Submissions:2015/Women... it takes a village

Title

Women... it takes a village

Theme

Advocacy & Outreach

Type of submission

Presentation

Author

Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight

E-mail address

rosiestep.wiki@gmail.com

Username

Rosiestep

Affiliation

Wikipedia; WikiWomen's User Group

Abstract

Readers of Wikipedia can only read the articles which exist at an given time. If an article is missing, it can't be read. According to WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force, 84.5% of the biographies on the en-Wikipedia are about men. If the percentage is inaccurate -- if the error is based on omission (systemic bias) -- we are capable of correcting the statistic. All we need is a bright light focused on the issue and a village committed to change.

WikiProject Women in Red (WiR) was created to address content gender gap... a form of systemic bias. WiR was launched in July at Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City, Mexico by Roger Bamkin (user:Victuallers) and me (Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, user:Rosiestep). WiR's scope focuses on increasing the number of women's biographies from 15% to a larger percentage of Wikipedia's biographies. WiR also seeks to increase the number of articles about women's works, broadly construed, to include the books women wrote, the art they created, the conferences they organized, and so on. WiR maintains lists of crowd-sourced redlinks organized by occupation, nationality, and such. It provides curated groups of redlinked articles to work on through a collaboration with other women's WikiProjects, such as Women artists, Women scientists, and Women writers. It encourages translation from other language Wikipedias through a collaboration with WikiProject Intertranswiki. It streams a Wikidata feed of articles (Wikidata entries with no en-Wikipedia article) through a collaboration with WikiProject X. WiR's members update a list of newly created articles. WiR tracks events and published articles related to the project's scope.

WiR has had its share of struggles. In its first 24 hours, it was renamed (from WikiProject XX). In its first 30 days, after having created hundreds of new biographies, it encountered a formal merge proposal to become a subgroup of the newly-established, WikiProject Women. WiR has weathered struggles, it has created hundreds of articles, but now it needs a village -- the entire Wikimedia village -- to join the cause.

The objectives of this presentation include:

• Review WiR's scope, why we need to address women's biographies and women's works.
• Review lessons learned during the project's first 90 days to include, project design, branding, organization, talkpage issues, collaboration with other WikiProjects, and how membership has reacted to change)
• Provide an outcomes projection for WiR's one year mark
• Call for action to the Wikimedia village

It takes a village:

• In order to reach its goals, WiR would like to develop a global "campaign" involving the Wikimedia village, that is, not just en-Wikipedia, but all language Wikipedias, as well as WikiData and Commons

• The campaign needs the right title. Wikimedians: we leave it to you! Wiki Loves Monuments and ArtAndFeminism are examples of global campaigns which WiR would like to emulate
• GLAM, Education, Chapters, and User Groups: WiR would benefit from the ideas, the connections, and the support of the GLAM and Education communities.
• Tech support: WiR's talkpage abounds with discussions centered on tech issues. The WiR tech Wish List is long. WiR needs a technical coordinator.
• WiR needs local and global advocacy, branding, and promotion:

• Editors. Editors choose what they edit. If they don't know about the campaign, or don't understand that Wikipedia considers it to be a high priority, they won't give it enough attention. WiR needs an internal branding and promotion coordinator.
• Outreach: WiR needs promotion and advocacy through the press and social media. WiR needs a marketing coordinator. This effort needs to be not only informational but inspirational as today's readers are tomorrow's editors.

Join in the conversation at WikiConference USA and/or at Women in Red.

Length of presentation

15 or 30 minutes (30 minutes will allow for interaction with the attendees).

Special schedule requests

None

Will you attend WikiConference USA if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

1. Tokyogirl79 (talk) 05:03, 20 August 2015 (EDT)
2. Add your username here.