Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's History/Archive 2

Archives Table of Contents

WikiProject talk page archiving
This talk page is getting unwieldy, and I'd like to set up auto-archiving on it so that a bot will file older topics off to their own pages. However, I'm wary of A) acting unilaterally and B) breaking something in the process. I've read about archiving an article talk page but project talk pages are different, so I'd like to try to establish a rough consensus before doing anything on this.

I could use suggestions on the best options and policies, especially from experienced Wikipedians:


 * Is there any particular reason to use User:MiszaBot_II, User:ClueBot_III, or some other bot? (I use User:MiszaBot_III for archiving my own user talk page.)
 * As for bot setup policies: If I were doing it, I'd date the archive pages by month and year; archive any talk topic that hasn't been commented on in, say, 7 days (168 hours); and always leave at least 5 topics un-archived. Does that sound about right to people?
 * What WikiProject talk pages do you think are well-run and visually attractive?

Once there's a rough consensus on archiving policies, feel free to be bold in setting things up; just post here first when you start working on it so that we don't cross wires. ---Shane Landrum (cliotropic &#124; talk &#124; contribs) 16:26, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't use a bot. They're too inflexible. Some items like past AfDs can be archived quickly, others, might need to stay up for a month because of their informational content or during periods when editors tend to be on holiday. I don't know if they're visually attractive, but I do the archiving at WikiProject Opera. Here's the talk page. The link to the archives is underneath the filing cabinet logo on the right-hand side. The archives have a Table of contents which I manually maintain and an alphabetical index by thread heading which a bot maintains. Voceditenore (talk) 16:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The page is set up to auto-archive after 90 days, which is too long. I really like what you've done at WP:Opera.
 * Do we want to move all of the tips and tricks to the Resources page rarher than just archiving them? - PKM (talk) 17:39, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Archiving tips and tricks off to Resources (or its own subpage?) makes sense to me. We should always have an open topic on the project talk page with recent tips and tricks, plus a link to the archived ones. ---Shane Landrum (cliotropic &#124; talk &#124; contribs) 18:46, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Voceditenore, I like what you've done for WikiProject Opera, but I'm vaguely concerned about creating project work for a human when we have relatively few editors working. If someone likes the manually-archived pages enough to volunteer to do regular archiving passes (once a week or so?), I have no objections. ---Shane Landrum (cliotropic &#124; talk &#124; contribs) 19:25, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Once the manual archives are all set up, any member can archive (and de-archive for that matter). It's not that big a job. I often go over a month between archiving at the Opera Project and it's not like this page gets huge amounts of posts now that the initial phase has settled down. I'll volunteer to set up the archives and get the first page started, but I can't commit myself to being the sole archiver. So you may want to go for a archive bot. I agree that a separate page for archiving Tips would be useful, but wouldn't that have to be manually archived anyway? Not having used an archiving bot I have no idea how easy it is to instruct it to not archive certain posts or to leave at least 5 on the page regardless of the date stamp. Just let me know if you decide you want a manual set up. Voceditenore (talk) 09:17, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy to help with manual archiving if you set it up. I like your system. - PKM (talk) 20:44, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I was beginning to think I was talking in an empty room. ;-) Anyhow, I've now boldly set the archives up and added a link to them at the top of this page. The Table of Contents is here and Archive 1 is here. I've archived the oldest posts to it as well as the discussion/votes on automatic assessment, leaving an update on this page. I've also created Archive 2 (currently empty) for future archiving. Successive archive pages can be created by simply copying the format from the top of the preceding page changing  to  and so on. I've left an open "Tips" section on this page and archived the old ones at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's History/Tips archive (There's also a link to it on the main Archives ToC). Voceditenore (talk) 10:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: For now, I haven't set up the auto-indexing via a bot, because User:HBC Archive Indexerbot seems to be running very sporadically due to a couple of technical problems. Once it's back to normal, I'll go ahead with asking the bot to index. For now, the Archive ToC gives a pretty good idea, and there's no urgency until we start getting multiple archive pages. Voceditenore (talk) 11:48, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thank you. - PKM (talk) 01:32, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

New subproject for educators
User:PhDeviate and I recently co-wrote a Wikipedia assignment for her students in an introductory college-level course ("Women, Culture, and History"). After doing this, I realized that lots of us who teach may want to talk about assignment design and how to get our students involved in editing Wikipedia. I won't be able to give an assignment like this for some time, but I'd love to help people who want to do it in their own courses.

