Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 01:01, 5 July 2014

Welcome to the Gender bias task force, a task force belonging to WikiProject Countering systemic bias. A task force consists of a group of editors devoted to the management of a particular issue or topic on Misplaced Pages. This page has been set up to ease coordination of their efforts.

If you'd like to help out in any way, please add your name to the list of participants.

• WP:GBTF

Scope

The aim of the task force is to identify gender bias on Misplaced Pages (including gender bias in articles, the selection of articles maintained, discussions, editor interactions, policies and implementation of policies), take steps to counter it, and raise awareness of how the gender gap can affect editorial and other decisions.

As WP:BIAS notes, a 2011 Wikimedia Foundation survey found that 8.5 percent of editors were women. The gender gap has not been closing and, on average, female editors leave Misplaced Pages earlier than male editors. Research suggests that the gender gap has a detrimental effect on content coverage. Articles of particular interest to women tend to be shorter, and women typically perceive Misplaced Pages to be of lower quality than men do.

Selection based on gender bias

Misplaced Pages has a longstanding controversy concerning gender bias and sexism which has been associated with the selection of articles which are maintained in the open-source encyclopedia. Misplaced Pages has been criticized by some journalists and academics for lacking not only women contributors but also extensive and in-depth encyclopedic attention to many topics regarding gender. An article in The New York Times cites a Wikimedia Foundation study which found that fewer than 13% of contributors to Misplaced Pages are women. Sue Gardner, previously executive director of the foundation, said that increasing diversity was about making the encyclopedia "as good as it could be." Factors the article cited as possibly discouraging women from editing included the "obsessive fact-loving realm," associations with the "hard-driving hacker crowd," and the necessity to be "open to very difficult, high-conflict people, even misogynists."

Participants

1. Czar (talk · contribs)
2. Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs)
3. SlimVirgin (talk · contribs)
4. Gobonobo (talk · contribs)
5. Superbellymonster (talk) 03:29, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
6. GRuban (talk · contribs)
7. Samsara9 (talk · contribs)
8. Carolmooredc (talk · contribs)
9. Djembayz (talk · contribs)
10. DStrassmann (talk · contribs)
11. Piotrus (talk · contribs)
12. Geraldshields11 (talk · contribs)
13. The Vintage Feminist (talk · contribs)
14. BoboMeowCat (talk · contribs)
15. Obiwankenobi (talk · contribs) Interested in categories
16. Rosiestep (talk · contribs)
17. Mssemantics (talk · contribs)
18. SPECIFICO talk
19. Tutelary (talk · contribs)
20. kmccook (talk · contribs)
21. Mark Miller (talk · contribs)
22. Maximilianklein (talk · contribs)
23. Steeletrap (talk · contribs)

To do

Improve biographies of women in the professions

• Useful infoboxes to add: Infobox engineer, Infobox officeholder, Infobox artist, Infobox scholar, Infobox person, etc.

Categorization

• Ensure that categories are used in accordance with the guideline above. Promote changes in the FA and GA criteria to ensure that promoted articles are correctly categorized.

Write essay

• Following this suggestion, write an essay on the problems women editors face, and how and whether Misplaced Pages's dispute-resolution processes can help. Consider ideas from this geek feminism page.

Her parting words

• Over one year ago before completing her term of leadership for Wikimedia, Sue Gardner had set a policy goal for getting women enrollment at Misplaced Pages up to 25% by 2015. It is now evident at the start of July 2014 that this goal can only be reached, in a realistic sense, for enhanced women enrollment only if Misplaced Pages is willing to offer an affirmative action preference for women editors as an incentive to encourage participation in the future of a gender neutral version of Misplaced Pages. Ought Misplaced Pages to endorse an affirmative action program adapted to incentives for showing preference to edits originating from women editors in an attempt to rectify previous and current gender imbalances, and to do this in order to make a realistic attempt to attain enhanced enrollment levels for women editors at Misplaced Pages. These goals were set out by Sue Gardner in her NYTimes interview from over one year ago. Ought some "level" of protection be determined as applied affirmatively to women editors (for some useful period of a few months or even several months). For example, there could be an affirmative strengthening of registered women editors by requiring that two editors be required to form consensus before being allowed to revert edits placed by women editors. Other forms of affirmative action preference could also be made available for discussion. LawrencePrincipe (talk) 01:01, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Related WikiProjects

• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Women artists
• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Women scientists
• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Women's History
• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Women's sport

Notes

1. "Editor Survey Report – April 2011", Wikimedia Foundation, accessed 7 January 2011.
2. Shyong (Tony) K. Lam, et al, "WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Misplaced Pages’s Gender Imbalance", WikiSym’11, 3–5 October 2011.
3. S. Lim and N. Kwon, "Gender differences in information behavior concerning Misplaced Pages, an unorthodox information source?", Library & Information Science Research, 32(3), 2010, pp. 212–220.
4. ^ Cassell, Justine (February 4, 2011). "Editing Wars Behind the Scenes". New York Times.
5. ^ Noam Cohen, "Define Gender Gap? Look Up Misplaced Pages's Contributor List," The New York Times. Found at The New York Times, January 31, 2011.
6. "Misplaced Pages's Women Problem". Nybooks.com. 2013-04-29. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
7. Misplaced Pages's Sexism Toward Women Novelists
8. Dunn, Gaby (2013-05-01). "Does Sexism Lurk?". Dailydot.com. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
9. Zandt, Deanna. "Yes, Misplaced Pages is Sexist". Forbes.com. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
10. Noah Cohen, The NY Times, 30Jan2011.