As a wikiHowian, I can speak to this a bit. Although I can't speak for Jack, I have my own aversions to purple girly welcome messages and I think this reasoning is seen on other wiki projects.
On wikiHow we have struggled to have professional looking welcome messages. I think the worst of it was one that had a picture of a bunny and said "follow the bunny to wikiHow" or something like that. So, I think that view may have (at least for me) trickled down even to welcome messages that are a "girly" color", since I am concerned that girliness and even just girly colors will cause wikiHow to be taken less seriously as a project. The funny thing, however, is that one of the "girlier" welcome messages I've seen (pastel background, '<3') is one that was created by a male wikiHowian and no one seems to have any problem with it so far that I know of. As one of the females in the male-dominated wiki world, I have sometimes felt that I've had to put my girliness aside in order to be taken seriously. I also feel that there is a backlash against girly pink userpages and the like on wiki projects and that generalizations are made about people based on their username or userpage and not on their contributions to the wiki. On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 4:08 PM, Sue Gardner <[email protected]> wrote: > On 14 September 2011 10:03, Michael J. Lowrey <[email protected]> > wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 10:41 AM, Sarah Stierch <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I do like this though (scroll down to badges), not the portraits..but > the > >> round badges. I'd love to see something like this developed for > Wikipedia. > >> I'd have them on my tumblr, etc. > >> > >> http://wikifashion.com/wiki/Wikifashion:Contributors_Needed > > > > Really???? I find them loathsome in the extreme; very Facebooky. > > > Soooo funny: everyone is different, and that is fine. > > I remember Jack Herrick seeming flustered and a little embarrassed one > day by a purple girly welcome message on WikiHow. But I loved the > purple girly welcome message, personally :-) > > Thanks, > Sue > > _______________________________________________ > Gendergap mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap > -- "Only the shallow know themselves." - Oscar Wilde
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