I've just started the subproject WPWH for Educators as a resource and talkpage for some of these discussions. If topics come up there which relate to this WikiProject more generally, I'll try to get people's attention by posting a link here. ---Shane Landrum (cliotropic &#124; talk &#124; contribs) 23:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Feminism in The Signpost this week/Outreach
There's a good interview with 3 contributors from WikiProject Feminism in this week's Signpost which may be of interest. Since WPFeminism is a large and long-running project, they have a lot of good insight about learning Wikipedia, recruiting editors, and keeping the momentum going in a WikiProject.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, I've just created an invitation template and instructions for using it as part of outreach to other editors. If you notice people editing articles which suggest that they'd be good contributors here, please invite them to join us. (In moderate numbers; don't be spammy.) ---Shane Landrum (cliotropic &#124; talk &#124; contribs) 01:52, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Projects can also request a mention in the sidebar "WikiProject news, News in brief" at Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/WikiProject desk, which has examples of the kind of requests other projects are making. Voceditenore (talk) 10:57, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Stub template creation and marking
I've applied for the stub women-hist-stub and the category Category:Women's history stubs. On 11 Feb 2011, if there are no objections, this can be created as a formal stub template and stub category, and then we can start marking articles appropriately.---Shane Landrum (cliotropic) 17:18, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I noticed the proposal on the stub project, I think you may be better off with something similar to WP:BIOG/A. It will allow you to rate articles on importance as well as the class and not just that it is a stub article.  I can't find a page with a description of how a wikiproject goes about creating them and using them but hopefully it's fairly easy to work out otherwise see if another wikiproject which uses a similar template can help. Waacstats (talk) 22:37, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What I think I hear you saying is that we'll be better off with an assessment-style scale for quality and/or importance rather than simply an "is this a stub or not?" marking system. That makes sense. I wonder whether it makes sense to piggyback onto WP:BIOG formally-- some kind of joint task force on biographies of women, at least for the parts of WP:WMNHIST which are biography-related. Thoughts, anyone? ---Shane Landrum (cliotropic &#124; talk &#124; contribs) 03:35, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Stubs risk deletion; nonstubs, not so much. And a way to see when women get too little coverage is vital. Assessments seem to be done by all of the WikiProjects already, so that tool or system seems widely available without having to use someone else's. Subsuming creates invisibility and lowers priority. I hope WikiProject Women's History goes forward. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Strongly agree. See my above replies to Skud (1 topic up) for next suggested steps: creating an assessment template out of the Banner template below. ---Shane Landrum (cliotropic &#124; talk &#124; contribs) 23:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

In light of this conversation I'm wondering the following: Is it preferred to create pages as fleshed out as possible, or is it okay to create stubs for the requested pages? Gwytherinn (talk) 15:12, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You might create the stubs in your sandbox and see if the team can collaboratively expand them before pushing them live the main space. - PKM (talk) 20:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think viable stubs with basic information are fine and can be very useful to the reader. Some editors think people should always write start class articles or not at all, but I don't go along with that. Just make sure to include at least two references to establish notability. This is even more crucial for a biography, and if it's a living person, you need some completely independent outside sources as references, not simply their websites or publisher/faculty bios. And make sure you add them when you first create the article, or it's liable to slapped with a proposed deletion tag or worse. Here are some stub articles I've created to give you an idea: Keto and Kote, Fridolin Sicher. Voceditenore (talk) 12:07, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Talk page diffusion
I noticed that there were separate talk pages linked as "Discuss" in the Project's navboxes that aren't an awfully good idea. Discussions about article alerts and assessment issues ought to be on this page to attract as wide an audience as possible. The talk pages of subpages attract very few watchers, especially in a project with so few active members, and because they are central to the project, shouldn't be spread all over the place. This is especially true of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's History/Assessment which said:
 * Use this area for discussing the project's assessment standards. You may also ask questions about the assessment of individual articles here.

