for 1 year or more over one edit, even if it's a recent edit, there's no need to block thousands of unregistered students, teachers, and support staff long term over a curious youngster inevitably writing "&hearts" on an article about cheerleading stunts or Barbie dolls. Then they have the audacity to classify such activity as "persistent vandalism" because the IP came off of long term block a few days prior, like they seriously think it's the same person writing "hi" that wrote "WIKIPEDIA SUCKS" three years prior (not referencing a specific case, just general examples that happen daily). The worst part? Some of these admins, whom are doing this without consensus or written policy, ADMIT that they are treating school IPs more harshly because they don't think schools should be editing anonymously when questioned about it. Really that's giving these petty vandals too much credit, and in a way encouraging them to become Grawp/Willy on Wheels, etc, because they think "wow, I just got my whole school blocked, what other damage can I do?" Once upon a time, we had a lot of editors who were high school/middle school students as well as teachers, and we still do, but probably not nearly as many. We need a WMF policy on this, and preferably one that requires a demonstrated good faith effort to contact these institutions and ISPs before issuing a long term block, and that the same process must be followed to reblock an IP long term.

But seriously, if gender imbalance is really an issue we need to address, maybe we should be trying to convert some of these curious young ladies into constructive editors rather than coming at them with pitch forks "I'M GONNA BLOCK YOUUU!!!!" Obviously these young ladies think it is "cool" to have their name or their friends' name on the encyclopedia, maybe if there were a way they could see it's much cooler if they are constructive because their work actually stays on the encyclopedia the gender imbalance would go away. PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 18:45, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what the next step for me to take to get my project off the ground is supposed to be

Advice please? I don't know my way around wikimedia very well and can't seem to find all all the threads related to my incubator idea. Any advice is much appreciated.   Bfpage |leave a message  20:14, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

@Bfpage: hi there! I wondered if you are still looking for advice for getting your project off the ground? I see that you have already transformed your project from idea into a full proposal and have been working to refine and scope the project based on others' feedback on the talk page. If you are still looking for next steps, I might recommend providing more details about your budget in advance of the deadline for finalized grants (March 31). Notifying other on- and off-wiki communities of your idea is also a good way to get more feedback, support, and participation - in case you have not already seen this page, Wikimedia provides some helpful tips on community notification here: Grants:Learning_patterns/Let_the_community_know. -Thepwnco (talk) 12:07, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Are there upcoming Hangouts?

I feel as though I remember seeing, somewhere, an announcement of Google Hangouts to happen in March that would help people discuss Inspire ideas, but when I look at Grants:IdeaLab/Events or search around Meta, I don't see those events mentioned. Are there upcoming Hangouts? Perhaps they have all passed by? Or perhaps I have imagined them! Sumana Harihareswara 12:06, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Sumana, good question! In past rounds of IEG w/ IdeaLab we have hosted Hangouts, so that might be what you're recalling. For Inspire, we just didn't get around to it, though now that you mention it, I wish we had. Hopefully, we can pick this up again in future! Meanwhile, please feel free to point questions to this page (or idea talk pages, of course) on-wiki. Siko (WMF) (talk) 05:59, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

announcements of planned proposals on Village Pumps

Hi, someone told me that planned grant proposals should be announced on Village Pumps. I am not sure if I understand this. Can anyone point me to a help page on this particular topic? I would like to know if this is meant for all proposals or just for some, and if yes, which? Thanks, --C.Koltzenburg (talk) 11:04, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

C.Koltzenburg, part of the grants process is community notification. So, for instance, if your proposal involved events about editing women scientists articles on the Tagalog Wikipedia, you would want to make a post to that project's central discussion area, as well as Tagalog mailing lists, and perhaps science or women's history WikiProjects if they exist on that project. You can see the guideline here. If you have notification questions about a specific proposal, let me know and I can help suggest places to post to. Best, PEarley (WMF) (talk) 03:03, 25 March 2015 (UTC)