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Need active peer reviewers

The projects Wikipedia:WikiProject Feminism/Peer review, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's History/Peer review, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Gender Studies/Peer review really need active peer reviewers, so if some people could click on those articles and add their usernames under the Active Peer reviewers section that would be great. Thanks!

Emma Sulkowicz (creator of Mattress Performance: Carry That Weight)

I noticed the task force created article: Women's rights in 2014 contains mention of Emma Sulkowicz. Perhaps someone familiar with Sulkowicz and her project can look over her wiki page for accuracy. For example, the current article stresses Sulkowicz never went to the police, which I think is inaccurate. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 16:00, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I created a stub for Families Advocating for Campus Equality (FACE), which was mentioned in the Emma Sulkowicz article and seemed notable and also a redlink for Campus Safety and Accountability Act which was introduced by Senator Kristen Gillibrand. Sharing this here in case anyone has the time or interest in improving or creating these articles.--BoboMeowCat (talk) 16:43, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I found a few promising sources for Campus Safety and Accountability Act, but I'll probably need some help with creating a stub because I'm not familiar with writing about legislation. How do you think this should this be described in the lead? Should it be called "proposed legislation"?

http://time.com/3058840/campus-sexual-assault-bipartisan-bill-aims-to-reform-the-investigation-process/

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/news/state_national_international/article_5f7447a8-181b-11e4-bb1b-001a4bcf6878.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/30/sexual-assault-campus-mccaskill-colleges-universities/13328939/

--BoboMeowCat (talk) 23:45, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

@BoboMeowCat: I think "proposed legislation" would be correct. I've looked at a few sources but haven't found anything that explains what stage it is at. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 04:49, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I created a stub for Campus Safety and Accountability Act. The article could use additional sources and the existing sources could be expanded, if anyone has the time or interest. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 01:59, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm interested. Thank you, BoboMeowCat. Looking forward to expanding it. I am more than a bit surprised to see an article about it didn't exist already. Ongepotchket (talk) 16:28, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Ongepotchket, you were right to be surprised it didn't already exist, because apparently it did already exist under a slightly different name: Campus Accountability and Safety Act. Oddly, this has been in the news a lot lately (related to Sulkowicz and Gillibrand) and is being referred to as "Campus Safety and Accountability Act" by the media, but the other article has references to the slightly different title. It seems one title should be a redirect after we figure out correct title, but I'm not sure how to do that. @SlimVirgin: regarding how to fix this.--BoboMeowCat (talk) 20:30, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Assuming this page is accurate, the bill seems to call itself the "Campus Accountability and Safety Act", so I think that's probably the best title. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:58, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

@BoboMeowCat: the new article has only one recent edit (yours when you created it), so assuming Campus Accountability and Safety Act is correct, the easiest thing would be to redirect Campus Safety and Accountability Act to that title (edit the new article to say #REDIRECT Campus Accountability and Safety Act). See Wikipedia:Redirect. You can then add whatever new content you created to the old article. Where both articles have a longer history, it's possible to merge the histories to retain the list of contributors, but where it's one recent edit, a simple redirect is fine. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 22:20, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I deleted my newly created stub and redirected it to Campus Accountability and Safety Act. Looking over the existing article on topic I think it could use attention from task force. (Pinging @Ongepotchket: who expressed interest). Current article does not seem balanced. It's heavy on the criticism of the bill and fails to mention the motivation behind the bill (the high rate of sexual assault on college campuses). I will also try to improve it when I have time but if anyone else has time or interest please take a look. (ps -when searching for sources search both "Campus Safety and Accountability Act" as well as "Campus Accountability and Safety Act" considering the media describes it both ways. I also already linked 3 sources above). --BoboMeowCat (talk) 16:00, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

NSF study

Moved post[1] referring to National Science Foundation study from project main page:

Are there any connections between our group and these researchers? Should there be? Would anyone object if I reached out to them just to let them know about this group and that we are available to help if they can use it? I wouldn't represent myself as a spokesperson for the group or anything. BTW, I have a lot of experience working with agencies that sponsor government research. Although, my experience probably is mostly not relevant, it was working for agencies like NIST, DARPA, and the USAF on computer science research (no weapons research, it was general AI and software engineering). Still, the fact that I kind of speak that language might help, to some extent all government research has similar issues, e.g., how to present complex ideas in ways that the suits can understand. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 02:29, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

MadScientistX11, sure, if you think it would be helpful, by all means let them know, and thanks for offering to do it. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 21:27, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, I'm going to have to step back for the time being. I had an operation on my spine last week. I thought it would be nice to get away from the Internet for a while but they actually had Internet access in the hospital from the TV including a nice keyboard. Actually, it was a new hospital and they were having problems with the Internet access for a few patients (including me) and my nurse said "but you are a computer genius maybe you can fix it" Well if you knew me you would know that even in bed with IV's going I'm not going to pass up that kind of challenge. And I did fix it, it was really simple actually. I was typing from my hospital bed last time but I was also on steroids (which make my hyper) and serious pain killers. Anyway once I got home I realized recovery was going to take some time and I shouldn't do anything requiring serious concentration or collaboration for a while. I should be back at least to medium strength in a few weeks and if no one has contacted them by then I will be more than happy to. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 23:32, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

@MadScientistX11: I know the situation you describe exactly (except for the part about being called a computer genius; I'm afraid I have never had that pleasure!). Take your time and get well. It's a good idea to contact them, and perhaps someone has done it already, but you can decide later whether you feel up to it. The one benefit of being a volunteer is that we're allowed to decide that we've had enough whenever we want to. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 23:45, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I reached out to these researchers a few months ago. They have yet to reply. --Mssemantics (talk) 05:11, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know, Amanda. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 05:45, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Less obvious articles

Has the project made any attempts to identify topics that aren't about women's biographies, biology of women, feminism and women's studies? I'm thinking about cultural practices, social niches, hobbies, sports, games, books, etc., etc., etc., that are particularly popular among women or associated with women. As a history buff, I'm thinking this would be an important strategy to pursue since individual women in history tend not to leave that many traces in sources.

Peter ^Isotalo 14:08, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't think so. I've often thought of tackling Sati (practice) because it looks like it could use some re-organisation etc but I've always shied from it for fear of unwittingly causing some sort of cultural offence. - Sitush (talk) 14:13, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, that's certainly about women's history, but I'm also thinking of much more general articles. Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking about stuff like sewing or parenting. And before anyone accuses me of assigning traditional roles to women, this is exactly the topics that tend to be underrepresented. And they happen to have been female domains throughout history, and in many ways stile are.

The articles we suggest seems like they're mostly chosen from activist's perspective. That's certainly a type of editor we should appeal to, but I'm assuming that not all women editors of the future are going to be activists. So what are their interests, hobbies, passions, etc? To make a somewhat provocative example, if there are more female Wikipedians interested in improving Twilight and New Kids on the Block than Virginia Woolf, why not attempt to tap that resource?

Peter ^Isotalo 14:47, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

I sometimes think DIY and other lifehacky topics are not covered as much as they ought to be, considering how obsessive a hobby they are for some (not me). As for me, I'm interested in expanding articles about authors and illustrators, mostly of juvenile fiction because I see a lot of gaps there. The Anastasia books, a couple of stubs on books by Lois Lowry, expanding on some articles on Beverly Cleary books. This Place Has No Atmosphere by Paula Danziger will probably be my first article, if it doesn't exist. Once that gives me practice I will maybe create several more articles for Danziger's books. She has almost as many books as Judy Blume but so few of them have pages, or even stubs. Barthe DeClements is a writer of less importance whom I'd like to expand upon, but being notoriously reclusive during her lifetime means there is very little out there to bulk up an article. Finally, Roald Dahl has some truly great short stories for adults that I'd like to cover, extensively if possible. These are a few my plans for the future, and I hope to collaborate with helpful GGTF editors. I have no interest in dealing with those who seek out endless drama with female editors, though, so I am unsure of a timeline at present. I have been working on these drafts for so long, waiting for the contention to die down. I am definitely the target demographic for something like the GGTF. I have a lot I could contribute but I've chosen not to because of the haranguing and constant berating from certain male editors towards female editors. I have no interest in becoming their next target du jour, so like too many women I have read about, I refrain from editing. Though that will end soon, as it's obvious they're not going to find something better to do. Ongepotchket (talk) 18:04, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Ongepotchket, do it yourself stuff was one of the areas my wife suggested when I asked about potential topics. And I definitely recognize this as something that my male friends and I aren't terribly interested in, especially the decorative kind. In Sweden, there's a subset of simpler handicrafts that most here would refer to as pyssel ("crafting; tweaking; lighter handiwork", possibly related to "puzzle") which involves a wide range of simple arts and crafts like paper collages, beadwork (including peg array art), embroidering, etc. this is something that strikes me as a hobby dominated by women.

These are the type of general areas that I think might be worth looking at alongside the type of articles we're already suggesting as GGTF open tasks.

Peter ^Isotalo 00:05, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

My apologies. I was picking up on your comment about the cultural things, of which Sati is certainly one. Slim may have the thing to hand but I can dig it out if not: earlier this week I think it was The Guardian, of which she is fond of quoting, reported on recent figures for UK university entry, relating to the 2014 cohort. They demonstrated that quite substantially more women than men had begun a UK university course in the year but also, IIRC, that the numbers were very significantly skewed as to what (hate to say it) are considered "traditional" roles. (There is a massive vocational skew for things such as nursing, btw). Despite a lot of pushing since the days of Margaret Thatcher, the ratio of men to women was massively on the male side when it came to engineering and science courses and massively on the women's side when it came to nursing, teaching etc. So, I suppose, like it or not, your point about sewing and parenting probably still has actual merit even though many would like to see it gone.

I doubt that you will get many takers here, though, because this seems primarily to be a political forum rather than a content-based one: content appears to be a secondary goal, although the hope is that content bias will improve by reducing the alleged severity of the gap. - Sitush (talk) 02:19, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Gender gap in university admissions rises to record level. It seems a bit different to the paper version that I read, so I'll dig around my recycling bin for that. - Sitush (talk) 08:01, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

• I would chime in that medical issues that affect women may also be under-represented on the project. This came up back in September, when it was noted we had no article on back labor, which I then started (and others improved). Considering about 30% of women have back labor during labor, I found it crazy that we had no article on it (especially considering we seem to have articles on every possible thing that could go wrong to a penis, and have for many years.)--Milowent • ^hasspoken 14:03, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Whether this project is political or not, it has plenty of open tasks related to content. Is there no interest in expanding this beyond women's biographies and explicitly feminist topics?

Peter ^Isotalo 14:19, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Peter , please feel free to post a link to an article related to women, yet outside the realm of biographies and feminist topics that you believe needs improvement and attention from this project, specifying your concerns. There's a good chance if you do that, task force members will assist you in improving the article. FYI, Sitush does not speak for WP:GGTF and you may actually find that threads dominated by him get less than average attn because it appears many members have become frustrated by lack of positive contributions to project and ongoing criticism. This project is actually highly content based. Your suggestions are not at all unreasonable, so if you'd like to assist GGTF please don't let detractor discourage your efforts. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 14:31, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

My gut feeling is "no" at the present time but I'll happily be proved wrong. There are many women - probably indeed a majority - who have no interest in this project, often seemingly because it has a political bent. It may not be the best venue to achieve progress in the way you desire although, yes, improving the coverage of what I'll loosely term gender-related content is one of the ultimate goals. FWIW, I think biographies feature among the most numerous and popular articles, regardless of gender and what happens here may just be mirroring that trend. - Sitush (talk) 14:37, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Regarding this amendment by BoboMeowCat, I'm surprised to see the notion that anyone speaks for this project: that is not how Wikipedia works generally, although I think the military history project has co-ordinators. I've just taken another look at the lists to which Peter Isotalo linked and, woah!, that is one long, outdated mess that maybe could do with a co-ordinator or two. For example, Beekeeping is listed there but the comment doesn't seem to match the current state of the article at all. Does anyone object to me removing it? - Sitush (talk) 15:10, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Struck some of that - the beekeeping thing is not in the women's section. My apologies. - Sitush (talk) 15:18, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm simply going by what drives me to write article content: Stuff I Happen to Find Interesting (SIHFI). SIHFI is seldom political even if I consider myself to be a fairly political person. But no matter how much I would like to will myself to write more about, say, queer theory, it still hasn't fascinated me as much as describing galleys and medieval cuisine. And whether biographies are popular or not, they're still just one aspect of what we do.

I'm going to look around for suitable non-obvious topics. I'll notify the task force here when I do.

Peter ^Isotalo 15:35, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, in recent months there's been a need for help updating articles about the localities in north eastern Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and the Central African Republic, where women are fleeing for their lives. Just keeping current with sources like Relief Web and allAfrica.com would be a start. You'd think these articles would be "obvious", but given the level of participation, evidently they aren't. --Djembayz (talk) 03:16, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

• Milowent, I suspect that you are right, although medical articles are particularly tricky to write because of WP:MEDRS etc - that scares the life out of me! I've just taken a look at Diverticulitis, which I'd always thought was much more common in women than in men. I can't spot where our article says that, so either I've missed it, I am wrong or the article could use a well-sourced tweak. - Sitush (talk) 14:37, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe I am wrong - see this, although I've no idea if it is reliable or not. - Sitush (talk) 15:21, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

That's a very good point, Milowent. If anyone is worried about the technicalities of medicine, perhaps WP:MED can help out. Maybe even the indomitable Doc James might be recruited. :-)

Peter ^Isotalo 15:35, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Doc James and other WP:MED folk are very helpful when asked for help. Medical articles are hard to edit because of MEDRS but it is possible to get changes to stick. I did it, way back, and I have plans for more changes. I take those changes fairly slowly to make sure they'll be OK. Ca2james (talk) 22:59, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I honestly think the best thing to do is worry less about trying to figure out what women might prefer to edit and concentrate more on creating an editing environment that more women will find welcoming. Recruit them. Support them. And let them edit whatever they want to. Lightbreather (talk) 19:44, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

The Task Force already endorses topics that seems to be what "women might prefer to edit". I don't see how recruitment would be made more difficult by broadening the range of suggested topics and articles.

Peter ^Isotalo 22:33, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

As a first attempt, I added[2] modern art to the open tasks list. Women are only included in lists, but without any descriptions. Frida Kahlo's absence strikes me as particularly notable.

Peter ^Isotalo 22:49, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

If you enjoy drawing up lists of needed articles, they are always helpful for people putting together editathons. One of the more challenging things about lists is figuring out a place to put links to existing lists of articles needed so that people can find them. Lists of articles needed based on an individual reference source can be useful, because they make it easy for "completionist" editors to simply plow through batches of articles. You might be surprised how much you could find for new lists by visiting a reference collection at a public or academic library. I always like to add a sample citation to cut and paste when making these lists, to save the editors time, and encourage them to add the footnotes.

By contrast, lists of needed articles for editathons tend to focus on more specialized sources available at the sponsoring institutions.