I've taken the liberty of blanking that page except for the banner and removing the "Discuss" links for those pages from the navboxes. If anyone thinks that was wildly inappropriate, please revert. Voceditenore (talk) 11:34, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Fine by me. - PKM (talk) 01:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Credo accounts
I just want to make sure everyone here knows that there are 400 free Credo Reference accounts available for active Wikipedians, subject to certain criteria—though there's an overspill list for anyone not meeting the criteria, and so far there are more accounts than takers, so the secondary list may be successful too. The database gives access to tertiary sources that may come in handy for anyone wanting to write women's biographies. See Credo for how to sign up. SlimVirgin TALK| CONTRIBS 07:31, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sign up now closed. Voceditenore (talk) 16:37, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Support for reinstatement?
I wonder if there might be support for reinstatement of women composers Hsiao-Lan Wang and Minako Hamano. I agree that both might be borderline as far as notability goes, but as part of a larger project to include women of accomplishment in Wikipedia they might be considered sufficiently notable. There seems to be a strong sentiment against Hamano, as her article has been deleted more than once. Rough representations of the deleted articles follow. Comments from anyone?

Hsiao-Lan Wang 王曉嵐 (b. 1976) is a Taiwanese composer, conductor, and music technologist. She is the current president of the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM).

Hsiao-Lan Wang was born in Taiwan, and graduated in composition from the National Taipei University of the Arts in 1999, from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2002, and received a doctorate from the University of North Texas in 2010. She teaches music technology and composition at Montana State University.
 * Biography

Pauline Oliveros Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music Libby Larsen Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music Athena Festival Chamber Music Composition Competition American Composers Forum Pierre Schaeffer Computer Music Competition (Italy) award Craig and Janet Swan Composer Prize for Orchestra, Finalist Composers Competition Prize from the Chamber Orchestra of Denton, Finalist Awards from ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) Logos Foundation (Belgium) Bourges Electro Acoustic Music Festival Overture Project (France)
 * Honors and awards

Minako Hamano (濱野美奈子 Hamano Minako) (b. 28 June 1969) is a Japanese composer known for electronic video game music. She is one of the few women composers working in this genre.

Minako Hamano was born in Kyoto, Japan, and after completing her education, went to work for the Nintendo company in Kyoto. She sometimes collaborates with Kenji Yamamoto, and has worked on the notable Metroid series of games.
 * Life and career

The music from Metroid and other games has been played by music ensembles including Jenova, Minibosses, OneUp Mushrooms and Select Start. Orchestral arrangements of Metroid and Legend of Zelda are included in Play! A Video Game Symphony that toured the US and Europe and made its Asian debut at the 2007 Singapore Arts Festival. Video Games Live, another international tour of orchestrated video game music, also included arrangements of Metroid and Legend of Zelda themes. The annual award-winning Symphonic Game Music Concerts (Symphonische Spielemusikkonzerte), playing similar arrangements, were initiated in Germany in 2003.

Even though some of her work is based on older technology, the appeal of Hamano’s composition is evident; Super Metroid was noted as one of the top five video games by Karen Collins in Game sound: an Introduction to the history, theory, and practice of video game music and sound design. Quality of the ambient music in Super Metroid was discussed by Gary Hill in The Strange Sound of Cthulhu: Music Inspired by the Writings of H. P. Lovecraft. A 2007 review in GameAxis Unwired describes her soundtrack for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption as “hauntingly good.” A review in Gaming lives in the twenty-first century: literate connections also describes the soundtrack as a high quality composition.

Selected credits include:
 * Works


 * Famicom Tentei Club Part II: Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo
 * The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
 * Super Metroid
 * Teleroboxer
 * Galactic Pinball
 * The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX
 * Pokémon Puzzle Challenge
 * Mario Kart: Super Circuit
 * Metroid Fusion
 * Wario World
 * Metroid: Zero Mission
 * Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
 * Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (WII)
 * Daigasso! Band Brothers
 * Tetris DS
 * Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!
 * Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day!
 * Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
 * Super Smash Bros. Brawl
 * Jam with the Band
 * Wario Land: Shake It!
 * Snoopy Concert

Her works have been arranged and recorded on media, including:
 * Relics of Chozo (12 September 2003)
 * Video Games Live, Vol. 1 Wendy Carlos, Michael Giacchino, Jason Hayes, and Utada Hikaru (Audio CD - Jul 22, 2008)
 * Video Games Live Level 2 Various Artists (Audio CD - Oct 19, 2010)
 * Video Games LIVE: Volume 2 (DVD - Oct 19, 2010)
 * Metroid Prime & Fusion: Original Soundtracks Audio CD (2003)
 * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Audio CD, Hyrule Symphony Orchestra
 * References

