User talk:Rosiestep/Archive 36

April Fools? Nope! Welcome to the Women Scientists worldwide online edit-a-thon during Year of Science
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100Stone
I made a few edits to 100Stone, with current information. Some of the news is sad. :( Juneau Mike (talk) 05:47, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * indeed sad. I thought it was a wonderful idea. I wonder what will happen with the statues. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:34, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Participants in Art+Feminism
I have developed a basic list of participants in the Art+Feminism editathon. I realize the concept is not very precise but I have not included those who only created articles on films, theatre, music or writing. If you think these should be included too, then feel free to review the list. I will be travelling all day tomorrow but will probably be able to send out thank you notes on Tuesday. You will see I have added the approximate article count. I think you will agree that 800 articles more or less on the topic is not bad for one month (although probably around 150 came from the in-person editathons).--Ipigott (talk) 15:59, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think your list is fine. If you can send out thank you notes, that would be great, and if you need me to send out any, just let me know and I will do so. I think +/- 800 articles at a virtual editathon is significant. I think >1,200 edits to the editathon's meetup page is also significant. I think, all in all, Women's History Month 2016 was epic. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:54, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I fully agree. I'll send them out today.--Ipigott (talk) 06:31, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Translation Corinne Chaponnière
Dear Rosiestep,

I have translated the article on Corinne Chaponnière but I have some issues with the differences in coding between the french and english version. Could you have a look especially for the references?

Corinne Chaponnière

Kind regards,

--Nattes à chat (talk) 18:30, 3 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi and thank you for translating that article. I've made a few adjustments regarding references and so on. Also, I made some additions on the talkpage. So nice to work with you. :)  --Rosiestep (talk) 01:35, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

"Women are everywhere"
Hi Rosiestep. I'm an editor of the Italian Wikipedia. I'm trying to participate to an IEG with the project "Women are everywhere". You will find the draft at this link https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Women_are_everywhere It would be great if you could have a look at it. I need any kind of suggestion or advice to improve it. Support or endorsement would be fantastic. Many thanks,--Kenzia (talk) 08:43, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, Rosiestep, I've just seen the message on your Wikimedia page that it is easier to reach you on the English Wikipedia, so I paste this message about my editing history also here. I hope you will pardon me also for my english, I try to do my best. First of all I thank you for your comment on the draft page of the project "Women are everywhere". You underline that it would be important to understand my editing history. As I have already explained to Victuallers, and to other people, I've not been very active on Wikipedia till now, being very engaged first in my studies in Paris and then in my work in Rome. Since my PhD studies at the Political Sciences School in Paris, I've always been a great reader of Wikipedia, and I have always been sorry for the gender gap in the women representation. My interest for the gender studies started very early, when for my university degree in 1985 I wrote a thesis about "La Femme et la Révolution française. La Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791)". I've started to contribute to the italian Wikipedia in 2012, when I wrote the articles about Joan Wallach Scott and Lynn Hunt. Since then, as Victuallers points out, I have written few articles: Serge Lebovici, Laure Murat, the Asmundo family, Il Conservatorio delle Verginelle, Francesca Leone, Concetta Flore, Fiona Tan... Last year I participated to an Inspire campaign with this idea "Women are everywhere", and now, that I've more time to dedicate to this task, I would love to put it in action. I do not pretend to be an expert in using Wikipedia, but I'm willing to learn and to ask all the necessary help. If the fact that I've not been very active till now on Wikipedia is a problem, I'm ready not to present the project. It would be very kind of you to give me your advise on this point. Grazie--Kenzia (talk) 18:42, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rosiestep, I've answered to your message on the discussion page of the grant, but for reaching you in the easiest way, I paste it also here. First of all, thank you for your message and for your kind attention. I'm aware that content gender gap is an important, vital, issue, that's why I would love to contribute. I know the Wiki project Women in Red. I would be honoured to work in collaboration with you to replicate Women in Red in the Italian Wikipedia. My purpose with the project "Women are everywhere" is to do a serious, measurable, deliverable work in the interest of the Wikipedia Community, a result which could help other editors, in Italy and elsewhere, to tackle with the gender gap problem. I'm not a wizard, I can't do miracles, so I will need all the available help. I'm used to hard, serious work, and I'm not afraid of challenges. Even if my editing history is short, I'm aware that editors have to face various challenges. I'don't underestimate this aspect of the engagement. Before proposing the grant, I'm trying to get the support as large as possible by the community concerned by the gender gap problem, in particular by the italian editors already engaged in this issue. This request of support is not formal, it is substantial. I know that I need all the possible help for being helpful in my turn. My motivation and my purpose are to collaborate as much as possible with other editors, to get not a scholar paper, or a personal accomplishment, but a real success in the interest of the community. Grazie,--Kenzia (talk) 09:09, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar to thank you for your enthusiatic support
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Women Geographers
Hi Rosie! I started this list for you: Geographers. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 21:46, 5 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you, . Really appreciate it.--Rosiestep (talk) 03:43, 6 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Is this simply in connection with Women in science (which I see we have just relaunched for the rest of the year) or are we planning an event including geographers? If so, maybe we could also include explorers.--Ipigott (talk) 10:07, 6 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I couldn't remember what it was from... only that it needed to be done. Also, there is a lot of social science overlap with modern geographers. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:19, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Forrest Dunbar
The page for Forrest Dunbar, a newly elected Alaska politician, is a redirect for a 2-year-old election here on Wikipedia. I believe he has become notable in his own right, but it appears I do not have the ability to undo or make any other changes to the redirect. Can you help, or advise? Thanks! Juneau Mike (talk) 08:09, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'll look at this tonight. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:19, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I added the "split article" template to the election article lead, and started a discussion on the Talk Page. I guess we'll see what happens. I'm not a big fan of the notability policy, but I understand why it's in place. Without *any* notability guidelines, anyone could create articles about themselves, or even their pets lol! But I am a big fan of consensus. In this case, I believe Forrest Dunbar is notable enough now for his own article. Gauging consensus is a little trickier. Juneau Mike (talk) 15:05, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Dunbar won the election? I can't find any sources which said that he did. Help? --Rosiestep (talk) 04:22, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Dunbar won by a decisive margin. Source: Juneau Mike (talk) 04:43, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * yup, you are right! ✅. But it needs work. :) --Rosiestep (talk) 02:05, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I worked on it a little tonight, I will be back to it soon. Thanks for your help!Juneau Mike (talk) 02:47, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

