Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women/Archive 3

Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 10

Tagging proposal

For articles to be tagged by AnomieBOT, the search constraints must be approved by the members of the project. Below is my proposal

Depth 2
Categories Category:Women
Has none of these templates, or their redirects on the talk page

In addition, the following points must be either accepted or changes must be specified:

I have suggested a search depth of 2 in the category tree. That will retrieve 10,520 articles. You can see the result of search depth 1 at WikiProject Women/untagged articles. It is only 782 articles, so clearly the number of articles grows very rapidly with depth, and a depth of 3 might give the project more than it can handle. We will need to collect responses for a week before AnomieBot will act on it. RockMagnetist(talk) 01:36, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

An alternative would be an explicit list of subcategories, although the list would be fairly long:

I am impressed by what a high proportion of categories seem relevant even at depth 3. RockMagnetist(talk) 01:49, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

I am thinking that all of these discussions must have taken place at Women In Red because the automation you are proposing I think is what we have been asking for since the beginning - alerts, tagging to be automated, notifications of FA, GA, DYK, automated matrices of new article creation. I don't understand the technical part and am very, very thankful for those of you who do. SusunW (talk) 13:07, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Tagging via an explicit list of categories would be the best and catch the most articles relevant to the project, even though it's more work to build that list. AWB can help build the category list, and I'd have time to help with that over the weekend. This tagging run should be likely be done in parallel with a {{WP Biography|women=yes}} tagging run. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:19, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
We spent a lot of time building the category list at WP:WikiProject Women writers and we had 3 bot runs do the talkpage banner tagging. We now have >23,000 articles within the scope of that project. @Headbomb: if what you're proposing mirrors the Women Writers effort, I'd be supportive. Mind you, it will be a lot of work, but Rome wasn't built in a day. @Ser Amantio di Nicolao: do you have any thoughts on this? --Rosiestep (talk) 14:23, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
@Headbomb: I have links above to category lists. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:16, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, but those lists go deeper and need clean up. Not every article in those categories should be tagged by WP Women. Like Category:Abortion is likely better left to WP Women's Health, even if they haven't been tagged by {{WP Women's Health}}. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:04, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
I see it as a starting point, though. The list was built with related wikiproject banners excluded, so one approach would be to tag those categories and redo the search. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:51, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand the exclusion reasoning. Just because an article has one banner, say Women writers, why would it be excluded from the woman=yes tagging in the WPBIO banner? --Rosiestep (talk) 14:07, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
I think this is to exclude tagging by {{WP Women}}, not by {{WP Biography|women=yes}}. I.e. that only one of {{WP Women}} or its sister project's banner should be on the talk pages, and not say, both {{WP Women}} and {{WP Women's Health}}. I could be misinterpreting RM's proposal though. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:15, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
That's right. I'm proposing that (for now at least) WP Women doesn't overlap with child projects. You can see the details in the "Proposed search terms" box above. My rationale is that it's more efficient to concentrate on articles that are not already covered by women-related projects. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:27, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
I have taken the proposal out of the box so it's easier to view. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:29, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Modified proposal

It has been almost a week, and so far we're not even approaching a consensus on what articles to tag. I think there are basically two approaches, which I'll give a precis of below:

  • My proposal: Search Category:Women to a depth of 2 or 3 (a depth of 2 would add about 10,000 articles. Exclude articles already tagged by other women-related projects.
  • Headbomb's proposal: Hand-prune a category tree and apply {{WP Biography|women=yes}} to the same articles (and also exclude already-tagged articles?).

Assuming I have summarized it properly, I see a couple of problems with Headbomb's proposal:

  • We would have to stick to biographies or the {{WP Biography|women=yes}} tag would be inappropriate. My impression is that this project is not intended just for biographies.
  • WP Biography has 1.2 million articles, so there may be a few hundred thousand on women. I doubt they would want to tag some small fraction of those for us - that would just be confusing. Certainly we would need their consensus for that. Or if we tag all the biographies of women, do we want to deal with hundreds of thousands of articles? We have only 19 members.

The main objection to my proposal is:

  • Headbomb thinks some of the categories in my category tree should be left to other projects, for example, Category:Abortion should be left to WP Women's Health. (Actually, some of the articles in this category - like Mooncalf - shouldn't be in any of the women-related projects.)

If someone wants to prune the tree, that's fine. However, it would be a big job - at depth 2 there are already 2323 categories.

