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Potential/Suggestions Archive

Geofocus ideas

2022 geofocus?

Do we have more of the continents left? Or do we need to think about how to geofocus for next year? There's a nice alphbet based idea above? Lajmmoore (talk) 17:04, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up, Lajmmoore. We've now covered most of the world but not yet the United States and Canada. I had originally suggested that we could possibly address certain areas of North America -- or even specific states or provinces -- in 2022. We could, for example, devote each quarter to one of the five geographic regions: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest and West. That would bring us into the first quarter of 2023. We could then tackle Canada. Perhaps we could give special attention to indigenous and minority communities. Any interest in this approach?--Ipigott (talk) 19:55, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

If this approach is done, it'd also make sense IMO to do territories as a section. They rarely get any focus and like the Caribbean gets lost in Latin America and the Caribbean, territories get lost in the US or Pacific focus. SusunW (talk) 23:15, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

How about devoting January to the territories: American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands? In February and March we could cover Canada before returning to the first of the five geographic regions of the United States in the second quarter (April to June), taking the others in the following quarters? Just a suggestion. Any more ideas?--Ipigott (talk) 10:45, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I know Maile66 had previously mentioned Guam on the WiR page. Somewhere in our archives would be a list of teachers from the USVI who had schools named after them. I'll try to search for it. SusunW (talk) 19:46, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Ipigott Here's the Guam redlist, whici came from Guampedia Women in Guam History. I think your idea for January is excellent. — Maile (talk) 20:21, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Apparently, I listed them all /The_World_Contest/Missing_articles/Latin_America_and_the_Caribbean#_US_Virgin_Islands here. SusunW (talk) 19:53, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

SusunW, Maile66, Ipigott I like the idea in principle, I think my only concern is that we'll be investing a lot more time on North America than we have for the other continents - but I'm not clear whether this is still part of the continental challenge, or has evolved into a new initiative? Would two months each for the US regions & territories work? Or two months for the regions, then one month each for Canada and Overseas territories? or do people prefer the 3 month time period? Lajmmoore (talk) 21:44, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Lajmmoore, December ends the Continental Challenge! The original brainstorming session of the Challenge is in the 2019 archives under "August Brainstorming". I think we have succeeded, but I think my prediction of Oceania having the highest count will depend on December:) Best, WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 23:01, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm US territories - why not just "Territories"? UK has a handful (all interesting places) and I suspect many countries would have them... NZ has lots of islands I believe. Victuallers (talk) 23:35, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Canada has three territories, but uses the term territories differently from the others: Provinces and territories of Canada CT55555(talk) 17:18, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

First quarter 2022 and beyond

My reasoning behind this was that whether we like it or not, most of Wikipedia's biographies are on people from the United States. For this reason, if we are to reduce the gender gap we need to improve our coverage of U.S. women in all the occupations and interests we cover. By specifying geographic areas, we should be able to encourage contributors to look more carefully into women from their own region or from states, cities and communities in which they have a special interest. Each of the three months per quarter could emphasize the need to cover different aspects, for example historical figures, indigenous and minority communities, and current leadership. (These can of course be refined later, with suitable redlists based on state-by-state analysis, etc.) In my opinion, a quarter for each geographical region would therefore not be excessive but maybe two months per region would be sufficient for those who feel American coverage does not require too much additional effort. In any case, if we can agree that in January we should cover the territories and in February and March, Canada, we could always decide later how exactly we handle the United States -- if at all.--Ipigott (talk) 09:30, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that focusing on regions of the US would be difficult and I'm not sure how effective so my vote would be for the US event to include all states, and as a separate event, the territories (mentioned above). --Rosiestep (talk) 16:31, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not too sure if I understand what you are suggesting, Rosie. Do you mean we should specify a selection of states for each quarter? If so, how should they be grouped?--Ipigott (talk) 19:29, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I was looking at the regional map included in this section and thinking that for me, it would be hard to focus on a region. For someone else, that might be easy. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:23, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

One month each for US territories, Canada and the whole of the US seems sensible to me, to avoid contributing to US-centric bias. Could be one last “quarterly” contest, but with a focus each month? Innisfree987 (talk) 21:39, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Just a heads up, I am tapping out of the geofocus "contests" once the Continental Challenge ends Dec 31st. It was a good experiment and I think it showed that quarterly editathons can have sustained interest and cut down on administration. My opinion is that we should continue with our established Annual initiatives (Black History, Art+Feminism, Pride, STEM, etc.) but WiR should do quarterly events, rather than changing everything up every month. I don't think that narrow geofocus editathons will gain traction among our members. I don't see a reason to have multiple new events each month. There just isn't enough return on time invested, especially geofocus. Quality over quantity. Just one editor's opinion. I am happy to continue helping with the invite and pages. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 02:12, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

WomenArtistUpdates: Let me just start by saying how much I have appreciated all your excellent work on the continental contests. You've been able to keep us fully informed of progress, have awarded prizes and barnstars to participants and have kept tallies of overall results. Great work!

Bur on future planning, I'm a bit surprised that you bring up "time investment" in connection with our month-by-month planning? When I was doing all this myself, it took me about an hour each month. All I really needed assistance with was additional sets of red links. From time to time Rosiestep would come up with new topics and innovative ideas for presentation and Megalibrarygirl would check things through for errors or shortcomings. Personally, I think monthly priorities make everything so much more interesting, keeping hundreds of our members and page viewers aware of our dynamism. If there is a preference for quarter-by-quarter not just for geofocus but for everything else, then I would of course agree with the consensus. As for the "traction", I have found from reviewing and assessment that many of the new biographies created each month coincide with our priorities but do not appear on our event listings as apparently some of our most active contributors find it too much of a hassle to find the event number, etc., preferring instead just to specify WIR on the talk page. (It's actually quite astonishing how many biographies carry just the basic WIR tag or the tag specifying the year.) Even so, it seems to me listings of 225 writers, 90 scientists and even 68 indigenous women are pretty significant results. If those who have been working on new events pages are finding it too constraining, I would be only too happy handle them myself once again. I always found them interesting to work on, choosing illustrations, finding relevant contacts, alerting other wikiprojects, etc., but I must say I would not be able to replicate the impressive artwork and barnstars from WomenArtistUpdates. There also seems to be a case for one-day events, as Victuallers was able to show with Ada Lovelace successes. Maybe we could introduce more of these in 2022. In any case, before we abandon our month-by-month priorities, I think we should seek wider reactions, not only here but on the WiR talk page.--Ipigott (talk) 12:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I interupt my work on Mary Earle today. A biog that is inspired by our "deaths in 2021" subject next month, however she also scores under my contributions to the Oceania theme where I have just been made an "Honorary Aussie" for my work. Oh and she was born in Scotand so she also scores a point for 55th WIR editathon at Edinborough University last Friday. When I was working as a teacher I would say "write about an engineer", but the students were more interested when I said "write about a woman engineer but she must not be alive or someone who was born in the UK or the US"... Just saying. Victuallers (talk) 12:18, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

