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Women's History Month debrief

March was a very successful and happy editing month: Wikipedia:Meetup/Women in Red/8. No brag, just fact: WiR created ~800 articles and there will be ~150 DYK articles once all of them get through the queue. What did you like about this event? What could we do differently next March? --Rosiestep (talk) 14:27, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Rosiestep It is always my favorite event and exhausting. My personal goal this year was to make every contribution I made a C class article or better and it was a lot of work, but well worth it. My only comments on what we could do better would be that we need more reviewers focused on DYK—pushing nominated articles through the queue and nominating others. Gerda Arendt busted her rear on them. The other would be scouring the articles that were created (though 800 is a lot) and pulling the redlinks in them into our lists, so that we better integrate the women's articles we create into the encyclopedia. SusunW (talk) 15:44, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
@SusunW: I certainly appreciate all the efforts you have made to reach C class on all your articles throughout the month. I'm afraid I did not spend too much time on helping you along with your work on feminists and activists as my time has been completely taken up on art. But I've been doing quite a bit of work on many of the new articles. I probably edit at least half a dozen each day. Those that are based on the standard drafting process for new editors seldom contain defaultsort or categories and many need more attention to mark-up, referencing and basic copy editing. In many cases there are no talk pages although I simply have not had time to add as many as I would have liked. And many of the orphan problems can be resolved by including them in the appropriate lists. Personally, I think all this is just as important as DYK, especially if we can establish a working relationship with some of the new editors.--Ipigott (talk) 13:44, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
I think we did well. Other than last year (when I guess some spared their women articles for March, while this year I was more driven already in January), we continuously brought new women's lifes in focus. Better next year: start writing sooner, to have some ready 1 March, and I will - in case I'll still be here - start sooner to say that we can produce 3 women every set there is, - 3 out of seven. Some prep builders have been very efficient! More to handle ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:27, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
Ipigott brought up another good point on his talkpage... seek better definition of the event scope. --Rosiestep (talk) 03:41, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Yes, and see what more we can do to encourage new editors to continue for more than a couple of days, perhaps by offering our mentoring services via in-person editathon organizers. I also think we should press Project X to do more to help us with "metrics". Several of us are spending far too much time on unnecessary gnoming instead of participating in content building.--Ipigott (talk) 13:08, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
@Ipigott, Rosiestep, and Gerda Arendt: yes, yes, and yes. I think it is very critical to help the new editors and do the behind-the-scenes gnoming. I appreciate that you were able to create art articles and do that too, Ian. How you found the time in March is beyond me. Usually, I monitor the new ones too, but I knew I wouldn't have it in me with the goals I had set for my own production and trying to get so many on the front page. I did manage to do one artist who was not an activist and some kind soul actually provided a picture of some of her ceramic work, which was thrilling :) Megalibrarygirl did a lot of that too, what with her going through many of the drafts from low hanging fruit on the talk page, her ever-vigilant work on AfD and twitter. Which can I say Rosie that was awesome! I don't twit or is that tweet, but I can see the posts and it's a great way to get the new articles out there and drum up interest. What I think works well is that we all are able to participate in things that are our strengths, as well as support and help each other. I do really, really enjoy this project! SusunW (talk) 14:29, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
@Ipigott, Rosiestep, Gerda Arendt, and SusunW: I can see how DYK needs more help. It's a difficult area for some though (I'm included in that.) Perhaps a tutorial on how to participate in DYK might be helpful. I think the AfD and prods that come up on these articles discourage a number of new editors. There was a lot of negativity towards the editathons in AfD by some editors. The criticisms on AfD included:
  1. that editathons produced biographies on "marginal" women
  2. that editathons were "political" tools, which I see as dog-whistle for "oh noes! It's feminist and icky!"
  3. that artists at the editathons were promoting themselves.
Because of some of these perceptions, I think that educating more Wikipedians about the purpose and need for Art+Feminism would be beneficial. We also all need to be "out there" speaking for what we do and reminding people that the scope of WiR isn't just to turn red into blue, but also includes promoting (DYK), improving (GA), and saving articles from spurious AfD action. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:31, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Megalibrarygirl This is pretty much what I do with DYK: DYK how to. Maybe it will help? I'm also sure Gerda can help too, as I find it a frustrating process with that "interesting" thing. What is interesting to me may not remotely be interesting to the reviewer. I am glad you are able to monitor the AfDs, as I find it overwhelmingly negative. I trust that when you need my help with sourcing on one, you will notify me, as I just cannot steel myself to monitor it. And I agree education is key. Been talking with an Italian Wikipedian and there is so much misconception that fixing the gender gap = writing fluff articles. Fixing the gender gap is about writing women back into history, not inventing notability or shooting for an illogical even split of articles. If women aren't notable enough for a stand alone article, but are marginally notable, that means their significant contributions are added to articles that discuss what they do, who they are related with/in partnership with/work with, etc. If they aren't notable at all, they aren't. I don't see why it's hard to understand. SusunW (talk) 17:07, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
SusunW, you totally hit the nail on the head. The only thing I can come up with to explain the phenomena of people thinking that writing women into history is "adding fluff" is this:
  1. Many people think if it isn't on their radar it's "not important" (I think a lot of people do this unintentionally)
  2. Ever hear the studies about women and men who are split 50/50 in a room and allowed to talk 50% of the time each by gender? The perception afterwards is that even though each group of genders spoke the same amount (50%) it is perceived that the women spoke too much. It's similar to this anecdotal article about the TV show, "Jessica Jones" where the cast is fairly balanced 50/50 men/women but men watching the show have reported (I'll quote), "WTF ALL CHARACTERS ARE WOMEN." From these things it makes me think that as we add women to the mix more and more, it is perceived in a skewed manner by society. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:29, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Also this PBS report: Women Talk Too Much. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:33, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Megalibrarygirl Yes, blinders on is definitely a problem. If it isn't in my sphere, it doesn't happen. I think the reason that #2 happens is that in a patriarchal society things are linear. Top down varying positions indicate import, wealth, power, etc. In a feminist vision, or at least the one I subscribe to, things are circular. Encompassing diversity on an even field of opportunity. If you can only imagine order in a linear fashion, circular views tend to represent chaos and thus are rejected. SusunW (talk) 17:42, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
