On the females on getting checkuser or oversight. First by female in this instance I mean someone born female, not male to female transgender.

Well in the oversight list there's Theresa knott so there's one person with oversight that was born female. There might be someone else, but I don't recognize anyone. Taxman, by the way, is not "Taxwoman" who a female friend of Poetlister.

Well I mentioned Minspillage on ArbCom, running for the board (did she make it? I'm not sure where to look) and I found this http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=59418079



So it looks like Mindspillage did something that made her lose Oversight and she doesn't have it currently. So maybe that's why she hasn't got checkuser.

Although I could be missing somebody, out of checkuser and Oversight, one female has Oversight and the rest were born male. That's pretty sexist.

Let me put this in no uncertain terms. Until all areas of Wikipedia Power are 50/50 male/female, Wikipedia is a "old boys' club". The fact that Floflo is a figurehead "chairperson" is beside the point, because she's completely incompetent.

Wikipedia is sexist and is likely to remain so. That's one of its main problems right there.

Hmm - now why hasn't Jayjg had his removed for the same offence?

It is a special kind of sexism usually attributed to immature nerdy middle schools boys. If we can straighten out WP we should next take on The History Channel.

Hm.. sexism or merely a representation of the makeup of Wikipedia users? I haven't come across that many females.

Good question. I read it was but it was given back.

Um, yeah.....but have you ever considered why??

That's the question to ask...

Females aren't welcome because it's all about what the WASP ole' boyz (Jimbo included) think. We don't want anything else...

I'll go even further. The only females who make it in that environment are those who are willing to behave like refugees from the English National Rugby team lockerroom...Look at Pottymouth Makemi and you'll see what I mean.

They don't want women's knowledge. It's all about validating what a buncha white guyz think....Which is why you have "list of big bust performers" and you don't have "list of big dick performers".

Jzg would never stand for that, anyway!.

I think it's more likely that the whole act of collecting minute pieces of information and doing so at a computer desk is a hobby that is particularly appealing to a certain type of young male.

Boys collect stats. Football, baseball, cricket, you name it. That's what they love to do. You don't get many girls who are trainspotters.

Actually there was..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...ng_well_endowed

i found out about that researching something else and would like to assure everyone here i am the complete opposite of gay.

Good point. And at the risk of coming off as sexist myself, it may be that sites like Wikipedia (if not Wikipedia specifically) encourage a certain level of male-like aggressiveness in female users, which is probably both good and bad, if you know what I mean.


I'm not so sure it's quite so bad as that... IOW, it's not that they don't want contributions from women, it seems more like they don't comprehend the female perspective, at least on issues where it's generally going to be different from the male perspective. In the end it might amount to the same thing, though, since they end up not understanding why they should have to include that perspective.

I shouldn't pretend to understand it myself, of course, but it's fairly clear in areas where it's a problem - a lot of the articles on religion and the vagaries of various "third-world" cultures have this problem, not to mention numerous biographies. And also rugby, of course.

"old boys club"!??!?!?

old alt.religion.scientology/slashdot/zionist/(insert balkan country) club more like.

Positive discrimination is evil. There is no reason that Wikipedia should be representative.

I am not defending Wikipedia here, I am just attacking your position.

Margo Leadbetter, is that you?

"Conservative"? Pah, bunch of lefties!

As a libertarian, I oppose both the PC posturing of the left and the moral grandstanding of the right, and support individualism.

I think we can be quite confident that there is little if any overlap between scientologists and Zionists, and where do the Balkans come in?

I wasn't implying that it was the same club! More that there are cliques from those groups that came onto Wikipedia in the early days... Alt.Religion.Scientology might be the most interesting, as their number is much less than that of slashdotters/zionists/generic nationalist with 600 year old memory, but they are heavily represented on Wikipedia. Even dear Kelly Martin iirc...

Look at the demographics and look at the number of women in positions of power in WP. The only way around this is to have quotas, like it or not. Plus, you need to specifically make changes which allow women more freedom to be able to express themselves outside of the "lockerroom".

Call it leftist. Call it what you want, but it's the only solution.

And WP is not going to do this, because it is an old boys' club....right, Jimbo???

Demographics of what, precisely?

This only works if everybody is positively identified so you know who is male and who is female, and you have a cast-iron definition of male and female to allow for TSs, TVs etc.

Well, what's the big deal about everybody telling their sex and everybody trusts that the sex they're giving is the one which they feel is correct?

That said, wasn't there some sort of study done which proved that the majority of females on Second life were actually males? Or another service like that?

Didn't Angela and Mindspillage create a mailing list just for women due to the misogynist atmosphere of the WP mailing list?

I find it ironic that various minority groups such as homosexuals find online communities like WP to be safe refuges, yet women in higher echelons of WP and the Foundation seem to lack effective power. I suppose Kat "Mindspillage" Walsh is the most powerful woman in the WP Community (Flo does seem to be more of a figurehead) yet even Mindspillage doesn't strike me as a Joan of Arc or Athena.

