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2017 20% graphic

Slide by Jane023

Several of us have expressed a goal of reaching 20% women's biographies on en-wiki in 2017. I think it would be useful to have a graphic depicting this. Ideas? --Rosiestep (talk) 17:40, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

A rough percentage bar could be created like we had for the Destubathon. It's not clear how many bios we'd need though, I'd guess roughly around 70,000 accounting for new male growth too.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:13, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I like the percentage bar too, especially in connection with more specific contests or challenges. I think something along the lines of Jane023's would provide a better overview of how we progress month by month. Then there are the graphics used by Maximilianklein for WHGI. Like Dr. Blofeld, I think 20% is extremely ambitious for one year unless strong incentives such as attractive prizes can be offered.--Ipigott (talk) 13:39, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, in this case what works for Dutch Wikipedia will not work as accurately for English Wikipedia. I can rely on fairly accurate numbers from the Whigi data dumps for the Dutch Wikipedia because we have a few really active users (Sjoerd and Edo) who are good about whisking all new articles (male/female or places or whatever) into Wikidata when the contributor doesn't do it themself. At the scale this happens in the Dutch Wikipedia, this is manageable, but in the English Wikipedia it still doesn't happen well at all. Not to mention the problem of the Articles-for-Creation backlog. The other thing is that if someone decides to do a backlog run of "all rulers of (fill in obscure country name here)" you will get an influx of male-oriented articles that may set you back a bit. I think it is more important to look at total growth of female-oriented articles per occupation, but how to do this is still something I have been wrestling with. Jane (talk) 14:13, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• @Jane023: You may be surprised to hear that WiR bases its progress entirely on Wikidata as a result of our tie-up with Project X. The metrics are based on the existence of an article on the EN wiki which is backed up on Wikidata with gender = feminine. But I agree with you that we often suffer from timelag and any accidental work on Wikidata. No one has yet come up with a more reliable method of calculating the proportion of women's biographies on the EN wiki. Articles on women's works (books, paintings, films, etc.) have to be added manually to the lists of new articles each month as they are not supported by "feminine" on Wikidata.--Ipigott (talk) 16:53, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

20% is extremely ambitious, if Dr. Blofeld's numbers are accurate. They are achievable, I think, if a couple of things break our way.

What's our on-Wiki publicity like? How often do we ping other WikiProjects to see if other editors are available/interested to work on the topics we have at hand? It might be worth doing something like that as we start the new year to see if we can't find more editors who might be interested in joining us. Frame it as a hard drive to reach 20% coverage by the end of next year and we might find some people who haven't yet gotten involved.

Also, have we ever had a banner ad up for WiR? Might be another way to get people interested/involved. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 15:16, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I have consitenly invited relevant WikiProjects to take part in our editathons and have also spent time and effort identifying the most active editors in relevant areas so that they can be invited too. Unfortunately relatively few register but with each editathon we have several new unregistered participants. Maybe they prefer to look at WiR. All our invitations contain a link for registration on our main mailing list but not many do so. It has often occurred to me that all this is something that could be automated but I'm not quite sure how.--Ipigott (talk) 16:28, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The banner has been used in connection with Dr. Blofeld's contests and for Wikipedia Asian Month but not specifically for WiR. Maybe this is something we should consider doing, for example for our editathons during Women's History Month and any contests we manage to initiate.--Ipigott (talk) 16:53, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

A banner has potential - I'd be in favor of trying one out this year, for one or two of the upcoming contests. As to the other point, I wouldn't focus too much on registration - I don't think I'm registered on the mailing list, and I didn't formally join the project until after I'd participated for some time. I'm most interested in content and content generation at the moment. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 18:23, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The banner would be good, but if we want to reach a target that large in that frame of mind I feel like we need something a bit broader (e.g. the 100,000 challenge someone mentioned above) than the editathons (although they could work in tandem) - I always seem to have the problem that the editathons miss my areas of interest. The Drover's Wife (talk) 19:15, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I think you are not alone, The Drover's Wife; I think that the narrower the focus area (occupation or geo area) of a WiR editathon, the fewer editors who'll be interested in participating.

So, pagestalkers, what if we offered additional editing opportunities in 2017 (in addition to the occ and geo editathons we've commonly done) with a "challenge" or something else? How to structure a challenge? We'll have at least 1 contest (US women/diversity women); probably in the spring. Other "contests"? Other ideas for more broad participation than our current offerings? --Rosiestep (talk) 20:06, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia Asian Month is already a contest, with judges helping to assess the articles, so maybe WiR should recognize "winners" in the category of writing on Asian women.--Pharos (talk) 20:13, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I think what Rosiestep said would be great, but I think some kind of all-encompassing challenge would be great, for instance for people like me who don't have the requisite background knowledge to write on their topics of interest for something like Wikipedia Asian Month. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:42, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Facebook and Pinterest

Could someone update the WiR pages on Facebook and Pinterest? They both say "less than 16% of Wikipedia's biographies are about women". Now that we have reached 16.77%, it would be more correct to say "less than 17%". I'm glad to see there seems to be a fair amount of activity on the social networks, particularly Twitter, but is there any evidence that articles posted there receive more page views? Maybe the "tweets" are receiving page views or whatever. Is there any way of finding out how many? Ditto Facebook and Pinterest. (My excuses for not being a member of these myself. I spend enough time each day coping with regular emails and I see how much time my wife and family have to spend on Facebook.)--Ipigott (talk) 15:25, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps Megalibrarygirl or Penny Richards could help with Pinterest?--Ipigott (talk) 11:33, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I'll change the Pinterest blurb right now.Penny Richards (talk) 15:22, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Ipigott I could help with Facebook, but I don't seem to have permission to change the page blurb, though I can make posts.Alafarge (talk) 00:36, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Alafarge. Rosiestep: Do you remember who posted the description on Facebook?--Ipigott (talk) 07:36, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

I reached out to a person I think might have coordinated the FB page. Awaiting response. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:19, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Her Hat Was In the Ring

I came across this website from Twitter: Her Hat Was In the Ring. It contains biographical records for 3,425 women, who ran in 4,663 US campaigns before 1920. I don't know how many of the entries meet WP:N or how many of the bios already have an article on en-wiki, but if someone has the inclination to create a redlist, it might be useful to us. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:11, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

It's worth looking at, but I might be careful - I did a quick once-over, and it seems like a fair number of them are simply one-off candidates in local races who don't possess much, if any, notability at all. Still, there's some good stuff there for a starting point. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 21:21, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

The note about Susanna Salter is interesting; that (and our article on her) contradicts several of the sources I found when writing Susan Wissler's article. I'll have to look into that. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:51, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

500 Women

Not to toot my own horn (OK, OK, maybe a little...), but I've created the following personal page in userspace for the upcoming year:

• User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao/500 Women

Its goal is to encourage myself to focus on creating 500 biographical articles of women before the end of the year, in an attempt to do my part to close the Wikipedia gender gap. 500's a tall order, but I'm hopeful that it's something I'll be able to reach.

