And now, a guest performance by the Bogglemen

[mme_hardy]

The Anita Borg Institute published an article encouraging women to edit Wikipedia. [e: Whoops, broken link. Fixed.]

The first section, about creating an account, contains the following advice:

Do not use obviously feminine names, such as SuzyQ or Pam I Am.

Do not use feminine titles like Miss, Ms, or Mrs.

Do not incorporate hobbies, interests, family status, religious affiliation, etc. For example, Knit Nut, Fairly Feminist, and Lovemykids are not the best usernames if you want to avoid Wikipedia gender-based harassment.

Another casual comment: "Edit summaries are supposed to be civil and about content, but bully editors abuse them. " What do you do if that happens?

A friendly or neutral-sounding edit summary (look for the words “good faith” or “AGF”) indicates you can safely proceed to discuss the revert. However, if the edit summary uses “you” or “your” aggressively; Wikipedia jargon (that an experienced editor knows a new user would not understand); or obvious insults (often in the form of questions such as, “Are you kidding me?”), it is time to disengage and decide what to do next.

If you thrive (or at least know how to survive) in such a situation, read up on the consensus-building process and go for it. However, if you feel uneasy, either abandon that article and move on to another, or seek help at the Wikipedia Teahouse.

I am bitter and tired, I admit this, but I genuinely don't see why women should invest their scarce time and resources in contributing to a public resource, no matter how valuable, that tolerates the behavior described.

Edit: I missed this gem.

perhaps join the Wikipedia Gender Gap Task Force (GGTF). The task force has been breached by some editors whose motives for participating are questionable, but not all men on GGTF are thugs, just as not all women there are friends. Many rational, civil editors on the task force really do want to discuss and narrow the gender gap.

Comments

[legionseagle]

That article explains a lot about my limited experiences in editing Wikipedia (for details, go to the article on the Protection from Harassment Act. Read the talk. Boggle. This was the one where I had a run in with an editor with a male pseudonym who was trying to stop me quoting from the actual text of the statute* in favour of decades old speculation that it would be used as a vehicle by vindictive women to persecute their exes.)



*Secondary sources are preferred otherwise it becomes Original Research and hence banned, apparently

[tree_and_leaf]

That is a particularly batty way to apply the 'no original research' principle.

[legionseagle]

Here's the dickhead in question's very reasoning. The section under "Seriousness" gets particularly batshit. "How can I convince this woman using an ordinary English word in its ordinary English context that she's Wrong, Wrong, Wrong and should go away and not come back until she's got a PhD in dialect and semantics?"

[tree_and_leaf]

My word.