WiR has hundreds of participants and I think that offering variety has contributed to that. Because we showcase some of the new articles created during each month, our Twitter account has >10K followers. So before we make any major changes to our programming format, let's request feedback on our WiR talkpage. We could do so now, and include a notice in the December MassMessage that there's still time to comment. In fact -switching now to my MBA hat- I think requesting feedback on an annual basis is a great idea. Thank you, Ipigott! That said, WomenArtistUpdates, it is a lot of work to plan/prepare for the next month and thank you for what you and others have been doing! As part of seeking feedback on our WIR talkpage, we could include a "help wanted" appeal for coordinators. And Victuallers, bravo on being made an "Honorary Aussie" for your WiR work!! --Rosiestep (talk) 20:02, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Rosiestep: I think it might indeed be a good idea to discuss this on our main talk page, maybe in a week or two, unless there are further signs of support for our existing approach here. We also have a new proposal that geofocus for the first three months should be devoted to the U.S. territories (January), Canada (February), and the whole of the United States (March). Any reactions on that?--Ipigott (talk) 07:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Ipigott, I go along with the consensus. --Rosiestep (talk) 11:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Rosiestep, WomenArtistUpdates, Innisfree987, SusunW, Megalibrarygirl: It looks pretty clear to me that unless anyone objects, we should go ahead with Women in business and geofocus on the territories in January. But we still need to sort out whether we should continue month-by-month priorities for the remainder of 2022 or just establish more general topics on a quarterly basis as earlier suggested. It would be useful to have more reactions here. Not sure who else to ping on this. Any suggestions?--Ipigott (talk) 11:35, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Ipigott, how about asking on the WiR talkpage? --Rosiestep (talk) 11:44, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Done! I suggest further discussions on these items should be on the main WiR talk page under "Plans for 2022".--Ipigott (talk) 12:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Geofocus A-Z

Seems to me that we tend to focus on the same areas over and over and I am wondering if we just did a straight alphabetical list of countries each month, if that would get more coverage of women worldwide. So for example "A" would have lists from: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, and Azerbaijan; "B" would have Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso and Burundi; and so forth. SusunW (talk) 20:09, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

@SusunW: That would be interesting. The geofocus would be filled for almost 2 years before the list would be repeated :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 03:54, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

I like this a lot. --Rosiestep (talk) 13:48, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Did we decide to do this? It does seem like a sensible idea ☕ Antiqueight ^chatter 13:17, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

We did "I" a while back. Nice idea to do all 26 but ... Some letters don't have any or many countries: see List of sovereign states. Three for F and for J, only one O, one Q, no W or X, one Y, two Zs. PamD 15:40, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I've been thinking that this might be a unique way of covering geofocus for January 2021 – December 2022. Over the course of 24 months, we would cover countries at the rate of one letter per month, except for December 2022 when we would include X+Y+Z. Some letters have very few options, e.g. countries starting with the letter Q, while other letters have a lot of countries. But over the course of 24 months, this would even out. Some considerations:

Incorporate Historical States that no longer exist within the alphabet scheme?

Skip our annual May geofocus on "CEE countries" and November geofocus on "Wiki Asia Month"?

Omit US and UK? --Rosiestep (talk) 15:46, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't see why not to include Historical states, as it'd flesh out the possibilites. I think we'd have to see which countries would fall under May / November first before deciding to keep/skipping over. Omitting US/UK doesn't seem right as it won't be worldwide. Whether it's a year long/two year long geofocus, the Us would be near the end of the list. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 15:58, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

How about developing this idea for the 12 months of 2021, carefully selecting countries for each month, not just one letter but perhaps two or sometimes three at a time. On the basis of the experience we gain from our June 2020 geofocus on reducing gender imbalance, we could compile a list of "deserving" countries for the whole year. Looking further ahead, in 2022, we might consider doing something along these lines for deserving cities or federal states, maybe even picking some from the English-speaking countries.--Ipigott (talk) 16:04, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Having two or more letters per month seems good as some letters are limited like PamD said i.e O/Q. Expanding on your idea, maybe in each editathon there could be a focus list of countries per letter while not excluding the other countries. It'd give a heads up to editors to know that these countries need a bump in articles. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 16:11, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Geofocus by latitude

How about a by-latitude split? Countries between perhaps equator and Tropic of Cancer, then Capricorn; countries of latitute from Tropic of Cancer north to x, then north of x, similarly for south. Or some such - sweeping across all the continents. Need to adjust the bands to make very roughly similar sizes, and perhaps accept that some countries are in more than one zone - a pity that the List of sovereign states mentioned above doesn't have a field for coordinates! PamD

Just found List of countries by northernmost point and List of countries by southernmost point - astonishingly few countries with northernmost point south of tropic of Capricorn...perhaps southernmost points gives a broader spread somehow! A fascinating pair of lists, anyway. PamD 15:50, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Geofocus by religion

I really enjoyed the Arab World one last year though, and liked its intersection with Islam particularly, so wondered if maybe something like women from Buddhist countries, or similar might work? The other idea I had would be to focus on women, based on a sea/ocean area e.g. Women from the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, etc. which might get some really interesting cross-overs? (Sorry if these have been done before, I'm still new!) (Lajmmoore (talk) 11:14, 17 February 2020 (UTC))

Geofocus by language

Not sure if this has been done before (a quick archive search didn't mention it, but I wondered about a focus on countries with lower rates of English speaking? This article gives some details based on a couple of different metrics. Countries it lists include: Iran, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, El Salvador, Oman, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Angola, Kuwait, Cameroon, Libya, Iraq and Laos. It also includes China (as rate of speaking is very low, even if reading and writing is pretty high). Gives an interesting spread of places. There's probably a better place to get statistics from than that article. Cheers (Lajmmoore (talk) 06:54, 23 May 2020 (UTC))

List of countries by English-speaking population may help! Corachow (talk) 18:37, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Historical States that no longer exist?