I found this discussion via Mike's vague reference to "an admin took care of it". It's getting harder and harder to justify the time I give here when Sanger's assessment of "anti-elitism" can be more accurately described as open resistance to a clue and even open hostility towards the notion that Wikipedia can amount to more than a compendium of trending topics scavenged off of the web within the past X number of years. I believe I read something on Mike's user page which implies his belief that the obscure topics he passionately champions and defends somehow define encyclopedic coverage of Alaska. Combine the nearly complete lack of coverage in general given to the Anchorage Assembly on Wikipedia thus far with the rather contentious debate over the attempted deletion of Theresa Obermeyer, and it should be obvious that any given editor who lacks familiarity with Alaska politics would be inclined to automatically dismiss holding municipal office in Anchorage as an indication of notability. More to the point, the result of this AFD would make this article a prime candidate for deletion: Demboski was far more a challenger to Berkowitz than Dunbar was to Young. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 08:48, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi and thanks for stopping by. You sound angry, and I'm sorry if I did something to cause that. I'm unfamiliar with Alaska politics in general, but I believe the Anchorage Assembly has a sufficient degree of notability for its own article. We could also use a category for members of it; a quick search shows that we have quite a few bios which would fit into that cat. Perhaps you disagree, and wish to take Dunbar to AfD instead. I'm preparing for m:Wikimedia Conference 2016 so I can't be much help right now, but after I return, perhaps we can collaborate on an article? My preference: buildings, geography, bios of dead people. P.S. Can't help but add that I love Radio K.A.O.S.; I went pink in 2000. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:32, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Rosiestep. My reference, "an admin took care of it" meant simply, since Forrest Dunbar is no longer a redirect, there was no longer any reason to have a template at the top of the election article suggesting the separation of Forrest Dunbar from the related 2014 election page.