If this is the sort of thing that will help anyone else develop a goal to meet, please feel free to steal and use it. I intend to be far more active in these precincts this year, and this will hopefully assist me in that. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:45, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Yay! My own goal is to produce at least 4 C class articles per week and work toward 5 GA this year. We shall see if that happens. SusunW (talk) 16:41, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

500 articles on women for the year seems like a good, achievable target. Not only our sports magicians but a few of our other participants succeeded in creating even more than 500 last year. But there is always a difficult choice to be made between quantity and quality. Personally, I was hoping to spend more time on quality and look forward to helping Susun along with some of her GAs. And I would also like to spend more time mentoring, reviewing new articles and working on existing articles which deserve improvements.--Ipigott (talk) 08:21, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Stubs

I'm proud to be part of the Women in Red project and look forward to continued success. But in clicking on some of the articles being added to the Metrics, I'm wondering how we can say we're expanding women's bios on Wikipedia when many of them don't seem to be much more than stubs? Can we say that the other 80% of bios (about men) also include a lot of stubs? I personally work very hard on my biographies, and I know other experienced editors do, too, but there does seem to be a plethora of stubby articles being submitted by new editors. I'm wondering if a minimum character count should be required to qualify for Women in Red? Best, Yoninah (talk) 20:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't. First of all, I think a lot of new articles are going to be stubs. Secondly, I think there are a lot of stubs among the articles about men, and I wouldn't worry overmuch about the discrepancy at this juncture. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:43, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Your point is well made, Yoninah; destubbing is important. I take the long view. Most articles begin as stubs and eventually -a day, a year, a decade later- some/most get improved so including stubs in our metrics should be fine. That said, in April, I'll be facilitating a destubbing campaign, narrow geo area, re women's bios. If it's successful (unsure at this time how to define success), the campaign could be replicated to destub women's content in other geo areas. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:32, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

One way of defining success is survival at AfD, free from partisan contributions, as occurred in the washup to the infamous Wikipedia:Meetup/Regina/ArtAndFeminism 2016/University of Regina. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:00, 3 January 2017 (UTC).

I consider myself a "queen of the stubs" even though I occasionally take the time to create longer articles. My stubbiness is a function of the sources at hand, not of my personal interest in the subject. For many, I start with a stub and slowly add to it when material appears, and over time hundreds of others have added to my stubs. It may take years, but I firmly believe that having a stub helps draw editors to the subject (as opposed to those who feel that they won't dive in if a stub is already there). I am also a stub improver in my field of interest as I assume many here are. One of the major advantages of having a stub is making the subject findable on Google, which in turn tends to make other sources findable for me. When I get frustrated looking for something, I make a stub and wait a month and let wikimagic happen. So far it has never let me down. Jane (talk) 07:31, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Yoninah: I think we need to distinguish between two kinds of stub: there are those which may only run to two or three lines but give essential details with appropriate sources, more or less along the lines of many entries in traditional enyclopaedias; and one-liners which give little more than a person's name and occupation. In my opinion, the first kind play a useful part in Wikipedia, providing basic information for those researching a name, while the second appear mostly to be seldom consulted, borderline cases. It seems to me that many of the latter do not evolve over the years. It is sometimes difficult to turn up good secondary sources about an individual who obviously deserves recognition but a few lines are better than none. I am absolutely certain that the proportion of stubs on men is just as high as that on women. So all in all, I think we need to include stubs in our metrics although perhaps we could start rating all the articles created here in the traditional way: stub, start, C, B, GA, FA. That would provide a better picture of our coverage and might encourage more concern for quality.--Ipigott (talk) 10:24, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Ipigott I understand. I guess I'm looking at this more from the point of view of Wikipedia than of this particular project. If we're just trying to get notable women onto Google Search, the one-liners make sense. But Women in Red doesn't want to get the reputation of being the first place editors look to slap on AFD tags. Yoninah (talk) 11:08, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Yoninah: I was not so much supporting the one-liners as stubs which present useful facts about individuals who are liable to be the subject of searches. Many of the shorter stubs are not. But you are absolutely right that there does appear to be a concerted attempt to list many female biographies at AfD. Some are certainly justified but there are many which simply require further research. I am particularly concerned about those which address women from Asian and Africa who have not been covered in the usual western sources. There is a tendency to have them deleted as reviewers cannot turn up sources on Google searches in English. Unfortunately, it would be a full-time job to research them all in more detail but perhaps we should spend more time on it. I thought it was particularly astonishing that so many of the articles on BBC's 100 Women were considered to be insufficiently notable for inclusion here.--Ipigott (talk) 13:32, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Regarding Asian and African topics: I wonder how much of that is related to gender, and how much of that is endemic to the fact that they're African and Asian topics. I know sourcing them is a great deal more difficult that sourcing other articles can be, and I have a feeling that might play into it more than not. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:17, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I think there are problems with sourcing articles on Asian and African men but in my experience finding sources on women is far more difficult as their achievements are or were far less likely to be documented.--Ipigott (talk) 15:30, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

They want to delete First Ladies now?

For those of you who do not follow Gendergap-l, this post, "They want to delete First Ladies now?", started an interesting thread regarding Nell Arthur. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:57, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep This isn't the first time a first lady has been attacked. I worked on the first lady of Puerto Rico and Sue and I have both worked to save a couple other ones as AFD. There seems to be a real lack of understanding that being hostess of a nation is an actual job and requires skill, finesse, diplomacy, etc. (Though in truth, WP requires no such thing, only that people have RS mentioning them throughout time.) Almost all the nominations have been on the basis of "Notability is not Inherited". Um, yes, the president has a job and the first lady has another one. Different jobs, different skills, neither dependent upon the other. It also decries the fact that there are tons of RS which establish GNG on first ladies. SusunW (talk) 19:41, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps notability is not inherited, but if we accept the reliable sources standard there's no excuse for PRODding an article like that. Hell, I have enough books around the house to create an article, fully sourced, about Nell Arthur from scratch if it becomes necessary. It's not that difficult. Besides which, considering that both the White House and the National Portrait Gallery consider first ladies important enough to treat as separate from their husbands when collecting/creating biographical material for them... --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 20:13, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I think of it like this: notability isn't inherited, but you can certainly inherit a notable job--otherwise, half the royals in history wouldn't meet the notability standard. (I realize that Nell Arthur didn't live to be First Lady, so this doesn't really apply to her; but she meets notability in other ways, I'm sure.)Penny Richards (talk) 02:37, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

She does, even if for no other reason than she was the wife of a notable man who is often discussed in biographies of him. (Yes, there are biographies - plural - of Chet Arthur. :-)) That being said...there are independent sources; how many books about the wives of the presidents are there? Enough, certainly - I have one around here myself, from the White House Historical Association, if I recall correctly. I know she's in there. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 03:38, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I think the notability issue is a red-herring. It's just an excuse for people to remove articles they believe should not be part of Wikipedia. It's very frustrating. :( Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:23, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Coming soon: A global community survey to learn how to best support Wikimedians

This article has some information about the upcoming global survey. I encourage everyone to participate... let your voices be heard! --Rosiestep (talk) 22:16, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I have read through these documents but it appears everything is aimed at "Wikimedians". I must say I don't know whether I am a Wikimedian, though I suspect I am not. It might therefore be useful for the study, the questionnaire and supporting documents to define exactly what is meant by Wikimedian. I also see that the questionnaires are only going to be sent out to "active Wikimedians". As one of the main areas under investigation is editing, I think it would be useful to obtain feedback from Wikipedian newbies as one of the key problems in attracting more editors appears to be the difficultly of understanding and applying the coding requirements, not just markup but all the various levels of supporting information required for each article. I am surprised no one has addressed this issue as a priority.--Ipigott (talk) 09:54, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep As you have posted a new thread below without responding to my above comment on this one, I can only assume that (together with most of those active on WiR) I am not considered to be a Wikimedian. I assume that as a member of WMDC you are considered to be one yourself. Would it be too much to ask you to support some of WiR's concerns in these questionnaires, including the need to facilitate editing for newbies, and to keep us informed of progress. I think it's a great pity that those of us who have tried to support and contribute to the success of Wikipedia rather than Wikimedia are considered to be second class citizens in these surveys. But at least I am thankful that you have been trying to keep us informed.--Ipigott (talk) 21:44, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Ipigott, you assumed I saw your earlier reply, but I didn't.  :)