Hi All, I wondered whether a geofocus one month could be on "historical countries that no longer exist"? (I'm not sure that's the best way to describe what I mean!) It's not something I know very much about, but I've noticed places like Kingdom of Saxony Kingdom of Prussia Austria-Hungary come up on redlists. I don't know whether its a theme people have done before, or what might be possible in terms of lists, etc. I found this List of former sovereign states and there's others too. All the places that are no longer recognised would maybe be too big, so there would be a question about period or geography maybe too? Equally, sorry if its been brought up before! (Lajmmoore (talk) 09:33, 31 March 2020 (UTC))

Lajmmoore: It was done in September 2019: Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Meetup/135. Unfortunately, it didn't get much traction. --MarioGom (talk) 09:36, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

MarioGom Thanks v much! I must have just missed it! Gonna have a poke around in the page now though! Thanks (Lajmmoore (talk) 10:26, 31 March 2020 (UTC))

Politicians USA in November

Not really sure if this is the right place for this. US Election Day is November 3 and it's one of the biggest elections of modern history. I do a lot of work around women in politics in the US and I'd love to see a geofocus on it, especially since we will see more women coming and going from national and state politics after the election results, and we might have our first female Vice President. I think it would be a great opportunity to improve coverage about women in American politics past and present. Thanks for your consideration. Missvain (talk) 20:23, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Aotearoa New Zealand

Happy New Year everyone! A few years ago (in September 2017, to be exact!) WiR ran a geo-focus on New Zealand, which produced 120 articles on New Zealand women. It was awesome to be a focus for the project! Since then, the editing community in NZ has become a bit more organised and cohesive and one of our group, DrThneed, has created a number of redlists of New Zealand women (which have been added to the WiR redlist index) which several editors are working with. We have also started holding in-person and remote editathons and editor meet-ups, including editathons on topics related to women (one on Maori women weavers is coming up this week). We're wondering if there is an opportunity in 2021 to have a WiR geo-focus on New Zealand women again, and we could back it up with some in-person editathons too and really make some inroads into our lists - and also potentially attract some new editors here. Any thoughts? MurielMary (talk) 10:07, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

MurielMary, I'd be happy to support this idea! Would it be useful to coincide it with when the three-month geofocus gets to the region? (I can't remember when that's meant to be) Lajmmoore (talk) 21:22, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Pacific Arts Aotearoa

Just to add there's a new project Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand/Pacific Arts Aotearoa run by Pakoire - it would be great if Women in Red could support it somehow!

Gender imbalance per country

Hello all! Just putting a vote here for another month-long focus on gender imbalance per country, like we did in 2020. The countries have altered slightly, which is interesting, and I found it fun to do! Lajmmoore (talk) 21:25, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Francophone/French language countries

Hello, so in March it is International Francophonie Day. So I was thinking we do one about countries that speak French. It would include countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, France, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Monaco, Niger, Republic of the Congo, Senegal and Togo. Sahaib3005 (talk) 21:07, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Sahaib3005, I like this idea! Lajmmoore (talk) 14:02, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Countries along some of the world's longest rivers?

Hello! Has countries along rivers been done before? I was trying to think of a different idea for a future Geofocus, and wonder about by river e.g. for the Amazon river, it would be Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana. Some are more varied than others, e.g. the Yangtze flows with China, but we could always choose rivers that visit multiple countries instead? Or not make an issue of one river in one country? Would love to hear what people think!

Mapped: The Drainage Basins of the World’s Longest Rivers, Can you name the Biggest Cities on the Longest Rivers (World)? StrayBolt (talk) 18:31, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Celtic nations

This year is the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, so I think it'd be interesting to do a Geofocus of the six Celtic nations at some point. This would be similar to Geofocus Great Britain and Ireland (done in 2018 and 2020), but including Brittany and excluding England (besides Cornwall). Curbon7 (talk) 17:59, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Countries with highest/lowest average elevation?

I was trying to think of further ways to think about the GeoFocus, and wondered about doing a month (or two) that focuses on countries at the extremes of elevation? See: List_of_countries_by_average_elevation Lowest average elevation = Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Singapore, Qatar, Netherlands, Denmark, Gambia, Estonia (for example) Lajmmoore (talk) 18:50, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Non-geofocus ideas

UK collaboration with WikiUK and the CARE Internationl charity

Women in Red and Wikimedia UK were approached by an International Charity to collaborate on an event around International Womens Day. @Lajmmoore: and Victuallers have been most involved from here in discussion. The focus is in the UK (their choice) and there is planned a high profile in-person event in London but the other parts are virtual. The idea is to get new people to sign-up for four editathons that will be based around the "nations" of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. WikimediaUK have volunteered to provide trainers but support from experienced wiki editors/trainers would be very useful. Following up on the new people to invite them to get more involved would be very valuable. Help with a landing page would be useful. Victuallers (talk) 13:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

More news - Care International normally hold a march on 8 March in London #March4Women. This year they have cancelled it and replaced it with a partnership with Wikimedia & Women in Red and CARE’s unseen, unheard and unrepresented women. Their plan is here. CARE plan to film UK celebrities talking about the work of Women in Red this week. There will be an event at the Houses of Parliament where MPs will be invited to share the name of women who should have articles. At the event there will be a gallery of notable women. A series of editathons will follow. CARE will be featuring WIR and giving us equal billing. @Lajmmoore:, WikimediaUK are involved. It is hoped to invite the 45,000 people on CARE's mailing list to join WIR (if we ge 0.1% then that would be great). The women I have identified for the gallery are here and please add or delete and ping me. CARE are trying to source open licenced images for us. I will list some of the women they have identified below. Victuallers (talk) 08:33, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

This event has been postponed by the partner, CARE International. In off-wiki consultation with @Lajmmoore and Victuallers, decision was made to remmove the event from the WiR March calendar. --Rosiestep (talk) 17:42, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

As you know this partnership is up and working again and our partners in July went with footballers in the Euros. Running banners in the UK increased our hit rate on our main page from c. 500 a day to c. 1,000 a day so wooo! but we didnt gain a surge in membership or articles I understand. I have been chatting with CARE and they had the following tentative suggestions which I quote "... let’s chat about the next themes we’re looking at and how we can best make them work for WiR. We’re thinking women in the arts (especially comedy) in August to coincide with Edinburgh festival, which I think could work nicely for WiR as there are very low figs for % of comedians on Wiki being women. In Sept, either ‘back to school / girls’ education’ or perhaps ‘new prime minister/women in politics’! Then in November, COP27 (perfect crossover with your ongoing climate theme!) and the PSVI summit. Anyway it would be great to know what you think - let’s discuss...". I plan to see if we can get our partners to join this discussion directly. Victuallers (talk) 09:15, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

@Ipigott: any views? Victuallers (talk) 09:19, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Victuallers: It's good to hear CARE are still interested in providing support for better coverage of women on Wikipedia. It seems to me that the secret of success in this connection would be careful planning, in particular by bringing together editors or potential editors who are really interested in writing pertinent new articles rather than just general encouragement. It might also be useful to try to get in touch with some of the critics who, as writers, might be interested in participating themselves and perhaps spreading interest in CARE and WiR. As it is a UK initiative, it would therefore seem to depend on the readiness of UK trainers to play a more active role than they did with the Euros. The Edinburgh festival might well provide opportunities, perhaps indeed in connection with women comedians. Those involved in WiR at Edinburgh University may be interested although the festival in during the summer holidays. From the WiR side, it would also mean preparing redlists, encouraging collaboration via our ideas page and following up on article creation, etc. Time is rather tight but I would be happy to do what I can to assist as far as I can although I have little interest in writing about British comedians myself. I should nevertheless point out that it is not easy for newcomers to write BLPs and I am not too sure how many notable comedians we have who are no longer living. The event page for last November's "Women in film and stage" may be a useful starting point. Hope this helps.--Ipigott (talk) 10:16, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Quarter three? #ChangeTheStory