You might want to try participating remotely in editathons yourself by adding some female-related content. Even if you just add the material that's available on the open web, it can really speed things up for the participants sitting next to the specialized sources at the event. Two examples or editathons would be the upcoming Black History Month editathons such as WikiDC editathons or AfroCrowd. Actually, adding female-related content for any any upcoming meetup is always welcome. It's really fun when you're an in-person participant to see that somebody participating remotely wants to make your efforts a success. Participating remotely is a good way to support the GLAM institutions, and the people organizing the events. Just add a section that says "Participating remotely" (or put (remotely) after your user name), and add your results on the editathon page. Even though the topic of an editathon tends be less obvious articles that you wouldn't work on on your own, when a GLAM organization identifies something as worth writing about, it will generally be something that is significant for scholars and researchers.

Another good thing about participating remotely is that you have someone at the event who can e-mail, chat, or leave on-wiki messages when you're working on something together. Collaborating in real time is fun, because you can just do the part you like, like infoboxes, or talk page assessment, or images, and let someone else do the parts that are harder for you. --Djembayz (talk) 03:16, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Latest on the Kaffeeklatsch test area

The MfD for the Kaffeeklatsch was closed with the result page kept,[3] and this notice[4] re the WMF non discrimination policy was put on my page by Harej. (Thanks, Harej.)

I don't know how the proposed WikiProject Women at the IdeaLab will fare, but one step at a time, I guess. Lightbreather (talk) 01:16, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Congrats on having it kept, Lightbreather. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 01:55, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I think it cuts down at least 90% of the objections. Lightbreather (talk) 01:59, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it was ever in doubt. Anyone who was trying to cite WMF non-discrimination was bound to fail and that is pretty obvious if you can actually read. It doesn't necessarily mean it is a good idea and I am narked that LB has just pinged me in some sort of gravedancing mode when I never even commented at the MfD. I look forward to seeing the outcome of the next batch of invitations but, please, let's have some decorum and not feed the trolls. As I said recently in an earlier thread here, behaving like a faction when your intention is to oppose a faction is probably not a great idea: rise above it. - Sitush (talk) 02:00, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Please do not misrepresent why I pinged you. You linked to a Kaffeeklatsch discussion[5] in a comment you made in that discussion, so when I learned that the MfD result was "page kept," I pinged you and the three other people in that conversation who mentioned the klatsch.[6] That's all. Lightbreather (talk) 02:13, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

And "gravedancing mode"? That was unnecessary. Lightbreather (talk) 02:16, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

What was unnecessary was the ping. For future reference, I have ARCA and this page watchlisted. - Sitush (talk) 02:21, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

You're using "unnecessary" in the sense of "unneeded." Got it. You're referring to my ping as "gravedancing" was uncalled for - something to "rise above" even. Got it? Lightbreather (talk) 15:46, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad to see it was kept, Lightbreather. Hope it generates plenty of good klatsch.

Peter ^Isotalo 01:02, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Can anyone help?

There was an obvious gap so a went ahead and created a bit of a place-holder at Feminism in Taiwan. Anyone with a spare 5 minutes is encouraged to help out! Cheers, St★lwart¹¹¹ 05:31, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

It's an interesting article, Stalwart111, thanks for creating it. The reference to the "uniquely Taiwanese concepts of gender" has made me want to read more about it. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 22:07, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Sarah, and thanks for the thanks. I was surprised to find it red-linked at WP:RA. I had previously created Gambling in Taiwan after finding that at RA too, and sources weren't too hard to find. Likewise, there are plenty of sources out there relating to feminism in Taiwan. Some fascinating books. The break-away from China and the influence of Japan and the US has had some interesting results. Its especially interesting how modern Taiwanese women view the roles of wife and mother. Anyway, if your reading is enlightening, please feel free to add to the article. It is very bare-bones at the moment. St★lwart¹¹¹ 22:53, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

African countries lead the way in the use of the "women situtation room" - an example of a space specifically for women's concerns

• An intriguing current proposal on a space specifically for women is the "women situation room", which will be used by journalists and NGOs monitoring gender-based violence in the upcoming Nigerian general election. Wikipedia could stand to learn quite a bit from the people who train journalists in "gender sensitive reporting". These journalists have practical experience in how to address women's concerns in print in a way that does not make the situation worse. Apparently the "women's situation room" concept has already been adopted in Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Kenya. Who knows, perhaps Wikipedia could be next! --Djembayz (talk) 02:17, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

@Djembayz: First I think that is a ridiculous comparison and frankly somewhat insulting to the very real risks of violence that the women being reported on and the women doing reporting in Africa face every day. To compare that with gender bias on Wikipedia is just ludicrous. They have to have spaces like these in African nations because the women doing the reporting face serious threats of violence. And I'll repeat my main two objections about the notoin of a "safe space" for women editors: 1) It is a very belittling view of feminism to think that women are so delicate and fragile that they have to have their own space just to edit and collaborate. 2) I think it circumvents one of what should be the benefits we are trying to achieve from bridging "the gap", that we want women to participate as full fledged editors with everyone else, not as second class editors walled off in their safe space. Women have a more collaborative style in general than men, while Wikipedia is far more civil than most places on the Internet there is still a lot of BS, especially passive aggressive BS here and virtually all of it, at least in my experience, comes from men. Also, I can just see where this might eventually lead: the mens rights groups will be demanding their own spaces, etc. Walling women off into their own private spaces on the site doesn't really address the actual problems, it doesn't change the behavior of the men who act like jerks and make women (and many male editors I think as well) leave in frustration. We need solutions not PC band aids. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 04:12, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

One last point, according to Wikipedia:Discrimination: "Wikipedia should not give privilege in writing and freedom of speech to some editors and readers at the expense of others, and thus Wikipedia should not tolerate discriminatory content or discussion. Likewise, users should not be able to use a valid Wikipedia policy or guideline in a discriminatory manner or to achieve a discriminatory end. Statuses of editors and readers that should be protected from discrimination on Wikipedia include:... Sex" It seems to me that the safe space is in direct conflict with this. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 04:25, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I can see how you would take it that way, but that wasn't quite where I was going here. We've been looking at resolving questions of harassment and conflicts involving gender-related harassment from more of an HR viewpoint on the site, and that's being rejected by some on a variety of grounds. Roughly, if I have understood correctly, there are some who feel that the site must be "self organizing", and that being "self organizing" precludes any HR function, some who feel that everything must be done transparently and in public (including some who would not simply want oversight over WMF office actions, but would prefer to eliminate office actions altogether as an option), and the rather vocal contingent who feels that anyone who finds the atmosphere too rough and unpleasant should just go elsewhere. Given that this site is estimated to be 90% male, we wouldn't necessarily want a "womens situation room", but rather a "gender situation room" for dealing with gender-related harassment. One thing that deters people from seeking redress in situations of gender-related harassment is the fear of further public attention. This "situation room" model has a piece that's missing from the HR model-- the "gender sensitive reporting". Essentially these groups have figured out how to compile data, and cover this data in the media, in a way that makes women feel safe coming forward. Your point is well taken, that this is just a website, and not the same as election-related violence. What is the same, however, is being in a central location where conflicts are resolved in the public eye, with consequences for the reputations of individuals that may have permanent, real life implications. (Should also note that since most people on this website are pretty civilized, the need for this sort of thing is not apparent until you run into the rougher sections of the site.) --Djembayz (talk) 13:53, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I didn't follow a lot of that, for example I'm not sure what "HR viewpoint" means in this context but I haven't had time yet to review the stuff on the project and once I do, I'm sure that I'll understand those points. But here are some responses to the parts I did get. You said "some who feel that everything must be done transparently". Count me in on that "some". I think transparency is one of the coolest things Wikipedia has going for it and that make it work as well as it does. And while I hadn't thought about it the lack of transparency in a "women's situation room" is another reason that I think it never will and never should fly. Transparency doesn't guarantee truth or civility but it makes them both much more likely. I'm far much more likely to exaggerate my complaints about another editor if I know that they can't read what I'm writing. Its just human nature, we are governed by emotions and if I'm having an emotional outburst about someone on my keyboard my natural tendency is to exaggerate how bad they are. One of the things that keeps that in check here and that make Wikipedia, for all its faults, still the most civil open Internet environment I've ever participated in is the policy of maximum transparency. Actually, I had an idea as well but I'll start another section as its really completely different than the room idea. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:33, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

• These points on transparency deserve a thoughtful response. Perhaps someone else would like to weigh in on this? --Djembayz (talk) 02:50, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Grant proposals on Meta regarding the Gender Gap

• The grant proposals on the Meta site for funding on the Gender Gap will give you an idea of an initial approach to promoting a more hospitable community for women. One thing that is clear from the Diversity Conference and the experience of other communities is that you need paid people, who have the community and its interests as their primary job, to make diversity work-- not volunteers. My guess is this is not just because a paid person has more time, it is also because a person who is paid to represent the interests of their organization can be required to undertake difficult or unpleasant tasks, and can be required to avoid conflicts of interest.

Two things to look at in the proposals: One, you'll see that there is a "PR panic button" incorporated in these proposals as a way to help community volunteers avoid running into media disasters. Two, when looking through these proposals it is important to consider whether they will also work to prevent gender-related harassment of our male editors.

Even those of us who do not have experience in an HR department, or in gender-related community outreach may have valuable input regarding the proposals for Gender Gap grants. Different sets of eyes can make us aware of possibilities we would never have considered, and help define the needs these community roles need to fill, so that the people assuming these roles are able to work well in a diverse, international setting. --Djembayz (talk) 02:50, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Zero Tolerance for Sexist Incivility?

I was trying to think of an alternative to the "women's situation room" and while this isn't really an alternative, since it's just a completely different approach I was wondering what people think of this: What if we pushed for "zero tolerance" for sexist incivility? We already have templates to warn users at various levels for incivility and if a user acquires enough of those they can get blocked or banned. What if we created special templates for sexist incivility and made the thresh-hold for a temporary block and a complete ban lower than for normal incivility? "Zero tolerance" is just the buzz word I'm using I doubt the community would go for a "one strike and your blocked" policy, that would probably seem too draconian but we might be able to say for example if normally it takes 4 warnings for incivility to get blocked then for sexist incivility it only takes two (I don't know what the actual numbers are, just trying to brainstorm). My thinking is this is analogous to hate crime laws. We put special stiff sentences on certain kinds of crimes because the crime doesn't just impact the individual but a whole community of individuals. Murdering an african american in a public way wasn't just meant to kill that person but to intimidate the entire local african american population. By the same logic we could argue for stiffer penalties for people who make sexist attacks on other editors and say those stiffer penalties are justified because as is well documented Wikipedia has a problem recruiting/retaining female editors. Besides the actual benefit in practice of cutting down on such incivility it seems to me announcing such a policy would be something the press might pick up and use to promote the idea that we are doing something to fix the problem. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 00:48, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

We could start with a Zero Tolerance for Sexist Incivility on this page, but I mean zero when I say zero tolerance. Sure somebody might get tossed off this page, say for two days, on a misunderstanding, but I think that would be better than the current situation. I suppose that only admins could enforce this. Is there an admin willing to do this? Would other editors on this page support that? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:40, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Smallbones I don't see the point to that. The goal of this project is to improve the number of female editors not to make ourselves a model of good behavior. IMO, that kind of navel gazing is exactly what we should stay away from. What would that really accomplish except perhaps to get us fighting with each other over how serious something has to be to qualify for zero tolerance?

The thing I find interesting is that we already have an unwritten zero tolerance of racism, especially anything overtly so. But editors seem willing to overlook sexism, or don't even notice it. Smallbones, I wouldn't want anyone to be kicked off for a mistake, but I think (in the case of mistakes) they should be put straight if it can be done without making them feel attacked. Where it's deliberate, I think we should just archive the comment. I would like to see zero tolerance of undermining the point of the page. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 05:00, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

If there is a new Wikipedia policy related to sexism it will need to work both ways rather than from the assumption that only men use sexist language. For instance, calling the male editors mad dogs peeing on fences, as was done by a member of this group, really did seem to be an extremely sexist remark to me. Gandydancer (talk) 09:12, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

There's an interesting discussion going on over at Roger Davies' Talk page regarding dealing with civility. One of the things that really resonated with me is that blocks and other punitive measures should be a last resort, not a first choice. Another thing that has really stuck with me is that Wikipedia is not the first community (online or otherwise) that has had to deal with civility issues, and Wikipedia could learn from other communities' experience.

My main concern with zero tolerance idea is that it could be used to remove participants who disagree with some of the major contributors here. Also, the bulk of disruption on this page doesn't necessarily use sexist language but is a result of low-level sniping between editors. Why not use the discretionary sanctions that are already in place for this page to deal with disruption? Ca2james (talk) 15:37, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Gandydanccer, while I agree all people should avoid sexist incivility, I also think it’s reasonable to present this as an issue disproportionally affecting women on WP given the gender gap. I think MadScientist's idea of a template which could be applied to more than just this page sounds like something that might help. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 22:34, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Sure, if you are one of those that believe that it actually is an issue disproportionately affecting women. I'm not. I find catty edits such as: Alialiac, I see you reverted the sentence again without hearing from BoboMeowCat (as far as I can tell). Favor, please? Could you at least put edit summaries with your edits? Lightbreather (talk) 15:53, 3 February 2015 (UTC) much more irritating and more likely to make me want to leave. Gandydancer (talk) 14:27, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I guess interpretation of that might depend on your history with and feelings about Lightbreather but I don't see that as overtly catty (not crazy about that term anyway). Either way, could we please move this issue and conversation beyond Lightbreather? I notice Ca2James and J3Mrs also linked to a convo about LB here, but I think the issue of sexist incivility is much more general than one editor.--BoboMeowCat (talk) 16:56, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

True, but I wasn't referring to who you thought, I linked to a thread but the specific diff I was referring to is here. I was trying to make general points but as you have misinterpreted I have clarified the incivility. J3Mrs (talk) 17:26, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I linked to the discussion on Roger's page because there were interesting statements about civility and blocking and other websites/groups there, not because the the first part of the discussion was about Lightbreather. I thought that when I pointed out the most interesting facts to me - which had nothing to do with any one editor - that I made this point clear, but it seems that I was incorrect about that. If I could have linked to the later part of the discussion where the focus shifted from specific editors to the general civility discussion, I would have done that. It wasn't my page, however, and so that wasn't possible.

The fact that there were statements made about Lightbreather in the early part of the discussion shouldn't diminish the interest and utility of the later statements on civility, but I have this sense that this is exactly what has happened. I have this sense that these interesting and very relevant points are being dismissed (assuming they're being read at all) because the start of the discussion was about one editor. Information is going to come from all sorts of places and not all of those places are going to be supportive, but that doesn't mean that the information is bad. Ca2james (talk) 17:35, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Ca2James and J3Mrs, my apologies for misinterpreting. I guess I just don't want the general issue of sexist incivility to get caught up in the current battle regarding Lightbreather's proposals for women's editing space etc and other ongoing battles. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 17:56, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

How does sexist incivility differ from any other sort? Some members of this project see any dissent or reasonable criticism on this page as incivility. Is that sexist incivility? There is an example in this recent thread here. How was it addressed? It was archived, swept under the carpet. In my book incivility is just that, it doesn't need an adjective to describe it. J3Mrs (talk) 22:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I haven't experienced sexist incivility, but I assume that I would be very discouraged and hurt by it. Moreso than just general snarkiness. I don't know the history of disputes here, but if anyone is subjected to demeaning or insulting comments I see no reason not to clamp down on it.

