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

The presentation's title, "Women... it takes a village", is apt as:

• WiR requires a global "campaign" involving the entire Wikimedia village in order to achieve its goal
• WiR requires local and global advocacy, including Usergroups and Chapters
• Wiki Loves Monuments and ArtAndFeminism are examples of global campaigns which WiR would like to emulate but needs you to make this happen

What else does the WiR campaign need?

• The right title -- to be determined by the village
• Editor support. Editors choose what they edit. If they don't know about the campaign, they won't work on it. If they know about it, and if it is presented in an attractive way, and if it is fun, they may decide to participate.
• Tech support: The WiR talkpage abounds with discussions centered on tech issues. The WiR tech Wish List is long. We need tech support.
• Outreach: The campaign needs promotion and advocacy through the press and social media. Today's readers are tomorrow's editors; the campaign's promotion has to be both inward and outward facing.
• GLAM: WiR is ideally coupled with the efforts of GLAM and Education in that we need the ideas, the connections, and the support of each.

I truly believe our society will be judged by WiR's legacy. If you agree, join in the conversation at WikiConference USA and/or at Women in Red.

Length of presentation

15 or 30 minutes; more time will allow for interaction

Special schedule requests

None

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

Yes

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