As for RadioKAOS, I have posted - respectfully - on his Talk Page that rather than going from page to page, rating each Alaska related article for WikiProject Alaska, and making long posts on the Talk Page there, a better use of his time might be in getting into the article and making the changes he suggests. With all due respect, I sometimes read his comments and see him as a school teacher, grading papers. I would rather collaborate with him. And every article I have created about Alaska is about a notable event or person. I think long and hard about each subject I create an article for, and I always wait to see if each subject has a lasting impact or notability. Yes, a few of my articles have been AfD'd, and that's ok. I doubt any long time editor here has escaped that process. Consensus is very important to me, and to Wikipedia, and I respect that. Thanks.Juneau Mike (talk) 23:07, 9 April 2016 (UTC) Side note: I forgot to mention that, although I did not see her page, and was not involved in the AfD, I believe Amy Demboski is notable as well. Anchorage is a largely liberal/libertarian/progressive city, with a vigorous and motivated conservative subset. Demboski is an outspoken and energetic voice of that conservative movement. I believe she is notable enough to have her own page.Juneau Mike (talk) 23:19, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Help needed with mergers
Once again, Rosie, I need your assistance. Two of 's articles need to be merged. Her Mariangela Criscuolo is a dulpicate of the older Mariangiola Criscuolo although her article contains more information. Similarly, her Mizz Rozee is a dulpicate of the older Katharina Rozee. I didn't want to cause trouble by calling for AfD but in my opinion, she should have searched Wikipedia first before adding her versions. About a week ago, I added a merge tag to Mizz Rozee but no one has reacted. Could you help to sort these two out and let me know how to handle such problems in the future. Unfortunately LF does not respond to anything on her talk page and I have not been successful in contacting her by email. I have however awarded her a barnstart for her efforts in March.--Ipigott (talk) 11:18, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll take a look at this tonight after work. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:17, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yup,, I'll merge both over the weekend. Aside from a note on LF's talk page cautioning more research before starting an article, there's not much more that can be done. As editors gain more experience, this tends to be less of an issue. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:15, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Rosiestep (talk) 01:54, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks.--Ipigott (talk) 15:55, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Rosamond Spicer
This artcile is in line with your specialization of anthropology. May like to add and edit. Thanks.-- Nvvchar . 10:36, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * , you are right, this interests me. It will have to wait for the weekend, though. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:25, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Shhh! Invitation to Women in Espionage
--Rosiestep (talk) 03:54, 12 April 2016 (UTC) via MassMessage

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Heads up
Hi, Rosiestep. I wanted to give you an advance heads up about this new WikiSalon that is in the works and is coming up soon. This is our planning page, and we will have a Wikipedia page up soon. The RSVP form is live. Cheers! 04:31, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, ; it's a great idea. I saw something about it on the mailing list but good to have this link. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:39, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi, Rosiestep. Which mailing list was the info on?


 * This is just the planning page, so no need to distribute this link. I just wanted you to be able to tuck it away, and please feel free to add your ideas to the draft page so we can have a better Wikipedia page. Cheers!  04:57, 12 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I had not planned on distributing it. :) I thought I saw mention of it on SF-l. I think it was Pete who started the thread? --Rosiestep (talk) 13:03, 12 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi, Rosiestep. Hmmm. I am subscribed to that list, but this is the 2nd time I have known about a cybercom that I did not receive. Was the mention for the March planning meeting, or for the April kickoff? Cheers!  19:07, 12 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Not sure, as my email box is mostly blown up with this and that, but here's the link to the SF-l archives (in case you hadn't checked there and apologies if you already did). At least I think it was on this list, although it might have been some other communication as I belong to additional SF-related lists. --Rosiestep (talk) 01:28, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Nice to meet you at the conference!
Hello :) Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (talk) 11:12, 21 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi and nice to meet you, too, . Glad we've connected. --Rosiestep (talk) 12:10, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

A sleeping kitty for you :)

 * oxoxo --Rosiestep (talk) 16:12, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

DYK for Caroline Skeel
Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:46, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Invitation for Women in Photography
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Hi Rosie. Here's a draft invitation with a link to the editathon page. Feel free to make any changes. Can you start the ball rolling by sending it to the mass messaging list. I'll then send it out to others who might be interested.--Ipigott (talk) 11:10, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Rosiestep (talk) 12:34, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Quick work! Thanks.--Ipigott (talk) 12:36, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Photography
--Rosiestep (talk) 12:33, 24 April 2016 (UTC) via MassMessage

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Etiquette question
There's a list of Women in Red (photographers), some with links to sources. Should I just pick one that looks interesting and start working on it? How do I know someone else isn't already working on it? Like the person who posted it and found the sources. Rosekelleher (talk) 18:38, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi, . In general, it is ok to click on any redlink and create the article. If someone is working on that same topic in a sandbox or a personal Word document, they can later augment what you've started. Best, --Rosiestep (talk) 19:28, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Good to know, thank you. Rosekelleher (talk) 19:50, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