Peter ^Isotalo 15:33, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm really not sure what "sexist incivility" is supposed to cover, and I'm expecially not sure how a variety of admins would (or should) interpret it.

Is it sexual incivility if you imply that someone's attitudes or views are related to their sex (e.g. "male chauvinist", "macho")?

Calling someone a "bastard" is mere incivility but calling them a "male chauvinist bastard" is "sexist incivility"?

Does it mean that men can call each other names that are etymologically based on things associated with the male anatomy (e.g. "dick", "prick", "jerk") but women can't, and conversely women can call each other "bitches" but men can't?

Is "don't be a dick" sexist incivilty?

Does use of "generic he" turn simple incivility into sexist incivility?

Is it sexist incivility to accuse someone of engaging in a "pissing contest"?

--Boson (talk) 09:51, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

As to the idea that sexist incivility is impossible to define, we can never get at a perfect definition I agree. And no two people will probably ever completely agree as to what it is and isn't. But we can certainly define it, e.g. by listing examples of insults; in fact it wouldn't surprise me if we could find some HR manual somewhere that has a pretty good definition. One of the large companies I used to work for was very progressive on helping women and taking a proactive approach to fighting sexual harrasment. They tend to define these things rigorously because they have to, if you are going to censure an employee for some behavior it helps to have that behavior rigorously defined and it also helps in case the employee tries to sue you in response. I'm still feeling a lot of fatigue after my surgery but when I have more energy I might look and see if I can find something. But in any case I don't see the big deal in a basic definition, words like "bitch", etc. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 19:39, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure why sexist incivility should be treated any differently from any other type of incivility. Also, is there any evidence that sexist incivility happens any more than any other type of incivility? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:28, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

This is a discussion about possible preventive measures, so I don't see how the frequency of sexist incivility is relevant. If it doesn't happen, all the better, but then I don't see the reason for questioning zero tolerance against it.

To put it in an appropriate context, compare sexist personal comments it with racist personal comments. Both are extremely hurtful and demoralizing forms of personal attacks that are also obviously harmful to collegiality and harmonious user relations.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:43, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Peter Isotalo. Exactly. A Quest For Knowledge a more relevant question would be "is there any evidence that sexist language is what causes women editors to leave?" And I haven't found any yet but I just started going over some of the background material. But even suppose we found that sexist comments didn't play a major role in causing women to leave. I think that would be highly counter intuitive and rather surprising but for the sake of argument assume it was true. I think changing the policy toward sexist comments would still be a good idea because there is a general precedent for this kinds of thing (e.g., hate crime laws, sexual harassment prevention programs in large organizations) and sometimes making a good faith effort, the act of showing a community that Wikipedia takes this issue seriously, could easily be as important as the direct actual effect of the policy change. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 02:40, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

@MadScientistX11: OK, Is there any evidence that sexist language is what causes women editors to leave? It doesn't make sense to attempt to address problems that don't exist. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:52, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you believe a zero tolerance approach to sexism would do anything to hurt user relations?

Peter ^Isotalo 00:09, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely. It will inevitably lead to further inter-user drama because of differing interpretations of what precisely constitutes "sexism". Nikkimaria (talk) 01:39, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

A Quest For Knowledge, sexist language is damaging, even though we can't produce firm evidence because no survey (that I recall) has asked this kind of question. I saw an example yesterday that left me feeling discouraged about being involved with Wikipedia. For women less committed/addicted, these encounters would have a stronger effect. Ditto for women readers, who might have become editors had they not seen certain exchanges.

What I find interesting, as I said earlier, is that no one would question the importance of avoiding racist language and educating ourselves about racism to make sure we avoid it. But people take a different view of sexism. Lots of editors don't feel they should educate themselves about it or take pains to avoid it. No one would expect black editors to ignore racism, but women are expected to ignore sexism (we're expected to "grow a pair," or be less "thin-skinned") and just carry on editing. Why there is such a difference in perception about the impact of racism versus sexism? Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 00:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Although not directly on point, I think that part of the problem here is that the variance in what is considered a sexist insult across English-speaking cultures is much wider than the variance in racist insults. What I mean is, certain words are considered racist insults and pretty much everyone from an English-speaking background would agree; but certain words are considered sexist insults in some English-speaking cultures but not others (the classic is perhaps 'dick', which in the USA apparently can be equivalent to 'jerk', while in many other countries it refers exclusively to male genitalia; the female equivalent works the other way and is also perfectly well-known around here). I suspect that part of the reason for this is that racial-activists have been active for much longer, changing social perceptions of certain words. So perhaps the solution is a zero-tolerance approach with a subjective definition of sexist incivility (ie the one insulted gets to decide). I can't imagine it's going to be popular, though, and I'm not seriously advocating it. I'm trying to point out the depth of the difficulty. GoldenRing (talk) 06:18, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Nikkimaria I don't see how this has to lead to drama because sexist attacks are so hard to quantify. We already have templates for harassment and personal attacks. Can anyone completely define what does or doesn't constitute a "personal attack" ahead of time? Of course not, we have -- just as for many things on Wikipedia -- general guidelines that define what they are and most of the time those work but if someone objects that is part of the process, to define was what X said on talk page Y a personal attack or not? If anything I would think that sexist attacks would be easier to quantify than personal attacks which we already have a template for. BTW, I know next to nothing about these kinds of warnings but I did a bit of searching this am and I think this is what I'm essentially talking about: Wikipedia:Template_messages/User_talk_namespace#Behavior_towards_editors The more I think about it the more I think adding a template specifically for sexist attacks to this list seems like a very rational thing to do as part of the response if we are serious about actually fighting sexism on Wikipedia. I agree with SlimVirgin, it isn't a fair requirement to prove ahead of time that sexist language is a major reason that women editors leave since we don't have that kind of data at this point and it is better to do something than wait another year or two until we have better data on the causes for women editors to leave. In any case, it seems like a rather rational hypothesis and, I think Sarah said this as well, its one of those things that its hard to see a down side in. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 19:59, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't see the point of a specific template for sexist attacks. If you believe that the comment is uncivil, does it really matter if it is sexist or not? Put a general incivility warning on the user's talk page, or take them to ANI. I think this has the potential to backfire, and in a truly spectacular way. For example, at a recent ARCA, one of the arbs pointed out as a "sexist comment" that someone else had mentioned a user being "wound up" and calling an action "cute". I don't consider those comments sexist in the least. Egregious examples should be addressed, and there's no need to make a separate template for it. There is a large range below that where there is legitimate disagreement on whether its uncivil or sexist. Karanacs (talk) 20:12, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Misuse of templates is an inherent problem with all templates, but that isn't a good argument to scratch 'em. Also, anyone who feels there is no need for a sexist incivility template is free not to use it. Clearly only those who think it is useful will use it anyway, so that doesn't seem a good argument against it either. Do we need formal permission to make such a template or can someone just go ahead and make it? --BoboMeowCat (talk) 20:20, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

You need to get community consensus for a new template or it will be brought to MFD. Karanacs (talk) 20:25, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

MadScientistX11, just to be clear, I said that sexist language is damaging, not that I'd support a new template. Templates tend to get people riled. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 20:18, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Avoiding just riling people seems legitimate concern. If such a template is ever made, it should definitely not be worded with accusatory text such as: "STOP! being a sexist jerk!" or anything like that, rather such a template should probably leave open the possibility of misunderstanding and simply request that the person consider that their statements might be taken as sexist incivility and to please review general civility policy.--BoboMeowCat (talk) 20:49, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

• A sample policy: "Staff, volunteers and service users will avoid and challenge the use of language which, in any way, belittles;
  

i) disabled groups and/or individuals with special needs

ii) any race, culture or religion

iii) a person's sexual orientation

iv) women and/or men."

• Things not to say: Bad sexism comebacks
• Possibly (though not necessarily) better sexism comebacks --Djembayz (talk) 22:33, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

MadScientistX11: we do indeed have templates for personal attacks, and we already have drama around that issue. Imposing a "zero tolerance" rule will only exacerbate that, as the consequences would be more significant than simply getting a template - but even getting a template will provoke disagreement. I doubt very much that it will be easier to agree on what is "sexist" than what is a "personal attack", based on the comments that some elsewhere have defined as being so - comments that I, as a woman, would never have so identified (as per Karanacs). It is very easy to see downsides in this proposal, whatever its merits may be. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:41, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree. As an example, I was once asked (where the editor knew I was a woman) when I used the term "we" just who I thought I was anyway, the Queen of England? Would this be considered sexist or not? Gandydancer (talk) 01:06, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I can see why you might think so but as a Brit, I think it refers to the royal we, maybe snarky but not sexist. That's the problem, context and understanding. J3Mrs (talk) 18:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, I'm not convinced but its clear that the consensus is going against me and frankly I hate doing stuff like this anyway so I'll just drop it. This is one of the things I find so discouraging about groups like this. So many people seem more focused on poking holes in ideas rather than in actually coming up with... and more importantly actually implementing them. So there ends up being lots and lots of talk with relatively nothing substantive actually getting done. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 20:03, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been off-line the last few days taking care of a sick dog. However, a glance at the resulting posts above seems to indicate that there is no evidence that sexist incivility happens any more than any other type of incivility, nor is there any evidence that sexist incivility drives female editors of the site than any other type of incivility. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 04:55, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Women as "information-storage devices"

Nathaniel Tkacz, in his Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness, University of Chicago Press, 2015, writes that women are arguably viewed by Wikipedia as "information-storage devices whose inclusion is desired in order to increase the resource base of the project. Women add to the pool – the market? – of available information" (p. 12).

The argument is that women are viewed as essential only because they are information carriers, not because gender equality is an end in itself.

I've only started reading this, so I don't know where he takes the argument. I think it's a little unfair on some of the people who have pushed to close the gender gap, who I believe do view gender equality as an end in itself. Even so it's a point that has concerned me for a long time. It's clear that attracting more women is good for Wikipedia, and for women in general because of the spread of the female perspective. But is it good for the women – the individual "information-storage devices" – who are encouraged to edit? I'm not at all sure that it is, especially given the current culture. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 19:50, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, to what extent have we tried to attract any editors with the suggestion that they themselves will benefit from it?

Peter ^Isotalo 20:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Peter, it's implicit: come and join us, it's fun, you'll love it, you'll be part of this important thing. I think presentation of the gender gap has been difficult for the Foundation. On the one hand, they want to stress how few women there are so that others are encouraged, but they don't want to acknowledge how sexist it can be in case that does the opposite. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 21:10, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Sarah, maybe I'm out of touch, but my perception is that the implicitness of Wikipedia as personal enjoyment is lacking. I mean, how exactly are we informing people about the joys of editing?

Overall, I'd say that Gardner is correct in the sense that it's a logical conclusion of WP:NOT. But being called up as a "storage device" doesn't make it particularly exciting. I agree that it's too diplomatic.

Peter ^Isotalo 16:34, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't think gender equality should be a goal in itself. In fact, nothing about the makeup of editors should be an end in itself. If, for example, we only had one good and highly prolific editor, that could somehow singlehandedly write and maintain all the articles the encyclopedia needed, that would be fine, though by definition that editor could not personally embody multiple genders, races, classes, nationalities or whatnot. Don't forget, we're not here to be editors for the sake of chatting with other editors, having fun editing, politicking, diplomacying, and adminning. We're here to write an encyclopedia. It just so happens that we are merely human, so it is quite useful to represent different genders, races, classes, nationalities and whatnot, and making editing more fun and less painful for everyone is also helpful ... but that's not an end in itself. It's just a means. The end is writing the world's best free encyclopedia. --GRuban (talk) 20:58, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

That's the technocrat's view on under-representation, though. If we extended that to it's logical conclusion, we should also ban everything from quirky userboxes to barnstars. I mean, we're here to write articles, not to enjoy ourselves, right?

Peter ^Isotalo 21:05, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

"Ban"? Where did I say "ban"? There is nothing wrong with enjoying ourselves, it just should not be our primary goal. But yes, in numerous cases, people who do not write an encyclopedia but solely hand out barnstars, make userboxes, and such, do get blocked and/or banned. It's called Wikipedia:Here to build an encyclopedia, and you will see it as a block reason every month on WP:ANI, if not every week. --GRuban (talk) 21:28, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Of course women are "information-storage devices", but they are much more, they are human beings. Of course our purpose here is to build an encyclopedia, but as in everything we do we must first aspire to be civilized human beings. Would I rather build an encyclopedia or be a civilized human being? The latter, of course. Can we build an encyclopedia without being civilized human beings? - only a very limited one. I see no contradiction in aspiring to be first a civilized human being and then a Wikipedian.

The key to being both a civilized human being and a Wikipedian is respect for our fellow human beings. Those who use Wikipedia as a medium of disrespect, who bully fellow editors, who try to exclude people based on gender, race, religion, nationality, or whatever other aspect of humanity they might choose are undermining us all, as well as undermining the encyclopedia.

I can get very upset when I see people doing this openly. Please excuse me if I get carried away at times, but as long as I'm around this project, bullies will be dealt with firmly.

If women feel they are being used solely as "information-storage devices", it's time to create a fork where every editor will be respected. The editors of the new encyclopedia will be better off for it, and, I suspect that in the long run, Wikipedia will be better off as well. I personally don't think we've reached that point yet, but it's getting close. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:34, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it can be painful to come up against total rejection of the standard anti-harassment measures adopted by real-life organizations, and wonder if women are simply being used for public relations purposes and "building the brand". There's plenty of money for public relations and programmers, but volunteers are supposed to devise an anti-harassment function all on their own, and make it stick, against organized efforts by trolls both on and offsite. And if "the community" fails to police itself, well that's "the community's" fault. There comes a point where you feel like you are being cynically exploited by people who came in to your movement, took control of all the money and lawyers, and who really know better. --Djembayz (talk) 18:07, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that completely misses the point. 90%+ of the information we use to create articles comes from other sources, not our own expertise. The knowledge is more procedural. And (the identified parts of) the content problem are that we don't have as many articles (even pro-rata), or such long articles, or the same level of integration on "female" subjects as on "male" subjects. If we lost some large percentage of male editors (and their contributions) this would no longer be the case. These issues can all be resolved (once identified) without recruiting more female editors. However recruiting more female editors would tend to fix this "automatically", as well as any unidentified parts of the problem. It is not that we want "women's knowledge" in a addition to "men's knowledge" but that we want to add more of the "women's viewpoint" which results in a different set of editing preferences. (It would also probably strengthen "mixed" content, to a lesser degree, and "male" content to still smaller degree.)
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:18, 20 February 2015 (UTC).