  • My new proposal: Search Category:Women to a depth of 1. The list of categories is here and the articles that would be added are here. About 800 articles would be added to the project, raising the total to about 1200 - more than enough to keep members busy. There are still 523 categories, so pruning might not be worth the effort. A few misplaced tags won't harm anyone. RockMagnetist(talk) 06:15, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Correction: I noticed on the project page that articles on women are about 15% of the total. That would be 180,000 articles. RockMagnetist(talk) 05:25, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Sorry for jumping in here, but I am confused. Are we talking about defining the scope of this wikiproj, or are we talking about how to tag all the articles belonging to it? Ottawahitech (talk) 09:41, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
Mainly tagging, but the tagging should be consistent with the scope. RockMagnetist(talk) 14:50, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
I haven't commented, mainly because I don't understand the technical aspects, and quite frankly would prefer to leave that to those that have the expertise to do it. What I wanted was alerts (and we now have them), files to be automatically affixed with WikiProject tags and categories to mark women, so that we can obtain lists of all new articles created for women. All I can say is that during the recent editathon, I reviewed by hand every new article and added hundreds of WikiProjects, so the last part of what I'd like technology to do doesn't seem close to where we are from my perspective. I'm a researcher and writer and write a lot of content, but cannot help at all with the technology other than to express what I would like to see it do for us, so that we can create new articles and improve existing ones. SusunW (talk) 15:21, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
@SusunW: WikiProject tagging is mostly done manually. This is because automated processes aren't reliable enough - there have been complaints of pages being WikiProject tagged that don't actually fall within that WikiProject. However, there is Yobot (talk · contribs) which will tag all pages in a given category or list of categories (but not subcategories, unless each one is explicitly named), subject to certain conditions, see User:Yobot#WikiProject_tagging. I believe that AnomieBOT (talk · contribs) does something similar: see the collapsible box "Before requesting a WikiProjectTagger run, please read the following" at User talk:AnomieBOT. It is also important to remember that these bots do not do this continually - it's always a run-once-and-stop task. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:58, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
Redrose64 I can only continue to thank you for your patience with explanations. I really do appreciate it. I guess to my mind, it seems that there would be fewer false positives than not. For example, I added WPBIO to a whole bunch of articles, as well as WPWomen. Of the list of some 700 files I manually reviewed over the last 2 weeks, there were only about 20 that were not actually women subjects. If one page is occasionally improperly tagged that would be less than the huge number of files that have no tags at all, IMO. I also understand why it would be run once and stop. Once it has tags, it has a "home" so to speak. My opinion is that the occasional grumble from someone over an article being improperly marked does not outweigh the benefit of both time savings and assignment that one gets with automated tagging. SusunW (talk) 16:13, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
I agree with SusunW. Tagging by hand is tedious. I wonder though, wouldn't we have to run a bot more than once as new articles are generated? Megalibrarygirl (talk) 04:26, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
Unless we tag all the 180,000 plus biographies (see above) plus all the other types of articles related to women, new articles will be a minor omission compared to old articles. However, new article alerts can be set up for a project (see, for example: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women scientists#Articles recently created). RockMagnetist(talk) 05:28, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
A bot could be run more than once. WikiProject Women writers have periodically requested a bot to run through a recently-updated category list, see e.g. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women writers/Archive 1#Scope and bot request, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women writers/Archive 1#Bots, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women writers/Archive 2#New categories within the scope of this WikiProject (#2), Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women writers/Archive 2#New categories within the scope of this WikiProject (#3). --Redrose64 (talk) 09:32, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm excited to see people using tools and looking at the bigger picture. I'm just coming back from a looong break and finding out what's new in WP. My last big involvement was creating the Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic gender bias (which has been redirected) in 2008. Is anyone working just at the 30k foot level on gender bias? For instance, just focusing on building tools and strategizing/exploring the best ways to use them? Or maybe this bot is the beginnings of such a plan. I'm trying to figure out where I will be most useful. Thanks! --Dekyi (talk/contribs) 13:43, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
@Deeb and Rosiestep: I'm excited to see someone else with technical skills. We need lot of help with so many things. Pop over to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women/Women in Red or [[1]] too for more technical help we'd like to see. (Rosie, another willing "victim" seems to be volunteering to help with technical woes ;) )SusunW (talk) 14:21, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
@Deeb: Some of us are looking at the big picture from 60,000 feet. How do we measure what we're doing? Wikidata and Wikipedia double-editing. How do we coordinate this Wikiproject across all language Wikipedias. And so on. Do you have thoughts on whatw you might like to work on regarding content gender gap? --Rosiestep (talk) 02:03, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

{{WP Biography|women=yes}}

I am confused, again. What does this mean? Is there a women's sub-area in wp:WikiProject Biography? Ottawahitech (talk) 11:12, 25 September 2015 (UTC))

Not yet. See Template talk:WikiProject Biography#women banner and #Roadmap above. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:19, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Scope of this WikiProject

Ideally I would have liked to add a section to the the main page called WikiProject Women Scope which would say something like:

  • All biographies of women articles
  • Paintings by women
  • books written by women
  • scientific discoveries by women
  • etc.

