Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red/Archive 21

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Today's Signpost pieces about gendergap in "Recent Research"

Link is here: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-01-17/Recent research. Jane (talk) 11:35, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Jane. A 'must read'. Includes links to this and this. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:42, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh how I love this "Encyclopaedias have, in the past, purported to represent all knowledge, but they have never sought to represent everyone’s knowledge." (~ Heather Ford and Judy Wajcman) Exactly the issue. Hierarchy, status, top-down structures rather than encompassing structures that weigh import by other measures. Why is it that ruling a society seems more important than building it up and making life livable? SusunW (talk) 20:06, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

And don't I know if from AfD. Anyone got a good answer to the "we aren't here to right great wrongs" (which completely misinterprets the essay on that topic...) Sigh... Montanabw^(talk) 23:23, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Not that the RGW-quoting crowd usually listens to me anyway, but my usual go-to argument for this sort of thing is that there are biases in how Wikipedians themselves look for sources, even more so than there are biases in which topics source material is available for. While the GNG is a low bar as written, it's usually interpreted as being stricter than it is (usually by strict interpretations of how many sources are necessary, source reliability and what counts as significant coverage, though occasionally by throwing out whole categories of sources as unworthy), and that interpretation is heavily subject to the biases of whoever's evaluating it. There's also a bias, partly due to the demands of AfD and partly due to what's easiest for editors, toward topics that can be sourced online (and usually through Google) by English speakers; this is a big part of why we have a ton of content about fandoms and niche hobbies from the Western English-speaking world but significantly less content about, say, prominent African women. (Not that I'm opposed to content on fandoms and niche hobbies, but there are double standards at play.) Given the added difficulty of finding sources on topics that one wouldn't expect to be easily sourceable online for structural reasons, it's more acceptable to set a lower bar for certain topics with the presumption that sources exist elsewhere.

Incidentally, this is why I feel that a certain degree of inclusionism is necessary to counter systemic bias, lest we start throwing out topics that are notable in places or fields without a strong internet presence. While the counter-argument is that keeping comparatively less notable content on topics that are more popular online makes the systemic bias problem look worse, in my experience the editors who write that content will always be able to establish its notability unless it's a very fringe topic, and the higher bar just makes it harder to establish notability for other topics. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:07, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Like SusunW, I was also impressed by ‘Anyone can edit’, not everyone does: Wikipedia and the gender gap. It clearly reveals Wikipedia's male-dominated hierarchical approach not just to the software and overall infrastructure but to the ever stricter application of rules on what can be included (and how) in a predominantly woman-hostile environment. Unfortunately, there seem to be no signs of improvement. At best, WiR could strive to achieve increased openness. But I'm afraid it might already be too late.--Ipigott (talk) 11:07, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes I agree. There seem to be ever higher gates being built to stem and channel the flow of new articles, while backlogs such as AfC only seem to be getting bigger. I sometimes think I am guilty of this myself when I am brainstorming about the gendergap and ways to draw women in. Somehow we need to let people help themselves, without scaring them off indefinitely by the way we "welcome" their first edits. I still haven't figured out how to do this. Jane (talk) 15:18, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Unless I am mistaken, the English Wikipedia is far less open than most of the others. It's a pity the acceptance of articles in the other languages cannot be used as justification for their inclusion in English. At least thanks to Wikidata and Commons some of the essentials are beginning to seep through. It would be interesting to have some research undertaken on why attitudes have become increasingly dogmatic on the English wiki while others appear to be far more welcoming and tolerant. When I see how many new articles on women are being added to the Korean, Japanese and various Scandinavian versions, it makes me wonder why we continue to be so rigid.--Ipigott (talk) 16:16, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I think some of it, too, has to do with the way Wikipedia is perceived in the larger culture - editing is seen as more of a nerdy hobby and less of a real way to make a difference. Reframing this - reframing the way people think of us - might go a long way towards attracting more even semi-active editors.

I'm in DC, so I have a lot of friends/acquaintances getting involved in Saturday's march. And I have a lot of friends/acquaintances who have been posting things on Facebook about causes you can donate to, things you can do in the new administration, etc. (Not trying to get political here...not exactly - I have a larger point in mind.) Wikipedia is not among those things. I'm sure these people are horrified to know that our coverage of women is at less than 17% of biographies in total, but it never seems to occur to them that if they themselves start writing articles that number could be cut down.

Point being, Wikipedia has become something in the public consciousness other than a scholarly resource. I think people understand its potential in the abstract, but for whatever reason never translate that potential into something concrete. When other people write articles to close the gender gap it's wonderful; when they are asked to write articles they don't have time. Nothing wrong with that - I don't mean to sound condemnatory, because I'm really not trying to be. I just wish I could think of some way to begin countering that perception. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:25, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

New stub: Virginia S. Baker

Hola. I posted here a few months ago about potentially creating an article on Virginia S. Baker and got a lot of encouragement, so 9 months later, I finally started a stub. I'm planning to add some more later tonight and would love help from anyone who has some time, either adding material or feedback on how it looks so far. It's the first article I've created, so any kind of input would be helpful. Thanks in advance! —PermStrump(talk) 23:18, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

It's a very good start. Importantly, you stated why she is noted and provided sufficient references to show she meets GNG. SusunW (talk) 03:39, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Agree. Enjoyable article. The only thing I didn't understand in the 2 seconds I gave to it, was why there was a See Also pointing to some other person (and then back from that person to Virginia) ... I took a quick look but didn't grok the connection. (IMO it's fine to append a desciption as part of the see also item, to say why the see also target is pertinent.) --Tagishsimon (talk) 09:20, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I got the connection - it's a Baltimore connection. (Both were from there, both were active in local civics, and both have parks named after them in the city. Still...that might be worth elucidating a bit in the "see also" section. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:44, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

@SusunW, Tagishsimon, and Ser Amantio di Nicolao: Thanks for the responses! Tagishimon, so what you're saying is... other people might not be able to intuitively know that Baker and Dobkin are connected in my mind because when I first posted here about Baker 9 months ago, Penny Richards replied and told me about the article she had created on Mary Dobkin that she thought might be helpful since they're both women who were mainly notable within Baltimore City? Or that after reading about Dobkin, I thought they sounded like kindred spirits who must have crossed paths at some point and become great friends (even though I can't find any documented evidence of it)? Hmm... now that you mention it, I can see how other people might not easily make that connection. :-P What Ser Amantio di Nicolao said is probably the extent of their connection, so I'll add a little explanation. :) —PermStrump(talk) 18:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

1978 March for the Equal Rights Amendment

There was not a Wikipedia page for the March for the Equal Rights Amendment in Washington DC in 1978. So in a sense it was a "redlink." 100,000 people marched, and altho there wasn't that much press coverage, it seems like a notable event. I just created a stub, and if anyone would like to contribute to it, that would be wonderful. Netherzone (talk) 02:15, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Netherzone! Looks like a good start! I was looking for images, and I found an ERA march in Florida. Not sure if you want to use that. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:21, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Megalibrarygirl! Thank you for this. I'm thinking of focusing on the 1978 Wash DC march at this time. For the future, it would be great to eventually have all the equal rights marches documented. Netherzone (talk) 00:47, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

There must be attendees who have usable photos from the 1978 Washington march--might be a good subject for social media outreach to older women? (I say this as a 50-year-old. They'd be older than me, anyway.)Penny Richards (talk) 02:13, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

@Netherzone and Penny Richards: There do seem to be some photos of the March on DC, but they didn't have the correct license. :( Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

@Megalibrarygirl and Penny Richards: The event is closer to my generation. I can reach out on social media (tho I'm only on FB) not on Flickr or Instagram, etc. Netherzone (talk) 22:37, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

100 days/100 articles on Jewish women (in four languages!)