SusunW I like the way you describe that. It's easy to visualize. I think I view feminism like that, too and that's also why I'm not competitive: it doesn't seem important when things are "circular" rather than top-down. I wonder if the habit of some men speaking for women or thinking what they know what is best for them is also in play for some of these issues. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:53, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Megalibrarygirl I can be competitive, but I want everyone in the room to have a chance to participate. I think it plays into my aversion to leading, though. I don't like the linear model because it assumes some things are more important than others. In my world, whether you leave out the egg or forget the sugar both change the nature of the batter, but don't necessarily make the cake impalpable. I think the whole speaking for anyone thing results from linear thinking... What I have to say is more important... SusunW (talk) 18:12, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I hardly dare to intervene in this discussion but I think it is only fair to point out that there ARE lots of deserving articles on women that are deleted and there ARE huge opportunities to provide many of them with better referencing. I am convinced that on a level playing field, the articles on women can achieve just as much claim for inclusion as those on men -- but they need to be properly researched and resourced. Some of those coming out of the in-person editathons have very little claim to notability. I believe I noted just after International Women's Day that I was surprised so many had survived. So perhaps above all it's a matter of educating the editathon organizers.--Ipigott (talk) 18:26, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
I agree that a lot of bios get deleted because of lack of referencing... or in a lot of cases the noms at AfD don't bother doing WP:BEFORE or they don't have access to databases. Then there are those editors who get into arguments about what constitutes a reliable source (RS). That is very frustrating with many editors not understanding that local sources are valid as RS. One of the articles that I helped pull out of draft was rejected at the "Articles for Creation" desk and the criteria for rejection included that it relied on local sources only for an artist who is notable in Pittsburgh. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:43, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
I don't have an issue with a woman's bio being rejected because the sources were limited to the town of Foo IF someone would make the same argument about a man's bio. But that isn't the case. Time and time again, I come across old gbooks about "Notable people of Foo (some American city or state)" and 99.99% of the entries are men's bios. Try googling "men of Philadelphia" and "women of Philadelphia". There were actually books written about the men of that city. This is why I don't accept the argument that local sources are inadequate... tables turned, they are adequate. To be clear, I'm not saying a "local ref" and a book about men in a city are the same. I am saying that before a man's bio makes it into a book about Philadelphian men, there was probably a local ref -newspaper article, magazine article, etc.- on him making his bio subsequently notable enough to find its way into a book. I stumbled across an entry in an old Welsh book about a man named John Rowlands (Giraldus) last night and started his bio. The PD ref said in part that "His other services were enumerated by the Rector of Merthyr and others, in the Western Mail and other papers, when he had a paralytic seizure". To me, this is significant. The newspapers articles preceded a bio in a book... The newspaper articles had value in establishing WP:N. Megalibrarygirl's Pittsburgh example feels to me like an uneven-handed application of WP:N. Isn't this the poster child of WP:systemic bias? --Rosiestep (talk) 14:16, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
Personally, Rosiestep, I find that local notability is a good thing to add to Wiki since it helps build a bigger picture of what's going on nationally. Also, I find that I personally work on a local level (El Paso) quite often, so it's a prickly issue to me: I don't want some of my work to be invalidated because it's local in scope. But your point is very valid that many of the same criticisms applied to women's bios seem to not happen with men's bios as often. I wish we could have stats on that too... I hate arguing that something is true based on my gut, but that's what seems to be happening. What made the Pittsburgh case even more egregious though was that the rejector of the article is a librarian who should know better. :P Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:43, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
To clarify my point... I support local references, I use them, and I consider them to be WP:RS. What's not acceptable is uneven application of WP:RS and WP:N between men's and women's biographies. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:10, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
As someone who runs a lot of Wikipedia workshops for new editors, I have found that referencing is by far the toughest hurdle to clear. And it's not only a matter of good and bad sources, though that is often in play. People who are not trained in a style of referencing like MLA or Chicago often put in the barest URL ref, and no matter how good the source, I suspect it tends to appear substandard to hasty patrollers. New editors also don't always insert citations in all the places they're needed, even if they have ample sources. And a page with a lot of refs gets exponentially harder to edit because of the ref-code tangle; I wonder if at some point a lot of people don't just give up on adding refs because it makes the page so much harder to manage?Alafarge (talk) 17:45, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
@Alafarge, Megalibrarygirl, Rosiestep, and Ipigott: I'm back from my brief hiatus and I am 100% in agreement about the referencing challenges. Dare I guess to whom you referred Sue? Ian and Rosie, yes and yes. Quality of sourcing is a big issue, but so is the misunderstanding of many about quality and reliability. The guidelines require that RS be produced by authoritative, reputable authors and publishers. That does not necessarily omit, local sources, or even blogs. Local sourcing is where every story starts. I have reminded naysayers on more than one occasion that events such as the Birmingham bus boycott started as a local event. I totally agree Alafarge about the style of referencing thing too. It is probably the most difficult thing to learn, especially for the technically challenged, like myself. It is almost as if one needs a tutorial on inputting sourcing before one can write an article. Things I have noticed, the drop down citations box in the editing window does not have data input in the same order nor even the same fields, thus, for example, trans-title appears only in the drop down for journal. But clearly journals are not the only publications which have titles in foreign languages. Then there is the whole thing that the only options in the drop down are publisher and people are constantly changing that field in my articles to "work". I figure if that is a requirement, whoever programs the drop-downs should fix it to comply with MOS and if not — not-my-issue. It was very hard for me to learn harv referencing, but the advantages to it are that it allows individual page citations and also allows the text you are writing to be less cluttered. It is hard to read through the editing with the jumble of citations mixed in, so now that I have learned how to do harv refs, it is my preference. In my perfect world, whoever does the programming for the drop downs in the edit box would insert a check-box for harv referencing. SusunW (talk) 17:38, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Social media