Pkeets (talk) 18:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The relevant deletion discussions are Articles for deletion/Minako Hamano (2nd nomination) and Articles for deletion/Hsiao-Lan Wang. – Voceditenore (talk) 18:42, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Alice Manfield
I have tagged Alice Manfield for our project. The photo is nominated for Featured Picture. - PKM (talk) 03:55, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Popular pages list?
Would members like me to request User:Mr.Z-bot to create and maintain a list of pageview statistics for this project like WikiProject Opera/Popular pages? These pages can be really useful for deciding which articles to prioritise for manual assessment or improvement. Voceditenore (talk) 08:12, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd like that. - PKM (talk) 20:43, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
 * OK. I've put in the request. Once it's accepted, the next time the bot runs it will automatically create WikiProject Women's History/Popular pages. I've initially asked it to list the 500 most popular pages (standard number). We can increase that up to 1000 or a maximum of 1500, if people think that would be beneficial. Voceditenore (talk) 15:38, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * For some reason, the list hasn't been generated yet. I've left a query on the bot-owner's talk page. Voceditenore (talk) 16:41, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposed merge
It is my feeling: The season 2010-11 Riksserien probably does not merit his own article, and such content as is appropriate should probably be merged into the Women's ice hockey in Sweden article. I invite discussion, --Charlesquebec (talk) 12:33, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * In the reading of your comments, I remove my proposition of merger. I only wanted to improve the Wikipedia encyclopedia but the Women ice hockey is not my domain of specialization. Thanks and happy editing.--Charlesquebec (talk) 12:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

AfD on Pippa Middleton
The current AfD on Pippa Middleton might be of interest to members of this project, as it raises interesting questions of notability that often attach to women in history. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:34, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Ended up "keep" per Snowball clause. Voceditenore (talk) 16:32, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Despite a resounding "keep" and a closed AfD, the issue is not resolved, and continues on the article's talk page. I confess that there's an aspect of the discussion that I'm not understanding. Cynwolfe (talk) 23:31, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

GA review
The article The Women's March on Versailles, which has the WH banner, is currently undergoing a GA review. I happened upon this by accident, and it would be nice to have an editing presence there since it's receiving focused attention. I unfortunately lack the time to take my own suggestion, but it seems like precisely the kind of article this project was created for. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:00, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Iris Wedgwood
This article is being discussed for deletion at Articles for deletion/Iris Wedgwood. Voceditenore (talk) 18:40, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Tips page
For now the past tips are archived in their "raw" state at Tips archive along with the various comments on them, including correction of errors. (See also WikiProject talk page archiving above.) I'd suggest that eventually a separate tips page (e.g. WikiProject Women's History/Tips) should be created with streamlined/cleaned up/updated versions of the various tips. It could be linked from the navbox would be a lot easier for new editors to read than wading through the archive. Voceditenore (talk) 10:57, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Women's sport wikiproject
I have proposed that we create a WikiProject devoted to Women's sport: WikiProject Council/Proposals/Women's Sport. John Vandenberg (chat) 10:39, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Iman al-Obeidi
Cinosaur (talk) asked on my talk page whether I would consider Iman al-Obeidi eligible to be listed under this project. Thoughts from the team? - PKM (talk) 03:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Marie Antoinette - Fraser Dependence
As pointed out on the Marie Antoinette discussion page, there is far too much dependence on Fraser's biography.

I have personally included some references to Lever (English-translated, so not entirely as weighty as the French version, but nonetheless, it holds) and even Hibbert, although the latter is somewhat debatable, and I am investigating personally a few points of contradiction brought up by his text. In any case, with that in mind:

 Other sources available to be incorporated and consequently cited include:  Louis and Antoinette by Vincent Cronin (who recently passed away, unfortunately), Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France by Evelyne Lever, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette before the French Revolution & Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution by Nesta Webster, Memoirs of Marie Antoinette by Madame Campan herself, What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber, and even from other books such as Simon Schama's Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution and William Doyle's Oxford History of the French Revolution.