Discussion notice

There is a redirect discussion that may be of interest to this group. Lightbreather (talk) 15:45, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Yvonne Sintes

Jodi Schneider has asked for help on the GG mailing list with Draft:Yvonne Sintes, an article about the first female air traffic controller and commercial airline captain in the UK, in case anyone here is interested. Jodi would like help especially with a timeline of Sintes's family-life and career, and suggested Sintes's autobiography, Trailblazer in Flight, as a source. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 20:38, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Curvy and buxom

Could someone take a look at the actions taken as a result of this non-discussion? Back in 2012, User:Hydroxonium removed redirects from curvy and buxom to Female body shape and replaced them with soft links to Wiktionary instead. I've just now reversed this.[7][8] Could the members of this project review the above? Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 07:36, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I would be very careful about redirects of this kind. Female body shape is much more complex than individual adjectives like "curvy" or "buxom". Redirecting them to a specific article like that is very subjective. They could be redirected at any number of articles, including topics that have nothing to do with the body of the human female.

Go for the safe and boring option here: soft redirects to Wiktionary across the board.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:27, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I guess I just don't agree. They were originally redirects which were then changed without any discussion from outside editors. I restored the redirects when I found I could no longer visit the parent topic which discusses these two types. A soft redirect should be avoided. Viriditas (talk) 09:34, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't believe the procedural history is relevant here. What's your argument for redirecting straight adjectives to specific articles in the first place?

Peter ^Isotalo 09:41, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The procedural history is directly relevant, as it demonstrates a common, primarily understanding of the term prior to the link to Wiktionary. How are these terms subjective? Please read the article on female body type. They refer only to that article. What else could they refer to here? Examples, please. Viriditas (talk) 09:44, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Procedural history counts for bupkus, especially if the Wiktionary link was left alone without complaint for several years.

Alternative suggestions for "buxom" are breast, breast augmentation, secondary sex characteristic, bust/waist/hip measurements, waist–hip ratio and any number of chesty celebrities. Same list for "curvy" except for the breast article. And look at voluptuous, it was a redirect to Big Beautiful Woman for crying out loud.

And it's not just that this is fairly subjective. This is clearly well-meaning, but it also has a bad aftertaste of normative description. Not neutral. To me, these terms are dictionary entries, not search term entries to encyclopedic topics.

Peter ^Isotalo 10:08, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Vandalism is often hidden for years at a time deep inside the body of an article until someone finally comes across it and removes it. I've removed vandalism that was "left alone without complaint for several years" many times. So, your "squeaky wheel" argument doesn't hold true. The redirect was altered without notice and without discussion. I merely reverted back to the original as I couldn't find the article when I typed in the two terms. I think that counts for quite a bit as 1) the original creator of the redirect was trying to target the most likely article, and 2) I came to the same conclusion several years later. Where I come from, that's called a consensus by agreement. In any case, let's address your alternative examples. All of the examples you give for "buxom" are already covered in the female body shape article, particularly in the section "Alteration of body shape" and the rest of those links are found throughout the article. So the best solution is to redirect buxom to female body shape to gain access to all of the topics rather than just one. More to the point, the sources describe "buxom" as an "inverted triangle" female body type, so again, the redirect is appropriate. "Curvy" refers to the hourglass female body type, so the redirect is entirely appropriate. I don't think we are going to agree on this, so I would appreciate it if we wait for further input. Viriditas (talk) 10:33, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, more input would be most welcome. Let's acknowledge WP:NOTABUREAUCRACY, though. None of us have committed any procedural sins. We're disagreemeeing about how to redirect in these cases.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:19, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The encyclopedia and its readers are far better served by links to Wiktionary. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I agreed with TRPoD and Peter that these adjectives should redirect to Wiktionary, not to articles on Wikipedia. "Curvy" does not necessarily mean "hourglass shape"; it could also mean "pear-shaped" or "bottom-heavy" or "voluptuous" or "too heavy". Similarly, "buxom" may also mean "top-heavy" or "large-breasted' whereas the "inverted triangle" refers to the size of the shoulders compared to the hips. Because there is some ambiguity, it makes more sense to redirect to a definition page that can include all the possibilities instead of redirecting to just one possibility. Ca2james (talk) 21:39, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

(although, Curvy really should go to Curve. )-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:49, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

In accordance with Wikipedia's guidance on what should be linked, as these words are not technical terms, jargon, expressions, or phrases, I don't see a need to link them to anything. Following Wikipedia's guidance on what should not be linked, these aren't unusual words, and thus I don't see a need to link to a dictionary definition. isaacl (talk) 21:57, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

If anyone cares what I think, I think directing "curvy" to Wiktionary is appropriate, though I think using curvy to describe women in encyclopedic articles should probably be limited. Lightbreather (talk) 01:14, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

@Lightbreather: I'm willing to be edumacated on the subject. Could you briefly explain why the Wiktionary soft redirect is more appropriate than the redirect to female body type, when "curvy" predominantly refers to the hourglass female body type in the literature, which is the relevant subtopic in that article? Viriditas (talk) 01:30, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, I'm not going to say I speak for all women. Also, I'm not going to comment on the "non-discussion" up top (from five years ago).

Let's say you had an article that said, "John Doe's build was angular." Should there be an "Angular" article? Are all men essentially "angular"? Should there be a "Male body shape" article? And if there is, should an article that says, "Harry Doe's build was soft" also redirect to the "Male body shape" article?

I've know some women with very hard-muscular-angular "shapes," and some men with very soft-smooth-curvy "shapes." It's just ridiculous, IMO, that's all. That we should put so much effort into describing how women look, but not into how men look. It says a lot about what we think is important - or unimportant - when it comes to being a woman as opposed to what we think is important when it comes to being a man. Can't remember where I heard it, a long time ago, but we look on women as ornaments and men as instruments. For women, it's how she looks, for men it's what he can do. Lightbreather (talk) 01:52, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Lightbreather. The Drover's Wife has informed me that men are not welcome here, so this will be my last edit. I'm not really following your comments up above (and no, it's not because I'm a man). The "female body shape" article includes reliable sources, including studies, of the female body shape. "Curvy" refers to the "hourglass" shape discussed in this article, which is why the redirect is appropriate. Others up above have mentioned that this is ambiguous, but I really don't see it. I only came here because I discovered that "curvy" and "buxom" no longer redirected the correct topic and had been changed without discussion to links to Wiktionary. That's about as far as my interest goes on this topic. I think the arguments for keeping Wiktionary soft redirects miss the entire point about helping our readers find the correct article, which in this case is female body shape. This has little to nothing to do with men. Viriditas (talk) 02:04, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

First, I don't think that's what The Drover's Wife said. Here's my spiel that I've started sharing in all these discussions when people start getting defensive:

I think a lot of the resentment on WP is a result of defensiveness. Most of the guys on WP are probably fine men, and among those fine men such sexism as might happen is unintentional. However, because of the defensiveness, it's hard to address. One thing I've heard a lot as an editor is "grow a thick skin," but when it comes to discussing sexism, even unintentional, systemic stuff, suddenly a lot of otherwise rational men become hypersensitive - as if they are being personally attacked.

Just as women have been asked not to be so thin-skinned when language offends them on-wiki, maybe men need to follow their own advice and not be so defensive about language that offends them on-wiki: not take every remark about sexism as a personal attack.

As for the non-discussion - it was from 2010, and the editor waited 10 days before acting on his proposal. I think many editors have made similar edits. Start a discussion, but if there is no response, go ahead and make the change if it improves the encyclopedia. I think that editor made the right move redirecting to Wiktionary, and some of the editors in the discussion above agree. I don't know what else to say about this besides that. Lightbreather (talk) 16:52, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Image bias

From waist-hip ratio

From Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2000.

I was checking out waist-hip ratio because of the thread above, and came across the image to the right. The slim example is of a SuicideGirls model. The other is some random user-generated image with the description "Front-On View of an Obese Man".

This is a very obvious example of gender stereotypes expressed through images. I've seen this before in articles that relate to body shape, clothing and similar topics. Look at this edit that I made to bikini. The initial choice for a bikini illustration was professional model Michele Merkin posing for a glamor pic. Extremely stereotypical.

This type of visual objectification has a tendency to creep into articles that have absolutely nothing to do with the female body. Someone seriously thought that this was a suitable illustration of laptop usage (my alternative). And here's a somewhat similar example that I switched out[9] in chair. Not as obvious as the laptop pic, but still a very odd choice for a neutral illustration of how a chair is used.

Has this issue been discussed before? Any thoughts about strategies for identifying and improving illustrations that reflect gender stereotypes or outright sexism?

Peter ^Isotalo 10:50, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

It's an interesting question, Peter, how to deal with this systematically because it's everywhere – inappropriate use of sex, women's bodies, certain types of bodies, images from pornography instead of ordinary photographs or medical images. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 16:55, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

If it's related... there's been a user trying to add Suicide Girls images to articles. Not sure if this might have been the result of the same thing. Regardless, this image should be changed. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 17:16, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Er ... changed to what? I am not specifically bound to either of these pics, but there is a lot to be said for one image of a male and one image of a female, as well as one image with the ratio noticeably greater than 1, and one with the ratio noticeably less than 1. --GRuban (talk) 19:00, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

It's a male gaze image from a pornography website. If we want to show a typical woman's waist size, we should first find out what that is, then look for a photograph of that size. And there's no need for skimpy underwear to illustrate a waist. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 19:12, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Sarah is absolutely right; 100% male gaze. The idea of juxtaposing a smaller figure with a larger one isn't all bad, but the execution just isn't right.

Peter ^Isotalo 19:56, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Black and white line-drawn illustrations could be a solution. The first thing that I thought of was the Pioneer plaque.Dialectric (talk) 21:59, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The second image above would be better than what's there at the moment. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 22:03, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

No offence, but the second image above does not actually show a waist-hip ratio. --GRuban (talk) 01:36, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Female body shape

I've just noticed that we have an article on Female body shape (created in 2006 as Voluptuous), but Male body shape redirects to Body shape. Male is the default once again. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 23:32, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Well one could argue too that the male's body shape is nothing special really, then again I don't think on it too much. The main difference is the curves which woman have to help childbirth. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:39, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

@Knowledgekid87: That's what I mean about male being the default. The female body is the norm for me (as you say, for me it's "nothing special"). The male body is the norm for you. But male shouldn't be the norm (the default, the Self), for Wikipedia, because that means Wikipedia is saying female is the Other. The othering of women is the essence of sexism. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 00:53, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Well I have no objection if someone wants to make an article on it. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:55, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that Female body shape article, with no corresponding Male body shape article this morning after reading the Curvy and buxom discussion started above. And you're right, SV: male is the default once again. Lightbreather (talk) 01:07, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

So rather than pointing it out make the article, nothing is stopping anyone from doing this. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:08, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

What's kinda aggravating though is why anyone should have to stop editing what they'd prefer to be editing to go create something to parallel an article that should probably never have been created in the first place. (It should have just been a part of the existing Body shape article.) Lightbreather (talk) 01:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

That's one way to look at it, an article should be redirected because one is about a female and there is no male counterpart that exists. Rather than having all or nothing though wouldn't it be better to have both? Having both gives the reader more of an in depth look at the subject. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:27, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, there you go. Maybe you should go and create a Male body shape article. Lightbreather (talk) 01:55, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Im a guy, and would want to but don't know about it enough from the medical point of view. If it is brought up though the nI feel someone should make the other article and rather than just saying "Hmm" maybe you can look for someone at the medical wiki-project to help out. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 02:18, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

(ec) KK, the sofixit response is problematic. Sexist titles (or anything that implies male is the default) shouldn't be created in the first place. When women point these things out, we're told to fix them. But there are only 10 percent of us, and only a small percentage of that 10 percent work on GG issues. If we have to fix everything, there won't be any time left for us to be normal Wikipedians, which is why we're here. So the sexism hits us from every direction. We see it while editing, we have to explain why it's sexist, we may have to explain what sexism is, we're expected to fix it, and that means we don't get to be regular editors like everyone else. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 02:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

You are the one who brought it up though, it shouldn't matter if you are female, male, bisexual, pansexual, ect. One way to look at it if you want to go by sexes is that you are creating an article from a female's point of view. You would be writing about the guys rather than the guys writing about the girls. In the end the focus should be about improving Wikipedia and I am sure the two articles can be balanced. if you don't want to write it than no problem, just ask a wiki-project. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 02:36, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

KK, can you see the essential point, though? Imagine a situation in which, instead of sexist content and titles, we had anti-black racist content and titles, and a very small percentage of black editors pointing it out, asking for change and help. Imagine that the response from white editors was to ridicule them and argue that it's not really racist (the complainants should stop being so "thin-skinned"), or to say: okay, sofixit.

The black editors would have to spend their whole time on WP either trying not to notice or mind the racism, or doing nothing but correct it themselves, sometimes to great opposition. That would be a horrible situation, wouldn't it? That would be a project that would have no support. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 02:51, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It drives me nuts to see male be the default - and it also drives me nuts to be told to just fix it. Being told to fix it is unhelpful. A problem has been identified and by saying "sofixit", you're basically dismissing the concern as unworthy of your time. And honestly, that's frustrating. Knowledgekid87, I understand that you may not agree that it matters to not have male as the default, and that's fine, but it would be more helpful and supportive here if you didn't dismiss the valid concerns of other editors. Ca2james (talk) 03:01, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm coming to this section via this note at WP:Anatomy. I don't think that the Male body shape link redirecting to the Body shape article has anything to do with males being the default; I think it has to do with the fact that much more has been written about female body shape than about male body shape. Really, this is shown in the literature on body shape. Ideally, we should only create WP:Spinouts when needed. Not every sex/gender topic needs to have corresponding male and female/man and woman articles. I've got nothing more to state on this matter at this talk page or the WP:Anatomy talk page since I'm not interested in debating the political aspects of it. Flyer22 (talk) 03:05, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Much more has been written about it because of objectification and male gaze. But if we're not gonna make a male body shape, at least rename the page to "female body in art" or something so that the it's not quite as othering. Can also add sections about objectification and male gaze. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:28, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

@Ca2james: Why do you assume that it is unworthy of people's time? Without a second thought you just connected that anyone who asks another editor to help out means the one who is asking is lazy which is a problem. I am saying if you want an article make it, I know little on the subject but do know that sitting around here talking about it isn't going to accomplish anything. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:09, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I didn't say that it was unworthy of all people's time; I said that when someone says "sofixit", it cones across to me like they're dismissing it as unworthy of their time. Or at least that's what I meant to say, and I apologize if I wasn't clear. Ca2james (talk) 03:15, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

That's not true though for all people as you said, I know if you want something done sometimes you have to do it yourself its how life is in my opinion. You want change? then take the step in the right direction, it wont be easy at times but small things like these will eventually add up. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:17, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Article expansion/merger

Found some titles relating to male bodies from a social and cultural perspective:

• Susan Bordo The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private
• Jonathan Watson, Male Bodies: Health, Culture and Identity[10] (full text PDF!)
• Emmanuel Cooper, Male Bodies : A Photographic History of the Nude
• Santiago Fouz-Hernández (editor), Mysterious Skin: Male Bodies in Contemporary Cinema
  

Peter ^Isotalo 02:37, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Getting ready to go out for the evening. Just wanted to slip this in here. Have only had a chance to scan it - it's from 1978 - but what the heck:

• Montemayor, Raymond (1978). "Men and Their Bodies: The Relationship Between Body Type and Behaviors" (PDF). Journal of Social Issues. 34 (1). Retrieved February 17, 2015.

--Lightbreather (talk) 22:57, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, there's plenty of good content in female body shape that ought to be present in body shape. Anyone have suggestions on how to go about merging content?