Twitter

Check it out! We're tweeting! Unfortunately, this is not "automatic", e.g. twitter isn't scraping our metrics page and tweeting out every new article created by WiR editors. The tweets are curated by us. So we probably need a systematic way of sorting out what to tweet. Low-lying fruit would be some of the articles in a meetup's outcomes section, which is the crux of what's been tweeted. But that shouldn't be the all of it because if someone creates a great article this month on a Welsh women who founded a school for coal miners' daughters, we'd want to tweet it. So looking for suggestions on how to curate what to tweet. Note, DYKs are tweeted by the DYK twitter account, so we may not want to repeat those; but maybe we do? --Rosiestep (talk) 17:09, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

One thought would be something like, WP:WikiProject Women in Red/Twitter. We would link to it in our Navbox so it's easy to reach. We'd crowd-source our tweet suggestions. We'd end up with a historical record of the articles which appeared on Twitter. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:25, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Great idea, started Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Twitter.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:30, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
WoooooWWWW! Still think that we can use a "did you know" approach. It will be useful to see how many extra hits that articles get that are retweeted compared with a control group. It would be excellent if this was followed by journos and we saw that writing about women got you more readers than writing about men. Maybe thats a good message - If you (our readers) want us to write about more women then you need to read about more women..." Victuallers (talk) 17:36, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Update: today, 200 followers. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:17, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Pinterest

And thanks to Megalibrarygirl, check us out on Pinterest! --Rosiestep (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Happy to help with the Pinterest boards if you need (or want) another hand. I usually pin images relate to the Wikipedia entries I'm working on, anyway. For a while I was working through the women of Heterodoxy, for example, so I made a pinboard to see them all together. Look for me as "pennamite" there.Penny Richards (talk) 04:01, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
Hi Penny Richards. Yes, that would be great. I don't know how to do Pinterest... not even sure how to find pennamite... but Megalibrarygirl does and got it set up for WiR. --Rosiestep (talk) 13:59, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
Hi Penny Richards! I'd love to have you help me out with any of the social medias. I can email you the info and passwords. I also invited you as a collaborator on the boards I've already made you so can contribute through your own log in, too. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:44, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Facebook

And now, we have a Facebook fan page; again, compliments of our social media coordinator, Megalibrarygirl. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:24, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Social media strategy

@Megalibrarygirl and Penny Richards: We've changed the Twitter profile to say: "Did you know that only 16.08% of the English Wikipedia's biographies are about women? Not impressed? Join us!". Can one of you make the change on the Pinterest and Facebook pages? --Rosiestep (talk) 19:36, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

I don't have access to the account on Pinterest, I'm just invited to pin to the Women in Red Wikipedia boards there. I think only Megalibrarygirl can make changes like that.Penny Richards (talk) 20:01, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
Now I have access, thank you Megalibrarygirl, so I can do these tasks as they arise.Penny Richards (talk) 01:30, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

AfD: Laura Aguilar

Anyone who has time, please take a look at this page and weigh in on the current AfD proposal: Laura Aguilar.Alafarge (talk) 15:18, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Swiss project on women's biography

Hi Women in red, Here is the link to the published articles that have been written by new contributors during our workshops. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Suisse/Biographies_des_femmes_en_Suisse I will start translating them and will need your help as I am not familiar with the englisk wikipedia! Looking forward to cooperate. Actually I am going to start tweeting our articles, as you are doing it! --Nattes à chat (talk) 18:29, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Use the #fillthegendergap when you edit articles for Swiss project on women's biography. --LaMèreVeille (talk) 04:41, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Nattes à chat: Merci. Cette liste nous sera certainement utile. Et félicitations pour tout ce que vous avez fait dans le cadre de votre projet. Je vois qu'il y a certains noms que nous pourrons aborder sans délai dans le cadre de nos editathons actuels:
Pour les scientifiques, il faudrait compter sur les efforts de Keilana et le projet wp:Women scientists.
Si j'ai le temps, j'essairai de les ajouter sur nos différentes listes.--Ipigott (talk) 21:14, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
@Nattes à chat: Merci beaucoup pour la liste - vraiment elle sera utile. Je n'ai pas ma liste des scientifiques avec les nationalités actuellement, mais je pense que il y en a une ici. J'en ai une aussi chez moi, et je l'ajouterai probablement demain. Keilana (talk) 21:23, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
@Nattes à chat:, salut! Je suis heureuse que les médias sociaux nous ont réunis! Merci beaucoup de partager le lien et nous avertir de votre travail. Nous sommes impatients de collaborer avec vous sur ce projet important: ajouter les biographies des femmes à Wikipedia. Il y a quelques polyglottes parmi nous, pour nous aider avec certaines traductions. (P.S. Participerez-vous à Wikimania Esino Lario?) Respectueusement, --Rosiestep (talk) 03:51, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
Dear Rosiestep Hi! LaMèreVeille and me will be coming to Wikimania, and we are really looking forward to it. We have our last workshop on the 28th and will be heading to Esino Esario straight after that. In the meantime we are happy to see that you appreciate the work done within our project! We will tell our group of new contributors that their article are going to be translated in english. I hope it will motivate them to continue contributing. Thanks for your encouragements, it really means a lot!

Nattes à chat (talk) 08:38, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

*Rosiestep Yes! It would be a great encouragement to our new contributors. We have created a page here: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Suisse/Biographies_des_femmes_en_Suisse/Articles_publi%C3%A9s

although we have not yet divided the articles between those created in 2015 and 2016.

The article created in 2016 can be found on these two pages: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Suisse/Biographies_des_femmes_en_Suisse/Liste_Atelier1 and https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Suisse/Biographies_des_femmes_en_Suisse/Liste_Atelier2

Kind regards,


--Nattes à chat (talk) 09:56, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Nattes à chat I started tweeting them, and I put the tweet link on the articles' talkpages. --Rosiestep (talk) 00:55, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
LaMèreVeille Would it be ok if I connected https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Suisse/Biographies_des_femmes_en_Suisse with Women in Red using the interlanguage link? It would be easier to keep up with each other's work, I think. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:44, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Editathon participants

I have just updated the editathon participants listings. As you will see, it has not been easy to monitor all those who participated in the Art+Feminism editathon in March. Despite the fact that we appear to have had over 800 new articles, the participants listed only created about 420 of them. Many were of course created during the in-person editathons (and have generally not been listed) and others were existing articles that were improved. Even so, many more editors certainly took part in the virtual editathon. Please update the list if you can identify any additional names. Unfortunately, apart from AlexNewBot, we still do not appear to have any other tools for identifying the creators of our articles.--Ipigott (talk) 10:52, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Berlin and Esino Lario

@Rosiestep: I would be very interested to hear how WiR is to be presented in Berlin and Esino Lario. Can you provide links to the corresponding agenda pages. Maybe some of us could assist with background information, especially in connection with international collaboration.--Ipigott (talk) 14:14, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