CARE are discussing subjects of August - Comedians and Women in the Arts (Edinburgh Festival), September - Women in Education ("Back to School), October - ??, November- Women in Climate (COP27), December - ??. They would create increased visibility (in the UK) for a drive for more activity on Wikipedia. A subject linked to women in war was also discussed. I'm mentioning these here, so we can influence, prepare and/or collaborate. What are your thoughts? Victuallers (talk) 13:53, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

A is for "A start"

Just before we started Women in Red I completed (after work of lots of others) in writing a biography of every woman in the Dictionary of National Biography. This meant that any (UK related) women who was recognised as notable before about 1900 was in Wikipedia. Obviously the DNB did not stop there and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography took over. That has LOTS more women - so what to do? I set out to do every women in the ODNB whose first name began with an A. I think I have made quite a dent in it. Look here or here. My suggestion is that we have a go at picking off all the women whose name begins with A (or alpha if she is ancient Greek) in any country. Our progress will demonstrate the size of the problem of doing all ~26 letters- Victuallers (talk) 09:44, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

@Victuallers: Would this just be ODNB related or any woman whose first name starts with name? For the ODNB list, there are currently just over 100 A first named women left (not bad). --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 00:11, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

@MrLinkinPark33: I was proposing women whose name begins with A (or alpha if she is ancient Greek) in any country. I imagined that we might be able to finish the UK and start on other countries. A demonstration of the fact that writing wiki biogs for women in just one country for just one letter is a large task. I see some arguing that the 83% blokes on wiki is because women are prevented from having wikiarticles because of notability rules or lack of written sources. These are problems, BUT they are not stopping us from adding thousands of more articles to fix the gap. Oh and thanks for your work and for noticing its just over 100 - do you have a more accurate list? Cheers Roger aka Victuallers (talk) 11:03, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

@Victuallers: Didn't get the above ping so I just saw it now. I only counted the people starting with A in the above ODNB link you mentioned. I can't confirm whether it is 100+ or not (since I don't write articles on ODNB people). Starting with A (in general) would be nice as it reminds me of the Countries starting with I contest we did last year. Also provides 2 years of contest material if we did one letter per month (see @SusunW:'s idea below) :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:14, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

@Victuallers and MrLinkinPark333: I read this thread after the latest WiR notice landed on my talk page.

Has any further progress (i.e., beyond 'A') been made? I'd be interested to help, and to help spread the word. If nothing else, could a list be made of women in the dictionary who don't have articles? I'm not sure if I have access, but it looks like access is free (?), or I can see if institutions I know hold subscriptions. = paul2520 (talk) 00:04, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

No idea as I haven't been following up with this idea. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 00:18, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

@Paul2520:@MrLinkinPark333:@Ipigott: - still ticking away at the "A"s in this list. The good thing is that they are all notable and we have a source. Just noting that this idea (which has slept here for some time) is appealing to some .... how do we make this happen? I would intend that we just DO every woman in the defined category, not for a month .... but until it is done. Victuallers (talk) 08:52, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@Victuallers:@Paul2520:@MrLinkinPark333:: Thank you all for contributing to the As on this list. I agree with Roger that it's something that we could try to keep up until we complete one letter at a time. As for me, as you probably know I spend most of my time trying to put women from non English-speaking countries on the map. It seems to me that there are enough English speakers around to deal with notable people from the UK. If you want to make it more permanent and encourage others to participate, why not but together something for the main WiR talk page, perhaps describing the scale of the problem, progress to date and the reliability of the ODNB. I see there are still several hundred names to be covered and that many of those blue-linked point to disamb pages. We could also include a short item in our announcements and include a link on our invitation for March. It might be useful to prepare a new WiR page describing the problem and including a list of all the A names still to be covered. We could then invite contributors to add their names to the ones they change to blue. It could even be made into a kind of competition. What do you think?--Ipigott (talk) 10:28, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I was hoping this might make its way into our programme. This has waited a long time so no rush. The problem is that its present core is about Brits, but I would point to the achievement (before we launched Women in Red) that saw every woman who was in the ODNB of Edwardian times was also in Wikipedia, every one. However could we do "A" Woman in red for every dead Brit, every brit who died more than 70 years ago, another group might do "A" woman in red for Australian Philatelic Society Fellows and another for "A" women in the South African Dictionary of Biography. Small islands but it would illustrate how many are missing if by working hard we can only do one letter, but also an "A List", an area of victory. Victuallers (talk) 10:44, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@Roger: A yes from me, As it's creative, And, ergo, I'm supportive. --Rosiestep (talk) 14:31, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Victuallers: Why not first of all see what kind of support you can get in the UK itself, not just for women but also for men? That would be the logical place to start. We could also try to identify which members of WiR are specifically interested in covering historic women in the ODNB and put something together with them. As I have suggested, we could put something on the main WiR talk page. I'll see what I can do over the next day or two if you don't feel up to it yourself. I've already mentioned this under Mar 2022 above. (cc Rosiestep --Ipigott (talk) 12:48, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Also, A thank you to Ipigott for the ping. :) ----Rosiestep (talk) 14:34, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

This sounds like fun. As an Aussie, I'm not sure about the Australian Philatelic Society, but I'd be glad to start with the two As remaining in red in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Also, as someone whose real life surname starts with R, I'm not sure I want to wait until bios for women from A to Q have been completed. One letter per month is far more appealing to me. Just my 5 cents worth.--Oronsay (talk) 02:25, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Looks like this is gathering traction. @Ipigott: surprised at the suggestion to include men. I think I have been working for about eight years to make sure that of all the notable people in the UK then if you are (historically) "a woman from history" then you are guarenteed to be in Wikipedia. We are a long way off being able to say that about blokes. To be able to say that we have done every (ie dead) woman in the ADB and in the ODNB and in the SABiog and the NZNationalBiog if their name begins with an A (or alpha etc) would be a small but IMO very significant stepping stone. Imagine if all the red lists started at "B". Victuallers (talk) 16:01, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Victuallers: I certainly wasn't suggesting WiR should also cover men. I simply thought that if Wikimedia UK were to be involved, they might not like to be forced to cover women only. I haven't really examined the ODNB in any detail and don't know how many men still need Wikipedia biographies. The priority is obviously to try to improve the stats on women.--Ipigott (talk) 16:24, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Twitter mates