15% of biographies are women
Rosie, At WikiCon last year, you presented about 15% of Wikipedia's biographies being women (I think that's the stat). I perused some research and couldn't find that number—do you know if it's published somewhere? Thanks so much! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:17, 25 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Lurker here. Don't know if Rosie is able to answer from her conference. The data came from WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force/Media and research I cannot find the updated report (yet) but it's gone up to over 16% now. SusunW (talk) 20:30, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * haha! No problem—thank you for responding when you saw this. I appreciate it. Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:31, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * de nada. Rosie is a huge help to me and I try to help her when I can. SusunW (talk) 20:35, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * thank you! yes, we got the number from that GGTF page. My slidedeck from Wikimania 2015 is --Rosiestep (talk) 14:06, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * , the GGTF page took the figure from Eduardo Graells-Garrido, Mounia Lalmas, Filippo Menczer, "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia", arXiv, 9 February 2015, pp. 3–4: "DBPedia estimates the length (in characters) and provides the connectivity of articles. Of the set of 1,445,021 biographies (articles in the DBPedia Person class), only 15.5% are about women ...". SarahSV (talk) 18:17, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I reckon WIR should produce an annual list of the exact number of women bios we have. Get a bot to create a big list.If we know the exact number we could make a target for the following year. Too much about that 16% figure is vague to me. I want concrete proof and figures by field of occupation and nationality and what exactly it entails to up the notch by one percent. Once we know the overall articles and distribution then you can do more towards reaching targets and making things more even, not just between men and women but between different occupations of women subjects.♦ Dr. Blofeld  12:00, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree 100% with your proposal. There have been all kinds of rather vague research results based essentially on Wikidata and usually with cross-language comparisons but I have yet to see any reliable method of providing statistics on the number of biographies of women vs men on the EN Wikipedia, even less so when broken down by occupation. In particular, I think it would be very useful to try to obtain figures on the biographies of women vs men in sport as these seem to represent by far the highest sector and probably have a significant effect on the overall picture. Have you any idea how a bot could be programmed to collect these statistics?--Ipigott (talk) 09:16, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean to imply that I don't believe it's just 16% hehe, I do believe it, but what I mean by wanting concrete proof is an actual directory of all women articles and figures collected by occupation. I reckon it would be great if a bot could create an A-Z list of all women articles on the site and a way of finding what the proportions are between occupations. That way we can try to even up coverage within women groups itself, not just the overla percentage in relation to men. There's definitely a gross uneveness of coverage of women from different occupations. Then you could organize more months dedicated to the poorer areas like science and technology, which I can imagine is one of the poorest. As we make a big thing of just 16% women articles. I think it needs to be calculated roughly what it might take to up it by 1%. If its 2000 articles, then you could have a countdown drive to reach the next notch. That might motivate more people to produce more, especially if you had something similar to Dragon's Wales in Red one month. It;s pretty important IMO to roughly work out how many are needed to up it by 1% as the central focus of the project is really to vastly improve this percentage over time.♦ Dr. Blofeld  09:28, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


 * One of the top experts in this area is who has been doing some great work based on the evolution of Wikidata. See his comments and graphs at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Archive_9 which should also be of interest to . He is to present a paper titled How Should Biography Gender Gap Data Serve The Community on the subject at the Wikimania conference in June. Perhaps he can let us know whether what you are suggesting is feasible.--Ipigott (talk) 10:22, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I see from Klein's report titled Wikipedia Gender Indicators (WIGI) that there are now 1,347,281 biographies on the EN Wikipedia, of which 217,442 (or 16.14%) are female biographies. These data are apparently automatically updated each week. I don't know if anyone is keeping track of the evolution. Interestingly, at the top of the list of the percentage of female biographies are the Wikipedias for Korean (23.28%), Japanese (22.11%) and Thai (21.99%). As for the European languages, we have Norwegian (20.84%), Swedish (19.98%) and - thanks to you, Rosie - Serbian (17.79%).--Ipigott (talk) 10:42, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

This is excellent progress ! Now let's make these figures central to WIR. Let's keep that total article count and figures in the intro or something. I would still like to see a full directory Women biographies on wikipedia in the project space though, if a bot could update something like that every six months or so that would be great. I think you can now roughly work out the percentages and roughly what is needed to get that one percent. What I'd suggest is working out how many new articles we need to get 17% and making that the primary target of the month/quarter?♦ Dr. Blofeld  10:46, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I think the overall figures are updated automatically once a week but I believe there has sometimes been a problem in keeping records of the progress made. Someone would have to undertake separate analyses on the evolution by occupation. If Maximillian does not have the time or inclination to do it, then perhaps, or  could help.--Ipigott (talk) 10:54, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