Nice article in the Wikimedia blog today. Funcrunch (talk) 05:59, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Interesting factoid re: women's historical representation

I just read in the NYC blog, Gothamist, that in New York City there are nearly 150 historical monuments (public commemorative statues) of men, and only 5 historical statues of women. It occurred to me that this may be something to consider in relation to the work we are doing here. I will make a note to keep this on my radar screen. I can photograph these statues, however I've had trouble posting images to Wikimedia Commons - I'm not doing something right in relation to licensing or using my real name vs. username. If there is a tutorial someone can point me to, I'd appreciate it!

Here's a link to the article - a short but interesting read: http://gothamist.com/2017/01/18/more_female_statues_in_nyc_please.php#photo-1 Netherzone (talk) 23:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

You uploaded two files to Commons (I assume both were of Jenny Holzer or were artworks by her). You are free to upload photos to commons that you took yourself, but you must take care that the license is also correct. So if you took a photo of the artist, that's fine, but if it was a photo of an artwork, then commons licensing policy for artwork must be met (you need permission from Jenny Holzer). The same is true for historical monuments - only those monuments for which the artist has been dead at least 70 years can be uploaded to commons without permission from the (heirs of) artist. Jane (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I always take photos of such statues and signage when I spot them, just in case. I was able to start an article about Edith R. Wyle after seeing a square named for her along Wilshire Boulevard--and added my photo to Wikimedia Commons to use in the entry. (Especially good for late 20c. folks, because they're too young to have had photos fall out of copyright.)--Penny Richards (talk) 01:00, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Penny Richards - I looked at your article on Edith R. Wyle - what a great idea to take photos when you see such commemorative signage! My question to you re: Wikimedia Commons: I noticed that you use your "real name" as your user name. My username, Netherzone, is obviously not my real name. Do you know what the policy is regarding this? How will the admins know that it my my "own work" if I use my Netherzone username? In the past I've had several photos deleted by admins, although I personally shot the image of a place, and in the case of a person I photographed, had permission from the subject in writing that I could use it - and it was my own work. But the admin took these down claiming I could not prove it was my own work. Netherzone (talk) 01:14, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I often wish I picked a more creative user name, but I guess it means I don't face that particular issue. Someone here must know how to get past that gate?--Penny Richards (talk) 01:56, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@Netherzone: My Wikipedia and Commons name, Funcrunch, not only differs from my real name, but I also changed my real name (legally) three years ago. Yet, I have not been challenged for ownership of any of my photos on Commons. I think it helps that I've embedded the name Funcrunch (which is part of my photography business name) in the metadata of all of my images, even when I went by a different personal name. Also, my real name is public on both my Wikipedia and Commons profiles. Funcrunch (talk) 03:23, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@Funcrunch: Thank you Funcrunch, this is useful information. I will try again to upload to Commons. BTW, your photographs of performers are wonderful. Nice to meet you here. Netherzone (talk) 03:34, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the kudos! And thanks for sharing the story and idea about photographing more statues of women. Although I usually photograph living people, perhaps I'll see if I can find any statues of women in San Francisco to shoot... Funcrunch (talk) 03:42, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

If you take pictures of statues, be careful about copyright; in the US at least, freedom of panorama doesn't cover statues, so the statue has to be in the public domain for photos of it to be out of copyright. That being said, this is usually the case for statues that are old enough. Anything installed before 1923 is in the public domain, anything installed without a copyright notice (probably the case for most statues built by local government or historical societies) before 1977 is in the public domain, and anything installed without a copyright notice between 1978 and 1989 and not subsequently registered is in the public domain. I've had pictures of more recently built statues (along with a few of older, privately built statues) deleted because of this, but if photos of older statues are properly tagged they should be fine. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:23, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I just use the same username here and on Commons - no one's challenged me yet. As long as a.) you have a unified account, and b.) you seem to be a solid contributor, I think people tend to assume good faith. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 06:04, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Netherzone, my guess is the Commons issues have to do with the content in the images rather than your username. My name isn't Permstrump, but that never came up the one time I uploaded an image of a picture I had taken myself and it wasn't deleted. Any time I think I have a hang of the copyright rules, there's some stipulation I never heard of until the Commons police show up on some article's talkpage. This is the one image I've uploaded. It's still there, but it was a headache. They were worried it could constitute 3D art even though it's a flat sign. I got kind of frustrated and let the editor who had requested the photo deal with the back and forth after a while, so I'm actually not quite clear on how it was resolved in the end. I don't know that I'll try to upload any images any time soon though. —PermStrump(talk) 14:50, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@TheCatalyst31: @Ser Amantio di Nicolao: @Permstrump: Thank you for all of this great feedback - the technical suggestions and policies are very useful and informative, and the personal experiences and suggestions are helpful to know. I may simply have had encountered a couple admins having a "bad day" and I became intimidated by the process. Netherzone (talk) 15:42, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, the Commons copyright police can be a headache, since a lot of them try to be stricter than the actual law. I've seen people go after photos where the main subject wasn't copyrighted but they thought a copyrighted thing in the background took up too much space, or because of what you said above about incredibly nitpicky distinctions between 2D and 3D works, or because they interpreted the text of a law to mean that a photo might technically not be out of government copyright despite the fact that nobody in said government would interpret it that way. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 00:47, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Category:Women in Red has been nominated for discussion

Category:Women in Red, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for renaming by another editor to Category:WikiProject Women in Red. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. 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) 14:01, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi RevelationDirect - I see that the main cat was renamed, but the subcats weren't. Will you be coordinating that? --Rosiestep (talk) 19:57, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Rosiestep: Oh sure, I'll write it up. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:41, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

RevelationDirect - thank you! I'm fearful of messing things up, which is why I didn't want to attempt it myself. --Rosiestep (talk) 02:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Erin Marcus

Any thoughts on the Erin Marcus article? Feedback is being sought in the AFD. Hmlarson (talk) 17:24, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

For me it's a "keep" although we have the traditional gang out to make sure it is removed asap. Have you had a chance to look at it Montanabw?--Ipigott (talk) 20:37, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Cisco WiR meetup on 19 January

From the meetup page it does not look as if there was very much interest in this event but maybe Rosiestep could provide additional details. It seemed to me to be an important initiative and one which could be followed up with other high tech companies if there is sufficient interest.--Ipigott (talk) 20:58, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. It was a awesome experience for me. Well-attended (~150 people), including Cisco women and those from a handful of other Silicon Valley tech companies. It wasn't a typical "meetup" or "editathon", but rather lunch and a specially-designed presentation with hands-on examples. Invitations and registration occurred through Cisco's system. No photos uploaded to Commons but some on social media. I'll upload my presentation to Commons soon. I think people learned a lot. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, including me! --Rosiestep (talk) 04:09, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep: {Good to hear so many were interested in our activities but it's a pity so few were ready to join us in creating articles. From what I saw on the meetup page, there didn't seem to be very much time for people to learn how to edit. Do you know whether Cisco will be reporting on the event?--Ipigott (talk) 10:06, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