Wikipedians are Wikimedians in the same way as I'm a Californian and an American. Another way of putting it is that Wikidata contributors and Commons contributors are also Wikimedians. Does this help? --Rosiestep (talk) 21:50, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, Rosie. It just shows how ignorant one can be. I did look at Wikimedians on Wikipedia but that told me I was a Wikipedian not a Wikimedian. Perhaps someone should write an article specifically on "Wikimedian" so that everyone can check things out. All I could find on Wikimedian was a page on Meta but that rather baffles me as it includes those working on projects such as Wikivoyage, Wikibooks and Wikiversity which have entirely different editing and sourcing requirements. As for Wikidata, as you know it requires a completely different approach to editing. From the document you linked to above and the other documents it links to, it certainly seemed to me that the emphasis was on Wikipedia. If it's confusing for me, it must be even more confusing for newcomers and outsiders. It's probably a case of the shoemakers children being badly shod. Perhaps you and your high-ranking colleagues can help to sort it all out.--Ipigott (talk) 08:05, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Ipigott, thank you for bringing up the terminology issue and the need for clarification. At your suggestion, I discussed it (without mentioning your name) with the survey strategist and one other WMF staff member this morning during a pre-scheduled phone call on another topic. The survey strategist stated they will discuss what they're referring to as "branding confusion" with the WMF Communications Department, and will try to make things clearer in future communications. My take-away is that if there's terminology confusion within our editing community, then press, readers, etc. are probably also confused. So thanks again for starting the conversation. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:20, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep: Glad to hear you brought this up. Maybe the survey should be based mainly on Wikipedia and Commons which are the projects most of us deal with. There could possibly be additional questions on Wikidata as it appears to be increasingly important. I suppose that as with most surveys based on questionnaires there will be a trial run. You may have an opportunity to see whether the questions are sufficiently clear and whether they cover our main concerns at WiR.--Ipigott (talk) 08:01, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Ipigott: There will be a 'trial run' as you say, but it will be sent to a randomly-selected group of Wikimedians. I do not know what pool (roles) of Wikimedians it'll draw from, e.g. foo-language editors, foo-language sysops, Commons uploaders, staff, contractors, Chapter board members, etc. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:37, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

In the news... @ Bloomberg

In case you missed it, Women in Red is mentioned in this Bloomberg piece: "Is Wikipedia Woke?"! --Rosiestep (talk) 22:43, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Lovely article. Pretty much sums up the environment. WHY is it so difficult to write an article? This “The person willing to make the biggest jerk out of himself oftentimes wins.” is priceless and precise. SusunW (talk) 17:04, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it is indeed a telling account. I already mentioned it above in connection with SvG. What I find frustrating is that the degree of opposition to women's coverage on Wikipedia seems to increase in proportion to the number of press articles and international efforts of support such as the BBC event. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, I think I need to point out that last week was the worst on record for the EN wiki with 238 out of 1,461 new biographies documenting women. This represents only 16.29% which is in fact a fractionally negative result compared to our current overall 16.78%. By contrast, many of the other wikis did far better: Hindi 50%, Danish 46.88%, Dutch 40.94%, Portuguese 36.76%, French 31.42%, Norwegian 26.79%. Overall we are falling behind as others maintain improvements: Welsh 53.37% (thanks to bots drawing on Wikidata), Korean 25.03%, Japanese 22.25%, Norwegian 21.97%, Persian 20.73%, Swedish 20.28%. It seems to me that our current difficulties on the EN wiki are mainly a result of the decision to delete most of SvG's 18,000 sports biographies. It has obviously discouraged those who regularly contribute short stubs on women in sport which usually account for about half of all our new biographies each week. Unless we can do something to create more confidence, I can't see much chance of the situation improving. I note, by the way, that SvG's articles have not yet been deleted. Does anyone know why not? I hope very much someone has managed to save them but fear it might simply be a result of those involved being otherwise occupied during the holiday period. But we certainly need to come up with new strategies and new means of supporting the cause within the general Wikimedia environment if we are to maintain the level of growth we have enjoyed up to now. Those responsible for the encyclopaedia need to devote special attention to the EN wiki as it is not only our flagship but serves as a source of information which extends far beyond native speakers of English.--Ipigott (talk) 13:13, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Worth noting that the WHGI stats for the week in question differ greatly from the Wikiproject X stats. If we look just at the December stats file, we see this pattern, which surely sums to more than 238 for the seven-day period?

• 25th 21 added
• 26th 16 added
• 27th 59 added
• 28th 123 added
• 29th 71 added
• 31st 106 added
• 1st 28 added

It so happens that in the week in question I amended several hundred wikidata items to show 'female' when previously they'd been blank or male. That work is reflected in stats files for other months, which show increases in the week in question:

• November 36 added
• October 31 added
• September 19 added
• August 28 added
• July 36 added
• June 19 added
• March 13 added

So. Set in this context, the WHGI stats are a puzzle and clearly suspect. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:17, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I feel like SvG's articles are more of an isolated case than a broader trend, and aside from (obviously) SvG himself I'd be interested to know who was discouraged from stub creation by that. While that discussion started to turn into a pile-on at the end, it always seemed to be more about poor sourcing and sloppy work than it was about the idea of stub creation in general. (If anyone has felt discouraged because of that, please do chime in; I'd hate to see us lose more editors because of that whole mess.)

As for SvG's articles, last I heard the plan was to compile a list of all BLP articles that SvG wrote, give relevant projects (presumably including us) a week to clean up the ones they want to fix, and then delete what's left. Apparently nobody has gotten around to creating that list yet... TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:34, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Interesting roundup of additions to Wikidata. I don't think this impacts the WHGI stats though they are off by date of the article creation. Please remember that the dumps are time-stamped, which is a good thing. Your additions should therefore be visible in the next WHGI dump. Don't forget that this is true for all time-lagged additions to Wikidata (and there are many). The basic idea is that this will eventually all average out in the end. I think we are still ramping up acceptance and understanding of what Wikidata is. Eventually I think everyone will move towards a workflow like mine, where you start with the Wikidata item and Commons categories, Commons creator templates, and sourced authority control links, before creating a stub on Wikipedia. Now it's often a question of reverse-engineering somebody else's stub, which is highly inefficient. Jane (talk) 07:38, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Tagishsimon for handling all these additions on Wikidata. And as Jane says, it will be interesting to see how the day-to-day metrics you mention affect the WHGI stats next week. Your figures certainly show almost twice as many as Maximilianklein's. I was also wondering how many biographies on the EN wiki have no gender info on Wikidata. Perhaps we could encourage our Wikidata specialists to look into these. The way the stats are set up at the moment, our percentages are based on the proportion of biographies coded "female" on Wikidata, rather than "female" as a proportion of the total of "male" and "female" biographies. I have a feeling there may still be a fair proportion coded "human" but not "male" or "female". Maybe it's worth looking into. But on the other hand, as WHGI uses the same algorithm to establish stats for the other languages, the place of the EN wiki in the picture is liable to remain more or less as it is.--Ipigott (talk) 08:43, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

