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?)

• Female celebrities such as Oprah could ask their audiences to try editing. This was suggested by Peter Sagal during the February 5, 2011 Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me National Public Radio quiz show (end of panel round two.) However, this would likely help if it were to happen. This has not yet been posted to the Gendergap list.

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; which would also support beginning editors. There is no reason we can't disable the javascript toolbar on low-end devices and enable WYSISYG on high-end systems, as far as I can tell.)

• 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]

• Most popular related articles.[12][13]