However, I guess I have missed the boat. The main page is already past the formative phase and much effort has been devoted to making it look pleasing to the eye, so that newcomers can do little to contribute content? Ottawahitech (talk)

Isn't that what the first paragraph does? RockMagnetist(talk) 17:02, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
@RockMagnetist:, To me, at east, the first paragraph is more about the mission of this wikiproj rather than its scope. Sorry have to run. Ottawahitech (talk) 12:38, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

German Wikipedia

Hi all! Sorry for not reading all preceding discussions about tagging articles, so just say if I have missed something. I have different proposal that can exist with all other proposals. Have a partial list of articles, that

  • exists in German Wikipedia
  • and are in their women category
  • and exists in English Wikipedia
  • and don't have any of these templates at their talk page.

Of course, there may be some false positives, but I think the list is quite fine. The list may include some transgender people, music groups, that have only female members etc. And as there are technical limits, some of those articles may have already been tagged with {{WikiProject Anthroponymy}}. And some articles have been tagged manually (like this one). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:37, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

I also think that there should be Category:All WikiProject Women articles (with some other name, if you like), that could be added to all project templates. I think, I have seen this done with some other project banner templates. And later (after the first tagging phase) we could take a look at Wikidata and tag some other pages, that haven't been already tagged. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:43, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
They don't normally have the word "All". {{WikiProject Women artists}} puts pages in Category:WikiProject Women artists articles; {{WikiProject Women's Health}} puts them in Category:WikiProject Women's health articles; {{WikiProject Women's History}} in Category:WikiProject Women's History articles; {{WikiProject Women scientists}} in Category:WikiProject Women scientists articles; and {{WikiProject Women writers}} in Category:WikiProject Women writers articles. It's set by |MAIN_CAT=. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:05, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
I know that type of category. I meant, that there could be some one extra ("tracking") category, where all pages, that are tagged with some of women-related project, could go. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:16, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
I don't see the point of this proposal. Why bother searching intersections of English Wikipedia with Category:Frau when you can just as easily search Category:Women? RockMagnetist(talk) 21:12, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
Because in this way you can catch all those articles, which are not in category "Women" (depth X), for example, Şermin Langhoff. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 06:55, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
@RockMagnetist: In my opinion user:Edgars2007 makes an excellent point. Not only are there still many women-related articles on the English Wikipedia that are not included in any women-categories, but also the removal of existing women-categories is continuing as we speak . Ottawahitech (talk) 11:00, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
Fair enough. Meanwhile, though, everyone seems to have their own proposal and after almost a month we're no nearer a consensus that I could take to AnomieBot. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:19, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
I don't think it is a lack of consensus so much as a lack of knowledge about how the technical aspects work to be able to voice an opinion. I don't care how we do it. It just needs to be done. Both last month and this month I have spent hours applying wikiprojects about women to over 1300 articles. It is tedious work but since the automation is not there, someone has to do it. I am frustrated that my time is not able to be devoted to articles, but I am also one of those who does not believe we wait around for the mysterious "someone else" to act. Not pointing any fingers, and not saying others aren't contributing, just saying if we want this project to work, we must be bold ;) SusunW (talk) 15:36, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
It's not necessary to understand the technical aspects. You just need to look at the list of articles that is provided with each of the main proposals, decide whether it is a reasonable start, and vote. I would like to try a combined proposal, but first there is one technical aspect that needs to be addressed. @Edgars2007: Are you sure that AnomieBot can implement your proposal? RockMagnetist(talk) 16:06, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
He told me, that this can be done, but it's better to give this job to some other bot. There is for example Magioladitis' (but he's currently on wikibreak) bot, that operate with AWB and offers Wikiproject tagging. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:16, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
So for now it might be better to table this one and move forward with my proposal. RockMagnetist(talk) 14:57, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Sure, of course. I was just proposing things :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 15:11, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Isn't that what the verb "to table" implies? See wikt:table#Verb, second meaning. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:22, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
I was thinking of the third meaning. Confusing! RockMagnetist(talk) 18:54, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Not in Front of the Children - at Peer Review

Notifying this WikiProject, as book by female writer Marjorie Heins -- an author and civil liberties scholar.

I've requested Peer Review for Not in Front of the Children.

Feedback would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/Not in Front of the Children/archive1.

Thank you,

Cirt (talk) 06:02, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Two First Ladies of India up for deletion - maybe they can be rescued?