• Tagishsimon and Jane023: As expected, the WHGI stats have indeed caught up with the additions mentioned. The most recent figures (week ending 8 January) show that 754 of the 1,587 new biographies were on women, i.e. 47.51%. This must be a record for the EN wiki. So now we can begin to wonder why so few new articles are recorded in our current metrics, although it might be just as well to wait for them to catch up too! (cc Rosiestep)--Ipigott (talk) 08:26, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Good to know. In case anyone reading here has an account on Phabricator, it is worth following the bug for adding the item creation date to Wikibase. This will make it possible to use the Wikidata Sparql query engine to find the number of newly created female-gendered items per period. Right now we are dependent on keeping running totals, which tend to time-out beyond certain numbers. These "task numbers" are T151538 and T151539. Jane (talk) 09:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

This is the first I have heard of either Phabricator or Wikibase. I've found them on MediaWiki but it seems to me that by and large things are chugging along quite well. As far as I am concerned, it doesn't matter too much if we have to wait a few days for things to catch up. The important thing is to have a consistent trace of the effectiveness of our work on WiR. The WHGI stats also provide interesting comparisons between the EN wiki and the others. For instance, I see that Dutch has now reached 17.17% and that Norwegian is within a whisker of 22%. To some extent, this appears to reflect the number of women in the national parliaments: 37% in the Netherlands, 40% in Norway. By contrast, there are only 30% in the UK and 19% in USA.--Ipigott (talk) 11:07, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

WHGI is great and I hope it lasts! We are slowly winning a few people over to the gendergap cause on nlwiki, but it is slow going and sometimes quite depressing. Generating my own queries is btw not something I particularly like doing, but I find it helpful just to be able to check my own work. Once over the threshold of figuring it out, I find I use it quite often for all sorts of things. Phabricator is just a way to track things, but like all online tracking systems, it refers to anything or everything as a task or bug. Basically the software assumes that any change is a "fix". Phabricator replaced Gerrit, if that means anything. You don't need to make an account on it if you don't want to. I only subscribe to follow things very rarely but I like it that it sends emails with updates. Jane (talk) 12:36, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Jane023 will you be at Wikimedia Conference (Berlin; March-April)? I'd really like to spend an hour with you to get up to snuff on some of this. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:26, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think so. I will be going to the big Wikidata 5 yr birthday party though. You can skype me anytime in the morning (I think you are 9 hours behind me). I am pretty sure I gave you my skype name, and otherwise I can mail it to you. Skype is handy because then I can just send you the links for the query engine as we talk about them (or any other links for that matter). Jane (talk) 11:45, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

WIR 2017

May I remind everyone that in addition to our templates for specific editathons, we also have {{WIR 2017}} which you can use on the talk pages of articles about women, whatever the topic. It will be particularly useful to Ser Amantio di Nicolao and anyone else wishing to create lots of new articles on women and their works during the year.--Ipigott (talk) 15:54, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I did not know about this - thanks for letting me know. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:18, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I must say how happy I am to see that with all your Wikipedian experience, you have decided to set WiR as one of your priorities for the year. I hope many others follow in your footsteps.--Ipigott (talk) 08:33, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, @Ipigott:, that template is very useful for articles on the WIR lists that don't fit in with the editathon of the month. I also see that {{WIR 2016}} works, too, so I've added it to my recent new pages. Yoninah (talk) 11:48, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I created that one a while back as I realized many of our members and participants continued to write about women month after month in areas outside the coverage of our editathons. It goes without saying that all articles about women and their works are welcome at all times. The editathons simply provide a specific focus in important areas but there is no obligation to contribute to them. Many of us do so because we like a bit of variety. It is also satisfying to see that some of the key players in each area are finally being documented, some quite extensively.--Ipigott (talk) 11:59, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Question from a relatively new editor - does the tag WIR tag go only on the talk page? I recently created several new pages (see below) - from the WIR redlink list for U.S. - mostly from Women's Caucus for Art sublist -- however I added the category Women in Red (and also Wikiproject:Women Artists) to the article itself via HotCat. My mistake! Another editor removed one with the comment that these do not belong on individual pages. Please clarify and accept my apologies if I caused anyone extra work due to my misunderstanding. I removed all HotCat tags in question that I could find for the pages I created. Eleanor Munro, Bernice Steinbaum, Michi Itami, Ellen Rothenberg, Helen Serger, Jill Giegerich, Joanna Frueh, Leslie King-Hammond, Linda Frye Burnham, Margo Machida, Mary Lum, Moira Roth, Patsy Norvell, Whitney Chadwick. I also redirected these two WIR redlinks to existing articles: Marilyn J. Stokstad to Marilyn Stokstad, and Celia Muños to Celia Álvarez Muñoz. I think everything has been corrected now. Netherzone (talk) 15:14, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Netherzone they go on the talk page only. They are a notification device, if the file get's nominated for deletion, or someone wants something fixed, they can notify the project. Categories are for organization of files. I looked at several of your new files. They seem fine. Welcome aboard! SusunW (talk) 15:33, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

SusunW Thanks for looking over the files, and for clarification, and the warm welcome! Netherzone (talk) 16:41, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Netherzone May I second that welcome from SusunW? If you ever need any references or are having trouble, drop me a note on my talk page or email me. I'm happy to help. Welcome to Women in Red! :D Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:26, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Megalibrarygirl Thanks for the warm welcome Megalibrarygirl. It's really great to be here! Thanks to all for your amazing work on women's contributions to history. My goal this month is to try to either create or edit at least one woman artist/educator per day. Netherzone (talk) 17:30, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Sander.v.Ginkel's articles

As many of you are aware, a recent discussion at ANI decided that the many biographies of living people created by User:Sander.v.Ginkel are to be deleted. To give editors a chance to preserve articles they wish to keep, a page has been set up here, though there still appears to be some discussion on how exactly the preservation efforts will happen. Notifying the project as many of his articles are about women and were created with support from us. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 13:32, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks TheCatalyst31 and Aymatth2 for raising these considerations. SvG has been the most active contributor to WiR over the past few months, not only creating more articles than anyone else but in assisting us in general and ensuring that as many new articles as possible are included in our Wikidata statistics on our women's biographies. As one of the most active day-to-day and month-to-month monitors of additions to WiR over the past 18 months, I have repeatedly drawn attention to Rosiestep and other key WiR coordinators to the inherent danger of including one-line mini-stubs on sports people created by SvG and several other editors. Her reaction, as one our leading members, was that stubs were always important as they could be built on this month, next month or in the years to come. I have personally carefully and constantly monitored much of the the work of SvG and several similar editors who have contributed a huge number of stubs in recent months on women who have played a key role in national and international sports events. While I agree that BLPs should normally be sourced from more than one reference, the fact that SvG -- like many others -- has been able to draw on at least one reliable reference for the biographies of almost 100% of his articles is ample justification for their continued inclusion. If SvG articles on women's BLPs over the past 15 months (probably over some 7,000) are to be deleted on the basis of problems detected with 20 or 30, I would estimate that some 30,000 other mini stubs on women in sports over the same period should also be deleted. Some would maintain that this should not be a problem as just as many of them are on men. But a general analysis on the number of new articles on women in sports compared to men in sports shows that the proportion is far above the overall 17%, bordering on 50%. In the case of SvG, given his specific interest in supporting wome the proportion was much higher. The deletion of SvG's articles with the additional threat of including those of the five or six editors who have followed more or less the same path would therefore have a devastating effect on WiR's until now successful attempt to increase the EN Wikipedia's coverage of women. I hope therefore that SvG's important work will not simply be lost to the discretion of a couple of administrators.--Ipigott (talk) 18:06, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree that there needs to be some process to save them. After all, it seems all the stubs on women sportsplayers that he's created pass WP:NSPORT, and so it seems crazy to delete them just because a few of them may be substandard. Joseph2302 (talk) 18:21, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