Peter ^Isotalo 02:58, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I commented in the #Female body shape section above; if merging goes on, then I hope it is justified and is not simply a means of making the female body shape and male body shape topics equal. They don't have the same WP:Weight. Flyer22 (talk) 03:05, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

This shouldn't even be an issue they are about two different sexes. We should be writing to inform not compare and contrast. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:10, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

No, but we should definitely write more based on comparative research. There tons of feminist scholarship that is specifically about differences in perception of female and male bodies.

Peter ^Isotalo 03:33, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

We could create a draft article at Draft:Human body shape and start working on one merged article by moving content over from both. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 03:20, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like a good neutral approach, great idea =) - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:23, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

And that type of merging is exactly what I meant by my "03:05, 18 February 2015 (UTC)" comment above. Female body shape is a WP:Notable topic in its own right and should have its own Wikipedia article. Male body shape? No so much, which is exactly why it is yet to have a Wikipedia article. If the topics were merged with appropriate WP:Due weight, then the article would be predominantly about female body shape in the same way that the Sexism article is predominantly about women. But to merge the articles and give them the same WP:Weight? That is not appropriate. I'm done with this discussion. I'm taking the Female body shape article off my WP:Watchlist, and I will not be looking at it again; this is all so that I don't have to witness this unjustified merging. Flyer22 (talk) 03:31, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Just don't kick this can down the road, if you see other articles bring them up here okay? Maybe there are people here who can help out more who know more on the subject. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:24, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Added[11] to the GGTF open tasks.

Peter ^Isotalo 03:31, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up SlimVirgin. It is indeed quite sexist that the study of anatomy considers the male body to the the protootypical model and the female to be the male with some variations. That said I think creating a male body shape article is my preferred option, as I think both articles have enough content to justify a spinout - ie differences in anatomy, shape, structure, social perceptions, depiction in the arts, influence of identity, and history of beliefs about the body shapes over time. --Tom (LT) (talk) 08:25, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Where does this end? Doesn't this open us up to pretty daft ideas such as merging Female genital mutilation with Circumcision? This stuff is not being thought through and alleged sexism is being placed ahead of many of our policies. The correlation between sexism and a gender gap hasn't even been proven, yet we are making these syntheses about things that quite possibly have only a very limited relationship.This group seems to be losing whatever path it once had. - Sitush (talk) 08:25, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Si has a point. I don't think merging is the way to go. Making Male body shape into a separate article would be better. There are issues that are specific to male shape, ("the ideal V shape", for example), issues specific to female shape, and issues common to both. In general it is not a good idea to try to cure the gender gap, or any other systemic bias issues, by removing information - either text or articles - from the encyclopedia. Almost always the answer is to add more in the less represented areas. --GRuban (talk) 16:42, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

We're kinda talking in absolute black/white terms here. There's plenty of content from female body shape that can be moved to or summarized in body shape, which is clearly under-developed and completely devoid of cultural history. It doesn't require a full merger, but simply ignoring the "main" article in a case like this is a bad idea. It's the typical over-specialization solution where everyone wants to work on the niches rather than tackling the more general topic.

And like I pointed out above, no one has even bothered to look for comparative research about the difference in perception of female and male bodies. Which obviously also includes ideas about body shape.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:00, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

So add a Male body shape, and edit Female body shape and Body shape? I would help you with that, PI - well, a little bit, anyway. Lightbreather (talk) 17:04, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I could use some suggestions for good sources, especially the comparative feminist stuff. Female body shape is pretty well-developed, though. Is there anything in particular that needs fixing?

Peter ^Isotalo 21:51, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Peter, I only glanced at it yesterday, but one thing that jumped out was the promotion of Barbie: "The perceptions of ideal feminine measurements change over time, and currently, the American garment industry standards of beauty are size 4 hips, size 2 waist, and size 10 bust.[19] In this age of social media, women are encouraged to obtain these measurement by any means necessary."

This is sourced to some log-in page. I didn't have time to deal with it yesterday, and still don't at the moment. I would suggest removing those two sentences, as it's not clear why we would care what the American garment industry thinks, assuming an RS could be found, or how we would know that (as though everyone making clothes in the US would agree). Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 22:17, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that was not right. Removed all of it. Even if a source is behind a paywall or something like it, you have to specify it. And the claim was way too broad to begin with.

If we get into any more specific article content, we should take it up at talk:female body shape. It's on my watchlist, so if anyone raises any concerns, I'll see it and try to fix problems.

Peter ^Isotalo 22:35, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I would probably prefer adding a Male body shape article over merging Female body shape into something else (though I think the Female body shape article probably needs some attention). Years ago I had a boyfriend who was sorta into Bodybuilding, but I see that article doesn't even cover the "three body types" as they're called (for men and women) - ectomorph, mesomorph or endomorph - though it does touch on Body dysmorphic disorder, which my oldest son struggled with a little when he was a gangly teen. Lightbreather (talk) 17:01, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Tom, it's nice to see your name on this page. I was thinking of merging them into one with male and female sections, but if you and others prefer to have separate articles, that's fine. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 22:10, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

There are enough sources to support 3 related but independent articles. They don't have to be equivalent in size. Peter has provided some sources above which should get Male Body Shape going and establish it as a notable and separate topic.Dialectric (talk) 22:31, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

There's gotta be a ton in anthropology and historic literature about male body and art. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:32, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

“I Love to You” edit-a-thon

"Feminists aim to fix the Wikipedia gender gap", The Daily W, 16 February 2015, posted by Carolmooredc to the GG mailing list, about an edit-a-thon organized by Amanda. Interesting point by Monika, co-organizer, which feeds into some of the discussion on this page: "I find that it’s really ethically hard for me to actually ask someone to volunteer their time to learn a set of rules that they may not have had any role in developing in the first place." Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 16:52, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand that comment. ANY newcomer to ANY site/project/etc is going to be asked to learn rules they didn't have any input in developing. Karanacs (talk) 17:26, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that remark was a little obscure. Perhaps it's a tactful and diplomatic way to allude to "getting caught up in learning a body of rules that is so large and complicated you never notice that very crucial and interesting redlink, until it is too late: Wikipedia:Sexual harassment policy." --Djembayz (talk) 21:05, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The whole quote and context is: "Sengul-Jones said a normal Wikipedia edit-a-thon would have more editing and less discussion. But she says that simply enlisting women to edit isn’t the solution. For real change to occur, there must be discussion.

'I find that it’s really ethically hard for me to actually ask someone to volunteer their time to learn a set of rules that they may not have had any role in developing in the first place,' Sengul-Jones said. “I think that attitude puts the burden of responsibility on them.'"

And later: "'I wanted to organize a public event that would invite conversation and critical engagement with Wikipedia and with different forms of media,' Sengul-Jones said. 'Just simply having a conversation is really valuable and important.'" Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 21:41, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm pinging Monika (sorry, I meant to do that earlier) in case she'd like to add something. I know she has written elsewhere about the issue of encouraging volunteers (free labour) to create and shape information sources. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 23:16, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Quick note: Monika has asked the The Daily reporter to update the article with a few corrections (e.g., we started at 9:30am, some quotes were misquoted, etc.). It's really difficult to capture several weeks of planning, four presentations, and four hours of conversation and activities in a brief article. Also, please consider that we were speaking to a particular audience in a particular context.--Mssemantics (talk) 23:42, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Amanda. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 01:01, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I stopped reading at "For example, there isn’t a page for Latina or Chicana, Menking said. Instead, Wikipedia redirects to the masculine versions of these terms, Latino or Chicano." as absurd. I don't know how this would be fixable without breaking WP:NPOV do we place "Latio" or Latina" first in the title? Is there a neutral word for that group of people? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:49, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Amanda, did you really tell the journalist that we lack a feminine "page" for Latino?

Peter ^Isotalo 00:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I can understand the thought behind it, but it is a poor example to use. Here is a diagram on what usage in books has: [12]. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:45, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Latino/a is also used. See The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 01:01, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

We could use that but since so few sources use the term we would have to add a footnote. Would the change just be for the title or usage in the entire article? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:04, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't know. This is the first time I've encountered that term (Latino/a). Maybe looking around on Google Books would help us to work out how common it is. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 02:15, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Speaking from a linguistic perspective, it seems unlikely that it'll be anything near as common as "Latino". WP:COMMONNAME will most likely put a stop to any attempt to change titles like these. Words borrowed from genedered languages into non-gendered languages (grammatically speaking) will usually lead to situations like this.

Peter ^Isotalo 03:02, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Using "American women" as a pattern, where the feminine form becomes History of women in the United States the feminine pages would be Chicana and Chicanas redirecting to History of Mexican American women, and Latina and Latinas redirecting to History of Hispanic and Latina women. Both would be excellent topics for the Wikipedia Education Program. --Djembayz (talk) 03:35, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I can immediately anticipate the next GG mailing list post. "As another evidence of Wikipedia's sexism, while the Chicano Wikipedia article describes both male and female Mexican-Americans, the Chicana Wikipedia article is only about females. Again, the male term is seen as the default!" --GRuban (talk) 16:29, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, good point. My experience with Spanish usage might not work for everybody. Input from the folks who specialize in the transition from gendered languages to English could be helpful here, as they have no doubt discussed all this at great length already. Anyone know where to find these discussions? --Djembayz (talk) 00:49, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

When I went back to college, my related studies was Chicana/o studies. If we are talking about culture, music, life - these are all "feminine" nouns in Spanish: la cultura, la musica, la vida, and that is reflected on the Spanish Wikipedia, where they have articles Cultura latina, Cultura de América Latina. (Oddly, "art" is masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural: el arte, las artes.) Lightbreather (talk) 18:14, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

On a related note, since we're part of the CSB project, I have curtailed my use of the words "America" and "American," as that marginalizes other inhabitants of the Americas. This was brought to my attention years ago by a woman I knew who traveled throughout the continent. Lightbreather (talk) 18:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I want to add, are we striving to be an encyclopedia that gores on what a majority of reliable sources say, or are we trying to be a barrier breaker and go with the minority viewpoints? Sadly there is a line, where do you want to define it? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 19:54, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Gores? Was that a reply to my comment about America and Americans? I'm only saying what I do, not telling others what to do. (It wasn't something I'd ever considered before my friend told me.) Lightbreather (talk) 20:09, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Im just saying in general is all. I just feel here that some of the things that may seem off-putting to woman on Wikipedia are what the culture has been accustomed to. Other things that may seem off-putting to woman may be perfectly fine for other woman. As I guy I cant stand sports but some guys love it and it has been a kind of stereotype. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:20, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

As a male Wikipedian, I'd be more careful about sharing any wisdoms about what women do or don't like here.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:06, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

In this case, KnowledgeKid87 is simply echoing statements that have been made by multiple women on these pages. Perfectly appropriate. Karanacs (talk) 21:16, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Lightbreather and Djembayz made general comments about language use. And all of a sudden we're discussing people taking offense and hinting at breeches of WP:UNDUE. A tad alarmist if you ask me.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:25, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

You are overthinking things here. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:59, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

There were insanely long discussions (well as I remember it) years ago about the use of the word "American" on Wikipedia. I expect I stopped following, but the consensus over several different discussions is that in these sorts of things Wikipedia broadly uses words in the way they are expected, and does not indulge in novel spelling schemes, calendars, measurements or vocabularies. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC).

One thought

As a long-time woman editor on Wikipedia, I had no idea any aspect of the CSB project was still alive and kicking, and I was relieved to see that this page was still active. But I was unsurprised to see that one of - probably the most - active contributors to this talk page is, of course, a man. One of the reasons Wikipedia will never, ever counter the gender bias in its editor base (and in turn in its article base) is that if you try to create spaces where women's needs are centred to address these issues, men have a tendency to a) not step back, b) get extremely angry about it. Like, this is not even "you shouldn't contribute here at all" but "you should be mindful of not dominating the space and being the most active contributor to the whole page". And so the cycle continues forever. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:50, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

You might want to check out User:Lightbreather/Kaffeeklatsch.

Peter ^Isotalo 01:12, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

@The Drover's Wife: According to the page history statistics, the most active contributors to this talk page are women, not men.[13] Viriditas (talk) 01:25, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Is there a way to run that starting at a certain date? Like, say, since 1 December 2014? Lightbreather (talk) 01:31, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

It's interesting to scroll down to the Top editors list and sort it by the far, right-hand column: Added (bytes). Lightbreather (talk) 01:35, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

In that case, yes, a man (Salvio giuliano) has been the most loquacious. Viriditas (talk) 01:37, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Seriously, look at this page. You've got a page that is supposed to be tackling Wikipedia's gender gap, and it is itself illustrating the gender gap when even on a discussion about fixing the gender gap the opinions of men are everywhere. As a woman who is wary of jumping into a pit of vipers, seeing a page like this and the sheer amount of men-contributing (and not in a centering-the-opinions-of-women-kind-of-way) is extremely off-putting; like, if men can't step back here, god help the chances of doing it anywhere more broadly. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:42, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm a man who writes about women and related topics and I have done so for a decade. I've also made what, 12 edits to this page? I have a mother and a sister, and strangely enough, we're all human and share similar concerns. I don't think I should have to stand back. Viriditas (talk) 01:46, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

All of the nine out of ten men on Wikipedia who form the gender gap had mothers, and many of them have sisters, but that mere fact hasn't remotely avoided the current situation. I'm certainly not saying you're a bad person and I'm certainly not saying your contributions are irrelevant, but that if male editors can't realise that a page addressing the lack of women on Wikipedia needs to focus on and centre women's needs/opinions/contributions we have a problem. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:52, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

That's precisely my point. We have more in common, but you focus only on differences. Any argument that begins "If X editors" should be discarded. Problems require solutions from both sides, not just one. I've worked pretty hard creating, expanding, and improving articles about women, so I think you are misguided. If you took a moment to put your anger aside and truly thought about the problem you describe, you would discover that it requires the active participation of men to solve it. I have really little interest in discussing this here. I came here to mention that I found two redirects that had been changed without discussion when I tried to find the parent topic. My initial comment spawned another thread altogether, focusing on issues relevant to this page, so I believe I have made a good contribution to countering systemic bias. You are welcome to your opinion, and I am welcome to disagree with it. Good bye. Viriditas (talk) 01:57, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

We have more in common, but you focus only on differences. And yet, today, we spent the day talking about why there's an article Female body shape, and whether or not "curvy" or "buxom" should redirect there. And is there a Male body shape article? Why is Wikipedia focused on that difference? That females have a "body shape" but apparently, males don't. Lightbreather (talk) 02:07, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm no longer participating on this subject. You are welcome to create an article on male body shape, but that has nothing to do with the concerns I raised on this page, as I did not address that topic. I think it's great that someone might create an article on that subject now that I raised the initial issue about female body shape, but you're distracting from the points I came here to make. Since males aren't known for their "curves" and can't be "buxom", your point doesn't make sense. Viriditas (talk) 02:12, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