See Suvra Mukherjee and Janaki Venkataraman. Perhaps someone can find better sources, keeping in mind notability cannot be inherited from their husbands position, and we need better sources than just few obituaries. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:38, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I worked on Suvra Mukherjee and found sources for her from before her death. She passes GNG now. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
I worked on Janaki Venkataraman she inspired the creation of a whole industry of manufacturing silk without killing the worms, was a parnter in a Labor Law Journal and an active first lady. What does the nominator think a first lady does? Playing hostess of the nation is surely no walk in the park???? SusunW (talk) 20:50, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm glad you found more sources. What an interesting person! :D Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:18, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Viviane Namaste appears notable at first glance, but haven't run sources. Still gnoming the new articles. SusunW (talk) 17:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
I found reviews of her books in one of our databases. I'm going to start there. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:27, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
Great Megalibrarygirl! I'm going to look for biographical info as it appears we have none and without that it becomes a question of whether the work is more notable than she is. SusunW (talk) 01:17, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
@Nvvchar: drawing your attention to these are you may have access to additional references. --Rosiestep (talk) 01:33, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
  • @SusunW: @Megalibrarygirl: @Piotrus: Thanks for the invite. I have expanded both articles with book and reliable web references. I have asked the user who had marked the tag for deletion to remove the tag. However, in the case of Suvra Mukherjee is also tagged with a merger issue. I have strongly stated that it should not be merged. All users who have expanded this article please record for non merger so that the tag is removed.Nvvchar. 07:59, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
@Nvvchar and Dr. Blofeld: Do you think [[Template:India First Ladies]] would be in order, in line with [[Template:US First Ladies]]? Perhaps it would assist with our work against systemic bias by drawing attention to possible redlinks, etc. (Char, thank you for working on the 2 articles.) --Rosiestep (talk) 14:30, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
  • @Rosiestep: I agree to your suggestion for the template.Nvvchar. 15:15, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
Yup, agreed, fine.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:17, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

RFC: 2015 Art+Feminism Grant

Art+Feminism has prepared a combined renewal of our IEG grant and PEG grant. If awarded, these grants will fund: childcare and refreshments for the 2016 international Art+Feminism Edit-a-thons; in-person training sessions for New York-city based volunteers and online training sessions national and international node organizers; the expansion of our outreach to post-secondary institutions and international Wikimedia chapters; building sustainable infrastructure for node organizers; and making our materials more intersectional. We seek community comment to help complete the grant process: here -- Theredproject (talk) 00:09, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Is this another WikiProject I should have been adding?

Hi, I have been looking at children's literature stubby articles adding tags, book reviews and other improvements. I have also been adding the WikiProject Women writers banner (and others) to relevant talkpages. Sorry, but I didn't realize there is also a Women wikiproject:) In future I will also add yours if that is okay. I can also revisit those women writers articles and add your banner? thanks Coolabahapple (talk) 15:42, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

As long as you have one of the Women's Projects that are in the umbrella listed, we will be notified of an article's creation or alerted if it is AfDed. No need to duplicate with other projects, but ours also cover's women's works, so if you write a separate article about a female author's book, or a painting, or a composition, etc. it would have the WikiProject Women and not Women Writers, Women Artists, etc. Our banner also works for those projects that don't have a separate gender designation like dance, music (pop music, jazz, hip hop, etc.), architecture, etc. so that we can better track the number of articles that are being created for and about women. Make sense? SusunW (talk) 19:33, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
Hi SusunW, sorry but as a wikicat with kitten tendencies I am now confused (this happens quite often:). does that mean this article Drama High should have the women banner but not the women writers banner? The WikiProject Women writers says "Scope:
  • women writers
  • works by women writers
  • awards honoring women writers"
so that is why I have been adding the women writers banners to articles about women author's books. Adding the women project as well might be similar to adding the novels project and children's literature project to a children's book talkpage? Coolabahapple (talk) 02:37, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
Coolabahapple Don't stress over it. As long as it has one of the banners of the umbrella group we will be alerted of its existence and any attempts to delete it. We are trying to monitor both, creations and deletions to see how systems effect women and their works, offer support, encouragement, etc. SusunW (talk) 02:43, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
SusunW, cool, thanks.Coolabahapple (talk) 02:54, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I think we should probably merge the banners into WP:Women to reduce template clutter, but you might want to wait until others comment on that, I'm just the big bad wolf of the project ;-)♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:32, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Identity rights versus community rights

Chantal Akerman was a queer director who did not like the queer label. In this edit, Pdeverak both removed the LGBT categories and stated in the article that this person was queer but did not like having LGBT labels. A piece in the The New York Times says that this person gets a lesbian label from fans but avoided the label for herself. The source Pdeverak cited says the same thing.