It wasn't so much that SvG was creating mini-stubs that weren't on notable topics, but he was doing them from often-incorrect data sources with no quality control, and so they weren't just mass mini-stubs, they were mass-and-frequently-wrong mini-stubs. It's a good opportunity for people to grab the ones they can commit to fixing up and move on, and so we ensure moving onwards that quality (and in that case, basic accuracy) matters as well as quantity. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Any comments at User:Aymatth2/SvG clean-up would be welcome. We may be moving towards a solution where the SvG stubs are all moved out of main space, then systematically checked, fixed and restored where appropriate. Our first concern must be to respect the rights of the subjects of the articles, who must not be haunted by clones of false and harmful Wikipedia articles for the rest of their lives. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:45, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

That would be an ideal solution if possible. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:48, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@Aymatth2: I don't want to complicate things further at User:Aymatth2/SvG clean-up but I wonder whether it would be possible to create a separate list of all SvG's threatened BLPs covering women on the basis of their categories. If so, over the next few weeks or months, we could attempt to share them out to members of WiR for checking and possible re-inclusion on the mainspace. As far as I can see, it should be possible to create the list as Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/SvG women BLPs for checking. It has now been suggested that all SvG's unchecked BLPs should be removed from the mainspace on 15 January. If there is agreement on this approach, I suggest the WiR list should be created on 14 January in order to avoid the inclusion of BLPs which have already been checked or moved to user spaces on the basis of specific requests. Perhaps Tagishsimon and any other technical experts could comment of the feasibility of this approach.--Ipigott (talk) 08:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

If we can find someone to develop the script, we can create lists organized by category to help support focused review and clean-up. It might be possible to create temporary maintenance categories for the clean-up, like [[Category:SvG women BLPs]]. That may be a really dumb idea though. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:56, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm trying my best to ensure that nothing is deleted (esp. en-masse), but moved to draft space instead, so they can be checked. Please see this section of the SvG clean-up page. @Ipigott: maybe MusikAnimal and/or Tazerdadog can help with the lists for female BLPs. Again, both are active on the clean-up talkpage. Hope this helps. Lugnuts ^{Precious bodily fluids} 12:04, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Not something I know how to create en masse, but I suspect it is easy enough with just a regular expression search for female pronouns. Not something I can do, but I'd be surprised if MusikAnimal couldn't do it. Tazerdadog (talk) 13:46, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I wanted to be sure WiR members think this would be a useful option. That's why I thought it should first be discussed here. I think we should be careful to avoid creating duplicate listings which could potentially lead to the same articles being checked/revised more than once. And there would be no point is creating a WiR list if our members are not willing to work on it.--Ipigott (talk) 15:46, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to use a bot to swipe all of Sanders's articles and leave just xxx and profession and one source? That way we'd have a lot of sub stubs but at least they would be rid of errors and sitll expandable. If the infoboxes have problems too get a bot to remove those too. I just think there's a better way of dealing with this. I think the best thing would be to delete them all and get a bot to recreate them and thousands more but that's unlikely to be approved.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:30, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

My understanding - and I admit I didn't follow the ANI case terribly closely, as I didn't have much to contribute - is that even that is suspect sometimes. To wit, that some of the articles link to a source that does not contain the information that it's supposed to. So that could be dicey, too. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 20:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes. A significant number of the cited sources do not mention the subject at all. Even if the source is good, I see little value in a sub stub that say "Jane Doe is a rhythmic gymnast" when in fact Jane Smith (née Doe) is a dental hygienist who competed in gymnastics as a child. The more we strip out of these articles the more meaningless they become. But the spot checks show that we have to review all the articles we want to keep to confirm that they say only what the source says, if it says anything at all. A bot cannot do that. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:25, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Sander.v.Ginkel's BLPs of women

Here's a Petscan list of Sander's BLPs for women: SvG female BLPs on Petscan. It may take a minute or two to load. 8903 articles. The report asks for the subset of articles linked from User:Aymatth2/SvG clean-up/BLP 0, considered the complete list of SvG BLPs, and which have a wikidata item using the 'female' property. I'm confident that wikidata is up to speed on SvG's creations.

It is possible to amend the Petscan list to pick out subsets by category: here, for instance, are 1922 Women's association football players. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:35, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks a million Tagishsimon, I knew you would be able to produce the list and I suppose I am right in thinking it will survive the deletion of the articles from the mainspace. But as I feared, with 8,903 articles the list really is enormous. Maybe, as you suggest, it would be easier to deal with if it were to be divided into subcategories for the various sports involved. But we now need to see whether any of our participants would be prepared to commit themselves to checking the articles out. Would it be unreasonable to aim for a minimum of 20 per person per week? With nine or ten volunteers, we could then complete the job by the end of the year. Perhaps some of the effort could also be handled automatically, e.g. checking whether individuals are specifically mentioned in the sources. Up to now, there appears to have been no interest here in assisting with the work. Unless we can find a few volunteers, we must face the risk of losing the majority of these articles. So, any offers? Or any further comment on a more automated approach?--Ipigott (talk) 10:13, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

• Once the articles have all been moved to draft, the list of mainspace articles at User:Aymatth2/SvG clean-up/BLP 0 will be changed to point to the draft articles, and the Petscan list can be recreated, as can sublists by category such as women cyclists. As draft articles for non-notable athletes are deleted or turned into redirects, and reviewed and corrected articles for notable athletes are restored to mainspace, the lists can be refreshed to show how much is left. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:21, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Volunteers are needed to do a careful review. Often the articles "look o.k." and seem harmless, but do not reflect what the source says. E.g. "Janice Bolland (born January 25, 1966 in Cheyenne, United States) is an American former road racing cyclist." The source does not say she was born in Cheyenne and does not say she has retired: she may still race in a senior category. So we need careful reviewers to avoid perpetuating errors. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:21, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Not much enthusiasm?

