Popular online open source encyclopedia, Wikipedia, is searching for women editors to balance its contributors list which is currently dominated by men factor with symbolic award as incentive, reports Computer Business Review.
To encourage this concept, website founder, Mr. Jimmy Wales says they are on recruitment drive for women.
Also, he said that the current team of “26-year-old geeky, male” contributors sometimes lack the needed expertise and most of them leave after getting married.
Wales founded Wikipedia in 2001, and its own research found that 90 per cent of editors are men.
The site does not pay its contributors and Wales says that the system is unlikely to change.
However, Wikipedia has introduced the WikiLove feature to simplify the editing process and to make it attractive trough symbolic awards including kittens, stars and hearts.
Wales said the site is not facing a crisis but the main thing is to bring in people of all different backgrounds.
“If you do that, you increase the knowledge base of the site, which can only be a good thing. At the moment, we are relatively poor in a few areas; for example, biographies of famous women through history and issues surrounding early childcare,” said Wales.
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D Short URLs: goo.gl, mcaf.ee, cli.gs
No comments:
Post a Comment