Wikimedia Conference 2010/Developers' Workshop/Notes/WikiWomen

WikiWomen 15 April 2010

Attendees:

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  • Maria Schiewe (Germany): Works with German Wikipedia
  • Nina Aldin-Thune (Norway): Trained Art Historian, started as a contributor
  • Finne (Belgium): 5-year Wikimedian
  • Tatiana: (Argentina): Debian user, Wikipedia user. Open Knowledge Foundation wants to integrate bibliographic data into Wikipedia
  • Delphine (France): Chapters committee member. Worked for Foundation as Chapters Coordinator. Has been a Board Member in Wikipedia France and running for Board in Germany. Married to Arne
  • Moka (USA): Work on Communications Team for Foundation.
  • Danese (USA): CTO for Foundation

WikiChicks:

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Started as a Mailing List 2007 (year of TypeA) by Angela Beasley. List was booted off the Wikimedia servers because there were no guys on the list. Currently hosted on Wikia, but not very active. Tried to do a lunch at Wikimania, but there just wasn't enough time. Aude & Finne: currently most visible female Tech contributors.

Idea: Danese thinking about organizing a Tea at Wikimania

Do we have a problem?

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This topic was discussed on WikiChicks and conclusions at that time (4 years ago) were that the community doesn't have overt sexism, but female contribution is still under-represented. Many countries there are higher percentage women. 2% Worldwide in Open Source development, as opposed to 7% overall in Technical Roles. Belief that editorial content however has a definite bias. Areas of higher interest to women are under-represented.

Mention of work of Geert Hofstede around gender and nationalism

For example: The topic of Knitting in Public attached to Danese's bio page..."Herstory" not well documented in Wikipedia content even today.

Discussion of factors:

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  • Early exposure by family member / friend to technical work
  • Come up with drivers for TODAY and work on a plan
  • Chapters are much more organized around female participation, lots of leadership roles are filled by women
  • ED and CTO are women, need to find women in the middle...identify a pipeline for achievement to gain more influence

Possible Projects:

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  • Herstory Sprint
  • Wikimania Teaparty
  • Success stories, increase
  • Mentor program; problem of finding participants
  • Tee-shirt
  • WikiWomen wiki to aggregate documentation
  • Should the focus be on Diversity?