• Rosiestep, Megalibrarygirl, SusunW, Dr. Blofeld, Victuallers: There does not seem to be much enthusiasm here for checking through SvG's BLPs on women. I think it is important for everyone to know that when the vast majority of his 8,903 articles are moved out of the mainspace on or around this coming Sunday, our figures for the past year will undergo a drastic decrease. I don't think any of us are capable of using scripts to assist in checking out that the factual information presented in the articles is reflected in the sources. That is why I suggested a target of 20 per person per week might be acceptable. But as far as I can see, few of us are sufficiently interested in sports to devote consistent time and effort to the problem over the next year or so. Even I would prefer to spend my editing time on creating and improving articles about women in other areas. I would have been prepared to play my part but I don't much feel like being the only one to contribute. That being the case, I suppose we'll just have to accept the loss and hope we can progress in other ways. There might still be a few editors such as Lugnuts who can save a few of them. But I sincerely hope the challenges and contests proposed by Dr. Blofeld will provide the means of encouraging more editors to contribute more articles to WiR.--Ipigott (talk) 08:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Here are some more breakdowns by sport and gender. For me personally, the cyclists and Olympians will be my priority areas. There's a bot request underway to get approval to move everything out of mainspace in the very near future. Once that happens, people can start to chip in. There will be 90 days from articles moved into draft to either a) save them or b) endorse deletion. I'll try and get progress updates of what is left every 30 days, and weekly towards the end. Hopefully the more high-value work that Sander did will not be gone forever. Lugnuts ^{Precious bodily fluids} 11:35, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Lugnuts: I really appreciate the time and trouble you are devoting to this. While SvG and you yourself have been able to create dozens if not hundreds of articles a day, the average Wikipedian, including most participants in WiR, simply do not have your tools or your experience. As far as I can see, it will be a matter of doing everything manually in the traditional way. Even if we are allowed 90 days, I don't think we'll be able to make much progress on the huge amount of work required. Particularly the articles on football are likely to require time-consuming research and revision, especially for those of us who are not aware of their relative importance.--Ipigott (talk) 12:10, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Ipigott: that last point, for me, is the main one. I'm not a sports person - I don't know the first thing about most sports. I've never edited much in the sports field, and at that largely category-related stuff. I wouldn't mind helping out, but I'd be useless, and I think my talents are better put to use elsewhere in the project. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:40, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Rosiestep, Ipigott, Lugnuts, Ser Amantio di Nicolao, and Victuallers: I'm not a sports person at all, either. I've edited a few, and find it daunting. Sports articles have a lot of jargon I'm not familiar with. However, I'll be happy to look at a few and reference them if that's what needs to be done. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:17, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with sports jargon. Contentious sports BLP issues, e.g. doping, aren't within my comfort zone. That said, I imagine some articles should be easier to review/recreate than others, and I'm willing to work on those for a start. And I will need guidance to assure I correctly understand the process. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I had a go at some of SvG's article some months ago and I guess I might have been able to extend a dozen by adding a 2ndary ref. If the task is just to check the main cite then that could be done quicker. Checking 20 a week would be possible and I'd be willing to try. Is that the task? Victuallers (talk) 23:15, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm in the same boat as the majority here. Not big into sports and feel that I would spend more time than would be productive just trying to get jist of the terminology. My time is far better spent, I think, on writing new articles and improving others with sourcing where I can. I hate to lose all of the articles, but am far more interested in making sure that we have good content in other areas. SusunW (talk) 23:43, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I quite agree. It would be better to concentrate on women who have made substantial contributions to the culture of the world than on the ephemerality of sports achievements. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:53, 9 January 2017 (UTC).

I'm not sure I'd go that far. I quite welcome sports articles...not just under the scope of this project, but generally. I think they add a useful dimension to Wikipedia, and a nice shot of flavor that we otherwise wouldn't get. But again, it's not a world with which I'm familiar, so I find it best to leave it be. I edit as much with my gut as with my brain, and my gut's no use when it comes to things like sports or math and science. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 05:58, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

I was a lot more keen on fixing up these articles before I actually had a look at a subset: a lot of these people have way, way less reliable sources on them than I do (and I'm not remotely close to notability!) I don't object to them having articles in principle, but when literally the only available content on them online is a handful of figures out of a table on a couple of random sites there's just nothing much useful you can do with that. It might make sense if you've got a bot, but if it's been buggered up as badly as SvG did it I don't know that it makes much sense for a human to do it manually in vast numbers. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:22, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

I understand the lack of enthusiasm. It's difficult to motivate anyone to work on an area that they're either a) not interested in (sport) or b) have little knowledge on the subject. I doubt anyone is sat there thinking - "You know what, I really would like 15,000+ articles to double-check!" I'm preparing for the worst, and by that I think that two-thirds of these articles will be deleted. In other words, there's 5,000 good/high-value articles that people will look at to save (cycling, Olympics, etc). The rest, well, your guess is as good as mine. I don't expect anyone to drop whatever editing they are doing to try and save a stub they aren't familiar with. That's just how it is. Even if you look at just one article, that's fine. I took a look at some of the football stubs (I hate football BTW) and I wasn't able to see any of the biographical info in the WP article supported in the source. That would be nuked, unless I (or someone else) spent time trying to establish sources and notability. This is a big task and I thank people in advance for any work they do. I'll try to help with any general notability questions, or anything else related to that, for that mater. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Precious bodily fluids} 09:38, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

For the record, I did what The Drover's Wife did. I went to the page, selected 2 names at random and tried to find sources. I found nothing that I would call a RS. I found blogs, and other primary sources mentioning the subjects, but no actual press, books, or other data. After spending several hours on 2 articles, I was able to add nothing. Thus, I concluded that it is not an endeavor I can assist with. I have no idea how to search for sports rankings or even how to judge which sites reliably report same. SusunW (talk) 17:40, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Saving articles

What is the process for saving the SvG articles? Do we just have to edit them or is something else needed? Thanks! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 19:22, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to understand this more clearly, too, in order to make a commitment. If it means removing contentious material, and keeping the non-contentious content, which is already appropriately sourced, that won't be difficult, albeit, it will be time consuming. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:27, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Megalibrarygirl and Rosiestep: There are guidelines here.--Ipigott (talk) 08:10, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Ipigott! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:26, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Skyler Cooper's gender identity

I was looking through the LBT Women redlink list (having already bluelinked a couple of them) and started researching Skyler Cooper. According to Cooper's web site he was previously gender neutral but now identifies as a "he", so I'm not sure he belongs on the Women in Red list. Funcrunch (talk) 03:33, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

On the one hand, strictly speaking, trans men don't fall under Women in Red pretty much by definition. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from writing an article on him (or any other notable trans man without one); I'd suspect trans men (and trans people in general, but trans women are already within our scope and nonbinary people wouldn't be too much of a stretch to include) are also underrepresented among articles, and the spirit of this project has never been to focus on women at the expense of other minority groups. It would also be possible to consider the project's scope to be anyone who isn't a cisgender man, as many women-oriented LGBTQ groups do. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 05:13, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm certainly not suggesting an article shouldn't be written on Cooper, just saying that he probably shouldn't be on a "Women in Red" links list now that he's declared a male gender identity. As a transmasculine person myself, I personally dislike the grouping together of "anyone but cisgender men" for any purpose, though I understand the motivation behind it. Regardless, I didn't want to remove a redlink like this from the page without first discussing it. Funcrunch (talk) 05:53, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Good call. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:17, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate that you brought it to the talk page Funcrunch. I agree with TheCatalyst31's comments for the most part, as I'd rather err on the side of inclusion than exclusion. However, as long as a redlink is maintained some where in a project which might create such an article, it might make sense to remove it from WiR. If the subject has declared that they are not a woman, we should respect that. Just my opinion. SusunW (talk) 00:29, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, upon reflection, my example isn't entirely applicable to the project, as the groups I referenced tend to form out of a (sadly) necessary need for inclusivity when cis men don't include trans people, and that's not really the problem we have here. I do wish there was a way to expand the work of Women in Red to other minority groups, though: LGBTQ people, people from outside of Europe and North America, and racial minorities within Europe and North America all come to mind as groups that could benefit from the redlink lists and editing initiatives that we do. We seem to be pretty good about intersectionality when it comes to writing about women, and we do a lot of work with projects like the Africa destubathon, but the work that can be done within the scope of Women in Red is necessarily limited and there aren't parallel projects that I know of for other groups. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:37, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

As a person who occupies several intersections myself (black, queer, trans) I appreciate the desire to have more articles on all marginalized people. It would be great if other WikiProjects adopt similar redlink lists. I just don't think WIR should have to take on the additional burden. But I'm not a woman so it's not really my call to make. Funcrunch (talk) 04:42, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I've just created articles for two more people I found on the LBT list who do not identify as women: L.J. Roberts and Pidgeon Pagonis. Both were assigned female at birth, but Roberts identifies as genderqueer and Pagonis identifies as non-binary. I think these entries are less problematic for this list than Skyler Cooper, who is a trans man, but they are still not women. (I did not add WikiProject Women categories to the pages for Roberts or Pagonis.) Independent of his inclusion on the list, I haven't written an article for Cooper because all of the sources I found (other than his own site) refer to him as a woman, which would make the article somewhat difficult to write at this time. Others are free to take a crack at it of course.