I have never seen anyone take a category off the bottom then repeat the text in the body. How is it decided which categories are appropriate? What is a good practice for the situation when someone uses one label, but their biographers use another? Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:02, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Very tough question. #1, we cannot push POV thus we cannot state other than what the sources do. But #2, we have to be mindful of BLP. Personally, I think it is fine to leave it as it is with an explanation on the talk page so that it doesn't get reverted. I have plenty of friends who are gender fluid and refuse labels. People are not as easily categorized as we like to pretend. SusunW (talk) 20:13, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject Men

Why not create one for men as well? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.75.214.131 (talk) 01:42, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

The scope of the project is to address "...the underrepresentation of content on Wikipedia about women (both real and fictional) and covering women's perspectives." Men are not underrepresented on Wikipedia. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 15:46, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Any editor on Wikipedia is free to organize any wikiproject they wish. It is up to interested volunteers to do the work convincing others that a need exists for their chosen wikiproject. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I think this is the most pointless Wikiproject I've seen. Underrepresentation? I exclusively work female related articles and many of my colleagues do too.  — Calvin999 09:02, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Calvin999 Thanks for your input but please take the negativity somewhere else. Our project has created 3000 articles over the last 3 months, which is exactly what our purpose is. And yes, WikiData shows that women's coverage on Wikipedia is only about 15% of all articles. How can 50% of the population only be represented by 15% inclusion? We are glad for any productive help and appreciate your efforts to "exclusively work female related articles". SusunW (talk) 14:48, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
Because men have done more? Little fact: There are 2,500 billionaires in the world. How many are women? 100. I think Wikiproject Women is just as pointless as a Wikiproject Men would be. It's just not needed. We have the Wikiproject's in place. For example, Rihanna is covered by Wikiproject's Rihanna, R&B, Musicians, African Diaspora, Pop, Reggae and Caribbean. Why do we need Wikiproject Women as well? I just don't get it, why do we need to assign a Wikiproject Women to female articles? Female editors are no doubt already apart of the aforementioned Wikiproject's. Wikipedia is not a place for feminism either. How many of the 3000 articles you've created are actually needed? I already work on RIhanna, Leona Lewis, Mariah Carey articles (and there's a lot) so I don't see why a Wikiproject dedicated to their sex would be helpful. Wikiproject Women is almost anti-male editors. I don't see how I would even fit into it.  — Calvin999 16:40, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Men's Issues. John Carter (talk) 16:45, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
@Calvin999: As it may be unclear to you, the scope of this project is to provide an umbrella over several women-focused projects; nothing wrong with that. Please stop making broad assumption-like statements ("Wikiproject Women is almost anti-male editors.") regarding the gender of our editors and their personal beliefs as your comments have no basis to them. It is a slur to say that almost all of Wikiproject Women's editors are anti-male. This project was co-founded by a man (user:Dr. Blofeld) and a woman, me. I have no reason to believe that Dr. B is anti-male. As for me, I am married to a man, my sons are men, my grandson is male, and I love them very much; and some of my best wiki-friends are male. The gender of our editors is of no concern to this project. What does concern us is working on the topic of our choice and working in a neutral, non-POV environment. I'm an admin and I've never taken someone to task at ANI, but if you continue your harassment-like tone (that's how I perceive it), you'll be my #1. Please choose instead to keep your discussions here using safe-space tone. And keep up the good work editing women's biographies! Know that you are warmly welcome to join this Wikiproject or work alongside us, as that's what we do here... create/edit women's biographies. Best, --Rosiestep (talk) 17:38, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm very male, I can assure you of that! I'm sure a lot would consider me an alpha male actually. I don't like the aggressive militant feminist types either or editors like Carol and Evergreen who seem to really resent male editors and see everything in terms of gender and discrimination. You're missing the point of it. The main reason this was started was because of the fantastic work coming in from people like SusunW, Rosie, Ipigott etc. A place to tie all of the work and sub projects together and try to get some focus in a field where 85% of articles are on men. I think it should be better, even if more men are notable in history. All I've seen to date is positive growth in content production so it seems to be working, this is why I support it. I think Rosiestep in particular needs to be thanked more than anyone for what she's done to encourage and organize growth on here, and Ipigott also of late has put in a lot of his free time in helping organize editathons. SusunW's output on women articles in particular has been absolutely phenomenal and I recently cited her by email as one of the best editors on the site right now in what she's doing. A lot of people could learn from her. This project works for contributors like her, if it helps support editors and encourage growth I'm all for it, even if it seems a bit redundant in name and scope to some. As for How many of the 3000 articles you've created are actually needed? I suggest Calvin you have a browse through SusunW's contributions and those articles created in recent editathons for a bit. They're all needed, and they're all essential bricks in building the best possible encyclopedia. Show some respect and encouragement.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:29, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
