Grants talk:IdeaLab/Inspire

IdeaLab Inspire Campaign

Discussion forum

This is the discussion page for the Inspire campaign. Got feedback/suggestions about Inspire? Share them here! Got questions about turning your ideas into plans or grant proposals? Add a new topic and ask us!

Discussion resources:

• IdeaLab Friendly Space expectations
• How IdeaLab works
• Gender gap FAQ

Promotion

I am not interested. In the moment I have to see nonsense as the statistic world mab between, I only can put me on my head. People who obviously don't understand history should not do such thing. Unbeleavable. Marcus Cyron (talk) 22:33, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Addressing the wrong issue

20% of contributors being women should show us how inaccessible Wikimedia is to non-technical users. There are so few women editors because the majority of editors are geeks and the majority of geeks are men. Quite simple really. I am well aware that there are many women IT specialists but their numbers are small in comparison with men. If Wikimedia wants to attract more women (or indeed more of any type of person) then it must make it easier to edit. It is still far to much of a pain in the arse to do anything except minor edits unless you can get the toolbar to do what you want it to do or copy and paste useful code from existing pages. The conflict-type discussions on Wikipedia are also a bar to many contributors who don't want to get involved in endless discussions which are 'won' by those with the most experience or those who can spout of policy acronyms. This is more of an issue with en.wikipedia but as a contributor to en.wikibooks it would seem that we have trouble attracting female editors also. I know my comments in no way address the issue being discussed here but I just feel Wikimedia is looking for the wrong solutions.--Xania (talk) 22:51, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Geeky women might well prefer to remain invisible. (See for instance "Geek women don't exist" at GeekFeminism Wiki.) --Pitke (talk) 00:17, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I wholly disagree. It's like lowering the standards in the military only for women. A service should uphold its standards, otherwise, what's the point of the service? Either you can serve, or you can't. Also, I don't think it's right to assume that women need things dumbed down for them. They're plenty capable of editing Wikipedia, it's just that they choose not to. This can be displayed through the 20% of editors that are women that do edit Wikipedia. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jacedc (talk) 01:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Even if we assume the premise is correct - that Wikimedia projects are only accessible to geeks, and most geeks are men - it does not follow that making Wikimedia projects less geeky would automatically eliminate the gender imbalance (or imbalance by any other designated group identifier). Only a tiny minority of men are geeky enough to edit on Wikimedia projects, so perhaps dumbing down the interface would just bring in even more men - the less geeky men. Maybe men in general are just more prone than women to work for free. If that is true, then eliminating the gender imbalance would require not only making Wikimedia projects somehow more welcoming to women, but also less welcoming to men. --Teratornis (talk) 04:10, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Ditch "diversity"

Forget "diversity" and instead seek out contributors who know how to think, speak and write in a rational manner, AND which are willing to abide by Wikipedia rules of editing. There is nothing rational about awarding any position to someone because of their gender, ethnicity or sexual preferences.

Anyone who has read many pages of the dispute resolution sections, knows that most of Wikipedia's problems are caused by those who fail to think logically and those who are unwilling to abide by the fundamental Wiki rules of editing. Trying to set up diversity quotas merely begs for more and more of those kinds of problems, because "special" people, who are classified as different from the so-called "privileged" classes, sometimes tend to think they can get away with a lot more than the rest of us, because anyone who suggests they be blocked for cause, is sometimes vilified as "racist," or "homophobic," or "misogynist," or some other idiotic phrase, designed to cut off legitimate debate/discussion on legitimate issues.

We need people of logic and willing to abide by the fundamental rules of editing. Not those who are intent upon using Wikipedia to advance their political agendas, as a soap box and extension of their own spam pages; nothing more. Trying to recruit on diversity grounds will just end up encouraging more NPOV, OR and COI violations. If, for instance, one is editing an article about the history of females gaining the franchise, the only thing that counts is if the statements are supported with WP:RS citations and if there is balance to the article (evidenced by valid WP:RS for various historical positions). The personal feelings of the editor involved, should not be a part of that equation. I don't want to know anything about them other than if they are editing in compliance with the well established wiki rules.