No, I don't think so, it's easy to work it out. You could adjust the figure each month, only takes a few minutes, I've just calculated that we need 11,596 new articles on women to reach 17%. Of course the male biography count is constantly changing, but I think roughly stating something like that is fine.♦ Dr. Blofeld  10:57, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The easy part is taking the measurement. The hard part is making sure the data is correct so that the measurement is meaningful. Saying "biographies of women" is not enough. I think a bot that just makes the measurement and dumps it to a page on a monthly or bi-monthly basis would be very useful. Jane (talk) 11:02, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. We need IMO an A-Z list of those 217,442 women and then a bot which can update the list every month as you say. I'm sure something could be programmed too to give a live percentage so we don't have to update it manually. We currently need 11,500 odd articles to get the figure to 17% which is a bit depressing though haha. What might be less depressing is if we work out how many articles are needed to adjust the figure by a 100th of a percent. You could add somehting like "We need xxx number of articles to up to notch to 16.15% or 16.2 % or whatever. That might be more manageable and might encourage more people to create.♦ Dr. Blofeld  11:04, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Just checked and I get almost 135 articles needed to up the notch by 0.01 percent. That's less depressing ;-)♦ Dr. Blofeld  11:13, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't worry too much about the overall percentages. You will never get this number above 20% max due to systemic bias. Wikipedia can only follow academia and will not allow original research (yet). The immportant thing is to measure how we are doing as compared to completely matched datasets. So e.g. if library X has a list of 4,000 authors, we should be able to match those on Wikidata 100% (assuming that all authors published and with works in that library are notable enough because of the selection process of the library). Today we often have the men, but not the women on such lists, so our current list would be at 10-15% while the library's list might be at 20%. Jane (talk) 12:44, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Glad to see you've joined the discussion, Jane. The number of articles needed to reach 17% depends of course on how quickly they can be added (to keep up with the increasing number of male bios. I have been interested to see that some entries on Wikidata are made on the basis of published biographies rather than the presence of articles on Wikipedia. If this trend continues, Wikidata cannot be used to measure progress on Wikipedia bios unless there is a specific check for a link to a Wikipedia article in the language concerned. What do you think of the proposal to monitor progress of women's bios with respect to occupations? Maybe you would like to trial the approach on EN and NL artists?--Ipigott (talk) 13:36, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata entries are also made for all sorts of reasons, such as being the relatives of important people or the subjects of artworks, so they don't necessarily need published bios. Whether or not they have sitelinks to English Wikipedia is not the point. You can easily measure women items on Wikidata with sitelinks to English Wikipedia. The real problem is the backlog on Wikipedia linking new articles to Wikipedia items. Currently you have no way to list new articles on Wikipedia as being about a woman without tagging them manually, and if you do link them to Wikidata, they will only be counted as female if someone takes the trouble to add the gender to the corresponding item. So until you reduce the backlog there is no real accurate snapshot of the position you are in today. However, over time, this will shake itself out. So an article with a 5-month backlog (due to review process at AfC for example) will eventually show up with its original creation date on Wikipedia. That's why a bot measurement is important, because you want to see the impact over time, not at a specific moment. Jane (talk) 13:59, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Adding and  to gain their perspectives. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:06, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


 * This is an important discussion and I'm pleased to see that the data Rosie and I presented last year seems to still be credible. Data is always wrong, but good to see that we are evolving a better figure and it looks like finessing rather than rethinking. It can be depressing to see that the figure is low and 15% to 17.5% seems like a small but very difficult change to make. However we are looking at it from only one direction. If you increase the number "15" to "16.5" then the percentage increase is 10%! 15% to 16.5% means that the average teenage girl has a 10% greater chance of finding a woman compared with before-we-started. That was the 10% increase we were targeting in Mexico Wikimania and it looks to me as if we are on target to make that change. That is "a result"!
 * I think its worth mentioning Klein's work was great and that Magnus's "Wikidata Game" has enabled volunteers to classify oodles of articles as being about women or men. One task to-do is to give WIR barnstars to the leading game contributors as without them then our data would be terrible. Jane also makes a good point in that we come up against genuine systemic bias (e.g. those war heroes in 17C were nearly all blokes!). However one figure I think that might be of interest is to see the %age gender balance by decade (I dream). OK in the 17C or in some countries now there is a reason for it not to be 50%.... But in USA/Europe we should see that it is now 50% ..... or we can predict the year when it will be. These figures allow every part of society to judge its equal opportunities talk and see if 50% of notables are now female. Victuallers (talk) 14:40, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Jane does have a good point, it's never going to be 40 or 50% but I think you're really underestimating things if you think it'll never be more than 20%. While in history the gross bias does exist in coverage of men, I'd say the sheer world population at present and sheer number notable living women would easily counteract this bias. There's easily more notable women in the world living at the moment than we have articles on men! If you only went on deceased biographies, yes, I doubt you'd get it over 20% but this could easily be manipulated to over 30% I reckon if focused on BLPs. And I think there's a lot more "hidden" missing women biographies from past centuries than most of us think, the ones lurking in old newspapers and documents which have never had a formal encyclopedia article written about them. Combined I think we could get it to easily 70-30 eventually, but it's going to take a long time, decades possibly. I'd be interested to see what Women in Red can achieve in one decade and how the figures look in 2025. The eventual proportion I'd say depends on how powerful a force Women in Red will become in manipulating the percentage in relation to what is generally started by everybody, rather than a severe shortage of women to write about.♦ Dr. Blofeld  16:09, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Convenience break
I just stumbled onto this conversation and suspect I can add a bit of info. I took a random sample of about 1,000 articles on EnWiki in December. You can see the data at User:Smallbones/1000_random and sort, copy, or otherwise play with it as you wish. Some basic stats are at the table under User:Smallbones/1000_random_results

