Wikipedia's vision is of a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all human knowledge. But we cannot achieve that when we are missing so much knowledge about women.
This #WomensHistoryMonth, join us in closing the gender knowledge gap on Wikipedia and across the Wikimedia projects.
#ChangeTheStats #OpenTheKnowledge
Get started: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wikipedia-needs-more-women
Sources: Humaniki, February 2024. Community Insights Survey, 2023.
From left to right:
Frank La Roche, Public Domain | RIGOYRBK, CC0 1.0.
Public Domain | NASA, Public Domain | Guillermo Kahlo, Public Domain.
Elvert Barnes, CC BY-SA 2.0
I bet there is a significant minority of women in the US that would be extremely happy if men knew the anatomy of the #female #reproductive system.
@TopKnot @wikimediafoundation
Once upon a time, I used a female handle on wikipedia and wrote about my trade. I will never do it again, because I got torn apart by know-it-alls who definitely had no idea of the subject at all.
I still contribute to Wikipedia now and again, but I use a male-sounding handle. That cuts down the flack by an appreciable amount.
So - what shall it be?
@WenAstar @TopKnot @wikimediafoundation As a regular financial contributor to Wikipedia, this makes me very angry. Sounds like what Wikipedia needs is an echelon of women and marginalized voices adjudicators who are there to eradicate that flack and bounce the offenders from participating. The space has to be made safer, Wikipedia -- don't keep guilting people into doing more when the folks there are so atrocious.
@wikimediafoundation As long as you will continue to support toxic behavior discriminating women and non binary people as editors, this will never happen. The old white male majority of editors will continue protecting itself from newcomers with a fresh mind. The results are visible in what recently happened in the French Wikipedia endangering many people (you absolutely know what I'm writing about).
You need to intervene. You need to stop this. Only then new contributors can rise and raise.
@wikimediafoundation Let me emphasize it : Your call for participation is pure victim blaming. The men don't let us edit. You pretend we do not want to edit. We want to edit, we want to contribute. But the old white cis men don't let us.
@braid @wikimediafoundation i facilitated a couple of those art+feminism wiki edit a thons a few years ago and men were overly criticizing pages we made, saying these notable women were not notable, threatening to remove their pages despite all the awards these artists and architects had won, even before the workshops were over. it was so discouraging that i don't do it anymore.
@forestine @braid @wikimediafoundation notability on wp is sloppy and seems arbitrary. i get the point of it overall, but it does give the impression of futility. you know, like laws that are strict, enforced unevenly, and used to target people who are already disenfranchised. you see people using deletion requests as punishment, as retribution. wp IS a bit toxic.
always this is framed as an imperfect system and better than nothing. yet when people decide to choose nothing, they wonder why.
@forestine @braid @wikimediafoundation
its broken. its unlikely to be fixed. good luck!
@forestine @braid @wikimediafoundation This is why we archive primary sources, cherish belief that a coming kinder world will access them.
@braid @wikimediafoundation EXACTLY THAT!
As we can see from #WikipediaFR there is no redeeming quality to invest time and labour into contributing to #Wikipedia when transmisogynists and Incels are literally backrolling any changes and deleting any appeals to their sabotage...
@braid @wikimediafoundation i have no idea what’s going on with the French Wikipedia, but would like to know more. Do you maybe have any link where I could read about it?
@braid @wikimediafoundation bit of googling brought up this: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2024/03/12/wikipedia-s-french-speaking-community-is-torn-apart-over-deadnaming-trans-people_6611905_13.html. Even the title is so bad, that it doesn’t matter if that is what you were talking about - it’s incredibly bad either way.
@thunfisch @braid @wikimediafoundation I suggest you Google "French Wikipedia controversy".
@thunfisch@chaos.social @braid@alpaka.social @wikimediafoundation@wikimedia.social So first, a caveat: I cannot read French, so I can't verify the original source for anything that happened on the French Wikipedia. I only know what French-speakers have translated into English.