It has everything to do with the discussion: it structures Wikipedia's coverage of body shape in a way that completely centres men, which in turn feeds back into the gender gap. When someone points out that you're having trouble recognising that because you have a different, and on Wikipedia drastically overrepresented, experience, your response isn't to listen - it's to get annoyed and try to shut down the conversation. That is not a solution - that is exactly how we got here. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:18, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I completely and totally disagree, as your entire position lacks evidence and is a wonderful example of what happens when you jump to conclusions. Body shape is not centered around the male body at all, nor is it the default topic for male body shape. In fact, no article links to male body shape. This is because it was created as a redirect to mirror the female article. The facts show that the article on body shape discuses male and female body shapes equally. So, your claim that this circumstance "completely centres men, which in turn feeds back into the gender gap" is baseless. What happened here is this: you discriminated against and attacked men as a group for daring to discuss on this page, and then you put on your patriarchy-colored glasses and attempted to push a round peg into a square hole. When one looks at actual evidence and actual facts, one finds that your accusations lack evidence. The evidence, on the other hand, shows that this particular discussion has nothing whatsoever to do with the gender gap. Now, cease your attacks on men or I will be forced to MfD this page. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 04:24, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I am amazed. The behaviour just demonstrated is exactly why Wikipedia has a problem with women, why it has a gender gap, and exactly why we have this taskforce. Having a discussion about why a project aimed at resolving the gender gap is still dominated by male voices, and how men sometimes unwittingly centre men's experience makes men - who three paragraphs above were insisting how they wanted to be part of the solution - fly into a rage and threaten to use their power as a prominent male user to delete the discussion. This is Wikipedia's "women problem" spectacularly illustrated in one brief discussion. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I really don't think this is going any further. Please consider hatting this discussion.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:30, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I didn't start this discussion to get into arguments with men, and I'm frustrated (if a little bit unsurprised) that trying to start a discussion about men considering their own position a bit better is being met with such anger: much as, like I said, this is exactly how we got here, getting out of here isn't going to happen unless we can talk this kind of issue out. Because if we can't, as one of the one-in-ten women on Wikipedia, what's the point? The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:37, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

It disturbs me greatly that I even need to think about writing "As a woman, I believe/think..." on this page. It disturbs me greatly that me self-identifying as female means others might be more inclined to listen to my comments than to those of someone who self-identifies as a man. It disturbs me greatly that there are some on this page who overlook the contributions made to this topic and to this project by men because they are men....and because they are men then obviously they have a hidden agenda to keep down the women.</sarcasm> I could have written everything Viriditas just posted.

My perspective on this particular discussion is quite different from yours: a) Militant feminist comes to the page to complain that there are too many men/not enough women. b) Moderate voice(s) say We don't want to exclude all men - we need a wide range of opinions and helpers. We're working on fixing the underlying problems. Here are some wins we've had recently. c) Militant feminists complain that "you've done A, but you've done NOTHING about X and Y." d) Moderate voice(s) say "Ummm...I wasn't discussing X and Y, and I don't really understand why that is an issue." e) Rather than consider whether the moderate voices have a point, militant feminists say "SEE, that proves men should not be allowed to post here". f) At which point the moderate voices get fed up, point out - again - that WP doesn't ban people from posting based on gender, and threatens to MFD the page if it violates that core value. g) Militant feminists feel justified in their accusations.

So yes, I see this section as an example of one of the problems on WP, but it is not the same problem that you see. Karanacs (talk) 15:17, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

This has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I said: it's like someone noticed that I got into an argument with a man and decided to tear down a strawman of a "militant feminist". I am not remotely suggesting they "have an agenda to keep down the women" and explicitly said the opposite. Like, I explicitly said I didn't want to "exclude all men". I'm quite bemused about how you got "you've done A, but you've done NOTHING about X and Y" from anything whatsoever I said above.

I wasn't saying Viriditas or any other man should be banned from posting here. I was suggesting that men dominating the discussion in a venue like this may be unhelpful, that they may want to have a think about how their own experiences impact upon the way they view this issue and and that they may want to have a think about the manner in which they participate, and got met with such utter rage that he threatened to have the project deleted. Viciously attacking an absolute strawman that has absolutely nothing to do with anything I said does absolutely nothing to address any of this. Outsiders, even hardly feminist outsiders, thinking about engaging in a project see men act in these ways and run like hell. The Drover's Wife (talk) 15:32, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

It was Lightbreather who delved into the "you've done A, but nothing about X And Y" side topics. You may not have explicitly said ban the men, but you suggested quite strongly that they separate themselves to allow the women to be heard. It's a matter of semantics, and, IMO, a dubious notion to start with, as I've seen no evidence lately that women's voices here are being drowned out by those of the men. You and others who share your POV, taken collectively, seem to be operating on more of a battleground mentality. I see genuine disagreements on priorities (what should we focus on - new content, fixing old content, sexism, etc), genuine disagreements on whether particular content is sexist/part of the gender problem/etc. That doesn't mean there's a male-female battle. It doesn't mean that men's voices are drowning out anyone else's. It just means that there need to be further discussion and open minds on both sides. Karanacs (talk) 15:41, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

No, the origin of this discussion wasn't I, but Viriditas, who came here yesterday wanting validation for changing redirects of "curvy" and "buxom" from Wiktionary to the WP Female body shape article. As for me, I agreed with SV that, once again on WP, male/man was the default - "V" or "I" shape - from which women deviate - "curvy." Then KK87 gave us permission to create a Male body shape article ("I have no objection if someone wants to make an article on it") followed by a directive to create it ("rather than pointing it out make the article"). When we suggested that he could make it, he didn't have enough medical knowledge to do it and directed us to take it to the medical project. Lightbreather (talk) 16:07, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't want to detract from Lightbreather's reply (edit conflicts galore), but I wanted to ask this - how can you actually remedy a gap where you have an editorial base that is 90% male with a conversation in which members of the 90% dominate the conversation about how to reduce that gap? I mean this quite seriously and without sarcasm. The fact that a page about reducing the gender gap still has a majority of male contributors, and that those men are pointedly pushing their own perspectives rather than intentionally trying to support women, is pretty clear evidence to most people that there's a problem. If I was ever trying to recruit women editors, and I showed them this page (pre-my addition), I'd strike out every time. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:10, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

If this taskforce is on shaky ground, it's because it's near impossible to confirm any Wikipedian's RL gender. GoodDay (talk) 16:05, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't think this is true at all. I don't need to know that someone who says he's a guy is really a guy to have conversations about these issues. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:10, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't be able to recruit women OR men by showing them this page. I also would be unable to recruit any of my female friends by showing them a female-only space here; they'd laugh at the idea that women need to be protected. I have recruited people by showing them articles that need work. By pointing out areas where articles simply don't exist, and by showing a match between their interests and WP's gaps. I'm doing my part this month by creating articles on romance novels - until last week WP had articles on only 3 novels that had won RITA Awards, which is sad. I suspect many don't know those articles are eligible for inclusion...and now they will. We need to work together to identify gaps in coverage, to help fill those gaps, and, where we notice it, improve existing articles to be more neutral in coverage. This takes men as well as women...as well as those who choose not to self-identify as a particular gender (which is the vast majority of editors). We need a wide range of perspectives, and I personally (and I think a majority here on WP) don't care whether those perspectives come from men, women, or literate aliens, as long as they are given respectfully and with the goal of making this encyclopedia better. Karanacs (talk) 16:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

All Wikipedians should be viewed as gender-neutral, indeed. GoodDay (talk) 16:28, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey, I'm all for seeing new articles on underrepresented areas, and that much is not a hard sell. But the moment stuff gets contentious, you see discussions that turn out, well, like plenty of those above, and that's where women start going "...and why would I sign up for this?" (I say this in the context of having had basically this exact conversation with interested women in the last couple days.)

The thing is, it isn't like Wikipedia stuffs this stuff up universally, and it isn't like guys can't make good contributions to fraught gender issues as well. I'm not sure of exactly who wrote it all, but the Emma Sulkowicz article referenced above is much better than I'd expected, and a good example of Wikipedia tackling potentially-disastrous gender issues in a decent way. But I see too many discussions where men could make a much better contribution if they just thought about their perspective a bit better, except that if I raise that too many guys absolutely flip their shit. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:39, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I think it works best if all participants in more sensitive discussions (be they on the gender gap or on contentious article pages) think carefully about their perspectives, their biases, etc, before they "speak". Which is, unfortunately, rare. Some of the most contentious discussions I have had on WP have involved other women. For them, it was "us against them" where "us" were editors of one religion/perspective and "them" were editors not of their religion/perspective. They frequently began conversations lamenting that there were so many people posting on the article talk page, peer reviews, etc, who weren't from their religion (which always, ALWAYS escalated the situation). I see that as directly analogous to this situation. Ideally, we all want to strike a proper balance (NPOV) across wikipedia. We disagree on what that balance looks like and we disagree on how to get to the state of balance. Some on both sides are more tenditious about it. There isn't enough de-escalation, and plenty of escalation (with comments about their being an over-representation of one gender or under-representation of another).

I would love to see those reframed as a look at diversity in perspectives, rather than gender. Do we have a broad enough range? Because if you add another 10 women like me to this project, I suspect you won't like the result any better than you like having so many males post...because for the most part, I agree with a lot of what they have to say. So we need people who think like me and Viriditas, we need people who think like you and Lightbreather and Peter, we need people who think like GoodDay, and there are probably other perspectives that I don't even know exist that really ought to be represented. Many of those perspectives WILL NOT come to this page and participate if they see so much of an us vs them on the basis of gender. If we can make the conversations more inclusive to everyone, rather than exclusive, I believe we'll be much more successful.

This page could be a great example of how to navigate the tough instances when people disagree, how to resolve conflicts that appear gender-based, how to educate about sexism and begin slowly reshaping perspectives. It could be, but right now it isn't. I do not believe that failure is 100% the fault of the males. Karanacs (talk) 16:56, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Karanacs I couldn't agree more. I wish I'd written that. J3Mrs (talk) 20:19, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Except that, if we did that, the "perspectives [that] will not come to this page" if we changed it will be men, and the people that will be looking at it now and going "noooope" will be women. You keep writing like it's a complete accident that this site would up having a membership in which nine in ten members are men, and that vehemently defending the status quo around gender will magically change this. I see this every single time I discuss Wikipedia with women off-site: it essentially boils down to "cool idea, I have things to contribute, but don't want to deal with men acting in these kinds of ways, so why would I put myself through that?"

It is absolutely about diversity in perspectives, and it does go beyond more than gender (women are not the only underrepresented group on this project). But the fact that you could probably find ten women who are extremely used to functioning in online environments hostile to women and that would happily defend the status quo doesn't change the fact that never asking the 90% to question whether they're centring their own experience, and whether they're really being inclusive of diverse experiences (and not in an "I'm a nice person so of course I am!" kind of way) means that you wind up with an extremely narrow demographic of people writing your stuff. Analogising to religion doesn't work because I'm not sure I've ever seen a religion (except maybe Islam) actually be underrepresented here, or to anywhere near the same effect. Wikipedia itself was better at all of this this once, but as women left because of the environment, again, we wound up here.

If you're going to deal in anything outside your own experience, you need to be mindful of how your own experiences are impacting on how you see that discussion. As a white woman from Australia, there are so many issues on which I need to pull my own head in and let people affected by those issues speak, and if I were to insist that my less-informed opinions were necessary (and more importantly of equal value) that would be damaging, to our editorship and our coverage. (In this case, being a white Australian, Aboriginal issues are one very big example of an issue I do this on.) It is sad and counterproductive when people insist on trying to force their way into those conversations with equal weight. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:54, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily defending the status quo. I do believe there is much work to be done. I just don't agree with some of the approaches being advocated by members of this project, and I don't necessarily buy into some of the proposed goals. There are already females already on this project who aren't coming to this page and/or don't want to hear anything about the gender gap because they are offended by the militant feminism.

What I read from your response is that it is okay to escalate a situation and strongly encourage people to leave the discussion if one's perception of under-representation is valid, and that the exact same behaviors aren't okay if one's perception of under-representation is invalid. I disagree. We will not change attitudes and behaviors by playing the victimization card or pleading for/insisting on different rules for women because we're underrepresented (and I'm not accusing anyone in particular of doing this, but it's something I've noticed occurring). That escalates situations. We will not change attitudes and behaviors simply by setting down new rules (zero tolerance for an ambiguous definition of sexism).

Relatively simple things, like the previous section's discussion of replacing the male gaze images with more neutral ones (like in chair and laptop), make a difference. Systematic efforts to remove that type of bias make quite a visible difference in showing what is acceptable and what is not....and one of the people who is vocal about addressing this issue is Peter Isotalo, a male. Karanacs (talk) 15:17, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

The Drover's Wife you say " It is sad and counterproductive when people insist on trying to force their way into those conversations with equal weight." Is what you are saying, if you aren't here to agree you aren't welcome? That's what's coming across to me. Women have different perspectives and if the project only wants recruits that agree, many women will feel excluded, not by men but by women. I'm becoming very averse to comments that contain "I'm a woman" in any conversation on any page. What is important is content and if there is something wrong it should be changed with an appropriate rationale. Many editors don't disclose their gender so it's not possible to say that 90% of contributors are men and impossible to say what percentage of male editors are "hostile" to women because most editors I've come across, by your figures 90% men, are extremely supportive. The encyclopedia should be attempting to recruit competent editors not those with an agenda to push. J3Mrs (talk) 20:20, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree, why do some here feel the need to state "I am a woman therefore..." as if you are speaking for every female that is on Wikipedia or that will ever join? Not all women are even feminists, some just want to be treated with respect here. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:30, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

There are already females already on this project who aren't coming to this page and/or don't want to hear anything about the gender gap because they are offended by the militant feminism. How many? Have you taken a survey? Personally I've avoided participating here because I'm disgusted by how much of the conversation seems to be dominated by militant anti-feminists. Please don't use the silence of other women as presumed support for your own opinions. -- TaraInDC (talk) 23:35, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I know of several, anecdotally, just as I'm sure you know of several, anecdotally, who are turned off by the other "side". My proposal is that we put the "sides" to rest. We need to learn how to better steer the discussions out of the danger zone that causes either side to rise up in protest. Back to the core civility tenet of comment on the issue, not the editor (or their gender). Karanacs (talk) 00:34, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

You're essentially attempting to 'put the sides to rest' by asking one 'side' to cede completely to your 'side.' For pity's sake, you just repeatedly called another editor a militant feminist for making the not-so-extraordinary observation that when a conversation about women's issues is dominated by men, that causes systemic bias. Do you not see the irony here? -- TaraInDC (talk) 04:45, 20 February 2015 (UTC) -- TaraInDC (talk) 04:45, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

As is probably pretty obvious by now, I wholeheartedly disagree that exclusion is the way to go. The mantra of many on this page who want to bar men from participating is that we want Wikipedia to be more welcoming to all perspectives, to be more inclusive. I don't see how we'll get there by insulting and excluding a large portion of editors - we don't like it that women are sometimes insulted and excluded on the project, so let's turn around and do that to the men on this page? Really? There have been several excellent discussions started by men here, many excellent contributions by men towards the goals of this project. I don't see that as a bad thing. There has been disruption by men, yes. There has been disruption by women too. Any suggestion I've seen that men be barred (or remove themselves) wholesale from certain discussions has been controversial, has escalated or distracted, and has caused more suspicion of this project. I think those suggestions need to stop because they are causing more harm than good at this point...UNLESS someone is willing to move Lightbreather's user page to project space, or create a women-only wikiproject as Lightbreather suggested at Meta, and see whether or not it survives the MFD (which I am perfectly willing to initiate). That would put the issue to rest once and for all. No one has been willing to do that thus far. Karanacs (talk) 05:42, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