We have monthly editathons now running in Edinburgh which are mainly in person. Ewan is one of the Wikimedians in Residence and they are very successful - They are badged as WiR - great!. A similar series is starting in Swansea. Last month they did nurses and this month business people. They want to be a "women in red" event. I will see if we can harmonise subjects. This is for info only I guess but is there a good place to log in-house events ? Victuallers (talk) 14:01, 19 January 2018 (UTC) p.s. I see WiR is getting mentioned by name in French! Femmes Rouge Wikipedia Victuallers (talk) 14:01, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Victuallers - I think it would be great to include in-person Women in Red events in our list here: [[Template:Women in Red]]. To that end, I just added a line for in-person events in the 2018 section. Please add whatever events you're aware of... and 2017 events, too. After you get the ball rolling, we should mention it on the main WiR talkpage so that others know to do so, too. --Rosiestep (talk) 19:21, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Update - still running. The next one is on August 16th at Edinburgh Uni Library. Victuallers (talk) 09:55, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

They are now Virtual and running about every week hosted by the Women in Red intern - next one is on June 13th 2020. Victuallers (talk) 11:26, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Femicon Museum

See this tweet conversation Victuallers (talk) 09:22, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

This seems cool, Victuallers, and we haven't touched this focus area before; did you reply to her? Maybe we could start an email convo with a few of us? Hey, Megalibrarygirl, I looked over the website, and wondered how easy it might be to create a redlist for this focus area, "femininity, girlhood, and the aesthetics of cute within twentieth-century video games, computing, and electronic toys"? --Rosiestep (talk) 18:55, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I think I could try to create a redlist based on the Femicom collection. Will start. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 21:09, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@Victuallers and Rosiestep: Here's a start-up redlist: Femicom Museum Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:13, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Megalibrarygirl; mega cool... mega thanks! --Rosiestep (talk) 23:38, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I invited her to post here. I'm not sure how big the museum is and we would need her or one of us to take the lead. Its not a subject I know anything about - but I can see that its an important area. Big thanks to MLG - do feel free to tweet her. Victuallers (talk) 06:52, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Trading article ideas

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in trading names of women with others who are interested in creating articles on specific topics. For example, I have many names of American women who have won prizes or been inducted into hall of fames. That way, our lists on Wikipedia and our personal lists could hopefully be reduced and we get to work on articles that are in our interests that we might not have come across already. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 05:50, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I'd be interested in adding lists that others have created (such as yours) into the Women in Red redlist collection. Let me know if this interests you? This is because it is my hope that Women in Red is as well known for its redlists as for its created articles. --Rosiestep (talk) 13:26, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

@Rosiestep: That would be perfect. It'd help reduce the amount of people on my to-do lists and give them out to others who want to work on them. I already moved my first one here but I'm thinking on making another one on women who were/are United Nations Special Rapporteurs as that list is huge. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:29, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

That's awesome, MrLinkinPark333. Also pinging Megalibrarygirl who is really good with to-do list ideas! --Rosiestep (talk) 21:52, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Just finished Rosiestep Megalibrarygirl. See here for the United Nations redlist. There are also women in United Nations working groups but I haven't included them in this list. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:20, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Sweet! Thanks for taking the iniative, MrLinkinPark333! I hope everyone feels comfortable adding to our lists, but if you don't, ping me. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 01:03, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Filling out lists

A suggestion of something a little different, maybe? We have a whole lot of lists that are partially filled out with articles - various women's halls of fame, for instance, or the list of National Heritage Fellowship recipients. Many of the by-year lists of Guggenheim Fellows as well. What about a month where we pick one or two of these lists and look at filling in all the redlinks? That would give us a nice filled-out list at the end of the month. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 17:05, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

@Ser Amantio di Nicolao: Funnily, I was thinking of creating a list of Guggenheim Fellows names as the recipents are automatically notable as per WP:NACADEMIC Criteria #2. That'd help boost up the percentage without worrying about notability :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:39, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

@MrLinkinPark333: As would the National Heritage Fellows...and those have the advantage of being sourceable to the NEA's website. Which means that their biographies there are in the public domain...if we wanted to we could crank out the articles pretty quickly thanks to that. :-) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 17:48, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

@Ser Amantio di Nicolao: In that case, I think the National Heritage Fellows would be easier to complete as the Guggenheim Fellows does not have a lot of info on each recipient, just the notability. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:51, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

@MrLinkinPark333: No reason we couldn't suggest both for different months. :-) I'm not sure this would be a monthly challenge, necessarily...but bimonthly or trimonthly, perhaps. Besides, getting all of the Guggenheim Fellows in one go would be a bit of a tall order. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 17:59, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

@Ser Amantio di Nicolao: Yep, that's why I didn't press on having them done first, because there is so many of them :/ However, I'm making a different list of names that are presumed notable based on individual criterias instead. ;) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:05, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

@MrLinkinPark333: What about other fellowships/awards? How about the Rome Prize, for instance - does that convey automatic notability? --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 18:45, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

@Ser Amantio di Nicolao: That specific prize I do not know if it passes WP:ARTIST or WP:ANYBIO. As for other fellowships, Criteria 1-3 and their respective notes of WP:NACADEMIC are the ones I see for fellowhips. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:51, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Women with redirects

While looking through NY Times Notable Deaths 2019 I noticed a couple of women with redirects. I was wondering if there were many women who wouldn't appear on any redlist, but would need an article written. Maybe some were AfD merges but times have changed. Perhaps we can come up with some criteria for creating a new (short?) list of potential articles from these redirects. StrayBolt (talk) 20:22, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

By reference work

Have individual reference works been used as a theme before? Each entry would start with at least one high-quality source (and, usually, a pre-compiled bibliography). In-keeping with aforementioned ideas re: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and filling out lists, could pick any reasonable list from Category:Women in Red redlink lists (by dictionary), e.g., missing only 121 items for parity with the Encyclopædia Britannica Online. czar 07:31, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

@Czar: I'm late to your message but I'd be interested in a Britannica Online based one. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 15:16, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I still keep banging away at the ODNB. One of the successes we had 5 years ago was to add every woman from the DNB. (The DNB was "the" UK biography book in the UK c. 1910.). Doing the Ency. Brittanica in date order might mean that we have a measure of success if we could do say every (woman) born before year x. Victuallers (talk) 11:32, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Compiling a list of biographies of the most significant women

I'm not too sure how much enthusiasm there is about this but as a result of the "Vital articles" discussions on the WIR talk page, I suggested it might be a good idea to draw up a list of biographies of the Fifty most significant women on Wikipedia. This could later lead to a Balanced list of Wikipedia's most significant people which would list 100 names, 50 women and 50 men. The general idea would be to show that we believe the contributions of women to our world are just as important as those of men. If there is any support on this, we could start working fairly soon on selection criteria and which areas of interest should be covered.--Ipigott (talk) 07:23, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

There is a long history on wikipedia of drawing up 'balanced' lists of articles of different types and they almost always seem to end up generating more heat than light. I strongly encourage you to either (a) find a balanced list produced by an independent party outside of wikiepdia and import it as a table or (b) focus on improving the quality and quantity of the articles in traditionally underrepresented areas. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:56, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Stuartyeates - Those are great insights. Using independent sources would decrease the heat.

