[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Sun Nov 26 09:17:36 UTC 2006

It's not very wiki-like, you're right, but Wikipedia actually began
with one of the founders getting paid to write articles.

--Ryan W.

On 11/26/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
> >There will always be subjects which are important but where the
> >intersection of people who are interested, whom are willing, and whom
> >are able to write free content will be small.
> >
> >So in parallel to finding ways to attract a wider spectrum of regular
> >volunteer contributors, we should also be exploring a number of other
> >solutions:
> >
> ># Encouraging our existing volunteers to write about things they don't
> >care about but which we can generally agree that we ought to cover
> >well.
> >
> We already have some Wikipedians wanting more experts.  This is the
> opposite to what you propose.  Writing about things that you don't care
> about is not easy.  Try doing such an article from scratch.  You can
> find a book and write about what's in there, but your lack of background
> will quickly become apparent.
>
> ># We're already raising money for the substantial operating costs of
> >the projects, and there have already been of grants to create for
> >content on non-wikipedia projects (wikibooks for example). It would be
> >possible for us to get some folks paid to work full time writing and
> >improving content where we have insufficient volunteer resources
> >available.
> >## This will require having a good picture of what we need done. The
> >various content projects have done a lot of work which will help us,
> >but I'm not sure that we have enough lined up to actually go about
> >hiring people to do the work.
> >
> >Both of the two options classes I've proposed  are both more
> >actionable than the vague suggestion to "bring more users of class X"
> >and I have more confidence that both are more likely to bring about
> >the desired outcome (better coverage).
> >
> >So while I'm not opposed to bringing in a broader spectrum of
> >volunteers, I think should treat such an effort as distinct from an
> >effort to improve the evenness of our coverage.
> >
> Paying people to write articles would be a whole new ballgame, and
> probably very un-wiki..  There would be no more effective way of
> creating a class of vested interests with certain visions of how they
> want the project to look.  We all want better coverage, but at what cost?
>
> Ec
>
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