View source for Battlestar Wiki talk:Think Tank/Female Involvement

== Combining goals? ==
Goals to solve:
# Female involvement
# "Important Themes" of the show -- possibly a new "series" of articles?
Why not combine them? Why not scout female contributors to write a themes series? One these women have written stuff, they may just stick around. On an unrelated note, what ever happened to [[User:Laineylain|Laineylain]] and [[User:Misco|Misco]]? They seemed to have stopped contributing at some point (all happened before my time here), but judging by people's comments they were very helpful over here. But back to the scouting idea. Maybe we should get our name out there a little more (of course underlining we're not a forum), as like Shane said on the blog, most communities (whether male or female) are unaware of our existence. On a side note, I'd also like this policy to encourage any present females to "come out", and I'll be adding a "sex" field to {{tl|User Data}}. --[[User:Catrope|Catrope]]<sup>([[User talk:Catrope|Talk to me]] or [[Special:Emailuser/Catrope|e-mail me]])</sup> 03:21, 1 May 2007 (CDT)
:'''Sex''' and '''femalecat''' fields have been added to {{tl|User Data}}. --[[User:Catrope|Catrope]]<sup>([[User talk:Catrope|Talk to me]] or [[Special:Emailuser/Catrope|e-mail me]])</sup> 03:48, 1 May 2007 (CDT)
:Laineylain and Misco were both pretty major podcast contributors for a while there. I'm not sure what happened... no major blowups that I'm aware of. They may have just gotten tired of transcribing. --[[User:Steelviper|Steelviper]] 07:40, 1 May 2007 (CDT)
::Paradoxically, centering out women to contribute because they are women is a little weird, but I understand and support this. For one, I'd like to see a female administrator, and I'll be forced to change the term "[[Mop Boy]]" to something else. I'll think more about this; there are many women of  popular note in the blogosphere (Sarah Kuhn from iPodObserver, Nat from BSGCast, for starters) that should be here more based on their enthusiasm, but aren't. Are there misperceptions about the wiki? The article appears to indicate that. --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 08:50, 1 May 2007 (CDT)
:::It is a little weird, I agree, but we have close to zero female contribution, whereas the overall online BSG community is filled with female fans. So clearly, something's wrong. And yes, appointing a "Mop Girl" would certainly be a milestone. --[[User:Catrope|Catrope]]<sup>([[User talk:Catrope|Talk to me]] or [[Special:Emailuser/Catrope|e-mail me]])</sup> 08:54, 1 May 2007 (CDT)


==After reading the article==

I agree, Spencerian, Catrope ... definite misperceptions, and something is wrong, but I'm not sure how to fix it. I was posting the below at the same time you both were posting and got an edit conflict, the following are my thoughts on reading the article:

From reading the article linked in the blog entry, I think the author doesn't really understand the goal of BSG Wiki: to be an encyclopedia. We aren't really about the speculation (much) or reinterpretation, but rather the documentation of that which is presented on-screen.  Take this quote:

:''This also means that some important themes in the wiki remain left out so far - including, for example, any coverage of potential homosexual relationships within the BSG world. Creative interpretation of the BSG text in this environment still has some way to go...'' - [http://snurb.info/node/662 http://snurb.info/node/662]

"Potential homosexual relationships"?  From a encyclopedic standpoint, we don't deal in potentialities, we deal in facts. It also really isn't our goal to do "creative interpretation" of the BSG text; in fact, doesn't that basically break [[BW:NOT]]? I'm generally an inclusionist, and we have tags to address these kinds of articles (fandom, plausible speculation, etc), we note real-world parallels in the Notes and Analysis sections of articles ...I wouldn't mind seeing an "Important Themes" series of articles ... 

We're a community, but we have different goals than other BSG communities. Those goals may not appeal as much to many potential female (and male, for that matter) contributors as, say, the ability to write fan-fiction, discuss potential relationships, or the ability to write whatever they like under their own name with a guarantee that it won't be altered/improved/deleted. I am all for bringing in new contributors, male or female, but I'm against compromising our stated goals to do so (not that anyone is saying that's the plan). I'm more for "getting our name out there". [[User:JubalHarshaw|JubalHarshaw]] 08:56, 1 May 2007 (CDT)
:I concur. However, that being said... where are the women (anyway)? Even granting our strict encyclopedic mission, there are still (I imagine) a tremendous amount of female encyclopedic contributors at Wikipedia. Why none here? Is it simply probability/statistics? (They do have a much larger sample size to work with than we do.) I'm not sure. I have, in the past, made [[Battlestar_Wiki:Wikipedian_Quorum/Archive02#.22Relationships.22_Article|suggestions]] to try to start topics that might be of more interest to a "female demographic", but they were (justifiably) determined to compromise the BW:NOT encyclopedic mission. I don't have any answers, though. --[[User:Steelviper|Steelviper]] 09:31, 1 May 2007 (CDT)
:Like I said on the blog, I agree that we should get our name out there. That should be possible without compromising [[BW:IS]] or [[BW:NOT]]. --[[User:Catrope|Catrope]]<sup>([[User talk:Catrope|Talk to me]] or [[Special:Emailuser/Catrope|e-mail me]])</sup> 09:52, 1 May 2007 (CDT)
::I posted a personal response on the article's blog (it should be available after its blog admin clears it) that clarifies what we are (I didn't speak on behalf of the wiki, but just clarified our mission) and put my 2 cents in about BSG, female contributors, and the one homosexual note in the entire RDM show: the Caprica-Six/Three/Baltar threesome from "[[Hero]]" (which should be funny to them as Lucy Lawless, whose Xena character has many homosexual fans and a strong overall fanbase). --[[User:Spencerian|Spencerian]] 15:24, 1 May 2007 (CDT)