It's an umbrella project which isn't needed. There are already many Wikiproject's assigned to biographies, especially for musicians, which encompass a range of backgrounds. Rosiestep, you have completely and utterly misinterpreted several of my points and proceeded to put words into my mouth. I never said that all of this Wikiproject's members are anti-male. Please re-read what I actually said. I said the Wikiproject (not the people who belong to it) is almost anti-male. I personally find the idea alienating, as a male, as I feel I would have no place and that it is for women only. I do think this Wikiproject has a feminist tone to it. You're trying to increase the % of female articles for the sake of increasing, that it what is reads like to me. Furthermore, I don't see how I am being aggressive; this notion completely baffles me. I don't appreciate your threatening tone of reporting me to ANI because I don't see the point of a Wikiproject. It is not very becoming to threaten someone then praise them for the work they have done. You're actually not respecting my opinion that I disagree with the creation of the Wikiproject, despite asking for me to respect your opinion that it is worthy.  — Calvin999 19:42, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
"You're trying to increase the % of female articles for the sake of increasing, that it what is reads like to me. ". False. We believe that the 85% vs 15% in biographical coverage badly needs to be improved. That's a big deficit. There is a definite bias in traditional male occupational subjects in particular. Editathons like the women in business and architecture ones are a great way to broaden the coverage. And the bias is there, I've even heard academics in universities discussing it. I think you've said enough now Calvin. Fine, you're entitled to your opinion, but don't expect the project and it's editors to suddenly go running when you tell them to. The project is here to say and I'm sure given time it'll increase in strength as a project, right Rosie? Oh and believe me, if this really felt like one of those militant feminist/gender gap anti-male projects I'd not touch it with a bargepole. Take it from me that it is just your perception of the situation. The focus is really on content, and that's why I fully support it, it genuinely works towards mass producing much needed content..♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:47, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
(e-c) I don't disagree with you that simply creating articles in and of itself is not necessarily the best way to develop the encyclopedia. I tend to believe that a higher priority would be doing something like the old Britannica macropedia, or generating significant content on notable topics and subtopics, sufficient to provide a broad review of the topics overall, is maybe a greater priority. And I have seen quite a few comments in various places that the other entity apparently seeking to develop the number of editors, WP:GGTF, is perhaps even less inviting to males. However, there has been a history of comments around wikipedia that it isn't particularly welcoming to female editors, and some controversy in the media about that. If those claims are true, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to do something to address those concerns, in such a way as to not make it appear to be driven by politics of one sort or another. Also, frankly, as someone who helped develop the basic structure of a lot of WikiProjects, I can honestly say many if not most of them were unnecessary. But, if their existence can help improve the related content, that is in a lot of cases reasons enough for their existence. John Carter (talk) 19:57, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Dr. Blofeld, But have you not looked into why that is though? That women have perhaps done less and that men have perhaps done more? That's like the UK government saying we need to hire more female MPs; you don't hire someone because they are female, you hire them if they can do the job properly. Much of music is dominated by female musicians today. Again, you're not listening to me, either. I'm entitled to my opinion just as much as you are, so please don't tell me to stop talking phrased in a polite way. And I'm not after shutting it down or chasing anyone out, I never said that. I'm simply saying that I think this Wikiproject is not needed and that many other WP's do the same job just with a different name and background interest. I think having gender Wikiproject's is too broad because you can't be interested in all women topics on here, and I would say the same if a Wikiproject Men was created too.  — Calvin999 19:59, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
There is a natural bias in traditional encyclopedias towards men. And that's largely a reflection of how society worked back then. Yet there were many notable women who got coverage in their time but didn't make mainstream encyclopedias. Believe me there's thousands of missing articles like this from all around the world. An Ecuadorian poetess from the 19th century, an Argentine university founder from the 1920s, these are the sorts of articles being started and the sort of ones we need to root out. In contemporary science and academia in particular there's now a lot of women out there yet to be started, BLPs. There is always going to be more male biographies than women, but we just think the 85% vs 15% figure is appalling and should be far far better. If the bias wasn't so bad there'd not be a need for this.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:08, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
It is possible that men have done more, or, at least, that more men have conducted themselves in a way which is likely to get sufficient attention from independent sources to make them notable. But a look at Bibliography of encyclopedias: general biographies#Women will show that there are a lot of women notable enough for inclusion in biographical dictionaries on those topics as well. And, FWIW, I don't know of many reference books of a similar nature specifically devoted to men. John Carter (talk) 20:04, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
Increasing for the sake of increasing is um, exactly the point of all wikiprojects, and this one has to do with women. I believe there are more than 15% notable women in the world, but what is more important, I think there is also more than 15% notable women of history through the ages. Both living persons and historical people need improving, and this wikiproject is for the women. Calvin may find this wikiproject silly, and goodness knows I find many wikiprojects silly. I think this one is highly valuable, especially since it is a good example of how to deal with systemic bias, which is something I care about in general on Wikipedia. The male-female lopsided ratio is only one of many systemic biases on Wikipedia, and I think this is one that everybody should be able to support, since everybody deals with women in their lives and can relate to the subject matter. Jane (talk) 20:01, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