Again, I understand the motivation behind the inclusion of non-binary people, and I don't want to take up too much space in a WiR discussion since I'm not a woman myself, but I do want to explain my take on the issue as a non-binary person. Funcrunch (talk) 06:41, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I almost wonder if nonbinary people should be included just to correct the somewhat binary-driven assumptions of the original scope of the project. Women in Red was created as a response to the (very real and significant) problem of women having substantially fewer articles than men, but I don't know that nonbinary people were even taken into account by that analysis. For that matter, if statistics on what percentage of people are nonbinary are as inconsistent and underestimated as statistics on what percentage of people are trans (which I wouldn't doubt, though I'm more familiar with the latter), I'm not even sure it would be possible to statistically determine if nonbinary people are underrepresented on Wikipedia (though if the statistics on practically every other minority are any indication, I'd assume so). Nonbinary people aren't binary-identified women, but if the scope of the project was defined without anyone considering that nonbinary people exist and asking whether the project should encompass all minority genders rather than just one, that's a discussion that should be had before we make a definitive decision on whether nonbinary people are part of our scope. The question is also further complicated by the existence of transfeminine nonbinary people, many of whom I'm sure would oppose being left out of women-centered spaces despite not identifying on the binary, and other nonbinary people who for personal or social reasons are in a similar situation.

Also, while I can only speak for myself here, I certainly welcome your presence, both in this discussion and as part of the project in general. Having the perspective of nonbinary people is critical to a discussion that centers around nonbinary people, and is important in general to gender-related discussions. While I understand your concern about taking up space, I'd consider that to be more of an issue when, for instance, male contributors do things like question whether a gender gap really exists (I wish that was a hypothetical). Full disclosure: I'm a binary-identified woman, and while I'm familiar with the experiences of some nonbinary people I certainly can't claim to speak for them. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:45, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your response and appreciation, TheCatalyst31. While I haven't done or sought out any formal measurement on nonbinary representation on Wikipedia vs society at large, I am sure we are underepresented. Personally, however, my main concern with trans and nonbinary representation on Wikipedia is that it be accurate and respectful, not that it reach a certain percentage of articles. I talked about this in my Transgender Gap presentation at WikiConference North America (abstract, slides, PDF).

Regardless, even if the scope of WiR is broadened to explicitly include nonbinary people, I imagine that some transmasculine people (among others) would be uncomfortable being included on a Women in Red list. I know I would, but I'm not notable enough for Wikipedia (yet) ;-) (I actually identify as agender, but I've transitioned to male for legal and medical purposes.) Funcrunch (talk) 05:05, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Funcrunch, I think I added those names. At the time, I was leaning towards putting them in because I felt that they are poorly represented on Wiki (and in the "real world") and I thought I might have some wiggle room for getting some exposure for them. However, I didn't consider it from your perspective, or the way that non-binary people might feel about being included in such a list. I'm glad you pointed that out and started this discussion, which TheCatalyst31 also expanded on. Do you think I should remove them and maybe move the redlines to Wikipedia: WikiProject LGBT? Thanks! And don't worry about taking up space discussing these things: they are important and they matter. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:32, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Megalibrarygirl for weighing in. Since I already created articles for L.J. Roberts and Pidgeon Pagonis they can probably be removed from the page regardless. Since I didn't include Wikipedia:WikiProject Women templates on those articles (as the subjects aren't women), I'm not sure they will even be included in the metrics. Skyler Cooper should probably also be re/moved, or at least have an explanatory note added that he now identifies as male. I haven't looked closely at the other nonbinary people yet to see how they identify.

I am active on Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT and can raise this issue there for others to weigh in if it would be helpful. I suggested there awhile back that we form a transgender task force, which would be a good home for redlinks like this, but there was very little interest. Binary lesbians, bisexual, pansexual, and queer women (trans and cis) would already be covered under WiR, so it's only nonbinary people that are really at issue here. Funcrunch (talk) 17:45, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Funcrunch, I'll take another look at the list today and see what I can move over to Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT. I wonder if trying to get a transgender task force started now might get more traction. It seems like more transgender people are in the news recently, and with the awful laws going on here in TX and other states surrounding bathrooms, there is more than ever a need for people to see transgender people on Wiki, IMO. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:48, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

I just alerted LGBT Studies to this discussion. Agreed that there is more than enough news and material on trans people for a task force (if not an entire WikiProject), but I'll (re-)raise that issue over there separately. Funcrunch (talk) 17:53, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Also agreed. Good idea. The Drover's Wife (talk) 18:18, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

As a non-binary person, I do not oppose to people outside of the gender binary to be represented on a list like this, in particular if they are on the "feminine side" of the spectrum. I agree with Funcrunch that transmasculine people of any sort shouldn't be here, but people like Amandla Stenberg or Ruby Rose who use feminine pronouns and don't object to feminine language in general should be fine. I'm not active in the Women in Red project, though as I understand it, its main purpose is article creation. I don't think listing non-binary people here is generally a bad idea, as long as it is handled at least somewhat intelligently. ~Mable (chat) 10:55, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

New blog post about results from Inspire campaign

See Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Report_on_funded_projects_from_gender_gap_Inspire_Campaign. Jane (talk) 10:04, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Fannie Ostrander

Any of y'all mind casting an eye over sources for the above? There's not much - a couple of mentions in a couple of Who's Who-type books from while she was alive, which is just barely enough for me to defend notability. Also, she was rather prolific - WorldCat lists just north of 20 titles from her, not self-published, near as I can tell.

Many thanks, as always.--Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:27, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

She wasn't self-published, as far as I can tell. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. Seems to have had a couple of different publishers, but good reviews. Teaching documentation is here: [8], [9] and I found an obit: [10] which would indicate she was born in 1859. There's tons of newspaper clippings on her. This is just a sampling. SusunW (talk) 02:25, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Nice, thanks. I'll try and incorporate some stuff in later, when I have another moment. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:54, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

List of first female lawyers in the United States

Just found that we have this onsite; worth generating a redlink list, perhaps? --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 21:22, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Definitely, IMO. SusunW (talk) 17:06, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I copied over the ones which weren't linked (and were redlinks after I add links) to Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Law. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:39, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

WMF's $3 million grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

News which should help us re images: Wikimedia Foundation receives $3 million grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to make freely licensed images accessible and reusable across the web. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:16, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes great news! Jane (talk) 11:37, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

This is indeed a step in the right direction. I hope it will also encourage companies, institutions and individuals to add more images to Commons in the knowledge that they can be more easily accessed and reused. Although vast numbers of images are created every day both professionally and on the social media, only a minute proportion are given appropriate licences. Thanks to this grant, wider awareness of Commons could improve its status as an easily searchable, multilingual tool.--Ipigott (talk) 08:32, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Brilliant news. Users increasingly use images as their method of search and only after they have found the image do they then ask for information. We have lots of information and this will allow users to find it. What I'm really hoping is that organizations will see that their pictures are not there. Many people think that because the images are on Google images then they are available for anyone. Very important global role models like Rosalind Franklin have no freely usable picture. I'm sure that her family would be surprise to find out that a Korean textbook cannot legally use her picture. Victuallers (talk) 10:11, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Victuallers: Yes, let's hope that there will be more interest in adding photographs of "role models" to Commons rather than requiring use of the "fair use" approach on Wikipedia. I've been wondering if it would be useful to compile a list of really notable women, both living and deceased, for whom Commons contains no images. This might create awareness of the problem and encourage organisations such as the BBC to make more of their images available on Commons.--Ipigott (talk) 10:22, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I have a mini version of that problem. As you know Newnham College intend to create a Role Models event on March 8th. I have insisted that we get best efforts to release their images in exchange for our free expertise. They are doing this and intend to get committees to meet just for our (the worlds) benefit. They want a list of Newnham alumni who we want pictures. Charles Matthews has done some great work and I'm hoping that will be the basis for such a list. Victuallers (talk) 10:32, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Fantastic news indeed and hopefully a sign of changing times. It's a major absurdity of current copyright law that you can find almsot any image you want through Google and almost nothing here.Alafarge (talk) 21:28, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Userbox

As WiR is quite active and successful, it seems good to have a userbox for the project's members and supporters. I couldn't find one so I made a draft on my user page a few weeks ago. It doesn't seem to have broken anything so I've created it as a template now: {{Women in Red userbox}}. It looks as follows. Please feel free to try it out... Andrew D. (talk) 18:47, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

This user makes women blue.

