Submissions/The "3W" phenomenon - Web - Women - Wikipedia

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2014 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this August.

Submission no. 1074

Title of the submission: The "3W" Phenomenon - Web - Women - Wikipedia

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop): Discussion and Presentation

Author of the submission: Adethya Sudarsanan

E-mail address: adethyasjce@gmail.com

Username: Adethya

Country of origin: India

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): Idea Abode

Personal homepage or blog

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal): “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” - This is a very famous quote from the book A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, a famous author who was a mordenist and emphasised on freedom of women's mind and encouraged women to take up writing. Not just Woolf is a mordernist writer ; there are many mordernists living in our own country who have the knowledge, courage & commitment to take up writing. But what was lacking to them were the infrastructure, societal support & finally the idea that they can edit Wikipedia! I am talking about the women editors in India who did not have a clue that they can edit information online. So long they have been only consumers of the information available online. We took up an initiative where we made a few women in India realize that they can go one step beyond from being consumers of information to producers of information.

Our initiative, "You can edit it" started as an small tea time talk one evening in my startup, Idea Abode. We are bunch of enthusiastic folks living and working in India who share a common interest in many things, one among those being Wikipedia! We, the people at Idea Abode are from diverse backgrounds, but Wikipedia was one among the things that linked us. But what was missing in our team was, there was no girl! we are all boys aged 25 (around), but we din't have a girl in our team. I jokingly said, this is the same everywhere. Even in Wikipedia, we don't have as many women editors as men editors. There was an instant silence in the tea group and that was a start!

We eventually spent the evening to discuss on how to rope in more women to get editing Wikipedia! Eureka!! We found out some ways through which we can encourage women to take up editing Wikipedia. We made surveys to understand among many things ; how many women know Wikipedia? How many know Wikipedia as an editable platform? How many actually use Wikipedia on a daily basis? How surprised are they when they realized that they can edit Wikipedia and contribute? There are many questions that I may add here, but, the point is, finally we arrived at a strategy that will increase number of women editors to Wikipedia!

Based on our research & implementation there was an increase in the number of women editors in the company I worked with, in my locality & in my study group. We handle their queries on how to edit Wikipedia, what if they ran into a conflict, what happens if their edit is removed by an admin, how do they start a new article, etc. etc. Our main focus has been on emphasising NPoV.

There are research/survey findings that will be shared in the main presentation. And, also, we found one women associate to join my startup! Hurray!

Track: WikiCulture & Community

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes

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-- FCT Berlin • ^=>message? • 19:02, 16 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Alice d25 (talk) 22:04, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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