If there's a report on the event, I will provide a link on this talkpage. The time allotment was standard for this group -Silicon Valley women in technology plus international attendees via remote- who gather together periodically during an extended lunch period on subjects which interest them and can impact their futures. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:55, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Missing articles by dictionary

Thanks Rosiestep, Alafarge and all others involved for creating, tidying up or simply moving these lists to our navbox. We seem to be developing a really comprehensive set of red link lists from a wide range of sources. I wonder whether it would be useful to develop an alphabetical directory or index of all these lists as in some cases, e.g. Black women, several pertinent lists are available.--Ipigott (talk) 15:43, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Ipigott, and I support the need for a directory/index. --Rosiestep (talk) 16:41, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

As do I. I'm trying to chase another one down that I found the other week, but I've forgotten what it was called. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:44, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Found it. American Women Modernists: The Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910-1945. Apparently it contains some 400 biographies of Henri's students. It's also close to a hundred bucks on Amazon, and I'm not willing to spring for it. However, if someone could find a list of those biographies and generate a list of redlinks off of it, that could be useful. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:51, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Good find! Sounds like a potentially useful book. Back when the Wikipedia Library project (of 1lib1ref fame) started, I misunderstood them and thought we could create our own version of Open library where we kept a list of books and references that we as editors had direct access to, so that other editors could ping us to look something up. It turned out that their project was totally different, but something along the lines of what I was thinking of could still be useful, especially for minority related works like art catalogs of women or dictionaries of women artists. Jane (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

There are a number of pagescanned works at wikisource which might be useful here, including such things as biogrpahical dictionaries. It might be possible to get some sort of bot set up which can list what topics have relevant articles in them, or, perhaps, lists of articles which can be edited down to those appropriate to this or any other project here. John Carter (talk) 17:27, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Is this another source we can look to, maybe? Woman's Who's who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada, 1914-1915. Looks like it has some potential, at least. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:11, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, good find. If you could somehow uplaod the .pdf to wikisource or wikimedia commons to make sure we can keep it around, that might help a lot. John Carter (talk) 18:41, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I can try, but I are not understand computer. If I can download it, I'll put it up on Commons. Did manage to find another resource, though: Gumbo YaYa: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists. No idea how useful it might prove to be, tho'. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:10, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, here you go: File:Woman s Who s who of America.pdf. Should be usable. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:22, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikiquote

I just added my first entry to Wikiquote (q:Gertrude Breslau Hunt) and that got me thinking, if women are underrepresented in Wikipedia, I bet they're even more so in Wikiquote. Here are some helpful links (none of which I consulted before jumping right in, heh):

Just a thought. --MopTop (talk) 12:59, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Possible online editathon theme?

I see a lot of redlinks at National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Would "Wiki loves cowgirls" or "Women of the West" be a good theme for sometime this year? Montanabw^(talk) 23:12, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Montanabw: That would certainly be great for all you Americans. But for more international appeal we could combine it with riding, horse racing, training, breeding, show-jumping, dressage, etc. I'm not sure how easy it would be to draw up lists of red links on all of these. Maybe we could call it "Women Equestrians", specifically including cowgirls, etc. I see we already have Category:Equestrians with lots of subcategories including Category:Female equestrians. How about May along with organisations and conferences?--Ipigott (talk) 07:55, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

What about another "women's halls of fame" editathon? There's a lot of fodder in the state halls of fame, too, to work with. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:37, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm down with either or all of that--Women equestrians, Western Women, Halls of Fame all should have plenty of red links to work on. SusunW (talk) 22:44, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

My question is how big does the topic have to be to become a WIR theme? My take is that western women and equestrian women have some overlap but less than you think; in my opinion, they are quite separate. Women in the Old West (and even the 20th-century west) are often overlooked and invisible in the "macho frontier" culture... Most of all, not all "cowgirls" are horsewomen -- many of the people in the "cowgirl" hall of fame are notable women of the west who sometimes didn't do much with horses at all, for example, Laura Ingalls Wilder, who probably never rode a horse in her life to speak of... That said, halls of fame in general would be a good topic too. Truth is, we have articles on many women in sport, though they definitely need improvement... but the equestrian area is making progress -- I think almost every woman who has ridden in the Olympics either has an article or should (women only were allowed to compete in Equestrian beginning in 1952, and maybe some of the early ones aren't there...), most women involved in the world of horse racing who meet the notability criteria at WP:Horse racing are up, though again, early 20th century might be kind of light -- a post there to inquire would be useful and there would be no problem getting those articles up, that project has a lot of interest in being comprehensive. But to do women equestrians is too broad of a topic (Women Olympians or Women in Horse Racing would be better). If we are talking May, that's Triple Crown season in the USA and perhaps a theme of women in horse racing might be worth a look... though I'd like the horse racing project on board, and the need there is more to improve what's there than to fill in redlinks (except for female horses, where we have a lot of redlinked champions)... Montanabw^(talk) 23:21, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Reading between the lines, there seems to be a general interest in giving more attention to American Women, which I suppose is natural given the number of dedicated American members of the project. After all the discussions of multilingualism, international extensions and more focus on Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it may well be sensible to concentrate on American Women in May. Should we give it a try?--Ipigott (talk) 11:23, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I kind of think that "American Women" is too big... I think that limits such as region, era, or whatever are needed. Though I suppose it's worth further kicking around. Montanabw^(talk) 20:41, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

If we're going to do American women in 2017, then April is the month for it as Sturmvogel 66 and I will be facilitating WMDC's American-women-destubathon/plus-contest (e.g. Women in Green), March 31-April 30th, which could incorporate a Women in Red subsection. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:26, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

So reading this, my question is: what is the goal of an edit-a-thon? Merely driving new content? If so, then something related to American women isn't a bad idea...about three-quarters of the articles I've created so far this year have been about American women, and if that's any signal, there's a ton of work left to do even in that arena. Add in the public domain sources, and it should be fairly easy to do a lot of work in a fairly short amount of time.

If, on the other hand, our goal is to demolish more systemic bias, then I'm not sure focusing on American women is the way to go. This is always going to be a US-centric project, for obvious reasons, and the only way to close the systemic bias gap for other locations, I think, is going to be targeted data dumps for those locations. To wit - a month of nothing but African topics, a month of nothing but South American topics, etc.

On the third hand (what? I'm from Chernobyl.) is the question of attracting new editors. And that is a question to which, as yet, I don't think I have a reasonable answer. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:56, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Adelina Catalani

I've just created this, based on some passing mentions in a couple of books on Italian opera. It strikes me that there might be some possibility here for a good Did You Know? feature, if anyone would like to take a crack at filling it out some. There do appear to be more sources on Google Books in German and Italian, but my command of neither is up to much snuff. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:41, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Bio looks good. Is there anything in Grove? Xxanthippe (talk) 00:09, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps something like " ... that Adelina Catalani sang the soprano lead in the premiere of Donizetti's first opera; fainted at the end of the first act, had her part trimmed in the second, and was replaced for the final act?" Edwardx (talk) 00:13, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xxanthippe: not sure, as I don't have access. I doubt it - she wasn't terribly important, though she had a decent secondary career for about ten years, it seems. @Edwardx: - there are only two acts, I'm afraid. Her part was trimmed and the second soprano showed up for the second act. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:25, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

In Grove's Book of Opera Singers there is an Angelina Catalani (1780-1849) but not an Angelica. See your talk. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:43, 3 January 2017 (UTC).