Thanks Andrew Davidson: It looks very attractive and I've added it to my user page. I think the reason we haven't had one is that we used to be part of WP Women. Perhaps Rosiestep could mass-mail it to our members, perhaps together with the editathon invitation for February.--Ipigott (talk) 14:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I like it, too, and agree we could include it in the Feb invitation. Note, we've been using #abcdef as the logo background color; but PaleTurquoise is nice, too. --Rosiestep (talk) 00:38, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson, Ipigott, and Rosiestep: there is standard naming convention for userboxes in template namespace (WP:CREATEUBX). As such, this should be moved to Template:User Women in Red or Template:User WikiProject Women in Red. 103.6.159.67 (talk) 19:06, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

That's true. Should be moved here: [[Template:User WikiProject Women in Red]]. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:14, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

• I have moved it around to the suggested names. Andrew D. (talk) 19:20, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this, sums it up nicely.Alafarge (talk) 21:30, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Another dictionary?

I was working on an article for the first Greek university student, who led me to create and article on the women's school she attended, which then led me to write an article on the woman who founded the school. All that said, I located a source Hale, Sarah Josepha Buell, ed. "Woman's record; or, Sketches of all distinguished women, from "the beginning" till A.D. 1850. Arranged in four eras. With selections from female writers of every age" New York: Harper & Brothers (1853), which has biographies of noted women. Not sure how y'all made those other dictionaries into lists. The original is in archive.org but the format there is hard to read as pages don't seem to be the same size? [11] I downloaded it to a pdf form that seems to be easier to deal with [12] but I have no clue how to make it into a list? SusunW (talk) 01:47, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

SusunW, great find! Adam Cuerden; it has 230 portraits! --Rosiestep (talk) 00:42, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm so glad you can see the portraits Rosiestep. I just get white squares where they should be, but if Adam can put them in commons, everyone would have access to them :) SusunW (talk) 01:06, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Develop "Resources" subpage

SusunW It could perhaps be added to here if it is really useful. I have also been suggesting that we should start a list of biographical works in the public domain specifically for WiR but there does not seem to have been much interest. Not sure whether it is worthwhile creating a list of red links specifically on this but it is useful to know of its existence.--Ipigott (talk) 15:12, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, Ipigott that's lovely and exactly what we need. I think we could actually do with a list of sources with one part being "a list of biographical works in the public domain", but that's just me. I have used several search/engine databases repeatedly, but have to remember to, say, go back to the nursing editathon to find that link on nursing journals or the Caribbean one to find UWI's finding aid. SusunW (talk) 17:35, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

SusunW, Rosiestep, Megalibrarygirl: How about creating a new area Wikipedia:Women in Red/Resources containing lists such as Wikipedia:Women in Red/Resources/Public domain bibliographies, Wikipedia:Women in Red/Resources/Public domain works, Wikipedia:Women in Red/Resources/External lists, etc. If developed properly, I think they would be quite useful. Some of them could be used in conjunction with our lists of redlinks, others could simply be added to "Resources" on the main WiR page.--Ipigott (talk) 09:20, 16 January 2017 (UTC) Here's the list I set up a while back: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women artists/Reliable sources. Jane (talk) 12:34, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Jane023: Thanks for reminding us of this. If we go ahead with this approach, maybe we should just provide a redirect from Wikipedia:Women in Red/Resources/External lists/Art. Let's first see what the others think.--Ipigott (talk) 13:22, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

If you are going to create a list of PD resources like Ipigott suggested above, it might be a good idea to add them to wikisource for proofreading there as well. In a lot of biographies of people who were notable in the past, but are perhaps less discussed now, old PD works may well reflect current scholarly opinion as well, and having such sources available in perpetuity there would help deal with any problematic changes to an article here which might occur over time. wikisource:Wikisource:WikiProject Biographical dictionaries contains a list of the biographical dictionaries of all kinds, gender-specific and otherwise, currently available there. John Carter (talk) 16:16, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott, Jane023, John Carter, SusunW, and Megalibrarygirl: We need all of this. Let's make it happen.

That said, a friendly reminder: we need to add WikiProject into our subpage naming convention per the decision on the Categories page. So Wikipedia:Women in Red/Resources needs to be named Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Resources, and that page has already been created. What do you think about fleshing it out with sections (just for now) rather than additional subpages, until it becomes too bulky, and then do the division? Example: --Rosiestep (talk) 17:16, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

• [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Resources#Public domain bibliographies]]
• [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Resources#Public domain works]]
• [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Resources#External lists]] which would include things like Jane's mention of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women artists/Reliable sources.

Granted, this isn't about biographies of women per se but this page might contain some useful material on the broader subject of women in general. Also, using the broadest possible search term "women" Open Library seems to have a great deal of some sort available here. John Carter (talk) 17:37, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott, Jane023, John Carter, SusunW, and Rosiestep: I like the approach that John Carter outlines above. I think expanding an existing section is preferable to making several different pages. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:35, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Develop "Lists of redlists" subpage

There are >300 redlist links in the Navbox. I suggest we move the "lists of redlists" onto a subpage Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Redlists. In the Navbox, we could provide links for "By focus area", "By nationality", etc. which would link to the appropriate section on the subpage. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:17, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep Sorry for missing out "WikiProject" in the page names. I seem to remember we once had something like "Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Redlists" and decided to spell them all out in the navbox. On the one hand, it is useful to have a navbox which presents all the lists of red links, on the other it might well be sensible to start grouping them under different headings. Personally, I always go to the navbox when I want to check out whether we have a crowd-sourced or a Wikidata list on a given topic or country. As it appears all over the place, it is an easy way to access whatever we happen to be looking for.--Ipigott (talk) 17:36, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Ipigott is correct. Navbox is better than a page as editors would tend to keep it updated as it appears at the bottom of every page associated with the WikiProject. If there are too many lists, then we might consider a navbox that contains only the red lists, which I already created at Draft:Template:Women in Red red lists. Feel free to move it to mainspace. 103.6.159.67 (talk) 18:58, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Anyone thought of maybe requesting a bot which might be able to keep such a list updated? Also, I suppose, it might be useful to maybe have some sort of indicator of which existing articles have already been checked against certain sources, to prevent useless duplication of effort and maybe get a few more articles up to a higher level of quality faster. John Carter (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

P.S. And, I guess, because I just love the idea of making things more difficult for others, has there ever been any thought to developing similar content over at the Simple English wikipedia, with, maybe, lists of articles that are and are not there yet? John Carter (talk) 21:57, 16 January 2017 (UTC)