Hi all
This is a nuanced issue and as ever, the press has failed to capture that
nuance. I received a call from the Sunday Telegraph on Saturday evening and
had less than an hour to draft, agree and send a quote on behalf of
Wikimedia UK. However within a short statement it's impossible to convey
the sort of detail that we're discussing here. As John says, he has been
working on a video about the UK community's work to address the gender gap
- which includes an interview with Jess among others - and we will be
planning communications around the release of the video where we can
hopefully paint a more subtle picture of the current situation. It seems
highly unlikely that the Mail would cover that but at the very least I am
now in contact with the Telegraph reporter who wrote yesterday's story, and
will send it to her (amongst others).
All best
Lucy
On Mon, 9 Dec 2019 at 12:40, Charles Matthews <
charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
On 09 December 2019 at 11:47 Fæ
<faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
That the press has picked up on this story, could
be seen as an
opportunity to embrace the criticism and to do more to make the
environment less hostile for committed contributors like Jess.
From Jess:
https://twitter.com/jesswade/status/1203583885369630721
Jess does not subscribe to the narrative found in the Telegraph and Mail,
for sure.
That narrative has been around for ten years, during which time much
progress has been made on English Wikipedia. I think in fact around 2011
the community realised there needed to be a more positive effort with
newbies; and as recently as 2016 some kinds of knee-jerk deletionism
started to receive serious deprecation.
I don't doubt that more work needs to be done. As far as I know, the
editor retention issue is much less pressing than it used to be. In 2009
the Murdoch press was pushing the line that the 2007 decline in editors,
which had just come to light in terms of stats rather than anecdote, was an
existential threat. No longer.
Regardless of the trivial of this incident, the
underpinning issues
are real and measurable and are the real reason for this long-running
perception of Wikipedia culture.
So, informed and accurate coverage of Wikipedia stories is also to be
wished for. If a single idiot adding templates can cause a media furore, it
is either trivial or non-trivial. If it isn't trivial ... well, the link to
ANI I gave has to be interpreted. In a past furore I helped a Guardian
journalist to understand exactly what had happened, via a page history. We
see shoddy journalism based on the vaguest ideas of fact-checking. We
should call that out.
Charles
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK:
https://wikimedia.org.uk
--
Lucy Crompton-Reid
Chief Executive
Wikimedia UK
+44 (0) 203 372 0762
*Wikimedia UK* is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement, and a registered charity. We rely on donations from
individuals to support our work to make knowledge open for all. Have you
considered supporting Wikimedia?
https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk
Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered
No. 6741827
Registered Charity No.1144513
Registered Office Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London
SE1 0NZ
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.