@Ipigott: thank you for your offer of assistance. I accept!
In December 2015, I was slated to attend WMCON representing WikiWomen's User Group. In that role, I was accepted for the Pre-conference (20-21 April), and my suggested Lightening Talk on Event Design was also accepted. In that regard, I've prepared a slidedeck and a submitted a poster. I may not have an opportunity to present the Lightening Talk -they are all scheduled for 21 April- as I became a member of AffCom in January, AffCom Pre-meeting starts 21 April, and my AffCom responsibilities trump participation in Pre-conference Day2. If I do present the Lightening Talk, I'll upload my slidedeck to Commons and I'll give you a link here. The lightening talk is about WiR's event design.
Regarding Wikimania Esino Lario in June: I haven't started the slidedeck, but the accepted presentation submission is here. There is lee-way with content, but not with the topic: "Content Gender Gap, an International Movement". I'd be grateful for ideas, comments, feedback, relevant Commons images, metrics in a pretty table, word clouds, and so on. The talk duration is ~18 minutes. --Rosiestep (talk) 03:02, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: Congratulations on becoming a member of AffCom. Esino Lario looks like an exciting event in a beautiful setting. Your speaking together with Maximilian Klein and Rohini (who has been increasingly active on trying to reduce the Wikipedia gender gap in India) should provide an opportunity for fruitful future planning. Your suggestions for using the WiR approach for other language Wikipedias seems very sensible. Perhaps we could target French, German and Spanish while liaison with Norway would be very effective. And if there are volunteers from Italy too, so much the better. (Maybe an initial practical trial during next year's Women's History Month could be envisaged.) I think it would also be useful to explore more effective means for results from Wikidata to be used as a catalyst for cross-language article creation. Way back in the 1970s, the Soviets devised a way of picking out key elements of their Russian technical papers so that they could be automatically translated and compiled into short English-language abstracts. The results, published each month, were impressive. It looks to me as if the information now being added to Wikidata could be used for a similar approach on biographies. Editors could ask for the basic facts from Wikidata to be presented in running prose in their preferred language: name, place and dates of birth and death, main occupation, special achievements, main sources, etc. The result would be better than many of the one-line stubs we often get at the moment and would provide sources for further research.
I'm not too good at tables and things but I may be able to help by collecting any basic data you might need. Just let me know how I can assist.--Ipigott (talk) 08:07, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, Ian. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:23, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

April

Wikipedia editathon at University of Edinburgh 14-15 April for Spy Week 2016 - Women in Espionage

Hi, I'm organising an editathon on espionage as part of the university's Spy Week (full details of the week's programme here: http://www.spyweek.llc.ed.ac.uk/
The Wikipedia event page is here: Spy Week 2016. Currently trying to organise/focus in on enough articles to work on (and sources to accompany aforementioned articles) so if you have any guidance on particularly notable red-linked or stub pages we could work on that could tie in with Wikiproject Women in Red I'd greatly appreciate the heads up. Trawling the internet and the libraries at the moment and have generated a couple of Wikidata lists to keep me going in the interim. Any pointers then let me know. Cheers, Stinglehammer (talk) 01:51, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Intriguing subject. I've tweeted it at #wikiwomeninred ... maybe you could retweet some existing tweets to potential editathon invitees? Victuallers (talk) 11:51, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
@Stinglehammer: This looks like an enterprising way of encouraging more interest in contributing to Wikipedia. It seems to me it could be usefully combined with our April focus on an online Women writers editathon. We already have quite a list of female wartime spies at Category:Female wartime spies and there must be a whole branch of literature to back them up (both fact and fiction). To start you off, there's an interesting list of literature on spies from the CIA which contains the names of both male and female authors including Ann Blackman, Sarah Helm, Mary S. Lovell, Melissa Boyle Mahle, Elizabeth P. McIntosh, Judith Pearson, Tammy M. Proctor, Margaret Rossiter and Elizabeth R. Varon. As you can see, most of them are red links and I'm pretty sure most of the books cited are too. --Ipigott (talk) 12:52, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
@Ipigott and Stinglehammer: I'll see if I can find more names and I'll make a list. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 13:27, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Megalibrarygirl: You're always so quick to respond. I look forward to seeing your list evolve.--Ipigott (talk) 13:43, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Hi! @Ipigott and Stinglehammer:, no worries, I like doing the lists. :) I started a short one before I run some errands here: Spies. Feel free to add any names. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 14:28, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Hi! @Ipigott, Megalibrarygirl, and Victuallers: Thanks so much!! I'll add your suggestions to the event page and any more you can think of then I'm happy to include. Off to do some more research and promotion. Cheers, Stinglehammer (talk) 19:26, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Do we want to create a WiR meetup page for this event? We could WP:TAB it together with Women Writers if someone knows how to do that. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:06, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't think we need a separate meetup announcement but we can all cooperate. Everyone who reads this page will know what's going on and Megalibrarygirl is creating a list.--Ipigott (talk) 22:13, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
I wish the list was a little longer, but I did find a few names and a lot of articles for improvement. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:17, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
@Ipigott, Megalibrarygirl, Victuallers, and Stinglehammer: Will WiR be supporting this, and if yes, could someone please create a meetup page, e.g. (click on #11 in our Navbox and use it)? I can add a clickable button for the event atop our other April meetup pages to link them. Shall we use our standard mailing list to distribute invitations, and if you think that's appropriate, plus who else? Duration of the event? --Rosiestep (talk) 14:31, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
@Ipigott, Megalibrarygirl, Victuallers, and Rosiestep: I'd be very happy to have WiR support the event. Signup numbers have been fewer than hoped for thus far (term break just finishing so hoping to catch a few more peeps now staff & students are returning before 13th-14th April when the event is now taking place (2-4.30pm both days) so any invitations/mailing lists you can assist with at this late stage would be really terrific.Stinglehammer (talk) 14:53, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: I'm afraid I have too many irons in the fire at the moment to spend additional time on a meetup page and invitations at this late stage. As I said earlier, I think the best way of handling this would be simply to draw our members' attention to the possibility of covering women authors of spy stories as part of the main April editathon. This could be done in the form of an announcement on our main page. That would also help Stinglehammer I think.--Ipigott (talk) 06:51, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: I wouldn't mind setting up the meetup page, but I've never done invitations. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:24, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, @Megalibrarygirl:. I'll create/send the invitations tonight if you'll deal with the meetup page. Note, the naming convention changes with editathon #11. Please click the link in the NAVBOX to assure you get the correct name. (It won't be: Wikipedia:Meetup/WikiProject Women in Red/11; it'll be Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Meetup/11. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:51, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
@Rosiestep:, I started the page. I think I set it up OK. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:34, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Good job, @Megalibrarygirl:. I got the invites out. I think it might be fun! --Rosiestep (talk) 04:11, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
@Rosiestep and Megalibrarygirl: Thank you both for you efforts. The new red-red logo on the invitation looks good. I'll try to contribute to the editathon too but time spent on Welsh Women and Spies means less time on basic work on Writers. I was hoping to create and/or improve some of the lists and also cover a few more Scandinavian writers but there's simply not time for everything and we're almost half way through the month. Next week we'll have to start preparing for the Photographers (which I suppose will now be WIR/12). Never a dull moment!--Ipigott (talk) 07:00, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
True, never a dull moment. My thought is this and my children were the first to iterate it: I can't write all the articles. Adding Spies gives opportunity to someone to participate in a WiR April event who might not have created a WiR-scoped article otherwise. Or who created a couple of writers and was ready for something else. A few of us like one month events, but we haven't surveyed all our members or all our participants. We probably should. I'm guessing some people get bored with a 1 month event. So offering other opportunities like Spies might spice things up. And as we're trying to replicate WiR across languages, running simultaneous events might sow ideas for other cultures. Long story, short... no pressure on you, Ipigott, or anyone else on WiR to contribute to Spies. Let's get new folks to do so! :) --Rosiestep (talk) 13:24, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
@Rosiestep: Yes, but it's nice to write at least one article for each event. Are your children not old enough to contribute too? I also left comments for you on "Berlin and Esino Lario" on this page which you might have missed. There's always a problem with several pings at once.--Ipigott (talk) 13:38, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
@Ipigott: 2 of 3 have usernames and have contributed, albeit rarely. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:14, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
@Ipigott: Since we have some women writers on the spies list, you could combine the two. ;) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:55, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
@Ipigott, Victuallers, Rosiestep, and Megalibrarygirl: Just wanted to say a HUGE thanks for helping with the Spy Week editathon. Your support has been immense. Hoping this will be a regular feature of Spy Week every year from here on in. Thanks again! Stinglehammer (talk) 18:44, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Women writers