These are of course only as a start - but there is really no excuse to be so heavily dependent on Fraser's biography, especially because that is very subjective, sympathetic and at times controversial. The article also doesn't make much of von Fersen, who is on the contrary very important, and I've dropped in him in several edits at several key points.

What also needs to be worked on is the heavy specificity of detail in some areas, and then the absence of any detail at all in others. Kfodderst (talk) 08:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Hildburghausen and Castle Eishausen Theories
These few incidents should be included into the Marie Thérèse of France article. Some references to aid writing a section for this: The Dark Count by Ludwig Bechstein, The Mystery of Hildburghausen by Brachvogel and Nevtelen Var (The Nameless Castle in English) by Jokai Mor for purporting the theory; in contrast, and a nice summary/overview, which dismantles the theory rather effectively, was done by Sophie Nagel in her book on Marie-Therese, Marie-Therese: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter. The inclusion should be done as soon as possible. I will be able to contribute as well, but maybe not immediately. If anyone has anymore references/sources or information, please mention them here so they can be included into the article. Kfodderst (talk) 08:35, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Feedback for new users
I know that several people here are interested in encouraging new editors who are writing about women and women's history. There are several articles at WP:FEEDBACK that might be interesting to some of you.

WP:Requests for feedback is not only one of the most fun parts of Wikipedia, but also one of the most important pages for assisting, encouraging, and teaching new editors. Unlike the more adversarial forums like WP:NPP, the inexperienced editors there are frequently extremely grateful for any attention. It's frequently quick, too: providing relevant, personalized, basic advice usually requires less than ten minutes. Please consider picking one of the articles out of the queue and providing a short response.

Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Pageview stats
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Women's History to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at WikiProject Women's History/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 00:35, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for doing this. I have to say, this is an incredibly cringe-worthy list, full of BLPs and especially pop stars. I had really hoped to see where we might do some good. (For instance, while I argued that Pippa Middleton's article not be deleted, and I think the reasoning bears on questions of how women have often entered the historical record, I don't think her article should be under the Women's History banner.) I hope everyone will take a moment to look over the discussion of criteria for BLP inclusion at the scope workshop here. Or go directly to a draft of criteria for including biographies in general here. Cynwolfe (talk) 02:39, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Cringe-worthy indeed. I was excited to see this tool, among others, to focus our work on articles that could be expanded, or more coverage given to women's history.  Now I'm just embarrased. --Tbennert (talk) 05:33, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Quite an eye-opener, isn't it. But for all the wrong reasons, alas, not to mention some of the bizarre "importance" ratings. The over-bannering has rendered the list virtually useless for helping this project to prioritise or even find core articles. However, once the scope criteria are sorted out (and this is urgent), the list will become a very valuable tool. I echo Cynwolfe's request and urge all members who have not yet participated there to discuss the proposed criteria at the scope workshop. The definition(s) of scope will be decided solely by a consensus of this project's members. Voceditenore (talk) 07:58, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Over-bannering, exacerbated in many cases by an inappropriate "importance" rating, has also made these clean-up tools far less useful than they could be. Voceditenore (talk) 13:15, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Now, now, the page-view list isn't a sign of the end of educated thought. I doubt that most people who look up Lady Gaga (!) are interested in her role in "Women's History", they're probably looking up her favorite color, or her birthday or something equally inane. Don't be discouraged! Boneyard90 (talk) 13:21, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
 * That's not the point as far as I'm concerned. The bannering of virtually every currrent female celebrity hopelessly skews the results of the "popular pages" tool and makes it virtually useless for prioritising the articles that are of core interest to this project. The fact that most people who look up Lady Gaga are not interested in her role in "Women's History" is precisely my point. How could they be? She only came to prominence in three years ago. You won't find reliable sources which have analyzed or chronicled her place in women's history. Voceditenore (talk) 13:41, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