Women are not a minority group....

For any given woman, is there really a barrier to access? Or is it just that women simply aren't as interested in making Wikipedia as a hobby?

Eh. I should have said something like "groups denied basic civil rights?" I meant no offense.

You may be right that women on WP may not be as interested in power. I wish WP would do a survey to find out about this. I'm curious as to what the results might be.

Of course, it could be that women aren't interested in power because of misogynist feelings at the top? Who knows?

I remember predictions here that it would be flooded by shemales as well as men who would sneak in to spy get horny and things would go bad. I never joined the list myself so anyone know how the list turned out?




What about SlimVirgin who is the power behind the throne on Wikipedia?




Only in male dominated areas like gaming and being a fan of lesbian pornography.

There are women-dominated areas. Go in see a romantic comedy at the theater. I don't mean one of the good romantic comedies, but one with a tired, cliche plot with a similar storyline rehashed for similar movies over and over again. Those have a high proportion of women.

There is of course, Ziontology which was the outcome of a circuit bending audit session involving an E-Meter and a Hebrew Speak'n'Spell.

You have a point. Women are more social then men, which consequences of course is to use less internet but rather socialise in real life. Wikipedia is a virtual community not real.

Also, women are less interested to ''lead'' and request power contrary to men they do not have by the most part wrongly placed ego's and do not overestimate their capabilities (more likely they will understestimate them). So women will just mind socialising on Wikipedia then contributing by having in mind to request more power int he hierarchy. Exactly like in real life.

Both those points explains why there are less women in the higher hierarchy, it also happens in real life, not as if it is something alien.

The funny thing is that a woman-controlled Wikipedia would probably be significantly better both for reading and for neutral point of view (if much worse to edit ). But you'll never get a permanently woman controlled organisation without some kind of positive discrimation. At least not with our species.

What about the Royal College of Nursing?

Kat Walsh could almost certainly have checkuser if she wanted it. I can't imagine the arbitration committee declining a board member.

I don't think it's misogyny or a greater desire for privacy, at least not necessarily... I see it as just an ingrained cultural bias against aggressiveness in women. Women are often just as guilty of that bias as men, I'm afraid.

In other words, if a female admin wants to succeed at getting higher access rights, the way to do it would be to behave in the most innocuous and uncontroversial way imaginable, make a TON of friends, and then spring the request on everyone by surprise. If she shows a "pattern" of ambitious or socially-dominating behavior, people will be waiting for it, and they'll shoot down the request just about every time.

It'll be interesting to see what happens if, say, Durova tries to get CheckUser access... Has she tried already? I can't imagine they'll let her, though I suppose crazier things have happened.


Also, would it be OK if I changed this thread's title to something like "Glass Ceiling for Female Admins"?

Yet Another Rilly Silly Thread (YARST).

I begin to lose hope for peeple's critical faculties.

Usernyms do not have real gender — they can at most have grammatical gender.

Real gender, like every other connection to Reality, is not verifiable within the Rules Of Wikipedia (ROW).

It's like talking about the gender of a Dragon in D&D.

Don't Be A Dragon Dick …

WP:RS = Rilly Silly

Jonny

Since I feel it best to comment whether I like the thread rename so people can learn when they did a good job and a bad job.... I like the thread rename "Glass ceiling for female admins?"




Has SlimVirgin asked for checkuser?

They're both Indians; you'd think that was enough evidence to block him as a sockpuppet.

Taxman could be the Native American kind of Indian.

User:Theresa knott recently quietly lost her oversight abilities, because she apparently did not "provide identification to the Wikimedia Foundation" .

In the meantime, Mindspillage has just had her oversight bit turned on, for Meta anyways.

I notice Deskana also gained oversight, on the English Wikipedia.

Deskana self-identifies as male, though... I know, people get thrown off by the female sounding name. For the longest time I thought postmodern indie folk singer Devendra Banhart was female too, just based on the name, until I actually heard some of his material. (At which point I also realized that I also didn't care, because I didn't really enjoy said material.)

*tugs collar*

Opps, apologies to Deskana, I've even been to that user page before but I never scrolled that far down. Let me derail this thread for a momment though and say I rather liked the banner (with MMORPG jab and Sickle/Hammer symbol) at the top though.

I always thought Deskana was something like a Desktop.

Destined for Bureaucracy, that one is …

Jonny

Not often do I agree with Jonny but that's what it sounded like to me as well.

It was only temporary, Bastique removed it.

Well, that's a relief! For a second there I was afraid we might actually have been wrong about something.

So... no female checkusers, and one female bureaucrat - Angela Beesley. That's worse than the Bush cabinet.

Hallelujah! It's raining men!

Anthere, for the time being, is now a checkuser on enwiki.