Got it, thanks. I suspect that's a typo for Angelica - that's Angelica's bio, near as I can tell. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:48, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

it's corrected to Angelica in Grove online; also has a very short entry in oxford dictionary of music and grove music online. Elizabeth Forbes is the author, but sadly not a single citation in the article to follow up on. Deloebrenti (talk) 15:19, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

16,000 BLPs moving out of mainspace

Hi. Some of you will be aware of an ongoing issue of BLP articles created by Sander.v.Ginkel. The background at ANI can be found here. The discussion on the cleanup can be found here. In short, 16,000 BLP articles are being moved out of the mainspace to draftspace. This has already started following a Bot Approval. This should be complete in the next 48hrs or so. Articles will remain in draft for 90 days. In that time, they can be checked, and if OK, moved back to the mainspace. Anything not checked after 90 days will be deleted automatically.

So how can you help? The BLPs are broken down by occupational area. If an one of these interests you, please help. Even if it is checking one article. Check the article that has been moved to draft that a) it meets the notability requirement of the occupational area in question and b) that the facts in the article are supported by the sources. This includes, but is not limited to, the dates of birth, who they represented, when they were active, etc. If there are elements that can not be supported by the sources, they must be removed. If you are happy with the article, then move it back into the mainspace. DO NOT move anything until you have checked the sources, or supplied other reliable sources to support information in the article that may not already be cited. More information can be found here.

This is not going to be an easy task. I don't think there's too much support to check 16,000+ articles and I suspect that most of them will be gone after 90 days. If you have any questions, please raise them here. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Precious bodily fluids} 11:49, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Lugnuts for once again drawing our attention to this issue. I have also been trying to encourage WiR participants to assist in saving some of SvG's articles but most of us, including myself, have little experience with articles on sport and do not know where to look for sources. Some of us have spent a considerable amount of time of trying to find additional sources but have not been very successful. I have seen that a number of other editors continue to create articles on women in sport. Perhaps you have contacts with some of them and could try to encourage them to assist you in saving some of the articles. I see from here that SwisterTwister, Stvbastian, SeosiWrestling, Hmlarson, Racingmanager, and Moscow Connection are among those who create biographies of sportswomen. Perhaps they could help you to save some of SvG's articles over the next 90 days.--Ipigott (talk) 15:12, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I started working on women's football/soccer players a few days ago - but yes - definitely need all the help we can get. Thanks for sharing with other editors. Hmlarson (talk) 17:11, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

For those who are interested, these are all out of mainspace now, so we can actually start verifying them and moving them back in without worrying about the bot undoing our work. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:01, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

New source available

I think wikisource:True Stories of Girl Heroines might be a useful source for material on the individuals it mentions. Although I do not know this directly, I do get the impression that at least most of those covered in it actually were real women. John Carter (talk) 21:24, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

They look fictional. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:48, 9 January 2017 (UTC).

Fictionalized probably rather than fictional. Several of them in fact already have articles here, if often short ones. John Carter (talk) 19:47, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, the veracity needs to be checked. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:29, 11 January 2017 (UTC).

Having proofread the first two biographies there myself, I at least got the impression that the hard data, such as there is, in them is accurate, but that a lot of the purported "quotes" and other first-hand observer data might be a bit dramatized. That tends to be true about a lot of other older sources as well. In any event, though, the source could be used as one of the required indicators of notability. John Carter (talk) 23:36, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Notability of some of the subjects may exist, but it will have to be found elsewhere i.e. in reputable biographies etc. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:59, 12 January 2017 (UTC).

More potential sources

Musical biographical resources on the Web, courtesy of Yale University - there's an entire section dedicated to women in music.

There's a lot to pick through to get there, and some of the links are dead, but this has possibilities, methinks. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 02:03, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

The Kapralova database of women composers looks like a useful collection of sources, both for creating new articles and expanding existing ones. We have a List of online encyclopedias but as far as I can see have no lists of useful online databases of biographical resources. Would this be of interest to WiR? Unless we follow up on some of these suggestion, they are likely to be forgotten.--Ipigott (talk) 14:13, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes very useful. Just from experience I have learned that more women artists can be found on Bénézit than in their own home country databases because many 19th- and 20th-century women artists went to Paris for "finishing school" of some sort. I learned that from trial and error, and I set up the reliable sources subpage as way to capture those. Jane (talk) 10:07, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Here's another resource - a database of databases, it looks like. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 06:19, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikimania Montreal - scholarships

Hi folks! The scholarship application process has begun for Wikimania Montreal, and I hope some of you apply. The most important mentoring I could give to you would be: describe the impact of your wiki work, in addition to itemizing your on-wiki/off-wiki wiki activities. If you have questions, please reach out to me. :) --Rosiestep (talk) 20:21, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Lumping women into groups

Hi all, I came across this problem a few years ago and just noticed it again today: the article for Sophie Gengembre Anderson has a list at the bottom that should not be included in her article at all, since the only thing relevant to her is the list itself, which should be offloaded to its own list page, or deleted altogether. ~I don't have time or I would do it myself. I find this sort of editting behavior extremely annoying, btw. Jane (talk) 12:58, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jane023: Do these edits [1][2] resolve the issue? Or was there something more? - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 01:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Thankyou so much! Her page is definitely better this way. All the other pages still need to be fixed too though: see Special:WhatLinksHere/Sophie_Gengembre_Anderson for the other women with the same list at the bottom of their pages. At least this one is done now. Jane (talk) 07:37, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Upset metrics

Harej, Rosiestep: As a result of a considerable number of articles deleted over the past few months, the metrics totals displayed under "Metrics" on the main WiR page for September, October, November and December have been reduced by bot causing the graph to show a fairly sharp decline as a result of the 2,742 articles deleted for this period. For some reason, the X-project bot has not adjusted the values for previous months although deletions have been made for all months since January. For example, some 500 articles were deleted in March but this is not reflected in the statistics or in the graph. Perhaps we should simply delete the "Metrics" section as it is no longer provides an accurate picture, showing a general decline in interest in writing articles about women. The overall impact of the recent deletions will become more accurately reflected in the WHGI results at the end of the week.--Ipigott (talk) 12:37, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Copying User:The Earwig. Harej (talk) 15:19, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