@Ipigott - I like your strategy to start with a Top 50 WikiWomen. Perhaps consider posting this discussion to Women In Green to see if they have any ideas on how to weigh the articles. Maybe we could have a contest to beef up the 50 profiles before attempting the second part of the strategy, the balanced list. @One issue with the word "balanced" is that the top 50 may exclude minoirties (ex People of Color, LGBTQA, etc). I suggest a tweak to the title. For example, List of Wikipedia's Top 50 Most Influential Women and Men. The word Prominent might be a good option too. The term women and men would encompass trans-women and trans-men, so that should be good.

Getting People of Color on the list would be another issue that I am interesting in solving. Perhaps a List of Wikipedia's Top 50 Most Popular Women of Color profiles. The parameters could be daily/weekly/monthly/yearly page views.

Check out these Google Books: A Century of Women - Great Men and Famous Women TheTypingKat (talk) 21:03, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

TheTypingKat: I certainly agree with the above comments on the difficulties of compiling balanced Wikipedia lists. What might work is an article which goes no further than to list what appear to be good reliable sources and related reviews of the pertinent literature, in other words a kind of bibliography of the world's most famous women. I don't think lists of actual names in article space would be accepted but it might be useful, in connection with Women in Green, to establish a list of highly prominent women who do not yet have articles in the GA or FA categories.--Ipigott (talk) 09:29, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Monthly editathon on the word vision for 2020

Hello. I was wondering if one of the monthly edithathons this year could be on vision. The reason why I suggest this year is because of 20/20 vision. I was thinking of using Vision as multiple ideas together:

people who work in vision related fields like opticians or optometrists.
people who have vision difficulties or who have lost their vision
women who work with people that have lost their vision or have vision difficulties
people who have been called a visionary.

Let me know what you think! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:34, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Names (by month, e.g. April Aprils) (by holiday, e.g. Christmas Holly) (by mammals) etc.

By month

Since we've been doing May Mays, I was wondering if we could do women with the name April in April and women with the name June in June. This could also apply to middle names as well. I was thinking maybe these could be added for 2021, so we could have the name themes from April, May and June. Let me know what you think! --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 15:55, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm too early for this, but what about Jan January? We can also do women with names such as Jane, Janet, Jenny, Jennifer, etc. What do you think?Corachow (talk) 18:15, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

By holiday

The names themes seem popular and I wondered about Christmassy names for December? Ivy, Holly, Carol, etc. (Lajmmoore (talk) 12:17, 25 August 2020 (UTC))

Don't forget Natalie, Noelle, Stella, Mary, Angel... ;) Penny Richards (talk) 16:50, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't care for Christian oriented themes. Just one person's opinion.WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 17:24, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

@WomensArtistUpdates: Great point! To be honest I'd forgotten Christmas was to do with religion when I mentioned it - but I 100% get that it's not very inclusive. Thanks for bringing it up! (Lajmmoore (talk) 07:15, 22 September 2020 (UTC))

Eponymous Women & Animals

Hi All, I was tidying my sandbox, and I found this list I started, women who have mammals named after them. I'm not sure if it's a theme that has been done already, but I wondered whether it might be fun for 2021? The sandbox list was based on this book, which I manually searched for women from. There's also a version for Reptiles, one for Birds, for amphibians and one for Odonata. I don't think all the women were notable from the mammals book, but some definitely were. I don't mind making lists, if a) people think it would be useful and b) people could give me some tips? Lajmmoore (talk) 11:36, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Wives, mothers, etc.

Something I've noticed more and more in recent years as I've done my research: more biographical dictionaries are beginning to incorporate separate articles on the wives and mothers of notable men, focusing on their achievements rather than those of their husbands and sons. Usually these are women who were previously featured as addenda in their husbands'/sons' articles. I think it could be an interesting theme to develop...maybe for Mother's Day next May? --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 05:56, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Mother's Day isn't the same day in every country, most notably it's in March (or very occasionally April) in the UK. It's also March in many European and Middle Eastern countries. Joseph2302 (talk) 19:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joseph2302: Just a suggestion - doesn't have to be keyed to any particular month. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 00:40, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Spreading evenly

Thinking about "July Julies" etc leads me to a couple of thoughts:

These themes bias towards women with names based on European languages (as do the Holly/Noel etc themes). Perhaps we should spread our work around by dividing redlinked women into a-z chunks by given name ("Aaa-Ada" etc, perhaps 24 or 36?) and offering one chunk a month? Or by surname (instead, or following) ?
Perhaps have a "born in the month" every month of the year, then the next year a "died in", and repeat, alternating years?

PamD 06:04, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Love it! Any/all of these ideas sound good to me. Innisfree987 (talk) 06:38, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Variations on Monthly Achievement Initiative

Given the current interest in this initiative (around 575 articles added by 29 August), it might be interesting to change the targets for the coming months. For October, we might for example call for articles on women from 31 predefined countries, one for each day of the month. We could list the countries beforehand, drawing on our redlists (but perhaps leaving out those without at least 20 redlinks). We could allow a maximum of three days for each country, e.g. 1 to 3 October: Albania, 2 to 4 October: Algeria, 3 to 5 October: Angola, 4 to 6 October: Argentina, etc. Participants could list their articles both under the countries and under their own user names, giving a clearer view of achievements. Then in November, we could do something similar with occupations. Would this be worthwhile or should we just continue using the August/September model? Personally, I think variations might attract additional interest. Other suggestions for variations would of course be welcome.--Ipigott (talk) 08:57, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Pinging Rosiestep, Victuallers, Megalibrarygirl, SusunW, Antiqueight, Abishe, Nick Number, cbratbyrudd, Stuartyeates, Alanna the Brave for reactions or other suggestions.--Ipigott (talk) 17:39, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Glad to hear there's been lots of interest, Ipigott. My thoughts: I like the idea of variations on topics each month (either nationality or occupation), but I'd be wary of making it too complicated for participants. I usually have to do some preparatory research before creating an article (which may take several days depending on how busy I am), and I don't want to have to try to remember whether I can submit an article about an Algerian woman on October 4th or an Argentinian woman on October 6th. On the other hand, I might be open to having broader weekly themes: during week 1, we write about women from western European countries, then for week 2 we write about women from Middle Eastern countries (or it could be women scientists or artists, etc.). Alanna the Brave (talk) 18:00, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