Pharos, Do you know when there might be an update from the NYPL regarding our Women Writers campaign in April? It would be an honor to develop this collaboration, something we might foster annually. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:32, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Invitation to edit: Europeana Art History challenge

Hi all, yesterday was the first day of the Europeana Art challenge. You can sign up and participate here: d:Wikidata:Europeana Art History Challenge. I made a little list of all artworks by women, so you can pick one to work on here: User:Jane023/Works by women in the Europeana Art Challenge. Jane (talk) 09:29, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Signpost article regarding WHM/A+F event

Hi there. Seeking someone(s) to write an article on March's Women's History Month. The collaboration of WiR and A+F. Interview the 3 co-founders, plus their main coordinators; use of hashtags; AfD issues; social media coverage; press coverage; etc. Thanks. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:14, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Hashtag & Storify

Let's talk about hashtags and storify. Maybe they are separate subjects; dunno. For a start and for historical context, I've copied over some posts from my usertalkpage. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:40, 13 April 2016 (UTC) 

== Women in Red hashtag? ==
Hi Rosiestep, is there a hashtag specifically for WiR edits, or are the #ArtAndFeminism and #NowEditingAF hashtags the appropriate ones to use? Circa73 (talk) 16:47, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
I must say I'm a bit confused about the hashtags and Facebook pages. I have very little experience of the social network facilities as I do not have time to use them. I see we had #WikiContentGenderGap in January and February and in March we have a link to Facebook. Up to now we have nothing for Wikipedia:Meetup/Women_in_Red/10. Should we be developing a policy on this? Should we also have links to Twitter and Facebook on our main page?--Ipigott (talk) 10:44, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
(talk page stalker). Hi, Ipigott. You can make up a Wikipedia WIR hashtag like #wir and put it in the edit summary of each WIR article edit. Then you can do a search with this new special Wikipedia hashtag search engine: http://tools.wmflabs.org/hashtags/search/
Here is an example search for #artandfeminism edits – http://tools.wmflabs.org/hashtags/search/artandfeminism
Here would be the search for #wir edits – http://tools.wmflabs.org/hashtags/search/wir
We had a high school editathone at Nueva Upper School and here is their edit search for #nueva – http://tools.wmflabs.org/hashtags/search/nueva
Since very few hashtags are in use on Wikipedia you have a lot of flexibility in choosing one. I hope this helps. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 21:31, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
{ping|Checkingfax}} Thanks for your suggestions. The tag we have been using most consistently is #wikiwomeninred. It seems to me just adding the code to an edit summary is a rather strange way of dealing with it. Is there no other way it could be added, for example as part of a template such as {{WIR-W 2016}}. Or maybe a new feature could be developed along with categories, etc., to provide specifically for the inclusion of a hashtag? @Harej: Have you or your Wikidata colleagues any views on this?--Ipigott (talk) 06:51, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Ipigott. I recently learned of the hashtag search engine at the artandfeminism edit-a-thon at California College of Arts in SF. It is hard to get into the habit of putting a hashtag in the edit summary and even #artandfeminism was a bit of a tongue twister to type into each edit. A few weeks later I went to an edit-a-thon at a women's makerspace/hackerspace called Double Union in SF, and any fem/art articles I worked on I inserted the artandfeminism hashtag into the edit summary. I used WP:AWB once to do some batch edits and I had AWB populate the edit summary with a stock one that included the A&F hashtag. 
If you go to the bottom of that search page you can see the WMF employees who created this as an after-hours volunteer effort: Mahmoud Hashemi and Stephen LaPorte. LaPorte is on the legal team at WMF. It would be nice if you could press a button that would insert your hashtag of the day. Ping me back. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 07:05, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
@Checkingfax: This is all useful background for the development of a most consistent strategy on the use of hashtags in articles. I would welcome feedback/suggestions from others including Rosiestep. I think it is important to develop something that will be more widely applicable. We don't want one approach for WiR and another for other projects.--Ipigott (talk) 07:20, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

===Women in ecology===
Nice to meet you, Rosiestep-- I've been tweeting about #womeninecology this month, and ran into your Women in Red project. Haven't been on Wikipedia for a while, but wanted to let you know that I just updated my "red list" for women in ecology at User:Araucana/sandbox. Covers women who got PhDs prior to 1975, per Langenheim. See Women in Ecology at ESA/history for info and refs if desired. Thanks! Araucana (talk) 23:00, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for checking it. I've been collecting the tweets at Storify:Women in Ecology. I may go back and gather older, pre-hashtag ones there as well. Storify might be a good resource as you develop your social media efforts. Araucana (talk) 14:49, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, all. I was checking on Mahmoud Hashemi and it looks like he is a top level Python programmer at PayPal, not a WMF employee as I stated above. I guess hashtags that are spelled out are the way to go, so the WMF hashtag for WIR could still be #womeninred, and that search engine would provide the summary and tally of all edits performed with that hashtag in their edit summary. A JavaScript to insert hashtags into the edit summary (maybe from a drop-down menu near the edit summary) could certainly be created by a user with JavaScripting skills and then be installed by editors wanting to implement it. Having a hashtag menu would help avoid typing mistakes too‍—‌I really had to knuckle down to avoid typos with #artandfeminism.