If you're talking about examples like Leysha Lopez and Lena Gabrscek related to User:Aymatth2/SvG clean-up/Guidelines, looks like these were just deleted today, so it will take another day for the metrics to be updated. If not, I'm not sure what you're referring to. — Earwig ^talk 16:53, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@Harej and The Earwig: Please keep an eye on this in the days/weeks to come, and let us know if the bot is no longer able to do its job: updating our metrics. I'm assuming there won't be a snafu, but looking to you for guidance if there is. Thank you. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:30, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I was just thinking last night what a good job the metrics bot was making of the SvG deletions: it's a clever bit of code. I'm happy that it's reflecting the deletions in a timely fashion. I'll be fascinated to see what WHGI makes of it all at the end of the week ... I'm still not quite sure how it time-slices its data, nor how it deals with ungendered human wikidata items, nor how much latency there is in the dataflow it receives, but I'm guessing the key percentile will drop to 16.45% from 16.83%. The overall picture is probably not helped by my recent work of adding the male gender to a couple of thousand or more previously genderless wikidata items - for which I entirely blame Ipigott, whose rhetorical ruminations about the state of human and gender properties in wikidata records set me off on a somewhat sysphian task. My current estimation is that the number of genderless, misgendered or humanless wikidata items is statistically insignificant; but without constant intervention, the number of these suboptimal wikidata records will once again rise. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:03, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Tagishsimon: Despite my "rhetorical ruminations", I must say I'm really pleased to hear you have added "male" to over a thousand genderless biographies as it was simply not reasonable to leave them empty. The Earwig: My above remarks were simply based on the histories of the month-by-month metrics at 12.37 today when I noted adjustments had been made for September, October, November and December but saw that there had been none for previous months, despite the fact that there were many red links there too. I am now happy to report that adjustments have been made for the whole of 2016, with a substantial reduction for March from 3,448 to 2,794. I also see the other months from January to August have been adjusted although some display a number of new red links which will probably be eliminated tomorrow. Maybe all this is dependent on exactly when the red links were created and when the bots actually scan the output and make deletions. If so, I have to agree with Tagishsimon that the bots are in fact providing us with good day-to-day status reports. In any case, I'm pleased to see that the graph has now restored the relatively high number of new articles created in August while the decline since then no doubt represents the considerable number of articles created by SvG. All in all, I think we need to give additional credit to all those who have been adding biographies on sportswomen, no doubt rather independently of the month-by-month priorities set by WiR. I was surprised to see that about 1,300 sports articles for February were deleted leaving only about 2,000 for the month. It takes an incident like this to highlight who our major contributors have been, at least in terms of metrics.--Ipigott (talk) 21:36, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

For those interested, it looks like the SvG articles have now been moved to draftspace. So I'm guessing the metrics will update some point. Joseph2302 (talk) 22:43, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, that is the reason we have been discussing the effects here. It looks as if SvG's articles have today been deleted for the 2015 months while a few more have been also deleted for the 2017 months. It looks as if this might be the last major round of deletions. Congratulations to The Earwig and Project X for handling everything so well. When I first wrote about this, I had not realized the articles were being deleted month by month.--Ipigott (talk) 17:18, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

A quick caution for metrics watchers: the SvG moves to draft-space are not fully reflected yet by the removal of all en.wiki links in wikidata records. So, at the time of writing, Amila Hodzic still has a pointer to en.wiki in her wikidata reord, meaning that both sets of metrics will continue to count Amila Hodzic as an extant record. I don't know by what process en.wiki links get removed from wikidata, so cannot speculate on how awry metric counts will be as a result of this issue :) --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:58, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Tagishsimon: As far as I can see, until now most of the Wikidata entries on SvG's deleted articles still contain a blue link to the deleted articles on the EN Wikipedia. Sooner or later though, I expect the EN links and perhaps some of the full Wikidata entries will be deleted but this may well take some time. In the past, editors seem to have been efficient in following up EN wiki deletions (see for example Kelley Weaver deleted on the EN wiki on 18 August 2016 and on Wikidata two days later). Some Wikidata editors seem to have spent considerable time and effort on deleting links to the EN wiki but I do not know of any systematic approach to the problem. With the huge number of deletions to be dealt with now, there will probably be a considerable time lag unless someone develops a bot to do the job. If the Wikidata editors do not consider this to be a priority, then the WHGI stats may continue to show improvements for some time to come. I do not think Maximilianklein or any of his associated researchers ever expected we would be confronted with massive sets of deletions such as these.--Ipigott (talk) 10:13, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Translate-a-thon

Hello ! During WikiIndaba17, we decided to organize a little translate-a-thon about African women biographies. The idea would be to get 16 biographies (of good quality) translated in at least 16 languages (more is better) in 16 days. It would end up around the 06th of March, so that outcomes are available for the International Women Day. We are currently launching a process of identification of those 16 articles (which would typically come either from English, from French or from Arabic). Is anyone interested to help ? That would be awesome to have you involved. AfroCROWD is already in. m:16_African_Women_Translate-a-thon Anthere (talk)

Anthere: This looks like an interesting initiative. Glad to see our Malouma is already on the list. What other languages are you thinking of? I may be able to help with a few. I suppose you are aiming for translations up to Start or C standard rather than full GA jobs. Perhaps it would also be interesting to translate some of the Portuguese articles on women from Angola into English and French, e.g Mel Gambôa, Helena Morena, Irina D. França (see here). Similarly, we could extend coverage of some of the German-language articles on people such as Ursula Vogel-Weidemann and Stefanie Gercke. It seems to me translations of biographies into 16 languages for each article is extremely ambitious. Would it not be more realistic and attractive to establish six priority languages and a further ten as additional options?--Ipigott (talk) 10:51, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

We would aim as much as possible for GA or wannaby GA. Not to stub and start. Yes... it will be a challenge to find 16 articles of GA or near GA quality about african women. This is why it is a challenge ;) Currently doing some digging with petscan to at least identify those which are already tagged in English and French with african citizenship. But even all nationalities included... I doubt we will get to 16, so we need to do some manual digging about nice articles not yet taggued GA or FA.

Any source language is fine. We considered that the highest chance for a good quality article about an african women would be either English or French or Arabic (user:Zeinebtakouti will look at the arabic version), but other languages are fine. What we expect is that once identified and selected, it would be best to get them translated in English anyway, so that English can be the "master" for other translations. If you know a German speaking who can have a look...

Number of language... it is actually THE challenge... the languages we were thinking of targetting are

International languages: Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, German

African languages: Akan, Afrikaans, Igbo, Hausa, Wolof, Tswana, Zulu, Xhosa, Shona, Swahili, Yoruba, Sudanese, Amharic, Tsonga, Ewe, Sesotho, Chichewa, Anthere (talk)

Anthere I agree with the priority international languages but apart from Arabic, Africans and Swahili, I think you'll have great difficulty in finding people ready to translate into the others you mention.

Let's have faith :) and if it does not work... well, we will have tried :) Anthere (talk)

I'm fluent in German too if you need any help. I see there is a pretty good German article on de:Rozena Maart which could be used to expand the English article as a basis for translating into the other languages. Other articles you might like to consider for the challenge include Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Flora Nwapa, Cri-Zelda Brits, and Manal al-Sharif for which the existing versions in languages other than English require considerable expansion. I was surprised to see there were so few articles about African women which had reached GA or higher. Perhaps we can also try to work some of them up on the basis of articles in other languages. Good sourcing though is always a problem for the English Wikipedia, apparently less so for the other languages.--Ipigott (talk) 16:40, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I added de:Rozena Maart to the list. I am fine with the other 4 you mention above (we need at least a picture and some polishing indeed). I go hunting the French ones... but yes... we actually discussed this a few months ago at Wikimania and a quick look made us realize how few GA we had... Anthere (talk)

DYK review?