I kind of feel I should recuse myself from giving suggestions, as both this month and next my real world life is impacting my editing time. That being said, I like the idea of variations, but agree with Alanna the Brave that it needs to be simple to follow or we will end up discouraging editing. Congrats on the success. 575 articles is awesome! SusunW (talk) 18:08, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

@Ipigott: I think having a broad area of occupations/countries would work better (in my personal case). Maybe have special awards that says, for example Wikipedian who created the most (specific occupation) this month, or the most articles from (specific country, area). That way if people want the special awards, they can go for it while keeping the broad range of coverage for others who just want the 5, 10, 15 articles etc. barnstars. This monthly imitative helped me clear through some articles that I wanted to do, but didn't get around to start/finish them :) --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:53, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

As a relative newcomer to WiR I feel that the new monthly initiative is a great place to record and celebrate all the WiR articles written in a given month, i.e. from the monthly meetups and the #1day1woman ongoing. I find that most of my articles end up in #1day1woman as I don't want to hold them up waiting for a specific meetup to come along. My preference is that the whole recording system not become over-complicated. Oronsay (talk) 02:26, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

My thirty-ish contributions only accidentally in the list, it was work I was doing anyway, but this stretch got done quicker with this extra motivation. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:04, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments so far. I can see the simplicity of the current approach is appealing. It therefore looks as if any variations should be "additional extras" rather than a complete revamp. Let's see how we do in September.--Ipigott (talk) 14:58, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

I echo those who suggest we keep it simple. There are many contributions to the #1day1woman page which are currently also eligible for the Monthly Achievement Initiative, meaning articles from any country and any occupation. Requiring articles fit a certain geographical or occupational category during a short window of time will limit participation in the initiative, and might be discouraging to our membership base who will see it as more of a competition. If the initiative is all about increasing participation and increasing metrics, I'd vote to not change the current model. --Rosiestep (talk) 15:27, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Ipigott I'm not very creative in brainstorming ways to get people to participate, but I do want to help you keep the work load at something you can handle. If that means wikignoming a lot, that's fine. Just keep me posted. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:26, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Could you review my submission, I was getting negative feedback about submitting Jenny L. Davis, a linguist and social activist because she is 'merely' an assistant professor who speaks a indigenous tongue and is attempting to revive it. CaptJayRuffins (talk) 00:12, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Edited Book Ideas

We are wrapping up an edited book, Wikipedia and Academic Libraries, which is schedule for publication in September, 2021. There are other edited volumes about Wikipedia, including Levering Wikipedia and Wikipedia@20. My co-editors and I were pondering, "What will the next book be?" And, based on the submissions for our book (almost 2 years ago) we suggest that someone consider editing a book about all the activity related to Art+Feminism. Bridges2Information (talk) 18:54, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Idea: Ancient women (probably not a great title)

I wondered whether this might be a nice theme for later this year or next? The redlist got fixed recently and its got a really good geographic spread and all the women lived prior to 400 CE. Lajmmoore (talk) 15:33, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Rescue a draft

This list of declined drafts just came to my attention. Many won’t ever be notable but we could undertake a concert effort to find and bring up to standard the ones that have potential? Might identify some new contributors this way too, altho sadly in many cases we’ll be months behind the original submitter. But perhaps worth a shot, and a change of pace for style of editathon? Innisfree987 (talk) 01:05, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Occasionally, I've added: Works in progress (Stubs, Drafts, AfCs, AfDs,…) to a few of the monthly events. They usually were more targeted, but also were trying to leverage off of existing work. It would be useful to have an ranking estimate of ending up with a successful article, perhaps by using some machine learning tool like Quicksilver or even simpler measures like: current article size, unique (website) refs, (particular) failed reviews, or Google (news?) results. Having some comment from WiR reviews, perhaps with likelihood of success, might reduce duplicate effort. I wonder how many new contributors don't come back after a rejected submission? StrayBolt (talk) 22:50, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Sea

Women and the sea? I'm not sure if that's been done before? It could include naval officers, sailors, sportspeople, then scientists, etc. Lajmmoore (talk) 21:18, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

To add World Maritime Day is 30 September, so perhaps this could be a September theme? Lajmmoore (talk) 10:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

... but I just found Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Meetup/75, so maybe the 2018 event is too recent? Lajmmoore (talk) 10:20, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

It's been over 3 years since we've done it as a focus, so I kinda think no one could say we are placing too much emphasis on the category. SusunW (talk) 22:39, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Other ideas for 2022 from the Historical Association (UK) website

This is a UK-based list of events and anniversaries next year, which I wondered might help support some themes? These are some things that stuck out to me:

1962 (60th anniversary): Uganda, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago are all granted independence from Great Britain. Could it be worth having a month focussed on those places? Or is that too British Empire focussed?
30 April 2022: 70th anniversary of Anne Frank’s diary being published, 1952 - a focus on women connected to the Holocaust, perhaps?
20 June: World Refugee Day - a theme on refugees??
26 September: International Day of Languages - perhaps we could have a focus on translating pages?
27 September: 200 years ago the French orientalist Jean-François Champollion announced that he had succeeded in deciphering the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone, 1822 & November 4: 100 years since the British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, 1922. ? maybe a focus on Egypt and Egyptologists?

There's others things too, like 25 years since death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in September?

All food for thought! Lajmmoore (talk) 22:08, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks,Lajmmoore, for all these interesting ideas. In connection with Champollion and the Rosetta Stone, we could also focus on linguists, especially those concerned with ancient or minority languages. As for Anna Frank, the original Dutch version was published as Het Achterhuis on 25 June 1947. I believe editions in German and French appeared before the English versions which were published in the United States and Britain in 1952 - so take your pick. Commemorations of Anna Frank have traditionally been held in connection with her birthday, 12 June 1929, especially in 2019 for her 90th anniversary.--Ipigott (talk) 16:15, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Ipigott Linguists sound like a great idea for September - I suspect we have a list for them already? Lajmmoore (talk) 17:21, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I think we should develop a crowd-sourced list. We have plenty of time to do so. I know lots of women have been involved in documenting the American Indian languages and I believe some have contributed to the indigenous languages of Oceania.--Ipigott (talk) 17:25, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Ideas submitted by Instagram followers for 2022

Hello all! I asked the people who follow our instagram channel what themes they might like to sea us look at in the coming year, and their ideas were:

Women at war/resistance
Women in medicine
Nobility
Women in agriculture
Women in historic preservation (I think some noises about curators/museums have been made before?)