Breaking it down in a different format, gives a number of 14.7% of all bios are on women. Given the sampling error, that's pretty consistent with the discussion above. I would like to point out that the census method discussed above (i.e. the use of WikiData) also has problems, e.g. data not yet entered and articles not classified.

I've got some breakdown by "occupation". Really it is not anything more than, "if I were to break down women's bios into subcategories what would I need to know to even know where to start?" i.e. really, really ruff stuff.

So women's bios are relatively more common for academics (which includes most scientists) and acting, but relatively less common in just about everything else, especially sports, religion, and business.

I don't think the project should try to match the # or even % of men's bios in specific areas - don't define women by what men do! But it could be interesting to get a sub project on women's sports bios (especially the history of women's sports) and women in religion could be interesting as well. This might broaden the appeal to editors, or draw in a different type of editor.

There's some discussion above on number of articles needed just to keep up the %ages. From the top table just multiply the numbers in the sample by 5,000 (=5,000,000 total articles in December/1,000 sampled) to get an estimate of total articles:


 * 1,185,000 estimated men's bios
 * 205,000 estimated women's bios

This means that if the number of articles (in the encyclopedia, or for bios in particular) are growing 5-10% per year, then women's bios need to grow by 10,000-20,000 per year just to keep the percentage steady. To increase the percentage of women's bios to total bios by 1% means adding another 14,000+ bios. As the Red Queen says, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Smallbones( smalltalk ) 17:36, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Interesting breakdown, thanks for posting! I think choosing random articles is a good idea, but there's a lot of work in categorizing and so forth. It is easier to check your standing among the wikis according to external datasets. It's nice to see enwiki scoring better than nlwiki when it comes to NL biographies :) -- see this breakdown of the 11,600 matches to the BPN property on Wikidata - a Dutch database of biographies of dead people (so zero BLPs):

I thought it interesting to see that the nlwiki scores in terms of sheer numbers, but enwiki comes closest to the highest possible percentage, which is the percentage of absolute matches. Jane (talk) 16:23, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
 * so there are 299 articles in Dutch in this set that are not on EnWiki. We should be able to translate these.  Is there a list posted somewhere?  Smallbones( smalltalk ) 01:51, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes a big chunk is from the initiative called 1001 Vrouwen uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis and the list is here: User:Jane023/1001 Vrouwen, or here: User:Spinster/Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon by occupation. Jane (talk) 06:03, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * would it be useful to copy Jane's and Spinster's lists intto a WiR redlist for 1001 Vrouwen uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis? Maybe we could calendar an editathon on its behalf later in the year? --Rosiestep (talk) 13:54, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Rosie, I'm not seeing any red links in either of these lists. SusunW (talk) 14:49, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * it seemed to me that the bluelinked italics point to Wikidata items, which don't have an article on En-wiki. did I say this correctly? --Rosiestep (talk) 16:24, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * That's right - the italics take you to the Wikidata item. Spinster & I made all the items 2 years ago from Mix-n-Match and filled each one with links to their biographies, and we have had a few editathons in NL that added women from this list. BTW, there are women in enwiki from this list not on nlwiki, so a few candidates for the content translation tool are there for both directions nl-->en or en-->nl. Oddly, the svwiki has been using our data to create biographies of women in theatre arts, which I didn't even know were in there, so there are a few Swedish biographies that you could use the translation tool with too. Jane (talk) 17:03, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I can make a Redlist. This would be for Dutch women? Also,, that is a very interesting breakdown! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:57, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes many are "Dutch" but they were all active in the area that is called Netherlands and Belgium today. Unfortunately they don't have Dutch/Belgian citizenship on Wikidata if born before 1830, so I guess you could select birthplace as a subset of the Netherlands and Belgiam with Sparql, but haven't tried it. Best is just to use a query for the P1788 DVN property. Jane (talk) 17:08, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Women artists of Middle East / North Africa... a WiR & Guggenheim collaboration
--Rosiestep (talk) 14:16, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