Template:Did you know nominations/Sonja Kehler, - when I wrote the article a week ago I noticed that her birthday is February 2, but then forgot until today, sorry. Anybody for a review? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:35, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I have it. SusunW (talk) 17:51, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 00:24, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life

Found this source here while digging around a bit for one of my American painters. Seems to be an interesting little volume - I'm not sure if we had it available to us yet, but it's certainly something we ought to consider, I think. Maybe generate a redlist out of it? A cursory search online suggests there are other, similar books by the same writer available. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 03:36, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I see it is in the public domain and the full text is available here. It's already been used as a source in a considerable number of articles. We really need to include works like this somewhere in our lists of encyclopaedias and reference works but I don't know quite where. As far as I can see, we do not yet have a section on women's biographies. Rosiestep, as you have recently been drawing on PD materials, perhaps you can suggest where to list it. Or maybe we should create a new list of dictionaries of women's biographies? It would indeed be interesting to compile a list of red links if anyone is interesting to go through it.--Ipigott (talk) 14:42, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I've started the redlinks list here and will plug away at it. This is my favorite period to work on so happy to do this.Alafarge (talk) 15:25, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Great! Like magic! It looks as if most of them are not yet covered by Wikipedia. As the text is public domain, it should be possible to create articles quite quickly, at least if the ladies are notable enough.--Ipigott (talk) 16:15, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Correct, it looks like about 60-70% of them are not yet in Wikipedia, and many of them look solid on the notability front at a cursory glance. Care should be taken with this source, though, as I've noticed that a number of the birth years for women who are already in Wikipedia are wrong (looks like age fudging to me as the birth years are consistently later than in Wikipedia).Alafarge (talk)

Given the designator "leading American women" in the title I think we should be OK as far as notability is concerned. Finding more modern sources might be troublesome, though... --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:49, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I've been working on the ladies from this book, off and on, for quite some time. Maybe start a new redlist grouping on the WiR NavBox "By dictionary"? Would that word be appropriate, though, if there's a book with only 20 women's biographies? --Rosiestep (talk) 17:16, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, I know Gobonobo has a collection of such redlinks here, some of which are broken down by source. So I don't see any problems with a series of by-dictionary links. However big or small those dictionaries may be. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 17:27, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Wow! great find. I am glad Ian found a link I could access in Mexico as the original one I could not. Maybe we put the link to the source at the top of the relink list of "by dictionary"? I am also thinking that additional sourcing will be likely found in newspapers and don't forget to check sources in hathitrust. Would that there were such a source on women of diverse backgrounds. I just have to keep hoping for Oxford approval to gain access to that Caribbean dictionary with its 6 volumes of Caribbean women. SusunW (talk) 17:44, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Gobonobo is welcome to link to my redlinks list, or even copy it over — though it is going to be pretty long, probably around 900 names altogether.Alafarge (talk) 19:05, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, surely the sources do exist. But it's going to be trickier to find them. I stumbled across it through looking for Virginia Granbery online - she seems to have been reasonably notable in her day, and it was pretty difficult to find a whole lot about her out there. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 17:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I started a "By dictionary" section on the Navbox and added the link to the Woman-of-the-Century. I suggest renaming the redlist, e.g. instead of your subpage, Alafarge, making it a WiR redlist. If we are aware of other dictionary redlists, we could do the same for them? --Rosiestep (talk) 19:14, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Happy to do this, just not sure how?Alafarge (talk) 19:23, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Alafarge: It would be a "Move" feature. Do you have access to do this? If not, I'd be glad to move it. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I have moved pages before but I'd appreciate if you'd do this since I'm not clear where precisely it should be moved.Alafarge (talk)

Alafarge: my pleasure; done. --Rosiestep (talk) 21:11, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I've added a 2nd dictionary, North American Women Artists of the 20th Century to the WiR navbox. It is a copy of Gobonobo's list. Is anyone aware of others? --Rosiestep (talk) 21:31, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm sure there are some - I'll dig around. But I bought myself a copy of that one with my Christmas money, so hopefully I can make some inroads in the near future. (It's the kind of thing I ought to have on my shelf, really...) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

fyi - the work is on wikisource here s:A Woman of the Century old scan started in 2015, i got a better scan and it will take a month or two to proofread. need to build a template to link to articles on each entry modeled on EB1911 i.e. Template:EB1911, and Template:Cite EB1911. cheers. Beatley (talk) 17:43, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

February 2017 at Women in Red

February 2017
	Black Women & Women Anthropologists online editathons Faciliated by Women in Red

(To subscribe, Women in Red/Invite list. Unsubscribe, Women in Red/Opt-out list) --Rosiestep (talk) 20:55, 28 January 2017 (UTC) via MassMessaging

Question: How to cross-reference WP entries from two countries?

I just created an article for WIR-ED 2017 on Ann Sutherland Harris a feminist scholar, professor emerita of art history, and curator. The French Wikipedia has a page for her HERE. How do I go about cross-referencing or linking them thus improving both articles? Netherzone (talk) 16:47, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Netherzone on the left under the globe at the very bottom of the page is a thing that says languages. Press add links. In the first box that comes up type fr (for french) and select français then type the name that appears on french WP. It will pull up a list of other links. Press the link button. If it doesn't work. Let me know. SusunW (talk) 16:54, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Great topic! The procedure for connecting articles on different language Wikipedias is explained at Help:Interlanguage links; in short, you have to add both to the appropriate Wikidata page, but you can do this without leaving Wikipedia by clicking "add link" in the "languages" section of the Wikipedia sidebar. I've added the French link for you. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:56, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

SusunW and J Milburn Many thanks to both of you for your help! Netherzone (talk) 20:05, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

New report: Inspire Campaign for Gender Diversity

Hi all,
I wanted to share with you all the final report of Inspire Campaign for Gender Diversity, organized by the Community Resources team at the Wikimedia Foundation. Beyond the quantitative outcomes of the campaign (number of articles edited, number of participants, etc.) I think this is a very interesting report because it explores different ways of working in the crossroads of technology and gender in the Wikimedia movement. The 11 Gender Gap Inspire grants complete to date have broadened our understanding of what it means to work on the gender gap. Three core themes were identified: participation, content, and developing leaders.
I would like to know what thoughts you have on this report, if you see any way you think the report could be useful in the work you do for WikiProject:Women in Red, and any other thought triggered by this report's reading. Please feel free to share these on the report's Talk Page, on my talk page, or privately via email at evalwikimedia · org
I really appreciate any time you can dedicate to this!

Go to report now.