When I tried accessing some of these listings to look for task-oriented contributions I might make to the project, I was so overwhelmed by the sheer volume, especially of BLPs, that I just didn't know how to proceed. I think we're making progress at the workshop on defining our criteria, and I hope there's some efficient way to de-banner. I seem to recall a discussion I can't locate at a glance on how there might be a way to automate the task for some types of articles. I'm not sure we couldn't just scrub every bio with a birth date after 1950. We have criteria for women born after 1950, so unfortunately this would mean deleting the banner from those who qualify for inclusion, thus creating extra work for members such as Tjepsen, whose Technology task force will involve examples of women born after 1950 who have made contributions of historic significance. But pitching in to re-banner those who qualify under the stricter criteria would be far less time-consuming in the long run than dealing with 10,000+ articles, most of which still need assessment, let alone actually organizing work around our core mission of improving content coverage. Cynwolfe (talk) 15:44, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Not a huge problem for Women in Technology - would have to re-evaluate around 10 entries.Tjepsen (talk) 03:18, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Participants list
I've replaced the bullet points ( * ) with # to produce a numbered list which tells us at glance how many members we have. I also thought I'd better check Category:WikiProject Women's History members for anomalies and found that it had been added to The Chronicle (Zimbabwe)?!? (I've removed the cat from the article.) I also found two active editors in the category who hadn't added their names to the "active participants" list and added them. We currently have 36 active participants and 3 supporters, although I suspect that number on the "active" list may be a bit inflated. There are some names there who haven't edited on Wikipedia at all for over three months. In October, I'm going to go through the active participants list and move the names of any users who haven't edited on Wikipedia in the previous 6 months (or have marked their user page as "Retired") to an "inactive and former members" list. Voceditenore (talk) 09:04, 17 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's really appropriate for you to add someone's name to a list. Boneyard90 (talk) 10:30, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Since they have already identified themselves as members via their user pages and have placed themselves in the category, I see no difference in also adding them to the list. A single list of all members is very useful for contacting people about important discussions, project news, etc. After amending the list, I notified both users that I had added their names and told them to please feel free to remove them if they'd rather not appear there. Voceditenore (talk) 11:01, 17 June 2011 (UTC)


 * What's done is done, but I still think it's inappropriate for anybody to take liberties with another person's name (or username). You should have contacted them before adding their names, inviting them to do so for themselves, or offering to do it for them. What you did was pushing the line of identity theft. It's also no different than what numerous junk-mail ad companies and spammers do everyday; they put your name on some list, load up your mailbox (or e-mail junkbox) and insist that there's no problem and you can removed your name for yourself. Boneyard90 (talk) 14:10, 17 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I complete disagree with your over-the-top and false analogy to identity theft, but as you have chosen to make a such an issue out of it, I've removed their names and notified the two users in question why I did so. Voceditenore (talk) 14:36, 17 June 2011 (UTC)


 * As one of the two users involved, I have to say that I wasn't at all upset by it. I would not describe myself as being actively involved with the project. Someone else added that project membership on my user page having noticed that I was doing edits to historical women's biographies and was hoping to get me more engaged with the project. I didn't delete it because I am sympathetic to the aims of the project and might perhaps want to be more active at some later stage, but right now my interest is more in local history and, while some women's history arises from that, women's history is not my primary focus.   Kerry (talk) 16:17, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much for getting back to us, Kerry. ;-) Once we get our collective act together and start monthly collaborations, you might find something to tempt you. We'll probably start small with choosing a few articles at a time to clean up or reference. Also, if you notice any missing articles on women in Australia's history, feel free to post them on WikiProject Women's History/Requested articles. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 16:51, 17 June 2011 (UTC)