Please don't respond with statements about my failure to be politically correct in my comments. That too, tends to discourage rational and legitimate debate/discussion and thus contrary to goals of rational thinking and writing and well-ordered compliance with editing rules. EditorASC (talk) 22:54, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree (see also Wikipedia:Equality). Jacedc (talk) 01:47, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

If we are primarily concerned about advancing the Wikimedia projects, then we only care about the quality of contributions, and not about who makes them. An edit is an edit; its value is not a function of who made it (see the Genetic fallacy). In that case, if we are concerned about who is editing, we would have to believe there are valuable contributions which could only come from members of a particular group. In turn it should be possible to list examples of edits that only women could make, and not men. Has anyone produced such a list?

On the othe hand, we might not be primarily concerned about the welfare of Wikimedia, but rather we might be concerned about women being left behind in some sort of digital divide. In that case we wouldn't need women to bring anything unique to the Wikimedia projects. We would be looking to recruit them for their own benefit - i.e. because they would learn something useful by editing here.

Given that these two possible motivations for concern over the gender imbalance are completely different, the people who are concerned should clarify which of the two concerns they have. If we're worried about what's best for Wikimedia, then show what women can provide that men cannot. If we're worried about what's best for women, and we believe what's best for women is for them to donate their labor to us, then figure out how to persuade more women to take advantage of whatever opportunity for self-improvement that men are more inclined to take here. --Teratornis (talk) 05:25, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Strongly agree. All the matters is the quality of the edits. If we create different classes of editors this will inevitably damage the ethos of Wikipedia, which is that all we are judged on is our actions as editors. RomanSpa (talk) 11:05, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You guys don't get it. You're mistaking a push for quality on the level of the entire encyclopedia for a push for better-quality individual edits.

Yes, any individual edit that an editor belonging to an underrepresented minority might make can be made just as well by a white male editor. But you can't look at each edit in isolation.

There are entire swaths of humanity whose interests and knowledge are not being incorporated into our projects. We cannot provide access to the sum total of human knowledge without the assistance of all sectors of society.

If, say, women are not editing in great numbers, how many topics are being undercovered in Wikipedia? How many women's thoughts are missing from Wikiquote? Are women's safety issues being communicated sufficiently in Wikivoyage?

And how does the predominately white male editor corps affect discussion pages on our projects? Is it not conceivable that the homogeneous makeup of the editors involved contributes to a lack of harmony and collaboration when editors not fitting the white male paradigm attempt to communicate with the rest of us?

-- LtPowers (talk) 16:26, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Banner grammar

That banner that is being placed on the top of wikis reads "Less than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women...", whereas it should read "Fewer than 20%...", because contributors are counted (not measured), so "fewer" is more applicable than "less". Can someone find someone who can change this and ask them to amend it? Rcsprinter123 (talk) 22:56, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Ha, I noticed that straight away too but didn't dare comment on it for fear of being accused of being pedantic. It needs to be changed as it makes Wikimedia look amateurish. People who have no concept of grammar shouldn't be tasked with creating banners which are placed across the whole range of Wikimedia projects. You could of done better.--Xania (talk) 23:32, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Good catch! I've passed that on. --Fhocutt (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Should be corrected now. Thanks Rcsprinter123, Xania. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I did check on this before putting it up, and "less" or "fewer" in these situations is a matter of debate. Either that or the people at the Chicago Manual of Style have "no concept of grammar" either. the wub "?!" 00:36, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Does the banner need either a reference or a ^{[citation needed]} tag after the first sentence? See WP:PROVEIT. Woodshed (talk) 01:50, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Being accused of being pedantic is like being accused of being beautiful - an accusation one should welcome. The unexamined sentence is not worth writing. --Teratornis (talk) 05:29, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I disagree; "less than 20%" is idiomatic here because we're not talking about precise numbers. LtPowers (talk) 16:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The failure to actually being neutral, fair and true to it's own policy

After seeing this Grants:IdeaLab/WikiProject Women-(gender segregation) that's allowed to exist and not even rejected quickly by WMF, I have no confidence on this IdeaLab, if WMF can't be impartial and true to their own policy (wmf:Resolution:Nondiscrimination), then how can people will give their confidence to this IdeaLab?.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 23:20, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. A WikiProject about women would be welcome. A WikiProject that limits its membership to off-wiki criteria is a disaster in the making. It's shockingly irresponsible for WMF to flip the switch on something like this without ensuring that it conforms to the foundation's policies and goals. DPRoberts534 (talk) 23:35, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

What's the big fuss?