As far as I understand, the admins of the French Wikipedia made two transphobic decisions. First, they created a rule requiring articles to deadname all trans people, even if they were not famous under their deadnames. They also banned queer users who criticized the policy.
https://eldritch.cafe/@SharpLimefox/111994912387444198
https://soc.kouett.net.eu.org/objects/b360c238-66eb-41df-aab1-3f939ec92588
After that, they reportedly changed the rules so that queer people are not allowed to edit articles about queer topics because we allegedly have a conflict of interest.
https://climatejustice.social/@theresnotime@labyrinth.zone/112049021320752948
#WikipediaFr
@wikimediafoundation if you want to have more women's biographies on wiki, have you considered making a global rule that prevents people from putting deadnames on trans people pages? considering recent controversy in french wiki community, i am sure many transwomen would rather not have a page at all than be deadnamed on it
@wikimediafoundation i'm pretty sure "identify as women" is widely regarded as antiquated language at this point and should be deprecated in favor of calling people simply "women". i believe there's no reason to use the "identify as" language unless you're trying to create an intentional distance, which is obviously not your intent
@hipsterelectron @wikimediafoundation i agree, its redundant at best. if you identify as a woman, you are a woman. if you do not identify as a woman, you are not a woman. etc.
by writing "identify as" here, you make it look like there is a difference between identifying as a woman and actually being a woman - which is simply not the case. writing "identify as" is more transphobic than just saying "woman"
@stella @wikimediafoundation thank you!! that was exactly my impression
@wikimediafoundation unfortunately the interaction in the Wikipedia community is extremely unfriendly and the admins behave like little gods in the wiki universe and in parts misogynistic. That not surprisingly is putting women off to participate.
Maybe a quota for females amongst the admins would change the general behaviour.
@wikimediafoundation I'm a woman, I did contribute to wikipedia, but with the recent transphobic events I don't want to anymore, fix your shit first.
@wikimediafoundation@wikimedia.social Hey Wikimedia Foundation! Are you listening to your French-speaking editors who are raising their concerns about outing and deadnaming Trans folks in French Wikipedia articles? Seems like something to pay attention to when "closing the gender gap."
@wikimediafoundation maybe not like, have nazis, running your French division, would help. Just spitballing here.
@wikimediafoundation Hello! Did you know that on the French edition of Wikipedia, most members of @lessanspages (a collective that aims to precisely reduce the gender knowledge gap, and that you provide funding to) are being harassed by current admins?
@ombremad @wikimediafoundation @lessanspages Sans doute lié aux mesures portant atteintes aux sources secondaires sur Wikipédia !
@wikimediafoundation Maybe do something about French Wikipedia being taken over by bigots to such a degree that it is unsafe for trans women and non-binary people?
@wikimediafoundation You really need to talk to Fr admins about cultivating an inclusive culture and community. They obviously don't want to do it :/
Very good words indeed.
Now, could you please remove the French moderators that are pursuing a policy of harassment against women and minorities, including transgender people?
Clean up your act. Wikipedia, this is becoming truly embarassing, and I say this as a supporter of your project.
@wikimediafoundation Great initiative.
If you want to go further, the gender diversity explorer measures gender diversity inside Wikipedia articles.
https://observablehq.com/@pac02/explore-gender-diversity-in-a-single-wikipedia-article
It is very common to find articles with less than 5% of women. It's very hard to find articles with more than 50% of women.
>male
>female
>trans woman
Oh, look! We found the transphobe!
Fuck off you pathetic creep. You're exactly the sort of toxic worm that keeps women off of Wikipedia.
@AnCuRuadh @wikimediafoundation
I don't accept your insults.
I rely on Wikidata P21 property (https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P21)
I'm conscious that the classification of gender on Wikidata is unperfect. There is a confusion between gender and gender identity (cis or trans) and there is an asymmetry between cis and trans people.
I encourage you to raise the issue in the P21 discussion page : https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Property_talk:P21
@pac2 go troll somewhere else bitch
@wikimediafoundation
You know why it is like that. Articles about women get flagged as "unimportant" way more often that those about men. You would need to do your fair share of work to help - but it is way easier to mark the (very long known) point and leave it to others to try to fix it.
Or ignore problems like those in France.
But well. I highly doubt you even read the answers to your posts. You are not really interested in the opinions of us
@wikimediafoundation talk to the cis white dude editors currently running things and gatekeeping everybody else from contributing
when wikipedia started, i immediately opened an account. for one, i have family that are important figures in Puerto Rican history and wanted to make sure their pages were there; but Latin American Studies is my expertise. wasn't for the editors who harassed me out of contributing.
and sure enough, after ±2 decades it's mostly WHITE Puerto Rican MEN in those pages.
what will y'all do so afroindigenous women scholars like me can contribute?