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Caspar Samler farmhouse
Caspar was my 5th great-grandfather. Need help adding some stuff to your page. --Richard Carvill King (talk) 17:23, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Glad to meet you, ; how can I assist? --Rosiestep (talk) 16:41, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

There are some materials on him in my Public Tree on Ancestry. This includes various maps, and copies of several photographs, including the one on which the painting included on your page was based. Probably better if you take a look and consider what might be of benefit, rather than help me through the process. As you can see, I've already failed on formatting my addition about the Samler name. Wrestled with that for some time before I realized that it's essentially the equivalent of "Baker."--Richard Carvill King (talk) 18:26, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Encyclopedias and/or Reference Works
Would you like to support the creation of and/join the proposed Wikiproject for Encyclopedias and/or Reference Works?--Bellerophon5685 (talk) 22:43, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Results for Women Writers editathon
Hi Rosie. Like you, I've been pretty busy with other things over the past week and will not have much time between now and around 20 March. I have nevertheless put together a list of Women Writers participants for thank-you notes or barnstars. I must say that with many editors dividing their time between writers, scientists, spies and Welsh women (not to mention other interests), it took far longer than usual to compile the list. As a result, I have not had time for the spies. Unless you have any immediate additions, I'll send the thank-yous out later today.--Ipigott (talk) 08:36, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for compiling and for sending out. Appreciate that. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:22, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

An award for your contributions
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 * BTW, I like that the thank you includes approx. how many articles were created. I think it's good promotion (page stalker eyes) and nice for the participant to see what was accomplished as a group. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:23, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Pavlof volcano
Thank you for your note on my Talk Page, regarding Mount Pavlof. The mountain is very far from Juneau, so no impact on the community here. I have done some editing to that page in recent months. Alaska currently has two erupting volcanoes, you can read about them here:. Again, thank you for asking! I hope you are well. Juneau Mike (talk) 04:35, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Women in Entertainment
I've started preparing for this with the editathon page and invitation. I've also put together an additional invitation list which you may like to add to. You will see on the main talk page that I hope to have some assistance on the other editathons for June. I suggest we start sending out invitations this weekend as Entertainers are a new sector for us and people might need time to prepare. Let me know if everything is OK.--Ipigott (talk) 14:45, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Still waiting for the go ahead. See also the WiR talk page. Hope to hear from you soon.--Ipigott (talk) 06:56, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
 * sorry, I did miss it. I will send out the MassMessage tonight after work. BTW, love the img in the invite: bright, catchy. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:21, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll be in bed by then so I think I'll start sending them out to the additional list beforehand.--Ipigott (talk) 14:29, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Does "entertainment" include actresses? We could sure use some more articles on actresses from the old Soviet bloc countries and Poland. I will try to contribute to this one. BTW I thought it was 16.14 now not 16.08?♦ Dr. Blofeld  18:36, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Actress=yes. Any/all entertainers! Don't know what you mean by 16.14 vs. 16.08? --Rosiestep (talk) 00:41, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Spotlight on women entertainers!
--Rosiestep (talk) 02:14, 24 May 2016 (UTC) via MassMessage (To subscribe, Women in Red/Invite list. Unsubscribe, Women in Red/Opt-out list)

2016 Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Search Community Survey
The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation has appointed a committee to lead the search for the foundation’s next Executive Director. One of our first tasks is to write the job description of the executive director position, and we are asking for input from the Wikimedia community. Please take a few minutes and complete this survey to help us better understand community and staff expectations for the Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director.
 * Survey, (hosted by Qualtrics)