What "mantra of barring men"? What are you talking about? There are plenty of men who participate on this page and it's battleground mentality, not men, that editors tend to object to here. I believe one editor requested above that men please try not dominate the forum, that seems quite different than the task force as a whole "barring men". --BoboMeowCat (talk) 05:59, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. I don't see anything here about banning men, only an observation that the conversation is dominated by men: in other words, an observation that the systemic bias problem on Wikipedia extends to the very task force that is supposed to be attempting to correct it. If that's 'militant feminism.' then sign me up. TaraInDC (talk) 06:04, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

An Ally Skills Workshop, such as the one organized by the Ada Initiative, could really help here. There are many well-intentioned men on this page with a lot to contribute who are getting needlessly frustrated. If we had a few experienced trainers who know how to start the conversation with people who are new to the process of being male allies, many participants here could get some new tools and be up and running in a rather short period of time. I'm hopeful we'll see some of this training soon, either through the Grants:IdeaLab/Gender_Gap_Allies_training proposal, or through some other initiative. For those interested in reading about "being an ally", I actually prefer the allies against racism writing to the feminist material (a bit less annoying jargon). We will all benefit from a happier and healthier atmosphere! --Djembayz (talk) 03:19, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Article needed on Affirmative Consent Law (SB 967)

California's "affirmative consent" law, also referred to "yes means yes", is mentioned in the task force created Women's rights in 2014 article, and it's also recently been added to the Cathy Young bio, but it doesn't seem to have a wiki page. 1) Could someone help me make sure such an article doesn't already exist under a different name? and 2)if not, are there any task force members who would be interested in helping me create this article? --BoboMeowCat (talk) 21:47, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I looked for that recently and found nothing. Yes Means Yes is about the book; while it mentions the law, there's no link. I can't promise lots of time, but I can definitely help a little. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 21:56, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Body shape follow-up

I've started tinkering with body shape and female body shape, but I noticed that there are other articles that could probably need some scrutiny by task force members.

body and perceptions

• waist–hip ratio
• physical attractiveness
• bust/waist/hip measurements
• body image
• sexual objectification
• feminine beauty ideal
• cleavage (breasts)
• wasp waist
• buttock cleavage
• muffin top
• toe cleavage
• downblouse (!!!)
• upskirt

clothing and measurements

• bustline
• thigh gap (!)
• media depictions of body shape
• petite size
• vanity sizing
• clothing sizes
• brassiere measurement
• EN 13402
• women's oversized fashion in the United States since the 1920s
• whale tail
• brassiere

If an article seems okay content-wise, don't hesitate to strike it out.

Peter ^Isotalo 22:52, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

• Body proportions
• Size zero

A few more candidates for review, possible merging.Dialectric (talk) 23:04, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Btw, if anyone kicks off male body shape as a separate article, don't forget to aim for WP:DYK. It will quite likely generate a decent amount of hits off the mainpage.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:16, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Odd that there's one for females, but not males. Wait, no it isn't. Objectification and male gaze. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:24, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

It's a good topic to look at from on-high and try to reshape things at least, and I'm glad Peter went back to revisit the area as a whole. Picking ones at random, Thigh gap is one that stands out from an quality perspective: the topic is fine, but that article is a hot mess (and not in a gendered way). The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:57, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Just noted something slightly surprising. We have no female body/male body articles. The former is just a redirect to female body shape.

Peter ^Isotalo 00:10, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

It seems a bit redundant to Female and Male, or to be more precise Man and Woman. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:08, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

If we can have articles about gender-specific body shapes, we can certainly have gender-specific articles on just the bodies.

Peter ^Isotalo 00:12, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I think it's too broad though, if you look in the man and woman articles there are sections that summarize the body. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:13, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

There would also be too many articles overlapping each other in scope. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:15, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

"Too broad"? I just gave an example of an article on the thigh gap, a detail of a specific part of the female anatomy. And you're musing about a general article on just the female body as "too broad"? You sure have a lot of very specific opinions on what articles we shouldn't have. I find your input here pretty unhelpful.

Peter ^Isotalo 00:30, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

You haven't addressed the overlapping issue, there are already articles covering different aspects about the body with the parent articles being woman and man. As for my opinions this is just one of them, if you look above I was encouraging someone to make an article about the male body shape as that is specific enough. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 02:23, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

There's nothing to address. Every single sub-topic article we have is technically an overlap of a higher-level topic. Articles on body shapes are limited to exactly what they specify: shape. Descriptions of the female and male bodies could contain cultural history, discrimination, anatomy, history of depiction, bodily functions, diseases, self-perception, etc, etc, etc. The top-level article in this case is human body, but the next step down would be articles on the female and male bodies, not specific aspects of female and male bodies.

Peter ^Isotalo 02:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• The father of all sexist "body" articles on Wikipedia, so to speak, is camel toe. See ya at AfD, I hope. Carrite (talk) 02:11, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
  • You're better off adding content that describes the concept as sexist. Otherwise there seems to be no issue with notability. Peter ^Isotalo 02:55, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

wow, the actual picture of a camel's toe for comparison is an interesting encyclopedic touch. I'm almost tempted to create "moose knuckle" now to further the concept (and see if it would survive AfD) but others might not get or appreciate the joke :) --BoboMeowCat (talk) 03:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd appreciate some input regarding cleavage (breasts). I just noticed that it described "cleavage wrinkles" under the heading "Pathology" where it also claimed that a "treatment" for wrinkles as Botox. In other words, natural signs of ageing presented as a disease. Ugh...

Peter ^Isotalo 04:59, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I removed some stuff that was COATRACKing and one thing that was not verifiable. That article is kinda ugh in general, but hopefully folks won't be too opposed to some of the edits. I'll look at that "pathology" part. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 05:42, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Might want to ask someone on WP:MED to check it out. Seems sketchy, but don't know enough to edit on it. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 05:50, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

WP:MED has been contacted.[14]

Peter ^Isotalo 13:21, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Peter and other interested editors, I just found these: Human body and Human physical appearance. The photo might be good for some of these article, though I have to ask again: What the heck is it with shaving these models' genitals? Lightbreather (talk) 20:43, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Also, y'all might want to consider this merge proposal: Proposed merge of Midriff and Waist into Abdomen. Lightbreather (talk) 20:43, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Cropping and removing images

Glancing over the body part articles it appears they could quickly be made more encyclopedic by cropping images and also deleting unnecessary images. I notice some of the gratuitous images from cleavage (breasts) have been recently removed. Many of the current images appear to be soft core porn and/or some sort of "glamour shot", which do not seem to seriously address the topic in an encyclopedic way (see thigh gap and cleavage (breasts) for a couple examples. I understand that WP is not censored, but it seems like the creators of these articles were trying to create Victoria Secret Catalog-type-soft-core-pornography, which does not address the topic in a serious encyclopedic way. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 17:47, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I honestly am not too bothered by the thigh gap image. It's not as gratuitous as the cleavage one and better than this image. Just my opinion though. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 05:00, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Me neither. The topic is solely visual, and needs an illustration. One might add that (as the article makes clear) it is essentially a female concept and concern, and not something the dreaded male gaze registers much. Johnbod (talk) 05:07, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

My only issue with the thigh gap photo is the odd flowing dress. Cropping it a bit would improve it I think. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 06:19, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

The thigh gap photo is cropped from a wedding dress model shoot, it actually took a long time for someone to find an appropriate photo to post there. I believe it is fine. But there are real cases of "lad mag" type photos on the project. I questioned BDSM when doing the WP:TOP25 this week, but some subjects naturally go in that direction.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 06:27, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I guess I just find the glamourous wedding dress in that odd cut off style distracting from the point and it's pretty much all I notice about the picture. Seems like if it were cropped to where you couldn't see the top part of that mini-wedding dress, it would be more focused on the thighs, and their gap.--BoboMeowCat (talk) 06:32, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

WMF survey indicates 21% female readership, 20% female contributor rate in "Global South"

The December 2014 WMF metrics meeting includes results of a survey conducted of 96,000 Wikipedia users in 11 countries of the so-called Global South — conducted in 16 languages (pg. 62). A total of 47,000 people ended up completing the survey, which ran both on desktop and mobile platforms. The survey showed that 21% of readers and 20% of contributors identified themselves as female (with another 2% declining to identify either as male or female and 1% selecting "other.") (pg. 64)

This indicates that while there is unquestionably a gender gap, the magnitude of the chasm in 2014 seems to be overstated, at least in the Global South — more like 4m:1f than 8m:1f. Carrite (talk) 02:02, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Normally (eg on Alexa & WMF stats, I suppose for en:WP) the readers of WP are 50-51% female, it's the editors there's a problem with. If we only get 21% in the Global South, differential access to the internet may be a large part of the reason. Johnbod (talk) 03:27, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I found that number very puzzling also; I'm not sure what to make of it. The implication at face value (which I'm not myself advancing here because I think something might be misinterpreted in the translation), is that there is essentially no statistically significant "gender gap" in the Global South outside of what can be explained by technology distribution and readership preferences. The "gender gap" is essentially another way of expressing the differential between readership and editing participation. Carrite (talk) 18:21, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

20% is not so far from the 18.2% (I think it was) figure that we have seen before, and which could well have been an understatement. We are also a few years on. There may be reasons connected with the relative technical maturity that disfavour males. The earlier perception of online social spaces as being inhabited by a less threatening coterie has been cited as a reason for a higher female presence in blogging, compared with the current level (I was not able to find the source for this claims though).

As for readers, the situation in the US/Europe 10-15 years ago is probably being mirrored, where males have more access to Internet technology, even in family settings. Moreover even in the ROTW there may well be a disparity on using platforms optimised for editing (i.e. desktops > laptops > tablets > phones > arduinos). All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:10, 19 February 2015 (UTC).

Writing about women

I wonder whether we should start a guideline, Wikipedia:Writing about women, on how to avoid inadvertent sexism. Some points to get started:

• Avoid using male-gaze images.
• Be cautious about referring to a woman by her first name rather than surname, unless it's needed to make the writing clear.
• Don't define a notable woman in terms of her relationships with notable men (wife of, mother of, daughter of). Make sure her own notability is discussed first.
• Try as far as possible to avoid openly sexist sources.

Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 20:53, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I think that is an excellent idea. The last point, avoiding openly sexist sources, is important but it will be crucial to word that in an appropriate way. Karanacs (talk) 21:13, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. I wasn't sure how to express that last point, and I couldn't offhand think of examples. Another point:

• Look out for sexism when disambiguating titles: Sarah Brown (wife of Gordon Brown) is a well-known example. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 22:10, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

• Are there any examples of biased sources from Gamergate that could be used? Or perhaps from any of the coverage of Dominique Strauss-Kahn? Are there ever any instances where a woman might be defined by her spouse (or even father)? Although I suppose even in the case of, say the wife of a president, we could disambiguate with (First Lady) instead of (wife of ....). Karanacs (talk) 00:30, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Sarah Brown (wife of Gordon Brown) is an excellent example of the trouble. She really isn't known for anything nearly as much as for being the PM's wife; she was a founding partner of Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications, and a campaigner for this, that and the other thing, but didn't get nearly as much press for any of that as for being the PM's wife. "First Lady" is not used for the PM's spouse in the UK, so that was out. She never called herself Sarah Macaulay Brown - that also is a US, rather than UK, style - so that was out. She isn't really known as Sarah Jane Brown, but that is what we ended up with. --GRuban (talk) 03:02, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I think it's a perfectly appropriate way to word it. Neutral sources are preferred, therefore sexist sources are not good for writing about women (or men), except in the usual narrowly defined way. Of course defining "sexist sources" is anther kettle of fish. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:32, 20 February 2015 (UTC).

Devil's advocate here - there are a non-negligible number of encyclopedic women who are quite proud of their male-gaze images. For example, Michele Merkin, mentioned a few sections above. That's her profession. I imagine there are similarly male models who are perfectly happy to be portrayed as sex objects. --GRuban (talk) 03:29, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• I like this idea. Would be an essay, but useful. Could add a few other things like avoiding cissexism. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 04:05, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

What's an "openly sexist source" considering all articles should be sourced to reliable sources? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 04:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• Trying to encapsulate the feminist theory term male-gaze, which isn't even agreed upon among feminists, into a guideline is a bad idea. There seems to be an inherent issue with this Task Force, which I warned about months back, that everything is couched in feminist theory and it is taken for granted that feminist theory is always right (as in factually correct) and is going to lead the way to closing the gender gap. Yet aside from it's most basic form of proposing equality between the sexes feminist theory today has blossomed into a mish-mash of competing ideas some wholly contrary to others. You're not going to get the inclusiveness and progress you want following this path. A 2013 Pew poll showed less than 25% of women even consider themselves feminists. Heck, 32% of woman considered feminist a negative term. More tellingly only 27% of all participants thought most women are feminists but 43% of self described feminists assumed most women are feminists.

You're simply pushing away the vast majority of men and women who are all for equality yet are all set with being labeled or discussing everything in terms of feminism. And in doing so you're missing the forest for the trees. Removing some images from some articles is going to do exactly nothing to increase women's participation here. 99% of them wouldn't even have seen these images. Note, I'm not saying some of these images shouldn't be changed/removed for the sake of a better encyclopedia, just that it's impact to the goals of the GGTF are negligible. The GGTF should be looking for root causes of the gap and looking to procure hard data that could lead larger initiatives that may have a hope of working. What are the leading causes for the lack of participation/retention of women editors? What, if anything, can be done to mitigate those causes? Those are the questions that need solid, data-backed answers, to do anything fruitful. And the latter question has no chance of being answered prior to the former. Capeo (talk) 14:01, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• Two proposed ideas for data collection tools: Wikipedia Gender Index Tools, and Wikipedia Gender Concerns Reporting Tools. For those interested in helping with these tools, or who have ideas for other tools, the Inspire Grants – Gender gap campaign runs through March. --Djembayz (talk) 02:44, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

• For my part, I'd prefer plain English rather than buzzwords or jargon. How about something on the order of "For articles about non-sexual topics, avoid cheesecake photography, fan service images, and other sexualized images of women." Getting closer? --Djembayz (talk) 02:44, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

• No, as it implies that "for articles about non-sexual topics, avoid beefcake photography, fan service images, and other sexualized images of men" is acceptable but the equivalent about woman is not acceptable. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 04:12, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Point well taken. A modification to address the concern above: "For articles about non-sexual topics, avoid cheesecake photography, fan service images, and other sexualized imagery." More adjustments needed? (Coming up with language that works for a wide range of people takes patience-- it's an iterative process.) --Djembayz (talk) 12:53, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Shouldn't everyone be treated equally?

Also, when writing articles about men, should we:

• Avoid using female-gaze images.
• Be cautious about referring to a man by his first name rather than surname, unless it's needed to make the writing clear.
• Don't define a notable man in terms of his relationships with notable women (husband of, father of, son of). Make sure his own notability is discussed first.

