Proposals for more female editors

Please link to the rationale(s) for and/or against at the end of each proposal.

Knowledge generation

• Study other online communities that have successfully addressed gender imbalances.[1]

Recruiting women directly

• Ask chapters to compete to nurture the greatest number of female administrators.[2]

• User:Pharos of the New York City Chapter is trying to recruit a Girl Scout to a Wikipedian in Residence position and involve the Girl Scouts more directly in other ways. IRC general meeting Feb. 5 2011, 10:20 Pacific time (This has not yet been posted to the Gendergap list -- should we suggest a Girl Scout achievement badge in editing Wikipedia?)

Making wikis more welcoming to women

• Improve articles on interesting women and womens' issues such as simple:birth control and birth control in developing world language wikipedias.[3][4]
  • Bring more articles about women and womens' issues to featured status in all language wikipedias. (Modified from one of several deleted proposals at this diff.) Carolmooredc 18:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

• Provide easily accessible contact information for people who are willing and able to mentor new contributors. (And related proposals which the English Wikipedia is upholding to some extent.) -- Please see w:Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/Welcome to Wikipedia, w:Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user, and w:Wikipedia:Contribution Team; thanks User:Ironholds for recommending those.

• Remove WP:NOTHOWTO because it is used to argue against topic notability but is not well respected.[5] (This would also remove a pointless exclusion which overlaps with subjects of traditional interest to women -- e.g. recipes -- and information which is known to be used asymmetrically to disadvantage women economically -- e.g., brake repair.)

• Demote Wikipe-tan from English Wikipedia mascot to WikiProject Anime mascot, replacing her with Puzzly.[6] (partly done)

• Revive Esperanza and the Association of Editors' Advocates with a focus on editor mentoring. (This was opposed -- why is there opposition to reviving these groups?)

Supporting women via their economic disadvantages

• Less javascript for mobile devices.[7] (This is potentially in tension with WYSIWYG editing on high-end devices)

• Support a multilateral tax haven treaty in the US and any other countries that might still be opposing one.[8] (there is a detailed discussion of this proposal on the talk page with multiple objections -- note that this might prevent Wikimedia UK from attaining charitable status unless the advocacy could be off-loaded to chapters.)

Supporting women via their greater de facto child rearing responsibilities

• Simple language wikipedias in languages other than English.[9]

• Low stakes instructional assessment content in Moodle's GIFT.[10]

• Audio upload with rtmplite and Gnash.[11]