Thank you, The Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Search Steering Committee via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:49, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for your strong focus
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A barnstar for helping us to fix the gender gap
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 * Thanks,, aka "PA to Exec (asst) for Barnstar Delivery"; love it! :) Very cool. --Rosiestep (talk) 01:38, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Alaska cruise ship accident
I know Alaskan issues interest you. While I don't believe the incident is notable enough for its own article, the video of the accident is pretty dramatic as you will see. I have added the incident to the Current Events portal, and made a small entry on the Celebrity Infinity page. See the article and video here: Juneau Mike (talk) 10:38, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi Cringe-worthy video; thanks for sharing it. Glad no one was injured. I guess high winds were to blame? --Rosiestep (talk) 14:47, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Women scientists
I have managed to compile a tentative list of participants in WiR/9. The list only covers April and May. I have not covered February and March as the tool for displaying articles created by user only goes back 60 days and in any case we only started to encourage participation at the end on March. I have split the participants into two lists, the first where active interest in Women scientists seems to exist, and the second where some of the listings may be accidental. Maybe you can expand the lists yourself if you can draw on other sources.--Ipigott (talk) 13:03, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
 * this is helpful. Thank you. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:41, 4 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I've revised the list quite a bit. There are now at least 37 participants. From now on I'll keep a closer check on the articles added. It's really very difficult to go back and see exactly who was doing what a few months ago, particularly as not all the articles listed on the editathon page are new.--Ipigott (talk) 10:08, 5 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I now also have the MENA artists participants. may have further additions or comments.  was indeed by far the most productive contributor with 27 new articles. There were also a number of MENA photographers, most not covered here as they have been documented in the photographer outcomes, etc.--Ipigott (talk) 11:48, 5 June 2016 (UTC)


 * And now I've just completed Women in Espionage. I'll try to add all the participants to the general list as soon as I have time. Let me know if you need anything else.--Ipigott (talk) 12:15, 5 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I think I've done all I can for the time being. I've now also updated User:Ipigott/Women in Red editathon participants. Hope it all helps. I hope that if this kind of thing is required on a regular basis, others will be able to help out. But please let me know if you need anything else.--Ipigott (talk) 13:10, 5 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I can imagine this takes a lot of time to compile. Do you prefer to leave it in your sandbox or move it to WiR space (so that others are aware of it and might learn how to help out)? --Rosiestep (talk) 13:49, 5 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Please feel free to move it to WiR. I've just been double-checking all the figures and have updated quite a few but I think everything is OK now. That particular list does not take much time to update but I needed to spend several hours on the editathons I had not been tracking on a day-to-day basis. The results are not optimal for WiR 9 and 11 as I have not checked the extent to which the participants who registered for each actually participated. On the basis of experience with the other editathons, some do not participate at all, some help to improve new articles created by someone else, and some work on things like categories or boxes. But all this takes an enormous amount of time to check out and would probably not change the overall picture very much anyway. Finally, there are a number of people who should probably be included in all the lists, even if they don't create new articles:, who has helped with metrics and compiling Wikidata lists of red links, who has helped to update Wikidata for the articles created,  who has co-hosted some of the editathons and has in any case liaised with NYC interests, and  who has coordinated WiR improvements in connection with Project X and has also provided Wikidata lists. There may be others I should have mentioned who do not appear in the editathon participation lists.--Ipigott (talk) 06:55, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
 * If I would know, how the list was compiled, I would say, it it's possible to make it easier. But generating the list itself can be automated with MS Access, if you input data like:
 * User A - 1[st editathon]
 * User A - 3
 * User B - 2
 * etc.
 * I have not covered February and March as the tool for displaying articles created by user only goes back 60 days ... hmm, I can kind of help with it (on one-time basis)  Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 09:53, 6 June 2016 (UTC)


 * That's a very kind offer but I'm not sure whether it would be really fair to include Women scientist additions in February and March as we did not begin to promote the editathon until the end of March for work from April onwards. So I think I have actually covered the new articles we need.--Ipigott (talk) 10:01, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Karin Lochte
Hi, I noticed you were the one to originally create Karin Lochte back in 2008. In case it's not on your watchlist, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to see its growth. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 04:18, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
 * thank you for improving the article -good job!- and for letting me know about it as I haven't kept it on my watchlist. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:25, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

You are invited
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Perhaps you would like to forward this to our MassMessaging list.--Ipigott (talk) 14:02, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for being on top of this,, as I prepare for my travels. I'll send out tonight. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:21, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Bon voyage! Let me know if I can be of any further help as you travel around.--Ipigott (talk) 14:37, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikimania conference
As far as I can see from the current programme of the conference, Max Klein will no longer be speaking in your session on "Gender gap" on 25 June. Instead there is a presentation on Identity-based motivation and the Wikidentities project. Maybe you will be in a position to present some of Klein's recent results as he seems to have been doing a great job with information from Wikidata. I see that there is also a meeting on the Wikidata project at exactly the same time. Maybe you will be able to make contact with some of those involved with a view to developing and promoting user-friendly interfaces with Wikipedia, along the lines of those communicated by, so as to facilitate, speed up and possibly automate the take-up of data from new articles.--Ipigott (talk) 09:20, 15 June 2016 (UTC)