I think it's just a case of people looking too deep into things. Perhaps less women want to edit Wikipedia? Perhaps a lot aren't interested? Perhaps a lot haven't got time because they have children to look after? Either way, women shouldn't be forced to edit and male editors shouldn't be blamed for there being less female editors and articles in comparison. Not all male editors are like that and I don't actually know any who are. To me, as long editors produce good quality work on Wikipedia, I couldn't care less if it is a man, woman or dolphin who is making the edits, so long as they are good and adhere to guidelines and MOS and format citations properly.  — Calvin999 20:09, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
This is project about content bias, not the gender gap, why are you bringing that up?♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:12, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
You say it as if it is something intentional?  — Calvin999 20:16, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
@Calvin999: No. I understand that you disagree with the creation of this Wikiproject and my one sentence which addressed that ("As it may be unclear to you, the scope of this project is to provide an umbrella over several women-focused projects; nothing wrong with that.") did not show disrespect for your view. To me, your sentence, "Wikiproject Women is almost anti-male editors." implied something disparaging and I called it out as such. If you believe I misunderstood you, then perhaps you can see how you misunderstood me? As for you working on women's biographies, and me inviting you to work alongside others who do so, I am baffled why you find that "unbecoming". We can agree to disagree, but I did not mean for hard feelings between us; hope you feel the same. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:08, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
I haven't misunderstood you, and I do find the the aim of this project clear. Thank you. I don't need to belong to a Wikiproject for Women which focuses on editing female articles. I just get on with it.  — Calvin999 20:11, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
Calvin999 I am usually of the give no oxygen to flames variety. What you intended your words to say and the message they imparted may not be the same thing. We have welcomed you despite your pushing of your POV. We don't push POV here. History does not bear out "men have done more", but instead many scholars concur that systemic bias has not recognized accomplishments by women. No one here is saying don't recognize men's accomplishments. What you see on here is articles about women, because that is the focus of this project. I have written numerous articles about males as well, and buildings, and 106 municipalities of Yucatán state Mexico. None of us exclusively focus on anything, which you seem to be implying. Please stop with the negativity. If you don't want to join the project don't. Find some place that supports you and your interests. Create, improve, help other editors. That will make Wikipedia a better place. Whining and whether you intend to or not, you come across as whining, solves nothing. SusunW (talk) 20:15, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
Agree with SusanW here. The talk page of a WikiProject is generally supposed to be used for discussing matters related to the content the WikiProject deals with, or WikiProject organization. Questions regarding whether the project should exist are generally not found within the reasonable uses of a WikiProject talk page. You have indicated that you have opinions which differ from those of the listed members. So do I and I am not a member of this project. Please, if do don't have anything particular which the discussion here is likely to be able to address to improve either the project or the article, you and the members of this project might be better served by your doing that instead. John Carter (talk) 20:22, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
Hell, if we can have a Wikipedia:WikiProject Rihanna we can have a project on anything! I personally think Rihanna having her own wikiproject is nuts and reflects the commercial bias in the world that such a woman is considered important enough to have her own project. But I frankly don't care what you do with it so long as it helps/motivates you to produce content. If having the Rihanna project helps you produce good articles and have some sort of goal, so be it. But at least recognize the same for others.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:25, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
Also, I'd add that even if we did as editors, focus exclusively on women articles, that's our right to choose. I can write about whatever I want and I'm glad I have a friendly place to do so. I want to also say that being feminist does not mean being "anti-male." I have a son, too and a father I love very much. I'm a feminist because I believe women are important, not because I don't like men. Men are awesome and do amazing things every day, but so do women and women are too often overlooked by media. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:59, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Wow, what a thread. Given the systemic bias mentioned earlier, yeah, there is a need for this project. I've created many articles on women scholars and writers, for instance, but not enough. I find this project very useful if only because I know there is a group of people whose help I can count on when developing such articles. And that's all I'll say, since I also believe in the relationship between oxygen and flame, though I would put it in a less friendly manner. Rosiestep, please keep up the good work. Drmies (talk) 03:40, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
  --Rosiestep (talk) 01:29, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
  • But sheesh it's hard to not fan the flames when there's comments like "Wikipedia is not a place for feminism either. How many of the 3000 articles you've created are actually needed?" What utter disrespect. Yeah, bringing Lotus up to GA status is great progress for a project which aims to disseminate knowledge to the world. Of course Wikipedia is a valid place for feminism, the ridiculous notion that women are people too, as one bumper sticker puts it. Drmies (talk) 03:44, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