Maybe women have just better and/or more important things to do + have less time and are less bored? Their interest may also be in other online activities including where to write and Wiki is not everyone's first choice (same for men and others). Try some brainstorming with the former possibilities in mind.

Re. ideas: Try a sweepstake or pay them to waste their time on Wiki. Sounds silly at first but then again, I don't think a different approach would work; you can't "force" people to do something they don't want and for free.

Good luck, TMCk (talk) 23:50, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely agreed. We can't just forcefully "close the gender gap." What I would like is to see female editors step up and communicate with people. Explain why they edit, why they think most editors aren't women, and explain how they think it should be handled. But we can't just make gender politics more divisive than it already is. If women have a problem with gender disparity in Wikipedia, then women should address that by editing. Everyone has the right to choose if they edit Wikipedia, and those choices are reflected by the "20%" statistic. Most women don't chose to edit Wikipedia, while men do choose. That's just how it is. It can't be that women are ignorant or dumb -- they're fully capable of editing if they wanted to. Jacedc (talk) 02:06, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Maybe women are, on average, less tolerant of having their work deleted. The entire wiki editing model is fundamentally confrontational, hostile, and alienating. You pour your heart and soul into some editing, without any financial reward, and some stranger comes along and obliterates it. You can't rely on normal human relationship-building to find your place. Instead your only defense is to master the complex and abstract rules and guidelines so you can become a kind of Rules lawyer. You see the same thing in real-life situations such as schools and workplaces. The men are constantly ripping each other, and the women have less tolerance for the same kind of criticism, so they tend to avoid confrontations and explicitly challenging other people's beliefs and positions. If the gender imbalance here is a "problem", that means men and women are somehow fundamentally different. But if they are fundamentally different, then the gender imbalance means the Wikimedia projects, by their design, are more interesting to men than to women. (And that would hardly be surprising, considering that these projects were largely designed by men.) --Teratornis (talk) 04:40, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

So we should lower our standard of quality to cater to those who are "less tolerant of having their work deleted"? Maybe they wouldn't be so intolerant of having their work deleted if their work wasn't deleted, i.e., valuable work. You can "pour your heart out" and have all the passion in the world all day long, but if it's unverifiable, original research, or biased, it can't be kept on Wikipedia because that's the only way to gauge whether or not content is legitimate. And your claim that the only way to circumvent having your work deleted is by being a "rules lawyer" is simply not true: I've contributed to Wikipedia before without knowing any of the rules and the content stayed all the same. Not to mention, the only crucial "rules" you have to know is that

1. Content must be verifiable with reliable sources (i.e. you can't make stuff up)

2. Content must have a neutral point-of-view (i.e. you cannot use biased language)

3. No original research (i.e. the content you add must be attributable to reputable sources)

As long as you understand and abide by those you should have no trouble. If you have a problem with those rules, then by all means propose new ways of making sure Wikipedia content is verifiable and unbiased. Readers of Wikipedia couldn't care less if the original writer "poured their hearts out"; readers of Wikipedia want true, balanced content with encyclopedic value. These things that I mention have nothing to do with gender, just with people. Jacedc (talk) 16:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

