Talk:WikiWomen's User Group


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Follow up on the last message about the photography workshop[edit]

Hi everyone,

This is a reminder about our photography sessions happening this week. Also, some people reached out with concerns about not being able to open the links to meetings in the previous message. Please find a direct link to the Google Meet sessions here:

Thank you and please let me know if you have any questions. If you have any questions please reach out to selsharbatywikimediaorg . --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:21, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Opportunities open for the Affiliations Committee, Ombuds commission, and the Case Review Committee[edit]

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.

More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hi everyone! The Affiliations Committee (AffCom), Ombuds commission (OC), and the Case Review Committee (CRC) are looking for new members. These volunteer groups provide important structural and oversight support for the community and movement. People are encouraged to nominate themselves or encourage others they feel would contribute to these groups to apply. There is more information about the roles of the groups, the skills needed, and the opportunity to apply on the Meta-wiki page.

If you are aware of participants in your affiliate who may be interested in these roles, please share this message with them.

On behalf of the Committee Support team, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 18 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation Affiliates Strategy: Summary and Report[edit]

Dear Wikimedia affiliate,

Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation Board announced they started the process with creating an Affiliates Strategy in collaboration with the Affiliations Committee, the affiliates, and the broader communities with the intention to develop a strategy that will help guide the Foundation’s immediate work in supporting affiliates for the next few years, with a primary focus on the recognition process, as a direct responsibility of the Board.

Over several months, the Wikimedia Foundation Board engaged with an outside consultant to drive a review process of what work the Foundation was doing to support affiliates. The end goal was to have several recommended actions.

You can read more about the findings and the recommendations on this Meta-Wiki page.

Best,

MPossoupe_(WMF)21:29, 23 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Preparing Undergraduate Women to Diversify Wikipedia[edit]

I am seeking brainstormers on a specialized education project!

Because of the troubling gender bias in Wikipedia, in both its biographical pages and in the makeup of people who edit its articles, this key online reference tool misrepresents the world it’s meant to reflect. One successful approach to bringing more women into Wikipedia editing and expanding the topics included in its pages has been to embed page editing assignments in college classes taken by majors with a higher female enrollment (e.g., nursing, education, literature, linguistics). This lets female editors learn to apply their research skills to creating a wider range of site content. However, one shortcoming to editing assignments that I have found in six years of facilitating them in college classrooms is that instructors encounter difficulties fitting time for a new set of policy and technology skills into their already full curriculum. The extra work needed to do this well adds to teaching preparation and risks causing burnout in the very people interested in creating more diverse student engagement. This is of special concern when working with undergraduates, who may be novices in their discipline’s content and hence not yet confident about sharing their class research findings in public-facing Wikipedia pages.

This project’s goal, therefore, is to help balance the additional workload required for instructors and students to succeed in online editing. Instructors who may want to encourage more female students to take part in the task of improving Wikipedia have expressed hesitation about being able to also maintain sufficient class time to establish their students’ content expertise. To meet this need, the goals of this project are to establish a network intended to mentor instructors in finding the most efficient path to fostering undergraduate women within Wikipedia. This would include launching a shared document to pool guidance and resources on successful methods for classrooms with lower division students, first-generation in college students, and non-STEM majors to get them conversant in the coding and ethics of open online editing.

To initiate this project, I will be attending WikiConference North America in Toronto, Nov. 9-12, 2023. (Thanks to funding from a WikiConferenceNA 2023 Scholarship and to a Texas Women in Higher Education Leadership Development Grant 2023). While in Toronto, I would love to connect with WikiWomen’s User Group members, Wiki Education representatives, instructors presenting on their own Wikipedia classroom editing experiences, and other interested folks. The discussion goals would be to 1) brainstorm of a set of best practices for more effectively training new female editors, finding ways to help to support novice researchers in expanding their documenting and outreach communication skills, to ultimately broadening Wikipedia content so that it better reflects the experiences of young women in academia. And to 2) produce a contact tree of experienced and new instructors who can contribute ways to streamline existing classroom editing procedures without creating such a teaching and service burden for instructors. These outcomes will enable instructors to more resourcefully get students engaged with their class content and the wiki modality as they shape a more gender-diverse Wikipedia.

Interested in meeting up to discuss this further? Or taking part in a discussion remotely? Please reply below, or message my talk page. Thanks!

LingLass (talk) 22:59, 29 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@LingLass: thanks for posting here! This isn't something I have any experience in, but sounds like an important initiative. There's a WikiWomen telegram group and I shared your message with members. A couple of people responded and noted:

Wikimedia Argentina has a long history preparing undergraduate students.
If you haven't already, you should reach out to WikiEdu - who have great experiences with student editors in North America and a structured curricula. On-Wiki, you could also look at the Wikipedia Teahouse for mentorship options.

I also wondered if it would be worth posting at the talk page for the Women in Red WikiProject as I think that gets more attention than this page.

I'll let you know if anyone else has thoughts, and in the meantime hope the conference goes well. All the best! Chocmilk03 (talk) 08:49, 7 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for these suggestions! And for sharing the ad on the telegram group. I have contacted WikiEdu already. But I'll follow up with the Women in Red Project as well. I appreciate your ideas! LingLass (talk) 13:46, 7 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Telegram group & other communications-y options[edit]

Kia ora koutou (hello all). I've now added an invite link for the WikiWomen Telegram group to the main page. Telegram is an encrypted messaging service. We don't currently have a newsletter or discussion list, nor does the group meet by video chat on a regular basis (I understand there used to be monthly meetings).

I'd be interested to know if anyone thinks those would be useful, or if the group could do with any other forms of communication? My personal feeling is that the Telegram group is the best way for people to keep in touch (with this talk page as an alternative option since not everyone would use the Telegram messaging app). Chocmilk03 (talk) 02:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]