Anyhow, just a bit more the mix! Lajmmoore (talk) 13:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

In the news

An editathon to encourage submissions to the Main Page In the news feature, given concerns raised repeatedly (which I share) about systemic bias in what ends up featured there. I will note that the Recent Deaths feature of ITN tend to get as much as 10x the traffic as DYKs, in my experience. So omission of women there is consequential. Innisfree987 (talk) 23:42, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

World literature

Writers, scholars and critics (etc!) of languages other than English. Innisfree987 (talk) 03:58, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Women in Red Bingo card

I saw that Wiki Ukraine had set up a bingo card for editors to tick off, and I wondered if something similar could be adapted for Women in Red? Lajmmoore (talk) 10:22, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm, I could see something like this working with a Decades Drive theme (see below). Penny Richards (talk) 20:44, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Late reply, but I think anything that creates incentives. So a link to a Barnstar for someone who collected a line, or a full house, would be a great idea. CT55555(talk) 19:07, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Articles for Deletion

Articles about notable women get deleted because they are poorly written, and yet could be easy to improve. It took me about 30 minutes to improve Leslie Segar from one line and one citation to a start class article. Sadly, that's because people who nominated AfD's don't follow WP:BEFORE but still, this is an area where we could have strong impact. I wonder if there is anyway to improve the efforts to rescue currently poor articles about notable women? CT55555 (talk) 17:25, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts, CT55555. It seems to me that the situation with AfDs has been steadily improving. In addition to those displayed on Women in Red, there are extensive lists on WikiProject Women and WikiProject Women's History. Perhaps these could be included as links on the main Women in Red page. Maybe there'll be other suggestions here.--Ipigott (talk) 10:14, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I see that WP Women is already mentioned but I have now added WP Women's History which is widely used. Hope this helps. I am particularly suspicious of articles which have been deleted after appearing earlier at AfD but have now been recreated and retagged despite substantial improvement. There appears to be an unreasonable tendency to tag them for AfD without proper examination of the improvements made, especially the additional sourcing. Many deserve to be kept and should not have been deleted in the first place if adequate searches for notability had been carried out.--Ipigott (talk) 11:32, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree. Combined with the clear lack of WP:BEFORE, too many are rushed to delete without even the most simple of online searches, never mind basic improvements. The actual spirit of AfD policy, which clearly directed people towards improvement as the first priority, is not being followed. CT55555 (talk) 14:40, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorry I'm new - What is AfD? I know that Women in Green have a banner that can be placed on the talk page so that the article doesn't get deleted. It talks about the article being added in good faith and some other things that make it less likely to get deleted. Does WiR have something like this? If not, that would be a good solution. I would be happy to imporove one line articles if there is a list somewhere? TheTypingKat (talk) 21:08, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

It's the acronym of Articles for Deletion. Trillfendi (talk) 16:39, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

The WiR tags do add notes asking me to assume good faith. However, I find that counts for nothing at AfD discussions.

There is a list of articles about women up for deletion here: WP:DS/WOMEN I try to check it regularly. But my participation at AfD has reduced recently as I find the atmosphere a bit tense/confrontational/exhausting there.

Others may have better ideas, but you can use the categories to find stub (very short) articles about women's history etc, and probably a hundred other types of stubs [[1]] CT55555 (talk) 17:06, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I think WiR is already having a strong impact here - not to say that it couldn't be improved, but women's bios survive deletion discussions more often than men's do. A good way to improve the efforts to rescue articles might be to do a de-stubathon? WiR primarily encourages new article creation, while WiG encourages raising articles on women to GA status. De-stubbing falls between the two. -- asilvering (talk) 19:10, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Minority Women

I would like to suggest a contest for focusing on Black women, Indigenous women, Latina and Latinx women, women with disabilities, and queer women. I didn't see these suggested anywhere else. If it has been, I would appreciate being pointed in the right place. TheTypingKat (talk) 21:12, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi @TheTypingKat these are all great suggestions! there's an annual focus on indigenous women in August, that I think is in the table further up the page and we're doing pride this month! There's usually an annual focus on black women in February, to tie with Black history Month in USA then. The easiest way to see all the previous themes is if you go to an event page (any of this months) and scroll right to the bottom there's a template box, if you pick expand where it says 2014-2021, that opens up layers that list all the different themes. We last had a month devoted to disability in July 2020 & last did a focus on Hispanic and Latina women in September 2017 - although they would have also been included in the continental editathons we did 2020/21. Please propose a theme for next month, or others later in the year? If you go to the top of the page and add a proposal for one of the months, people usually say if they're in favour or not! Cheers, Lajmmoore (talk) 14:43, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Decades Drive?

Maybe after the Alphabet Run, a Decades Drive along the same lines? If we did the decades from 1780-1789 to 2010-2019, that's 24 decades--or two decades a month for a year. Birthdate, deathdate, another important date, it's all good. Or, if we wanted to simplify further: ten months for "OOs", "10s", "20s", "30s" etc., which has the potential to include more centuries (and calendars). Just thinking about 2023 ideas and this came to mind. Penny Richards (talk) 00:00, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

@Penny Richards This is a really nice idea! Lajmmoore (talk) 17:03, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Women in the construction industry

Women crews on Habitat for Humanity homes from the WOMEN BUILD HALL OF FAME made me wonder if we've ever focused on women in the construction industry. Women have always been right out there with men on every level - from the architects to the hard-hat work crews to the inside sales crew. When was the last time any media did a series on women architects? — Maile (talk) 16:06, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I like this. I think most efforts I've seen to challenge gender stereotypes land on STEM. This seems like a really helpful focus area in terms of countering gender assumptions about occupations, I like it. CT55555(talk) 19:06, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Women in the food industry

What about a focus on women in the food industry (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Food and drink) and women-owned restaurants and other businesses in the industry? Just a thought. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 18:45, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Also, User:BostonMensa might be interested per work at Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Food and drink. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 21:33, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Disability

The recent death of Judith Heumann has "reminded" me that there hasn't been a collaboration between WiR and WP:DISAB for quite some time. I'm not yet thinking of a particular theme, just putting the topic up for discussion. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:03, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I like this suggestion. CT55555(talk) 19:05, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

The last time was in July 2020 with Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Meetup/171. So we should perhaps plan something for the coming months.--Ipigott (talk) 17:31, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes please, and happy to promote across many channels. Penny Richards (talk) 23:21, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Romani women

I do not know if this debate has been opened on any previous occasion. 8 April is the International Romani Day. The Roma is generally socially marginalized people, a fact that pushes them to represent the most economically vulnerable and discriminated population sectors (especially in countries where they have a very important population such as those of Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Spain). This discrimination is doubled in the case of women, so there are not many well-known or notorious Romani women, as they are also subjected to a certain patriarchy. I think it would be positive to add, in the events of the month of April, one dedicated to Romani women and Romani culture. To investigate, to discover and to give to the world to know women of this people must be an exciting exercise. Glad to read your opinions! _-_Alsor (talk) 23:15, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes Alsoriano97, Please see WiR main talk page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red#International Roma Day Edit-a-thon (April 3rd – 9th, 2023). There you can see the conversation and the link to the Roma Day Edit-a-thon 2023. Best, WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 01:31, 17 April 2023 (UTC)