They have a choice

Women have a choice just like everyone else. Why is there a need to "close the gap"? Women tend to have bigger social lives, it's been proven that most of Wikipedians are male and that is a natural reflection of society when it comes down to intellectual tasks. I don't believe there is any gender bias other than the one that it's natural to our world. Thanks --Camilo Sanchez (talk) 00:14, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It's in WikiMedia's interest to make its projects more welcoming to all sorts of users in order to keep and develop its user base. It might also be interested to be the change it wishes to see in the world, i.e. advance feminist ideals by stop treating male as its default (and preferred) member. --Pitke (talk) 00:21, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Camilo. Women can edit Wikipedia if they want to, they don't need to be coddled into doing something they don't naturally do. I understand it may be in the better of interest for Wikimedia to make their experience more welcoming, but if that's the case, do that. Address the issue of the usability of Wikipedia: Don't make gender politics any more divisive than it already is. It's like trying to make Call of Duty more welcoming to women because of the gender disparity... Maybe women just don't like Call of Duty? (I understand that there are plenty of women who play that game, but I'm guessing the gender disparity is probably the same. If not, just think of some other example if you have to.) I'm honestly a little tired of this gender war, Wikimedia does have plenty of users, the gender gap should reflect the gender itself, it shouldn't reflect Wikimedia. The thing here is between genders, not between females and Wikimedia. You're putting the focus on the wrong things. Jacedc (talk) 01:54, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually it's not in Wikimedia's interest to become more welcoming to "all sorts" of users. That's the business model of Facebook and Twitter - those sites want to bring in everybody, with the result that the average contribution is dreadful, and the worst contributions are offensive. The flagship Wikimedia project - Wikipedia - is an encyclopedia. The people who belong there are those who read encyclopedias when they were children (waves hand) and were ridiculed for it by their less intellectually inclined peers. And given that few people have been formally trained to write encyclopedias, users have to teach themselves by reading and following the mind-numbingly long and complex rules. It's in Wikimedia's interest to appeal to those types of people, and we do.

In the longer run (>20 years) perhaps we could reduce the dependency on human editors by building or training AIs to edit on Wikimedia projects. For example, if IBM's Watson can beat the best humans at Jeopardy!, we might soon see computers that can write featured articles from scratch with little or no human intervention. That would be one sure way to eliminate gender bias from Wikimedia projects, along with carbon bias. AIs, being tireless, could also work off Wikipedia's enormous technical debt represented by the large and endlessly growing backlogs. The existence of enormous backlogs says we have a much bigger problem than gender imbalance - humans regardless of gender do not enjoy the grunt work necessary to clear those backlogs. --Teratornis (talk) 05:03, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. Wikimedia is in a crowd with several other internet services that have no business trying to pose as a social network. Wikia is a fantastic example of that right now. Jacedc (talk) 16:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Is this another flavor of canvassing?

wikipedia:WP:CANVASS forbids recruiting editors having some identifiable bias to enter an ongoing editing dispute. If only 20% of Wikimedia editors are female, wouldn't eliminating the gender imbalance constitute the largest instance of canvassing in Wikimedia's history? This would require recruiting thousands of new editors specifically on the basis of their gender. For it to not be canvassing, one would have to argue that the new editors would not bring some sort of "female bias" to the projects. But if that is true, then what is the point of recruiting new editors specifically on the basis of gender? This focus on gender seems like a repudiation of what Wikimedia editing is all about - namely, that anyone (regardless of age, sex, national origin, or any other census form classification) can read the rules and usefully contribute. Can someone give an example of a specific constructive edit that could only be made by a woman? --Teratornis (talk) 04:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Teratornis. Please take a look at Grants:IdeaLab/How it works particularly "IdeaLab has its own processes and policies". As you'll see, IdeaLab is not English Wikipedia. On Meta, there is no guideline against canvassing -- in fact, we welcome people spreading the word about initiatives that happen here! --Skud (WMF) (talk) 07:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Well that's quite a shame considering that what Wikimedia does inherently affects Wikipedia and its policies. The canvassing policy may be worth considering here, anyway. There's no reason not to abide by the canvassing policy. Jacedc (talk) 16:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Glad this is happening

Thanks for putting this together. I'm glad it's happening. Sumana Harihareswara 04:45, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Sumanah!!! Great to see you here, and I totally agree. Jane023 (talk) 14:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm curious to know why you are glad. Do you believe:

1. The project can actually eliminate gender imbalance on the Wikimedia projects? (can we say snowball?)
2. That there are some constructive edits that only women can make, and not men? (I'd like to see the list of such edits - I suspect it is very short.)
3. That women themselves will benefit from donating their labor to us? (There may be something to this one.)

