Hi, I've been lurking this list for some time and have been getting a bit depressed by the direction it's taking as of late. It was all cha-cha-cha in the beginning, but now I've seen references to women not wanting their children exposed to vulgarity, women and transgendereds needing a separate list to feel comfortable, and women on Wikipedia being compared to rural Africa as served by NGOs.
As a chick that likes computer stuff, I've encountered this before in looking for peer groups and it makes me feel double alienated--I don't even *like* children and now they're part of a conversation about me as a female on the internet. Personally, broad statistics about women nearly never ring true, and that's a conversation block. Nerdy guys have taught me Wordpress, torrenting, and heaps of other useful internet skills. In turn, I have taught some lady friends. It would be more encouraging to get back to what we know and how we can share it. I don't edit Wikipedia because I've never taken the time to learn the system and I'm afraid I'll screw up. I assume it would feel like making a big mistake in a newspaper and having the whole neighborhood scoff, and I think that becomes a part of my Wikipedia profile forever and ever. I'd like to find a YouTube video to walk me through basic involvement. If it's that cute guy from Portland who is now a Wikipedia community manager presenting it, well all the better. I could also be encouraged to edit if the community had an offline component that included meeting for microbrews. Thanks, Carissa
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