  Like Montanabw(talk) 07:24, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

A factual error has been repeated a few times above without correction. This project has tagged 3000 articles, not created them. I don't know how one would determine how many were actually created, but the number is undoubtedly far less. But hey, the project was only created in July! RockMagnetist(talk) 18:53, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Actually, RockMagnetist that statement is not correct either. I have tagged way over 3,000 articles. 3,000+ articles have indeed been created during the course of this project's life. Only new files within the umbrella programs of WikiProject Women have been included in the 3000 count. There are many files out there that have been created and have no tags, there are files created in projects say like dance, music, etc. which are about women but are not tagged because they do not appear on any of the lists that the project receives. Would love it if the lists were merged into a single source, but so far have been unable to get anyone with technical skill to do that so am looking at 4 lists on a daily or every-other-day basis. SusunW (talk) 20:21, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
Confusing! RockMagnetist(talk) 20:41, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
I think it's more frustrating than confusing ;). I just do not understand why this cannot be automated. Why we cannot get some sort of tagging system in place so it does not have to be manually done. Why that system cannot include all files on women that are created; why it cannot exclude files that use the pronouns him, his, he or it (I swear the current system sends a lot of the files related to a church or political party to the women's history list, which makes zero sense to me. I get the occasional male OBGYN or a ship referred to as she but certainly not the cities with population break downs); why all the various lists cannot be combined into one single list; why all the extraneous data rather than just the page names and dates of creation is part of the list, etc. I could go on, but there seems no point. It isn't being done, so manual review is the only way to get it done. There does not appear to be a more efficient way to try to ascertain how many articles on women are being created. SusunW (talk) 22:06, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
Could you provide the links to these lists? I might be able to figure something out. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:10, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
Gladly! These are the four I look at almost every day Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's history/New articles, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women artists#New articles created, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women writers#Articles recently created, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women scientists#Articles recently created The lists come in a format like this:
  • Mary Frances Leach (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs | tools) by Keilana (talk · contribs · new pages (13)) started on 2015-10-23, score: 11
  • Patricia Fili-Krushel (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs | tools) by Jacobk1016 (talk · contribs · new pages (1)) started on 2015-10-23, score: 44
So I first have to strip them to # [[Mary Frances Leach]] eliminating all that extraneous text. Then I look at every single one of them add categories, sources if they are prodded, Wikiprojects, eliminate the ones that are not women, verify that they are not already on the list and add them. It is an extremely tedious process. SusunW (talk) 22:21, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
Why do you need to strip all the information? Each entry has a link to the article and its talk page, so you could just click on them. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:36, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Women/Women in Red/Metrics Data when stripped goes here. For me personally all that extra stuff is hard to look at, and doesn't make finding anyone easy, but I didn't start the metrics only took it over. Maybe Rosiestep can answer. SusunW (talk) 23:30, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
@RockMagnetist and SusunW: That's a bit more than I was doing (I didn't add cats, source the prods, or add Wikiprojects.). At first, I checked if the entry was already on the list but when Rich Farmbrough volunteered to re-sort (alpha) and delete the dups, it saved me that step. So what I did do was check if the article was within WiR's scope, and if yes, I stripped the extraneous stuff, added the pound sign and brackets, and posted the entry to the list. Note, I have a Skype call on Monday evening with a WMF person regarding an automated approach to our metrics list, but no way of knowing if a solution will arise from that call, so RockMagnetist, if you can figure it out, wonderful! --Rosiestep (talk) 00:00, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
Rosiestep Fingers crossed. I have said before, I am too OCD to just move on ;P. If I can fix them, so they don't get immediately AfDed, I do. And yes, any help at all RockMagnetist would be gratefully accepted. SusunW (talk) 00:05, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
I think that metrics like Wikipedia:WikiProject Women/Women in Red/Metrics should be viewed with caution. Probably the great majority of articles are not added by WikiProject members. RockMagnetist(talk) 01:10, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm guessing the majority of *all* articles on Wikipedia are not added by WikiProject members. I don't see what difference it makes who creates them. The project was born to create, promote creation of, improve and track articles about women. From the get go, the plan, as I understood it was to try to track the number of articles being created by any source (we are not addressing the gender gap ratio of men/women creators because our position is that it doesn't matter who creates the articles). Lots of articles have been written about the lack of coverage on women, but what is that based upon? What is the percentage of new files being created about women to the overall file creation? How many created files about women are deleted? Those questions cannot be answered with any accuracy, because there isn't really any data or tracking. So, as I said, that was part of the plan from the get go, unless I totally misunderstood where we were going. So far, the technology piece that we thought was going to do the major part of tracking hasn't been there. But... I am not the person to ask. I am not an admin, in leadership, nada. Just a flunky and fairly new to Wikipedia trying to help out. If you want better answers, ask Rosie or Dr. B. SusunW (talk) 02:12, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Category:Members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption

Category:Members of Masonic Lodges of Adoption, which is related to this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 11:28, 25 October 2015 (UTC)