Best,
María (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

MCruz (WMF): I have read through the various sections of your report with great interest. Many of your findings reflect our own experience at WiR, in particular the evolving data from WHGI, the problem of systemic bias in redirects from female to male-based articles, and the need to encourage the participation of more women editors. I think it would be useful to write an abstract or summary of the overall findings as well as suggestions on how you think future work on overcoming the gender gap should be prioritized. I would have been interested in hearing how you succeeded in maintaining your new women recruits as well as whether any decided to leave and, if so, why.--Ipigott (talk) 13:55, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I have just seen from this that you have indeed summarized your findings and have made some suggestions for future work. Given your conclusions, I was surprised to see you did not address the need to attract a far greater proportion of women editors, perhaps on the basis of the reasons why they are reluctant to edit Wikipedia while being so keen to participate on the social networks, etc.--Ipigott (talk) 15:04, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Ipigott, thank you for reading the report and offering your thoughts. The points you raise are suitable for a roundtable discussion, I think, among Wikimedians who are already working to bridge the gender gap. I will share this with the team that created the report and follow up. Thank you! María (WMF) (talk) 14:32, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

MCruz (WMF): Thanks. Please keep me in the loop.--Ipigott (talk) 14:43, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Women's March videos on Commons

Hi, There is currently a discussion on Commons about the copyright of Women's March videos of speeches by women speakers: c:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Activist Gloria Steinem Tells Women's March Protesters 'Put Our Bodies Where Our Beliefs Are'.webm. Curiously only women's speeches are questioned. Noboby asks for the deletion of Bernie Sanders's video, nor of videos of World Economic Forum in Davos. Regards, Yann (talk) 12:38, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I see this has been Kept (now closed).--Ipigott (talk) 08:59, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

FYI, it has been reopened. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:42, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Focusing on women's works, e.g. 2017 Women's March

WiR has a lot of redlink lists for missing biographies, but very little regarding "women's works" and "women's issues". It's made me think about this in a different way, e.g. should the WiR project scope continue to state that "women's works" and "women's issues" fall under its purview, vs. should WiR concentrate 100% on biographies? WP:WikiProject Women's Works in Red could support articles related to women's paintings sculptures, books, operas, songs, albums, dances, music, and schools founded, conferences convened, marches marched, and so on! It could be a sister project to WiR/daughter project of WikiProject Women; or a task force of WiR; or we could leave things as they are. I bring this up as there may be other groups of editors out there who aren't interested in writing biographies, but are interested in writing about "women's works/women's issues", and we might be able to forge relationships/alliances with them by offering a WikiProject more specific to their areas of interest. Thinking multi-language opportunities; thinking collaborations with Wikidata (take a look at Wikidata WikiProject sum of all paintings) and Commons (it just got a huge grant!). Yes, 2017 Women's March has me thinking. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:35, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Adding Missvain as we're planning a women+wine event for March, and women's wineries would fall under "women's works". The more I think about it, the more I see a potential for WP:WikiProject Women's Works in Red... additional editors, more venues, large redlists. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:08, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

It never occurs to me to leave out works created by women. This month, I have written about schools created by women and girls' schools as well as biographies. I think it is a natural outflowing from the woman to her works or vice verse. If she and her creations have enough sources to make them notable, I just create both. I like having them in one umbrella, but maybe others have different focuses. I find it much easier to collect things in one spot and organize them in divisions than to scatter them all over the place and have to jump hither and yon to find them. SusunW (talk) 20:24, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Rosiestep: I agree with SusunW that when writing or improving biographies of women, it is often logical to create separate articles about their works. This is particularly true of artists and writers but also extends to all the other occupations and areas of involvement. Unfortunately, WHGI and our own metrics fail to detect new articles on works. Quite a few, but certainly not all, are picked up by AlexBot although they have to added manually to our lists. I think it might be useful to maintain separate lists of new articles on biographies and on works and related issues, both for our specific editathons and for those included in our monthly metrics. I think this would provide additional incentives for people to address women's works. There have been a number of suggestions on creating categories for women's works and I think this should be given more careful attention.--Ipigott (talk) 14:56, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Maybe a task force/work group? Women's writings, women's history, women's "work" (maybe more pages about women in professions or lists like List of women astronomers), women's music (compositions by women), women's visual arts (paintings, sculpture, etc.) might all be potentially related groups to this one. John Carter (talk) 22:50, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Support I have spent the past few years adding 1) women's artwork to Commons and articles about women artists where possible due to copyright restraints, and 2) women's artwork to Wikidata with links to Creator pages on Commons. That is specifically artwork, but women's works are so much more than that, such as innovations and improvements in daily life. I wrote earlier about collecting reliable sources for women and have started added biographical dictionaries of women to Wikidata. These should all have WP articles so that others can link to them. See e.g. this article about an early US inventor Mary P. Carpenter, whose patents are still cited but who sadly has so little written about her. Her drawings still need to be uploaded to Commons. Jane (talk) 12:54, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Support, though I'd also be fine with including women's works as part of this project. I do a lot of work with historic sites, and one of the reasons I originally joined this project was that I kept finding historic places connected to notable women in history who didn't have articles yet, so I wrote articles on both. There are also a lot of women's works, like local women's clubs and social movements, that are notable despite not being tied to a notable individual. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:20, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Support especially if it can encompass woman's organizations too! There are a ton of woman's organizations and women-led movements that are missing from Wiki. Not just today's movements, but from the last 2 centuries. Very awesome idea, Rosiestep! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 15:01, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes to orgs, Megalibrarygirl! Food for thought would be the non-biography subcats of Category:Women, which itself needs to be better organized. Plus collaborating with the editors who work on Category:Literature by women‎; who are they; do they have redlists; do they run virtual editathons? We know that Jane023 is working on Category:Paintings by women (yes, it's a non-existent category; cc: Jane023, and TheCatalyst31 works on Category:Women's clubs. Surely there are other editors who work on Category:Girl groups and their songs; who are they and can we work together? Maybe a "task force" re women's works would be more palatable than a new WikiProject. I continue to think "works" are underserved, and ripe for attention in the post-2017 Women's March world. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:30, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I added some stats on gender of painters per collection and thus also the gender behind the works per collection here: d:User:Jane023/Gendergap report. What you can see is that for complete sets of paintings there are still quite a few paintings by unknown painters (and thus unknown gender). Some of these will probably be attributed, but many will just remain unnamed old masters, which were probably men. That said, the percentages of women in any collection are pretty low - mostly between 1% and 10%. Jane (talk) 21:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

So I created Category:Women's marches and added all the articles I could find which seemed fitting, but as you can see, it's a poorly-populated category. I will try to add to it. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:54, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Nice work! Jane (talk) 21:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Awesome, Rosiestep! I'm sure there's more out there, and if not, we'll add to it. The great part about working on orgs/marches/works is that it often uncovers otherwise hidden women in history to then write about in turn on WiR! Awesome pic from the Versailles march. Women rock. ;) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 21:23, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Would be terrific to see this expanded to organisations, etc: I often struggle a bit for biographies because my areas of interest are so colossally historically male-dominated, but there's a lot of organisations/events/etc I could throw articles together on. The Drover's Wife (talk) 22:41, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Regarding women's works, you all know about the Wikipedia Library's Wikipedia:Women Writers Online subscription databank, right? John Carter (talk) 23:53, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Feb 6: International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation

I just became aware of this. International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation is celebrated February 6th and WikiMujeres is supporting it with an editathon, es:Wikiproyecto:Mujeres/Wikimujeres/MGF. Their meetup page contains a Wikidata-generated redlist in multiple languages, including en-wiki redlinks. If anyone is interested in WiR participating, be bold, create a meetup page, include the en-wiki redlinks. If busy with other things, no worries. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:33, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Is it possible to collapse a group within a Navbox?

