File:Women... it takes a village at WikiConference USA 2015.webm

English: From the conference program:

An international movement has begun to ensure that notable women are recognized for their achievements. The issue is defined as content gender gap, and the movement that addresses it is named, "Women in Red". Wikipedia is ideally situated to take a leadership role in this campaign due to its diverse array of editors, languages, and readership. This presentation raises awareness about content gender gap, and outlines a call for action for the global Wikimedia village. What we accomplish through Women in Red will inspire future generations of women and men to stand on their shoulders and reach for the stars.

INTRODUCTION:

According to WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force, approximately 15% of the biographies on the en-Wikipedia are about women. WikiProject Women in Red (WiR) was created to address content gender gap... a form of systemic bias. It was launched in July at Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City, Mexico by two seasoned editors: Roger Bamkin (user:Victuallers) and me. WiR maintains lists of crowd-sourced redlinks organized by occupation, nationality, and such. It provides curated groups of redlinked articles to work on through a collaboration with other women's WikiProjects, such as Women artists, Women scientists, and Women writers. It encourages translation from other language Wikipedias through a collaboration with WikiProject Intertranswiki. It streams a Wikidata feed of articles (Wikidata entries with no en-Wikipedia article) through a collaboration with WikiProject X. WiR's members update a list of newly created articles. WiR tracks events and published articles related to the project's scope. WiR is young and strong. In its first 24 hours, it dealt with a rename (from WikiProject XX). In its first 2 weeks, the project created almost 500 new articles. In its first month, it encountered a formal merge proposal to become a subgroup of the newly-established, WikiProject Women; with consensus, the merge occurred at Week 5.

PRESENTATION OBJECTIVES:

• Review WiR's scope: women's biographies and women's works.
• Review lessons learned during the project's first 90 days to include, project design, branding, organization, talkpage issues, collaboration with other WikiProjects, and membership
• Provide an outcomes projection for WiR's one year mark
• Request the community's support in developing a campaign to further our work. We are hopeful that a village-wide campaign, addressing strategy, developing best practices, and amplifying communication, will catapult the work of WiR.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE:

• GLOBAL FOCUS: In order to reach its goal of increasing the percentage of women's biographies, the Wikimedia village -- all language Wikipedias, as well as WikiData -- must embark on a global campaign.
• PROMOTION: WiR needs local and global advocacy, branding, and promotion. It needs internal and external marketing coordination. It needs press coverage and social media expertise. This campaign needs to be not only informational but inspirational as today's readers are tomorrow's editors. This campaign needs the amalgamation of global Wikimedia campaigns, such as Wiki Loves Monuments, which has a presence on the Wikimedia movement calendar, with the woman-minded focus of the ArtAndFeminism initiative during WikiWomen's History Month, which does not. Major local and international-level initiatives which rely significantly on site advertising/banners/messaging for their success already bump up against each with competing priorities. We need a strategy as, if editors don't know about a particular initiative, or don't understand that Wikipedia considers it to be a high priority, they won't give it significant attention.
• GLAM, EDUCATION, CHAPTERS, USER GROUPS: WiR would benefit from the ideas, the connections, and the support of these communities. How can we partner with you?
• TECH SUPPORT: WiR's talkpage abounds with discussions centered on tech issues. The WiR tech wish list is long. WiR's articles are generated by humans. Let's address bots before someone starts using one indiscriminately to create thousands of sub-stubs.
• WIKIDATA: We have been told that WIGI Wikipedia Gender Index will be able to provide statistics on a weekly basis, but only for the biographies in WikiData. How do we account for every Wikipedia article on WikiData? Who is creating the WikiData entry for the newly-created Wikipedia article?
• QUALITY: WiR focuses on converting redlinks into blue. How do we build in quality measures for a project which concentrates on new article creation (Stub-class/Start-class articles)?

CONCLUSION:

In July 2015, the en-Wikipedia started a global conversation at the international conference, Wikimania, addressing content gender gap. Women in Red's work depends upon editor engagement, that is, creating new articles about notable women and their works, "moving the needle" from 15% of en-Wikipedia's biographies to some larger number. The movement's success hinges upon strategy, coordination, promotion, and buy-in from the Wikimedia village as there are other competing movements vying for the same editor's and reader's attention. Join in the conversation at WikiConference USA and/or at Women in Red.