 * To Kerry: I'm glad to hear you're pretty laid back about the issue. I think I would feel a bit peeved if someone violated my Userpage. After all, that's what the Talk page is for. So, even though you seem ok with it, and I'd guess from the other user's silence, he or she must be all right with it too, I still feel compelled to apologize on behalf of the project for the intrusion and unethical (though not malicious) methods of trying to gain your participation.
 * The person who added the userbox to Kerry's page was not a member of this project, and they were just trying to be helpful . Voceditenore (talk) 17:28, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * To Voceditenore: If you really disagreed with me, you would have provided better reasons. It's pretty clear that your intent was not malicious, and one may even say it was done "in good faith". However, you were wrong to do so, I think you know you were wrong; now be mature about it, admit it, and apologize to the rest of the project members and avoid such action in the future. Boneyard90 (talk) 17:00, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The other person was fine with it too. I felt I had provided sufficient reasons as to why I disagreed with you. You are of course entitled not to accept them. After this palaver, I guarantee you the situation will not arise again, but perhaps you could keep an eye on Category:WikiProject Women's History members and invite any new additions there to sign the participants list. I also added a note there reminding members that they can place (no contact) after their names if they do not wish to receive messages from the project. Voceditenore (talk) 17:19, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm thoroughly perplexed by this exchange. Here I thought Boneyard90 was saying that placing a project user box on one's own user or talk page might typically result in automatically being added (by a bot) to a master list of project members. I'm confused about why it was wrong, then, for Voceditenore to see whose pages already displayed the WH user box and then manually to place the name on the list of project members, since we haven't arranged to have a bot do so. We also have a template for inviting editors to join the project—something I've done before I knew such a template existed. So even someone who placed the user box on another editor's page could have erred in choosing that template instead of the invitational template. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:34, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * In the project where I saw the bot addition, this feature was explained on the same page where one finds the Userbox, so the user is informed that if the Userbox was added to a User page, the Username would be added to a list. I think it works like a category-template. The same project page also had Userboxs that distinguished between a "member" and a "participant", or "Interested in the subject" or something, for those editors who want a Userbox but don't want to be considered an "active member", so there was a choice as to the level of participation. An invitation, or an invitational template, placed on the Usertalk page is no problem, in fact it's terrific. But like I said, what V. did was something similar to a spammer; though I understand it was an errant follow-up action made in good faith, in the wake of the spamming editor who placed a Userbox on the pages of the two affronted, but un-offended, editors. As all Wikipedia operates under systems of checks & balances, I decided to voice my objection to certain actions as a matter of conscience. Voceditenore has made a public assurance that such action would not be repeated in the future, so I'm satisfied that my admonition will have a positive outcome, even though Voceditenore apparently declines to openly admit error or apologize to the project. Boneyard90 (talk) 06:24, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * One of the users placed the box themself. The other one decided to keep it when it had been placed by someone else. And for the umpteenth time. It was not placed by a member of this project and it is ridiculous to characterise that editor as a "spammer", just as it is ridiculous to characterise me as an "identity thief" and a "spammer". And no I'm not going to apologise. But like I said, you're entitled to your own interpretation of the events. Voceditenore (talk) 06:39, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * True, I was incorrect with the "identity theft" remark. It was a hasty, knee-jerk characterization. I still stand by the "spammer" description though. If it looks like spam, I call it spam. But, I also understand you made an inadvertent error. We all make those. That's why I characterized it as an "error made it in good faith". Boneyard90 (talk) 06:58, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I do not consider merging those lists an error, "inadvertent" or otherwise. But like I said, you're entitled to your own interpretation of events. Voceditenore (talk) 09:36, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep. That's what I was trying to point out to him above—I simply merged two public lists of people who have publicly indentified themselves as members. As for the editor who placed the userbox, they weren't even a member of this project. Nevermind. The proverbial tempest in a teapot.;-) Voceditenore (talk) 06:20, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

This project was created in part to encourage participation both by women and toward coverage of women. Some of the issues were addressed earlier this year in this New York Times article and related forum. We've spent a lot of time on peripheral issues such as Ursula Andress's bikini, which to my mind at least raises questions of prioritizing contrary to addressing the problem of, say, adequately representing the role of women in the two World Wars. High-drama approaches to expressing what may be legitimate concerns, or demands for apologies, or debating the taxonomy of individual trees while the forest is on fire, won't create the work-oriented, mutually supportive, can-do editing environment I at least had wanted to find in this project. In particular, the characterization of Voceditenore's placing two names on a list as "spam" is disheartening, when one of the concerns of a majority of project members has been spam-bannering of articles in the hundreds, a sprawl that the project can't possibly hope to monitor or maintain. This kind of dispiriting discourse discourages participation (I sputter alliteratively) from the very editors we most want to attract: those with little appetite for this sort of thing, and who want to contribute primarily by improving content. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:46, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd like to think the issue of the apology was more of a suggestion, even a recommendation, rather than a demand. I had already apologized on behalf of the project to the affronted (though not offended) editor in question. But if one editor feels another is in error, one shouldn't be afraid to call it. We all make mistakes. The reaction should be discussion, not indignation. Boneyard90 (talk) 17:38, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

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File:Didrikson.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 07:10, 18 June 2011 (UTC)