Report: “Wikipedia Still Hasn’t Fixed its Colossal Gender Gap”
From Fast Company:
Wikimedia has launched initiatives to encourage more women to participate. The Wikimedia Gender Gap Project promotes groups such as Women in Red, WikiWomen’s Collaborative, and WikiProject Women, which aim to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of women and subjects related to them.
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Even with these initiatives in place, Wikipedia’s gender imbalance persists. Dr. Jessica Wade started contributing to Wikipedia in 2018 and has since created over 800 articles on scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who are women, people of color, or LGBTQ+. She has a vast amount of experience in regard to the issues that women editors and subjects face when someone chooses to write about them.
“I’ve been through some especially depressing editing discussions,” she says. “I think some of the old-school editors don’t like all the press around the gender and ethnicity gap on the site, and they occasionally target me, systematically tagging the biographies I’ve written for deletion. . . . They seem quick to criticize and tag for deletion, but slow to help you improve a page.” On top of that, editors often peg sources as being noncredible, even if they’re from reputable universities and publications.
Read the Complete Article (approx. 800 words)
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.