User:Marshallsumter/Resources favored by women

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

The problem is insufficient women contributors apparently to the English Wikiversity. Percentages of ~ 15 % are called tokens, like the project symbol. They indicate that barriers exist preventing percentages near 50 %.

Perhaps the single most common complaint about editing and contributing to the English Wikipedia where the percentages of women contributors are also in the range of tokens is contentious editing.

What is your solution?

We've already created and contributed to resources that are likely popular with women such as Dominant group, especially as often thought of in sociology and social psychology: men, or richer married men; and Sex integration, both socially and in the work place.

Many more such resources focusing on topics like contraception, child birth, pediatrics, among a variety of medical areas, aromatherapy, dating or its modern equivalent, peer pressure, especially between and among women and girls, tokenism, appearance, aging, and others to be determined by web searching and volunteer researchers may be suggested and tested for their effects on these percentages.

On the English Wikiversity, contentious editing at the worst has percentages in the token range, contrary to the English Wikipedia. Here again is another topic idea that can be openly handled by resources and contributions to such resources initially on the English Wikiversity. With sufficient volunteers willing to help from the English Wikipedia, some of the solutions so discovered that reduce the percentages of contentious editing into the token range on the English Wikiversity may be transferred to the English Wikipedia so as to dramatically increase the percentage of women contributing to the English Wikipedia up into the ~ 50 % range.

Goals

The major goal is the creation of resources on the English Wikiversity that greatly increase participation by women. Hopefully, many of these resources are created by these women, because they find a positive and re-enforcing freedom to contribute.

Women on Wikipedia are probably no more than the usual token (~ 15 %) symbolized by the proposal image. Any of these barriers are easily removed by Wikiversity's greater freedom to contribute. The more resources we create of interest to women, the more they will create and contribute to.

Get Involved

Participants

Marshallsumter

Endorsements

Marshallsumter

Project plan

The overall project plan is to create or expand a number of resources that may be favored by women so as to systematically increase the percentage of women contributors, especially to break through the tokenism barrier.

Activities

The main activity to be completed if the project is funded is a greater number of resources of interest to women. This serves two important purposes: it expands the wiki movement to a greater number of women and it encourages them to become involved and to contribute or create resources in a positive, empowering environment.

Budget

The principal activity needing funding is contributor success.

Let's say a resource on contraception, maybe 20kB, would likely capture interest of those women searching the web on their cell phones: if the percentage before contribution is 15 % and and the percentage moves up to 16 % after contribution, then 500 USD for the successful idea. If it takes several new resources or other participatory ideas to raise the percentage, then 500 USD for this combined success of ideas for each percentage point.

Community engagement

As already provided as the incentive for the INSPIRE campaign, we need to have a statistical breakdown by gender of readers, contributors, and resource creators before and after each effort to determine which resources and topic ideas are increasing participation.

Sustainability

This effort contributes primarily to advancing the wiki movement by attracting more women. If the initial series of resource suggestions increases participation, this can suggest similar topics which in turn increase use and continued growth with or without funding.

Measures of success

Wikimedia has determined there is a gender gap. All we need are before and after statistics from the same source. For example, if statistics are presented before the first resource is created, a comparison for a similar period indicates its success after creation. This may be especially valuable if a number of contributors or readers turn out to be women. Usually a minimum of 30-100 readers visit any given resource in a month. Sometimes these numbers jump to the thousands when a popular title or subject is used.

We only need to see percentage changes to know that resource ideas are working.

Positive percentage changes from before to after are the measures of success.

Project team

Principal investigator: Marshallsumter

Community notification

Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. Need notification tips?

Wikiversity Colloquium notification

meta:Category:IdeaLab/Ideas/Online community organizing