If yes, it would be nice to set that up for the >300 redlists which are swelling the WiR Navbox. Or move redlists into a second Navbox? --Rosiestep (talk) 22:52, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I've collapsed various things, and tweaked others - diff. So, it's possible. I leave it to you all to decide if it is desirable :) --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:04, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

So it is possible; cool! Tagishsimon - But instead of 4 different collapsible sections (seems like too much), could we have just 1 collapsible section/group, e.g. redlists? --Rosiestep (talk) 22:24, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I've updated it to a single collapsed section ... any better? The template system does not facilitate the collapse of a subsection of the navigation box, so thatever we do will be a bit of a hack. --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:12, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. This looks fine to me.--Ipigott (talk) 16:17, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Tagishsimon, as to my eyes, it's definitely an improvement. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:03, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Do the bots find my articles?

Will bots automatically discover my articles? I'm working through the WiR list of Canadian women and sometimes adding my own. I put the Wiki Women Project tag on the talk pages. Are these going to be counted? Westendgirl (talk) 03:06, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Mainly, Westendgirl. But not all. And not bots. By way of example, Sonya Erasmus, Lynne Bowen, Carly Hill, Yolaine Oddou, Victoria Cartier, Judy Cameron, Margaret Frost, Abeille Gélinas, and Alice Benjamin were all added to wikidata (all as an en.wiki article link added to an existing wikidata item, iirc) semi-manually by me ... they have the human/female properties necessary to get them to count in our stats. Jura1 added a couple of other articles you created / worked on.

I run a series of petscan reports each night, looking for biographies that are not linked to wikidata. Right now, I rely on the article being categorised by any of year of birth, year of death, or any of a large set of 'people' categories - people by occupation, people by nationality, women by occupation, etc. But my coverage is not universal and biographies will fall down the gaps if they're categorised only in categories which I've not got around to discovering yet. So Andrea Holmes, for instance, is categorised as Category:Canadian Paralympics only ... that looks like a badly linked category - it is nested under Category:National Paralympics and Category:Canada at the Paralympics, neither of which are 'people' categories. And so Andrea Holmes was undiscovered and not linked to wikidata until just now. Looking around, it seems that Category:Paralympic competitors for Canada is the de facto category for such a person, and Category:Canadian Paralympics a runt which needs to be knocked on the head & replaced by Category:Paralympic competitors for Canada. (I'll leave as is for now, but amend the cats in a day or so.) I should & now I'm reminded might get around to trying to use the Wiki Women Project tag as a marker against which to check for a link to wikidata.

Zara Taylor was also not linked - I exclude from my work articles which have various tags - deletion, merge, and, as in this case, citations for verification. Such articles get added once the tag has been removed. (I've now added Zara.)

Finally Chloe Cooley was not linked because I've not run the pertinent petscan since the article was created a few minutes ago. I'll add after I post this.

In conclusion: I think at the moment the vast majority of new biogs are caught & added to wikidata in a timely fashion, and categorisation is key to this happening. But, a minority of biogs are not found, or not found in a timely fashion. It is instructive to look at the contributions of Reports_bot around the 13:30 time each day - it is the bot which compiles our statistics. Day after day it finds & adds articles in each of the months since July 2015, meaning we're still discovering (from the perspective of wikidata and our stats) qualifying articles 18+ months after they were written.

Finally: thanks for adding so many articles in recent times. Very much appreciated. --Tagishsimon (talk) 04:53, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Tagishsimon I can see you are becoming indispensable.--Ipigott (talk) 16:22, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I was just wondering how they get picked up. I've decided to work on adding biographies of Canadian women for the moment. I'm working from the WiR page but sometimes also just adding people I think of. I have been shocked to see that some people were not already in there.Westendgirl (talk) 19:08, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

5,000th tweet for @wikiwomeninred

If you've wondered what kind of impact our twitter campaign is having, here are the latest metrics at the moment we made our 5,000th tweet:

Tweets 5,000
Following 968
Followers 1,256
Likes 1,302
Moments 0
Your Tweets earned 2,335 impressions over the last 24 hours

Thanks to everyone who is curating @wikiwomeninred! --Rosiestep (talk) 21:27, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Can't we encourage some there "followers" to join us on WiR? I'm no expert on Twitter but maybe we should also be sending out tweets about our editathons and the need to add more articles about women to Wikipedia. We could also ask for suggestions on the names of notable women who deserve to be covered. Perhaps we could do the same on Facebook and Pinterest.--Ipigott (talk) 15:35, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Ipigott, @Victuallers and Megalibrarygirl: and several others regularly recruit on our twitter page. Victuallers in particular constantly asks can you help, will you join, etc.? I usually ask that when I find a woman without any photo. Typically I can find a fair use photo, but when even that is unavailable, I take to twitter. SusunW (talk) 16:03, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I've noticed some of these messages but I have not been able to identify any responses. I was wondering whether it would be possible to encourage responses on Twitter itself which we could then try to follow up. For Twitter users, it may be quite a jumb to be dragged straight into a Wikipedia page, especially our WiR pages. Perhaps there's an easier way to bring them in.--Ipigott (talk) 16:12, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott, Rosiestep, and SusunW: Since Twitter has character limits, we could create a graphic that describes how to join WiR and link it in posts. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:25, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@Megalibrarygirl and Ipigott: good ideas! Do you want to develop the strategy/implementation? SusunW I've never tweeted about a missing photo, but seems like a good angle. Maybe we should start a campaign focused on missing photos? Thoughts on how to phrase the tweet? Victuallers It's only been in the last week that I've tweeted a link to the WiR talkpage asking readers to "join the discussion", e.g. trying to recruit. My tweets have otherwise only been informative, e.g. a fact about a new article and a link to it. Do you have pointers/sample tweet on letting people know how they can help or join?

Besides the four of us who are already tweeting from @wikiwomeninred, do any other WiR members want to be added to the account and join in the tweeting? --Rosiestep (talk) 19:44, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@Rosiestep, Ipigott, and SusunW: The picture would be mostly text based as I see it. It would include instructions about how to find Wikipedia, how to find WiR and how to sign up. It could be done as an infographic maybe. We could have a few different ones, longer infographics and shorter quick how tos. People could also share these pics on Facebook and Instagram. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:09, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@Megalibrarygirl: Those seem like great ideas. Could you create one or two infographics along these lines and see how they work? Would it be possible to adopt a similar approach for the other social networks? @SusunW: As for pictures, I was wondering whether there is any straightforward mechanism available on Twitter, Facebook, etc., for allowing the creators of photographs to make them public domain or give them a suitable Creative Commons label. When Flikr first came along, a fair proportion of those who posted images gave them suitable licences for use on Wikimedia Commons but now the vast majority of new images are posted on the social networks and sites such as Instagram, nearly always without any licence which means they are copyright.--Ipigott (talk) 08:43, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

We do get replies via DMs on Twitter. We have discussed how to release images with groups. I have a campaign running with the British Women's Equality Party to try and get their leader to supply a picture (and 1000s more!). They don't get it! We also use the stream to tweet our new articles. The image sounds like a good idea although converting newbies is a big ask..... you could use the header? Victuallers (talk) 12:28, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

@Ipigott, Rosiestep, SusunW, and Victuallers: I can make an infographic. I'll work on it this week. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:17, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Guardian link

Is this any good to anyone- Hidden women at NASA there seems to be a lively debate in the comments.--ClemRutter (talk) 17:31, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

ClemRutter Thanks! Nice link. We recently watched the film made about some of these women and I thought there must surely be more information about them. Already found a subject among them! SusunW (talk) 17:49, 5 February 2017 (UTC)