WMF edit summary hashtags can be used to create metrics from edit-a-thons, and I am sure there are more benefits. I do not know the social networking benefit of the metrics but the summary could be used to measure the success that is then publicized in social media. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 18:23, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

You can take a look here. See that blue line below edit summary field? There we have collected the most used edit summaries, which get added to field itself after clicking on them. If you like it, I can create similar script here with all hashtags you want/like, and extra summaries (like "typo", "answer" etc.). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:44, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Self-portraits of women

I came across this in the current GLAM review. As it's been created automatically from Wikidata, it might serve as an example of what else we might achieve by drawing on Wikidata items. In any case, it might be useful in its own right for those interested in women in art. We seem to be reaching the stage where Wikidata can provide increasingly useful services. Thanks to Pigsonthewing.--Ipigott (talk) 11:37, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Actually it was an idea of User:Spinster and we worked on it during the A+F weekend. Glad you like it! I made a local version here: User:Jane023/Self-portraits of women. Jane (talk) 15:23, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
@Jane023: I see you and your colleagues have developed lots of similar lists in connection with your d:Wikidata:Europeana Art History Challenge. Wikidata seems to be particularly effective for art.--Ipigott (talk) 08:13, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
You would be surprised what ListeriBot is used for. I like art and use it for art, but there are all sorts of lists made by people interested in all sorts of things, on many different projects. Not all projects understand what it does so they have not enabled it. You can see the botstatus here: latest list updates by ListeriaBot per project. Jane (talk) 10:20, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Oklahoma resource

Oklahoma Historical Society if anyone is interested in writing about women in the state of Oklahoma. — Maile (talk) 20:42, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

RIP Merle ... I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee and love writing about Oklahoma women. Thanks Maile66! SusunW (talk) 21:09, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
And let's not forget the native population.--Ipigott (talk) 08:02, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
My first solo articles on WP were on native women. 77 tribes were forcibly removed to Oklahoma, so there are many, many records and families there. SusunW (talk) 15:20, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

May & June Metrics upkeep

Is someone able to volunteer and do metrics for May & June? Thanks. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:47, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

I would be willing to do July and August but am going to be gone the entire month of June on an Eastern European walk about. SusunW (talk) 18:11, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
I can certainly try to help but I can't guarantee anything like the level of coverage Edgars2007 was able to achieve. Maybe Harej can look into his methodology and develop better tools to help us along. I will, in any case, be carefully monitoring progress on photographers.--Ipigott (talk) 08:00, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
I did a scan some few months ago (maybe in February) for Women by nationality, but I think there was only some 80 articles, which were not in metrics page. Yeah, if Harej is interested, I can share with my method. The way I did that was quite work-aroundish (because I had limited access to database), but I assume Harej has full access, so he can write easier query/tool. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:11, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
This looks encouraging. Maybe Rosiestep can work out some kind of official collaboration between Edgars2007 and Project X? This seems to be top priority for the core members of WiR.--Ipigott (talk) 08:19, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
Hi Edgars2007 - I am sure that the leaders of WikiProject X, @Harej and Isarra, are open to new ideas, if you'd like to ping them directly. --Rosiestep (talk) 16:13, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

@Edgars2007:, I am interested in hearing your methodology so that I can automate this process. (I have access to the replicas on Labs, which just about anyone can get access to, including through Quarry, though Quarry limits you by how long a query can take.) Harej (talk) 15:12, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Munira Thabit

Can someone who is more technical than me figure out what "code" is putting the birth range which is typed as (1902-1967) but shows as (1967-1902) in the wrong order? Thank you! SusunW (talk) 15:04, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

I would suggest you post further at WP:VPT. It's something in the coding for the Arabic spelling of her name. I tried spacing afterwards, and it literally transposed it in the edit window. I tried clicking my Enter key right after the parenthesis, and it did the same thing. Any keyboard stroke after the Arabic transposed the numbers. After trying several other methods, the only way I got it fixed was to retype the lead, without the Arabic, as if it were a fresh paragraph beneath the one you typed. Then I deleted the one you typed. But there must be a logical explanation, and those folks at the Village Pump probably have an answer. — Maile (talk) 22:12, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
Maile66 thanks, yes, it's like it isn't seeing the closing brackets on the Arabic spelling. I'll ask them. SusunW (talk) 23:06, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Good article nominee help - Women in Japan

I'm currently reviewing Women in Japan for good article status. I have some concerns about the article as documented in my review Talk:Women_in_Japan/GA1#Comments. Unfortunately I don't think there are any [[Women in [country X]]] good articles yet to review it against :(, so in a way it is a "red link". If promoted it would be the first, and would help show how and what needs to be included in such articles to be rated as "good".

If at all possible I'd be grateful if some editors here could help improve the article, as it needs some attention, to both its content and wording. Many thanks (hopefully!), --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:02, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi LT910001! I'm going to boldly ping @SusunW and Dr. Blofeld: because they have a lot of experience with the GA process. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:19, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
I actually looked at this a couple of days ago, but it needs serious work, based in his preliminary review. Just the first point of info Tom wants is historic info, which goes into the whole change from Confucianism to Buddhism. Religion itself is baffling to me and then add to it a culture(s) I know nothing about, and I realized it is way over my ability to help. SusunW (talk) 23:28, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia Conference 2016: "Lightening Talk - How to design a successful virtual editathon"

"Lightening Talk - How to design a successful virtual editathon"

As promised, here is a link to my presentation today in Berlin. It went really well. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:54, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

