Wikipedia talk:Meetup/Feminists Engage Wikipedia

Latest comment: 3 years ago by Liliput000

I love this project. Are there any current initiatives like it? Would love to know. --Liliput000 (talk) 15:39, 29 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Feminists as "Special Interest Group" edit

No one sees this as a special interest group intent on using wikipedia to spread propaganda?

Christ. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.236.153.226 (talkcontribs) 15:14, February 27, 2013‎

Everyone is a special interest group. As long as they cite to good sources and aren't any more biased than anyone else, I think we could use the help. Also, a lot of what they want to do is create new biographic article on feminists who are ought to be included but are not our priority. And forgive my inclusionism, but almost any article is better than no article. Chamberlian (talk) 00:10, 28 February 2013 (UTC)Reply

This is a bad idea. Adding a feminist bias to these articles isn't a good thing, you know. It's almost coming to being the opposite of equality, the whole feminism movement, and being more about "Your rights end where my feeling begin". Wikipedia is edited by anyone and everyone, for fair, unbiased information. If a group with a clear political and social message starts editing to make articles be more friendly to their (very) specific views, such articles lose any reliability.Acex222 (talk) 09:08, 9 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

As Chamberlian said, everybody has biases and everybody has (very) specific views. As you confusingly say, "Wikipedia is edited by anyone and everyone." That means anyone and everyone. When and if someone sees edits that look NPOV, readers and editors are free and welcome to challenge or call out those edits. If there is a pattern of NPOV edits, you are free to report the pattern through the established channels. Until then, as it has in so many other circumstances, Wikipedia should welcome all efforts to expand its participation base. Given the well-studied under-representation of women among participants, anything that helps to combat that should be welcomed.
And if "feminist" is an adjective that disqualifies someone from editing Wikipedia, why would "Democrat" or "Republican" be any different? Wichitalineman (talk) 19:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Also see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_gap Mehmetaergun (talk) 00:48, 13 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Because democrat's and republican's aren't organizing events to inject their politics into as many articles as possible. When a handful of people start injecting their personal beliefs into the wiki articles, it's done at a slow, natural pace. A pace that can be offset by a few editors noting and correcting the unbiased results. When wiki gets flooded by an entire group, with people dedicated to injecting their views, it becomes far more difficult for the natural flow of the process to correct. It's one thing for feminists to be involved in editing (they have been for years. just look at the warzone that has been the men's rights page, and the shear volume of content related to feminism, feminists, women's lib, and all the variants you can think of)... it's something else entirely for them to organize specifically to inject their ideological views, en masse. This will likely overwhelm the natural checks/balances that keep wiki neutral. Kratch (talk) 13:20, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia's perspective on objectivity and value-neutrality may indeed be in mild conflict with common epistemological perpectives in feminist approaches to reality construction and power relations. However, it also has certain policies that can be used to create a balance between Wikipedia's focus on value-neutrality and feminisms' on situated knowledge... This tutorial would be helpful for editors participating this event, since, what's at stake in this specific event is to add feminist experience and expertise to Wikipedia's articles where there might be such a need, rather than to chalenge and change Wikipedia's approach to epistemology and knowledge production and dissemination. Above critics, such as Christ and Acex222, are overly ambitious in their suggestion for this event to cease and desist, as their advice would mean that anyone who has any affiliation with any political party, philosophy, political ideologies, governmental or NGO IP addresses, or any other groups (such as, say, a Linux user group) need to banned from edits, and those who are to edit Wikipedia need to be folk who have no position on anything, which, as Wikipedia itself seems to accept, is an impossibility. This is an event, and as long as its participants adhere to the requirements of the field of power they want to participate in, such as careful attention to due and undue weight, such pre-emptive criticisms, which clearly seem based on a profound lack of understanding of feminisms, are not in merit. Mehmetaergun (talk) 15:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for this thoughtful comment, with which I agree almost 100% and the remainder isn't worth pursuing. One brief note of no particular consequence: I think "Christ" was meant to be an exclamation of exasperation rather than a user signature. That user appears to have added "unsigned" along with an IP address now. Wichitalineman (talk) 00:20, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • One can write about feminists, the feminist movement, etc as neutrally as one can write about anything else; and that content should be covered as well as anything else written about in Wikipedia. There are a lot of missing and poor articles related to the subject now (as there are with pretty much every subject on WP); this editathon is one small effort to rectify that. It seems pretty straightforward to me. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 15:56, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Someone deleted the page content last night and I just "undid" their revisions. I'm not sure if this is the best approach to managing page vandalism, so I'm hoping that others might weigh in on what's appropriate in these circumstances. Janaremy (talk) 17:03, 17 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

That's absolutely appropriate. If they continue that kind of vandalism, we can get their IP address blocked. Wadewitz (talk) 00:34, 18 March 2013 (UTC)Reply

Re: Category:Feminism Stubs & Category:Feminists edit

Patricia Hill Collins has a fairly substantial article - was the intent to a) have her page linked into the Feminism stubs or b) rather to make her page more visibly signposted in Feminism and Feminist category lists (i.e. increasing visibility for her presence and work through improved linking/webs of knowledge?) -- meghaninmotion (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply


Wiki page for organizing events? edit

Is this article even legal by wiki rules? I wasn't aware wiki pages could be used for event organizing. Kratch (talk) 13:20, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply

This is not an article, but a wiki space that is part of Wikipedia used for organizing Wikipedia-related events. See Wikipedia:Meetup for many such events. Wadewitz (talk) 18:10, 11 September 2013 (UTC)Reply