@blogdiva @wikimediafoundation
That's a shame. I was very active in the early years on Wikipedia. On somewhat different issues, I noticed some people in forums complaining that Wikipedia must be controlled by (X meaning certain organization) ; I took a look at articles they were complaining about, and it seemed to me more that there were a small number of regulars with (X agenda) gaming the system - I made suggestions on how others could use the same tactics to game the system back 1/3
@blogdiva @wikimediafoundation
but few were interested - most didn't want to get involved in all that, they just wanted to be able to improve coverage as casual interested users, which was perfectly reasonable.
With the Hurricane Katrina Federal Flood disaster of 2005 my focus went more to Wikimedia Commons, the media repository, as I could debunk stuff just by taking photos and uploading them with accurate descriptions.
2/3
@blogdiva @wikimediafoundation
While I'm still on Wikipedia, I've been more on Wikimedia Commons since.
3/3
@wikimediafoundation This is satire, no?
@wikimediafoundation if you want all women to feel safer and represented on Wikipedia so that they can contribute you better fix your shit wrt reactionary, misogynistic, transphobic and racist admins on some Wikipedia languages — namely the French one.
@wikimediafoundation maybe you should tell that to your editors, you know, the ones who actually drive away any woman, non binary or trans person in general from contributing.
@wikimediafoundation please, remove your problematic (sexist and transphobic) behaving contributors and admins which hide their hatred behind a polite speech from french community first.
@wikimediafoundation also, take this warning seriously, a part of the french contributors acts and behavior trigger a lot of redflags and pattern usually seen in authoritarian politics. They hide themselves behind a so-called neutrality or "encyclopedic knowledge".
@wikimediafoundation what's your plan for dealing with the racism and misogyny by the French Wikipedia admins? stop blowing smoke up our asses and get started yourselves
@wikimediafoundation I hope that someone at Wikipedia/Wikimedia is listening to the feedback in this thread. I support you and want you to succeed, but there are some serious problems, and you're driving women away and deleting too much material on women that you already have.
@wikimediafoundation Fix your goddamn admins first, mate.
@wikimediafoundation@wikimedia.social
Did you do anything to fight back WP-FR's decision to deadname trans people on their biographies? Because this is disgusting, also trans women are women.
https://eldritch.cafe/@Pandora/111924866636202868
https://bagarrosphere.fr/@photos_floues/112047957955051151
@wikimediafoundation So you have a problem: white cis men dominate the space and prevent others from participating. Sounds like any patriarchal system to me!
Your culture – this chikenshit liberalism demonstrated here, which allows bigotry – is the problem, but here you are, focusing on something else instead, avoiding to upset the bigoted white cis men.
Have your liberal white-cis-men-only Wikipedia. We who aren’t welcome there will make our own.
@wikimediafoundation Maybe start by making Wikipedia a place that doesn't outright reject voices that aren't cis white males
@wikimediafoundation Wikipedia is a patronage racket aimed at homogenizing culture and hermeneutics down to a conveniently colonial package. The only worldview which gets approved as “NPOV” is uniformly the very POV of the authority of colonial power.
No thanks.
@wikimediafoundation Maybe stop letting admins and mods enforce stricter "notoriety" criteria on women's pages than on men's pages.
This post of yours is an insult to all the people who tried to contribute to "change the stats" only to be met with unjustified deletion of their work and sometimes harassement.
@wikimediafoundation What are you doing to provide a better environment for women (and other minorities) in #Wikipedia?
@wikimediafoundation I tried to make some edits on wikipedia and after two hours of working on it, someone just went in there and deleted it all. It was a shitty experience, and I'm not doing it again.
@wikimediafoundation nothing I love more as a woman than fighting the Nerd War.
No Thanks.
@wikimediafoundation Several years ago, I created a page for Deirdre Costello (actress). An editor said it didn't have enough citations. So I added multiple. The editor switched their complaint to notability. I pointed out that she'd won a major award and been in multiple film, TV and radio shows with named roles. Other editors joined in the discussion to get her entry deleted (even though equivalent men retained their articles). The experience discouraged me from editing any more. :(