@Rosiestep: You did a good job summarizing the main aspects of what we have been doing in recent months. The only drawback might be that it all looks rather more complex than it really is in practice. Most of it has simply "evolved" as we have tried to increase interest and attract more participants. What I missed was more attention to the need to include encouraging messages/background info for newbies, and the importance of assisting them with their initial work. But perhaps we have not been as successful as we might have been in this respect. Glad to hear the presentation was well received. Was there any interest in replication?--Ipigott (talk) 09:49, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
Interesting and thanks for posting. I am missing the lessons learned. Also, I think it is important to mention the behind-the-scenes work involved (scanning to add changes to the list/defense of AfD noms/problems with counting in general/ripple effect of this effort as part of larger international March 8th related chapter-affiliated A+F events, etc). Jane (talk) 10:21, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
There is lots of interest in replicating. Regarding "lessons learned", it is basically addressed in the "Women's History Month debrief" section on this talkpage. Sorry for brevity; I am in an all day AffCom meeting so do not have time for a longer post at this time. --Rosiestep (talk) 12:07, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
Rosiestep so glad it went well and appreciate your efforts in moving us forward. SusunW (talk) 15:16, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Quick review of nominees for Antarctic Women list

Hello again WiR,

I'm working with SCAR to put together Wikipedia articles for important Antarctic researchers, explorers, policy-makers etc for an event in August (You may also remember Megalibrarygirl's list). Members have nominated almost a hundred people, and a group of volunteers are working to put together initial draft articles on the nominees (loosely based on the preloaddraft template). We hope to have as many as possible of the articles in draftspace by the beginning of August, and move them into mainspace at the event of just before it.

The 35 initial drafts are in a PDF (dropbox PDF link).

I'd love input on a couple of things:

  • Notability - I've checked the nominees and I think that they meet the notability criteria, but it would be excellent to have a second opinion! Here is the guideline that members were given for nominating.
  • References - I've not much experience in biography articles. Any opinions on the spread of sources used to support the nominees would help. I've advised that self-published/faculty-published sources are ok for uncontroversial things, but there needs to be mostly third-party sources for most points. Citations will be moved inline when we create draft articles.
Summary bullet list
  • Mary Albert
  • Viviana Alder
  • Escartín Conxita Avila
  • Robin Bell
  • Merieme Chadid
  • Kathleen Conlan
  • Kim Crosbie
  • Bethan Davies
  • Carlota Escutia
  • Helen Fricker
  • Christel Hansen
  • Bettine Jansen van Vuuren
  • Deneb Karentz
  • Kovacs Kit
  • Jennifer Lee
  • Wei Lijie
  • Karin Lochte
  • Bettina Meyer
  • Robyn Millan
  • Rachael Morgan-Kiss
  • Linda Nedbalova
  • Patricia Ortuzar
  • Erin Pettit
  • Marilyn Raphael
  • Christina Riesselman
  • Michelle Rogan-Finnemore
  • Jane Rumble
  • Rhian Salmon
  • Irene Schloss
  • Sudipta Sengupta
  • Deborah Steinberg
  • Teresa Torres
  • Jemma Wadham
  • Sophie Warny
  • Barbara Wienecke

Thanks in advance for any feedback! T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 05:37, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Woww, what a great event! Great work! I can help in the way, that if you have all the basic info of the persons (date of birth, city of birth, alma matar, Universities studied, field of research, residence etc.) in for instance excel, I can get the total format of all the articles in a few clicks. A basic layout for an article like those is I would say:Infobox, introduction, career, personal info, list of publications/awards etc., references, categories:

{{Infobox scientist}} (with all the info of course)
'''<Full name>''' (Born <Date of birth> in <city of birth>) is a female <nation> scientist… <in a few sentences why she is notable>.

==Personal==
<Personal info>

==Career==
<career> (main part of the article)

==Awards/selection of publications/etc.==
<list of publications/awards etc.>

==References==
{{reflist}}

<categories>

As an example of how I would do it (I wrote one about myself to include in my own thesis :) ): User:Sander.v.Ginkel/sandbox2. Good luck Sander.v.Ginkel (Talk) 07:58, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Evolution and evolvability I mostly write biographies. I think it's great that you are preparing them ahead of time to eliminate issues at the event. My overall comments, they need work on balance. Encyclopedic writing is neither resumé style, press release style nor essay style. I see some that are bulleted lists like resumés and others that use language like "...was inspired by her parents to love, protect and respect the natural world" which is more like an essay, or "probably inspired by the trip to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum which she still loves" or "is the most accomplished scientist I know", which appears like press release puffery. Better to keep it simple and less flowery, "from a young age was interested in nature". I see lots of uses of titles, Dr. this or Dr. that, which should be eliminated along with use of first names. We don't know these people personally and use of first name is overly familiar in an encyclopedia entry. Sally Ride is Ride, if someone else in the bio has the same surname, they can be referred to by first name, as they are not the principle subject. The lede is missing from them all. It needs have a short summary of relevant points in the essay and to state precisely why they are notable. (She edits a journal, she made a discovery, she received an award for, a glacier is named for her, etc. Remember that someone who is routinely performing their job may not meet WP notability criteria.) Each statement in the bio should have a specific reference to an external source. All appear to list sources at the end without in-line citations. Linked-in and Wikipedia are not acceptable sourcing, nor is the scientist's own work. I would also say that you need to have a plan for taking the articles to mainspace as if they are submitted to AfC, there will be issues. Hope that helps, it is an overall impression. They appear to be good starts but need work. SusunW (talk) 15:13, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
@SusunW: Thanks for the feedback. I agree that the tone and style are going to have to be brought into line with an encyclopaedic format. My plans for moving the drafts forward are a) to fix the tone so that we know which statements are going to have to be supported, then b) to go through each statement and check if it's supported by a third-party source that can be placed inline. I aim to only use faculty websites and publications to support any non-contentious statements that aren't covered by third-party sources. Any other advice is, or course, very welcome! Thanks again. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 23:49, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

OMG OMG!

Women in Red has a Wikidata item number: Q23875215! And, as if this isn't enough awesome news, we have an interlanguage sister project in Farsi language! This really is exciting. And lest I forget my manners, hi from my layover at Newark airport. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:07, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

WOOT! Congratulations Rosiestep our baby is growing :) Travel safely! SusunW (talk) 23:11, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
LOL. Too awesome! This cheered up my day. :D Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:17, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
+ in Chinese, folks. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:21, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 8

Newsletter • March / April 2016

This month:

Transclude article requests anywhere on Wikipedia

In the last issue of the WikiProject X Newsletter, I discussed the upcoming Wikipedia Requests system: a central database for outstanding work on Wikipedia. I am pleased to announce Wikipedia Requests is live! Its purpose is to supplement automatically generated lists, such as those from SuggestBot, Reports bot, or Wikidata. It is currently being demonstrated on WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health (which I work on as part of my NIOSH duties) and WikiProject Women scientists.