I'm highly skeptical that this initiative could put a detectable dent in the gender imbalance. People have been trying to address the gender imbalance across the range of STEM fields for decades. That's no reason not to try, but clearly this is a much bigger problem than a Wikimedia problem, and I'm not aware of any STEM field that has figured out how to solve it. It might require some breakthrough in the behavioral sciences. --Teratornis (talk) 05:54, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

There are several areas within STEM that have successfully increased the numbers of women -- in many cases dramatically! For example, just to name two: in the late 1990s to early 2000s, research at CMU by Margolis and Smith raised the number of women studying computer science to around 50%; their work is documented in the book "Unlocking the Clubhouse". More recently, the Python foundation's work has doubled the numbers of women participating in PyCon (a major international Python conference), through following best practices being developed by a number of groups and people in the open source community. Just because you're not aware of successful results at increasing gender diversity doesn't mean they don't exist. There's actually plenty of evidence that there are mechanisms which can effectively increase women's participation in technical fields and communities. The question is, is the Wikipedia community willing to take those steps, or is it going to obstruct them? --Skud (WMF) (talk) 07:36, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

This program goes against neutrality, one of the five pillars that support Wikipedia

I agree with Camilo Sanchez and Jacedc in that there is this effort to “close the gap” is unnecessary (refer to § They already have a choice. Everybody (men, women, kids, teenagers, adults, elders, and so on, by any other classification) who reads Wikipedia online can edit it already. Furthermore, I hold, based on the foundation of Wikipedia that this project is counterproductive. Wikipedia is supposed to be a neutral encyclopedia. Neutrality is among the 5 points (appropriately called the Five pillars) deemed the most essential and fundamental principles of this encyclopedia. This is one reason of why advertisement has been rejected in Wikipedia (and all of the WMF projects) despite that it would be a huge source of income to the WMF and would enable it to pursue projects which would drastically improve the encyclopedia (such as hiring professional writers for topics with bad covering). I agree that neutrality is more important, and so does the Wikipedia community as stated in its official policy. I don't want to see advertisement on Wikipedia. The banner of this project is unpaid advertisement. Let's make things clear: equality is not neutrality; even the concept of what equality is, is subjective and therefore not neutral.

1. Promoting equality entails selecting a metric as relevant, namely, the metric by which the status of groups (dominance or equality) is to be judged. Selecting such a metric is an act of subjectiveness. If several metrics are selected, this carries the implication that those are the worthy metrics and the others are irrelevant (or at least less relevant), which is just as subjective and hence against neutrality, if not worser.
2. Promoting equality implies the underlying belief that the relevant classes of agents for which such an equality is being pursued ought to rank equal, and furthermore, do so in the selected metric.

In our society, most people don't have a major physical disability. Seeking that 50% of representatives in a congress are people having this condition would be giving an unfair advantage to them, and therefore it is called reverse discrimination. Let's see how this project makes the same mistake: The world population is roughly distributed equally between men and women (see Wikipedia:sex ratio, and note the difference between the 7% mentioned there and the >500% implied in the banner) and as mentioned in § They already have a choice, equal opportunities are given to everybody to edit Wikipedia already. These facts coupled with the observation (in the current banner) that “Fewer than 20% of Wikimedia contributors are women” is–coupled with the fact that they have equal editing opportunities–firm evidence (as firm as the source for the percentage is) that less women than men take the opportunity to edit Wikipedia (or collaborate in a WMF project). To hold that in equality of opportunities, and less aptitude, interest, or whatever other factors are involved (but not a difference in sheer numbers, as noted above) by one group to make use of that opportunity, the results must be equal, is an unfortunate byproduct of Wikipedia:political correction at its most exaggerate and misapplied form.

This opinion has no place in an organization like the Wikimedia Foundation or a project like Wikipedia, neither does the associated advertisement. There is a huge numbers of Wikipedians (and contributors to other WMF projects) and there is no way that we can agree in advertising any opinion. We can collaborate in the premise that nobody's opinion will stand before that of the rest, hence the policy about neutrality. I don't want to see Wikipedia turn into a soapbox for the current or past WMF executive directors.

As pointed above, we don't need “diverse” contributors either. We need quality content. Wikipedia an the WMF has never cared about the background of the contributors, only about their contributions, as it ought to be. The better evidence for that is that several administrators intentionally keep their identity secret, and that disclosing that information (of any editor, not just administrators) is against policy and is addressed by serious measures.

Regards.

Mario Castelán Castro (talk, contributions) 04:46, 5 March 2015 (UTC).