I'm all for avoiding inadvertent sexist writing, but singling out a particular sex seems to perpetuate and redirect the problem, not solve it. Shouldn't everyone be treated equally? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 04:28, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

This is "reverse sexism" nonsense. There are plenty of things we should avoid with articles about men, but there is no "female gaze". There is no trend of defining men by their relationships. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 04:58, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

You are correct. There is no such thing as "reverse sexism". There is only sexism. I believe that all genders should be treated equally. Do you agree (or disagree) that everyone should be treated equally? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 05:02, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, both genders should be treated with respect...so if there was an issue with "female gaze" images or defining men via their relationship with women, we would definitely need to fix that, but I don't see that happening on wikipedia. I do see the issue with women happening, which is why we are addressing it as an issue on wikipedia that needs improving. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 05:31, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Disagree. Men should not be treated like women (or queer folks for that matter), because women are treated like second class citizens. People should be treated with respect and dignity. This is why the "equality" rhetoric is often crap... equality often means "treated like men" (really White, able-bodied, heterosexual cis men since we already know we treat Black men, disabled men, trans men, and gay men like crap as well), which is not the same as being treated with respect and dignity. However, it's fallacious to try to apply issues affecting women and gender minorities to men because the reality is that they are not equal in Western society. We should give due weight just as we have WP:WEIGHT to the issues affecting specific marginalized and oppressed classes of people, and in this case it means paying more attention to anti-woman and otherwise sexist bias present on Wikipedia. Sadly Wikipedia is a tertiary source and reflects other sources, and those sources reflect sexism in society. As such, we cannot remove all sexism, all anti-woman bias, but we can at least minimize it. So no, I don't believe in "treating everyone equally" since we already treat each other like crap. And I don't think that just because someone raises an issue that disproportionately affects women we need to say "what about the men". EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 05:35, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• I nominate A Quest For Knowledge to start the anti-female-gaze-photo project. Get busy, bro, I feel violated daily. You know, I actually did the first-name thing on a female subject recently and after someone fixed it, I recognized I did it because the subject was female. So while everyone should be treated equally, they aren't unless we are diligent about minding to it.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 06:37, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• I agree here, isn't "Avoid female gaze images" a bit too far? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 06:51, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
• No, thanks. I don't believe that there's anything wrong with one gender appreciating the beauty of another gender, or the same gender for the matter. But my point still stands: we should treat everyone equally. Saying that genders should be treated differently is just more sexism. I would hope that this project is against sexism, not in favor of it. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• No is saying this group doesn't want everyone treated equally. Your original "point" was ludicrous, and as non-member of this group I felt comfortable calling it out.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 18:15, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• Really? Please explain how my post was "ludicrous" (your words, not mine)? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:06, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Re don't define a notable man in terms of his relationships with notable women: Are you talking about articles like Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Denis Thatcher, Feroze Gandhi, and Rick Salomon? Could we have some examples of actual articles (on men and women) where this is violated, with suggestions for improvement? Does it depend on what a person is most notable for, regardless of gender? --Boson (talk) 10:02, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Happens often enough in off-wiki obits to be noticed.[15]. I'm up for a doing a semi-scientific study of this on-wiki if you and three others each volunteer to review 100 biographies (we'll develop criteria for article selection and review factors in advance).--Milowent • ^hasspoken 12:45, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

From the indentation, that appears to be a reply to my question, but I fail to see the connection between my question and your answer, especially the linked obituary. It does, though, seem like a good idea to formulate a falsifiable prediction about different treatment of men and women in "randomly" chosen articles about men and women, if that is what you are suggesting. --Boson (talk) 17:01, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

This is what I'm suggesting, though I'm not a researcher and don't drop words like "falsifiable" or "fail to disprove the null hypothesis(?)" (where did that come from in my mind?) easily. But it seems like a project that would be really interesting. Probably would need to be a manual review. E.g., Taylor Swift has no references to "Taylor" except in quoted excerpts. This link [16] serves a random BLP, that would be a good way to random select biographies. The hypothesis would be that a female BLP is more likely to contain first name references to the subject than a male BLP. It is also likely that less-edited and less-trafficked articles are more likely to have first name references; I would think this is an error that is often caught but it would not be easy to check all prior versions of an article.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 18:06, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

We would also need to deal with situations like Eamonn Dolan (random server find) where "Eamonn" is used once to differentiate him from a sibling with the same surname. Should such cases be excluded or not?--Milowent • ^hasspoken 18:10, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

First name vs surname is actually addressed already at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biographies#Subsequent_use. Karanacs (talk) 18:15, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that link. If the use complies with that, it should be considered acceptable, I think.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 18:21, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

From about 25 random hits: Anjali Kulkarni has two uses of "Anjali". Low traffic article. (Hate Man is never called Hate!).--Milowent • ^hasspoken 18:44, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

There are, of course, exceptions. When two people with the same surname (e.g. spouses) are mentioned, the given name is conventionally used to distinguish them. The Anjali Kulkarni example raises other issues, which are partly gender-specific. In cultures where a woman adopts the husband's family name on marriage, some might consider it inappropriate to use that family name when referring to the woman before her marriage. There are similar considerations with (male and female) nobility. In the Anjali Kulkarni example, one use of the first name follows a reference to her mother, so the simple pronoun "she" could have been ambiguous. We should also be careful not to introduce different cultural biases. The guideline appears to treat the conventions in certain countries as the norm and add other conventions as an afterthought. Saddam Hussein is referred to as "Saddam", and I presume the same convention should apply to Arab women. I don't know what the convention for Indian names is, but I wonder whether some names are associated with castes. We would probably need a preliminary survey to identify and take account of such considerations. It might be sensible, at first, to avoid cultures where naming conventions may be different (including Iceland, where, I believe, people are formally addressed by their first name). --Boson (talk) 11:57, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

You are certainly right about Iceland. Not sure about India - perhaps an editor will chime in on that one. On the marriage issue, I can see that reasoning too, I'll check the policies for the "proper" method.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 15:40, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

I have considerable experience writing about military history, especially naval history. This includes eight promoted articles on the topic (and my never-ending project galley). It's a topic that covers plenty of men in their military roles. Not once have I seen a reasonably experienced editor or a member of WP:MILHIST refer to any man by their first name. People actually tend to be overly reverent towards their subject, referring to them with their titles over and over. In some cases, like Vasa (ship), I've actually had to explicitly stress[17] the need to refer to some people by first names simply because they didn't have a proper surname in the modern sense.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:52, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• Recent example of inappropriate use of a first name in a woman's article. [18] It is an excellent idea to create a cheatsheet of the common errors that are found in biographies of women. I think it would be useful to offer the information at edit-a-thons that are likely to include content creation including biographies. Sydney Poore/FloNight♥♥♥♥ 20:33, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

What about women hidden on pages with a male title

What about women hidden on pages with a male title? Here is an example: Michael Mastro, was an American real estate developer who became infamous after he declared bankruptcy. His wife, Linda, received/s as much press coverage as he did/does. The page was already moved once, but Linda Mastro's name remains buried in the article. It is interesting to note that in order to google the correct Michael Mastro one needed to provide additional qualifiers, because the other Michael would show up instead, however the term Linda Mastro required no such qualifiers. Ottawahitech (talk) 21:47, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

A dismal omission

Here's a real hole in WP coverage: National Association of Women Lawyers, an organization with a 115 year history. I just bumped into this group in the course of writing a bio. If anybody is making a list of potential topics for edit-a-thons, that would be a great one. Carrite (talk) 06:53, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

DYK time!

Peter ^Isotalo 12:42, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• I started a stub, definitely is DYK worthy if folks can help expand. Interestingly, some other smaller bar groups have long have articles -- National Bar Association (2005), National LGBT Bar Association (2009), and South Asian Bar Association (2009). American Bar Association was started in February 2004 to give a sense of when the project got big enough to start including such coverage.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 17:39, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

There are also no lists of women lawyers in Category:Lists of women by occupation or in Category:Lists of legal professionals, even though there are plenty of women lawyers in Category:Women lawyers. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:09, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Proposed Wikimania talk: How to Pick Up More Women

Proposed Wikimania talk of possible interest to GGTF readers: How to Pick Up More Women. Topics include "Should we try and avoid English speaking white women so that we increase our benefit?". --Djembayz (talk) 00:46, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

There's a discussion about it on Roger Bamkins' talk page (Roger proposed the talk). See User talk:Victuallers#How To Pick Up More Women .... Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 01:12, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

"How to 'pick up' more women" kinda makes me wince. Ouch. And "avoid English speaking white women"? I could see focus on non-English speaking and/or non-Anglos, but again - ouch! Lightbreather (talk) 01:29, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

It's an example of othering, particularly the second part, because it's clear that "we" in that sentence refers to men, or least doesn't refer to "English speaking white women". Otherwise it would mean "Should we try and avoid ... [ourselves] so that we increase our benefit?" Pinging Victuallers given that he's being discussed. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 01:46, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I can see why you/one might think "we" means "us blokes" .... but that isn't my intention, and I think it is not "clear" (as you say). If "we" are the wikipedians editors (gender is not important for this group noun in this sentence) then should "we" concentrate on creating more stuff about women? I would say yes. However I'm a programmer and a mathematician so if I apply this logic in a self referential way then... If we believe in a positive bias towards women (who are under represented) then should we (same "we") continue that we (same "we") should only edit about women who are under-represented in the sample of women "we" (same we) are giving added attention too? Now that is a bigger question. I personally 'try' to edit articles about women who are not from English speaking countries. However its difficult. A lot of the lists of "missing" and "required" articles are lists of women which includes more Americans than Africans. What is the answer? I don't know. That is a question that Rosie and I are interested in. I would claim to be very active on the "Countering Systemic bias" project. I'm not sure I am doing as much as I might. Please consider that in an AGF way that "we" might actually mean we (meaning the we that is intended to not have gender included). I'd like you to assume that when I see "we" I don't mean "us blokes", I mean, we, the people who create Wikipedia. Victuallers (talk) 16:17, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Roger, thank you for the response. I feel bad being critical of this, because your talk is a great idea. The problem with the title is that it's the kind of joke we'd hear in a male locker room, and that's the atmosphere that has to change if we want more women editors to arrive and stay. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 23:43, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. The talk is a great idea but there are ways of introducing the topic without making it sound like a seduction community seminar. As Wikimania is an international event, there's the risk that non-English speakers may misunderstand the double entendre. gobonobo ^{+ c} 11:51, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Sarahgobonobo for realising that this is a an honest attempt to try and address this problem. Do help us. The translation issue may be real but in my experience non English speaking editors use AGF. The locker room is a stereotype. We are talking about overcoming stereotypes not primarily by fixing language but by information and education. Do help, we (meaning you too :-) ) need it. Victuallers (talk) 12:30, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Male heterosexual pornography & bias in sexuality articles

It appears articles related to sexuality may have issues with systemic bias. These articles seem to be depicting what is seen in pornography (male heterosexual pornography) as normal, mainstream or representative of the topic. For example, a while ago someone posted a link here to the article anal bleaching. Recently, I’ve looked over the sources for it supposedly being “mainstream” and those sources are not actually supporting that it is mainstream, but rather are questioning the notion that it is mainstream outside of pornography (and perhaps not even there that they may use lighting techniques instead of bleach). Also, someone recently linked to the article fisting in discussion regarding censorship, and looking over that article I was really surprised to see it was mostly illustrated with images of women (vaginal fisting), for an article on a topic that seems primarily related to a male homosexual practice. Oddly, the only image of a male was a medical image (like a rectal exam or something). I think sexuality articles are being edited from the POV that what is shown in male-heterosexual pornography is normal and mainstream and also from a POV that is squeamish about gay male sexuality. --BoboMeowCat (talk) 15:52, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

It has concerned me for a long time that young girls coming to Wikipedia to learn about their bodies are finding (often sexist) articles written by (often young) men. We talked above about the "male gaze". Women internalize this, and exposing girls to it in a supposedly neutral encyclopaedia is damaging. One idea would be a guideline saying that no pornography images should be used in articles that aren't about porn (that would have prevented the anal bleaching situation). It's something that could be added to Wikipedia: Writing about women. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 23:53, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the problem with the anal bleaching situation. Can you please explain what the problem is/was? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:12, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Previously the anal bleaching article contained an image of a pornographic actress to illustrate "the effects of anal bleaching" without any evidence she was actually bleached (as opposed to being naturally fair, or having her image altered via lighting or photoshop). This was compared and contrasted to a non-professional nude model who had significantly darker skin tone [19] Also, the article previously contained unsourced text which said anal bleaching was a safe and effective procedure. [20] (I've started reading over the actual sources and they mostly appear to be saying it's not very safe nor particularly effective). Currently, the article uses sources which question the assertion that anal bleaching is "mainstream" but it appears those sources are being misused to assert in wikipedia's voice that anal bleaching is now mainstream, when the sources do not appear to support that. [21],[22] --BoboMeowCat (talk) 00:29, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Oppose Slim's suggested guideline. So if we have an article about a body part, and the best photo we have of that body part happens to be of a porn star, we shouldn't use it? Seems counterproductive. Also, of course, if we accept what Bobo just wrote, it wouldn't have solved the anal bleaching situation, since he says it is an article mainly about pornography. --GRuban (talk) 18:29, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

• Support No porn images for non-porn articles. That's a no-brainer. Lightbreather (talk) 18:34, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Notice of ANI discussion

There is a discussion at ANI that may be of interest to members of this group: Porn in users' pages Alleged porn on old user pages Sexually provocative images on user pages. Lightbreather (talk) 17:13, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Edited to address concern raised in ANI that title did not exactly match the title of ANI thread and to clarify the porn is alleged (some may see it as porn, others may not) --BoboMeowCat (talk) 17:50, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Edited link - discussion header was changed. Lightbreather (talk) 18:37, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

As a follow-up, two MfDs were created from the discussion, so better to go there if the subject interests you.

• MfD for User:Jbc01
• MfD for User:Joe1234

--Lightbreather (talk) 18:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

How the heck?

How the heck did Wikiepedia end up with an article about Fucking Machines dot com? And what's more, how the heck did it become a "good article"? Lightbreather (talk) 19:12, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

After reading it I'd say it's because it's a pretty good article. The machines drew commentary from notable people and led to a fairly notable attempt to appeal a denied trademark. I'm not sure what the problem here is. Capeo (talk) 19:21, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't see an issue either, both sexes enjoy pornography. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 19:22, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Capeo and Knowledgekid87, for your kind words about my quality improvement efforts on Wikipedia to improve articles related to freedom of speech and censorship to higher levels of quality including WP:GA and WP:FA. Please also note that the article includes commentary from secondary sources written by women, including: Carly Milne, Regina Lynn, Annalee Newitz of AlterNet, author Violet Blue, author Audacia Ray, Bonnie Ruberg of The Village Voice, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Jessica Roy of The New York Observer, author Sarah Schaschek -- indeed, the majority of the secondary-source-commentary in the article itself is cited to female authors. Thank you, — Cirt (talk) 20:09, 25 February 2015 (UTC)