Adding a request is as simple as filling out a form. Just go to the Add form to add your request. Adding sources will help ensure that your request is fulfilled more quickly. And when a request is fulfilled, simply click "mark as complete" and it will be removed from all the lists it's on. All at the click of a button! (If anyone is concerned, all actions are logged.)

With this new service is a template to transclude these requests: {{Wikipedia Requests}}. It's simple to use: add the template to a page, specifying article=, category=, or wikiproject=, and the list will be transcluded. For example, for requests having to do with all living people, just do {{Wikipedia Requests|category=Living people}}. Use these lists on WikiProjects but also for edit-a-thons where you want a convenient list of things to do on hand. Give it a shot!

Help us build our list!

The value of Wikipedia Requests comes from being a centralized database. The long work to migrating individual lists into this combined list is slowly underway. As of writing, we have 883 open tasks logged in Wikipedia Requests. We need your help building this list.

If you know of a list of missing articles, or of outstanding tasks for existing articles, that you would like to migrate to this new system, head on over to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Requests#Transition project and help out. Doing this will help put your list in front of more eyes—more than just your own WikiProject.

An open database means new tools

WikiProject X maintains a database that associates article talk pages (and draft talk pages) with WikiProjects. This database powers many of the reports that Reports bot generates. However, until very recently, this database was not made available to others who might find its data useful. It's only common sense to open up the database and let others build tools with it.

And indeed: Citation Hunt, the game to add citations to Wikipedia, now lets you filter by WikiProject, using the data from our database.

Are you a tool developer interested in using this? Here are some details: the database resides on Tool Labs with the name s52475__wpx_p. The table that associates WikiProjects with articles and drafts is called projectindex. Pages are stored by talk page title but in the future this should change. Have fun!

On the horizon
  • The work on the CollaborationKit extension continues. The extension will initially focus on reducing template and Lua bloat on WikiProjects (especially our WPX UI demonstration projects), and will from there create custom interfaces for creating and maintaining WikiProjects.
  • The WikiCite meeting will be in Berlin in May. The goal of the meeting is to figure out how to build a bibliographic database for use on the Wikimedia projects. This fits in quite nicely with WikiProject X's work: we want to make it easier for people to find things to work on, and with a powerful, open bibliographic database, we can build recommendations for sources. This feature was requested by the Wikipedia Library back in September, and this meeting is a major next step. We look forward to seeing what comes out of this meeting.

Until next time,

Harej (talk) 01:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC) Ipigott (talk) 09:59, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

@Harej: This seems to be coming along very well. I was particularly interested in your list for Women scientists but am still not too sure how this was created. Perhaps you could provide more precise instructions so that we can prepare a list of redlinks on women photographers (which we'll be covering in May). The problem is that we do not have a WikiProject Women photographers although we could possibly look for articles categorized "Women photographer" or look in Wikidata for "Photographer" combined with "Female". It would be useful to obtain Wikidata info on those documented in other languages on Wikipedia.--Ipigott (talk) 09:59, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
Ipigott, the list was created based off of the work of WikiProject Women scientists. Keilana could tell you more how those lists were created, but I believe it involved poring through long encyclopedias. Harej (talk) 00:15, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
That is precisely what it entailed. :) Keilana (talk) 02:28, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
@Keilana: I might have guessed it was the result of your efforts. Great job! @Harej: Excuse me for returning to this but in recent weeks I've seen a variety of interesting lists, apparently created from a combination of Wikidata and Commons, such as those on artists created by Jane023 and in particular the one on Welsh women, Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Women biographies, which has been created by Dr. Blofeld from Wikidata. I was simply wondering how to create a list of women photographers from Wikidata, if possible with images, as an aid to writing English-language biographies on those covered in other language versions. Is this feasible or should I try to compile a list manually on the basis of articles under Category:Women photographers which has equivalents in French, Spanish and a few other languages?--Ipigott (talk) 10:00, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
You can move the list to your userspace, if you want. Another list (ranked by number of iws), the first result won't be in your interests :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:19, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
@Edgars2007: Thanks a million for you efforts. This is exactly what I wanted. @Megalibrarygirl: Do you think it would be useful to display this list as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Photographers? Maybe it could also be linked to the page for WiR12, once I've started to put it together.--Ipigott (talk) 06:42, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for tagging me in, Ipigott, this is a really interesting development that seems very useful. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:51, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
@Megalibrarygirl: Do you think it would be useful to include something at the top of the redlink pages with Wikidata additions to draw attention to them? I completely missed the addition to "Photographers". In February, Harej communicated his Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Tasks/Wikidata Missing Article Report. While this is certainly useful, the display is not as attractive as the one for photographers. If you have time, perhaps you could check all the lists of red links and see if there are others with Wikidata additions. @Rosiestep: Perhaps we should be more systematic about how we use these Wikidata tools for creating lists of red links for women in various occupations?--Ipigott (talk) 08:45, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
I don't have the technical expertise to be more systematic using the wikidata tools for creating redlists but hoping others on this string can sort it out. --Rosiestep (talk) 10:35, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure, Ipigott. I think since the list is in the table of contents, that should be enough. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:57, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Coming up in May

You are invited...

Women in Photography worldwide online edit-a-thon

(To subscribe, Women in Red/Invite list. Unsubscribe, Women in Red/Opt-out list)

We'll be sending out the invitations soon. Feel free to add your name to the list of participants on the editathon page.--Ipigott (talk) 11:20, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

File:Monir Portrait-exh ph021.jpg
You are invited...

Women artists of Middle East / North Africa
worldwide online edit-a-thon

(To subscribe, Women in Red/Invite list. Unsubscribe, Women in Red/Opt-out list) --Rosiestep (talk) 14:25, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Meetup page naming convention

Some of you may have noticed I am migrating the meetup pages from "Wikipedia:Meetup/Women in Red/x" to "Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Meetup/x". This is based on conversations on this talkpage in March, and on the WikiProject Council talkpage. I will try and get this cleaned up by the weekend. In the meantime, sorry for any redirect confusion. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:29, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Of interest

Not sure which project would be most interested in this, but forward as appropriate: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Resting bitch face. Montanabw(talk) 01:45, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

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