Good points about neutrality. Another point is that since Wikimedia editors need not reveal their identities, then presumably we already have a way for editors to avoid gender discrimination. If women are not editing here because they are being singled out for some special kind of abuse, then presumably they can avoid this abuse by editing under genderless pseudonyms (like mine). If on the other hand fewer women edit on Wikimedia projects simply because they don't like the inherently rough nature of the place where all our edits can be "mercilessly" edited by anyone else, then it would seem the only way to make the projects more welcoming to people who don't like this merciless editing would be to fundamentally change how these projects work. Instead of the current model, where you edit something and see if it "sticks", we would have to go to a more organized, hierarchical model where editors are given specific tasks under the expert guidance of senior editors who know what will stick. In other words, we would have to edit our content like all the hierarchical corporations out there. It's hard to imagine such a fundamental change would even be possible in a community of globally distributed volunteers, and if it was, it might drive away most of the people who came here because of the way things have been from the start. --Teratornis (talk) 06:15, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Reading these snarky comments above I truly understand why the campaign is needed

Wow, I must admit that reading the thoughts of people above made me somewhat queasy. Go ahead, read all of these again. Were I a woman, I'd be feeling very much unwelcome. One user actually did feel nice enough to post she's happy about this thing happening, but she was put to her place...

What's my point? A) Too many people (not only women of course) turn away from editing Wikipedia because its communities can be obnoxious (it's the same with my local language Wiki, too). B) This campaign is not trying to "shake one of the pillars that Wikipedia is standing upon", nor trying to encourage any kind of "Canvassing"... it's merely an experiment, designed to see if the community has constructive ideas about making Wikipedia contain more voices so it can embody more aspects of human knowledge.

For the life of me, I can't see what could be so offensive about the campaign. I can, however, see the point how such reactions do highlight the need for good ideas and a better environment for women editing Wikipedia. Alleycat80 (talk) 06:58, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I for one find this campaign offensive because it perpetuates the stereotype that any underrepresentation of women must necessarily involve a community intervention to make participation more accessible to women. Why make people assume that we even want special help to get us to do something maybe we aren't that into in the first place? Such reactions should be expected, since this campaign uses the sort of politicized language that anyone who's been spending time online should realize will draw out both sides of the social justice culture war, so to use the reactions as justification for the campaign is circular reasoning. --Euniana (talk) 15:44, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Where is the problem?

I really don't understand, women have the same possibilities to be part of the project, there isn't any kind of direct or undirect discrimination. Furthermore, if it's proved that we have a smaller number of women, it's not clear how that reflects on the quality level of what we do. --Carlomartini86 (talk) 08:05, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes I understand where you are coming from. As a woman, I have become one of the go-to people to explain this stuff. Since I felt somewhat responsible, I decided to dig a little deeper and guess what? Turns out you don't have to dig at all to find the gendergap. Name your corner of Wikipedia and I can show it to you in probably a few minutes. I read on fb that someone felt that "ideas are not gendered", but they certainly are. I think 80% of what is written on Wikipedia is written by people who "just feel like writing an article on that one specific thing". Well there are tons of very specific situations that no man will ever wrangle themselves into, let alone have the idea to write about it. Case in point? Take a look at this article: en:Contraceptive implant and the accompanying video piece. I also love the template that has become a snarky insinuation at the top. Jane023 (talk) 14:26, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

We don't have a gender problem, we have a civility problem

I have said it many times before, the problem we have on the WikiProjects and specifically the English Wikipedia is civility and double standards. When editors are treated like second class citizens regardless of how long they have been on the project and how much they have done, and admins are treated as though they are infallible, it causes problems. People do not want to work in a negative environment no matter how much money they make, let alone as a volunteer project. When people are routinely treated as a throwaway commodity and are under-appreciated, they leave. No matter how much recruiting is done and no matter how much attention is paid to the issues of Gender, ethnic and racial disparity unless someone does something about the underlying problems of civility and admins who are allowed to do whatever they want with impunity, you are not going to fix anything. If you fix those two major problems, and start rebuilding the culture of trust that once existed, you will find things will improve and people will want to edit again. Reguyla (talk) 16:14, 5 March 2015 (UTC)