WikiWomenCamp/FAQ/Perspectives/New Zealand
New Zealand
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There is no New Zealand Wikimedia chapter. New Zealand has several female Wikimedians who do everything from new page patrol to content-building. A few of them have been involved in editing Wikimedia projects for several years.
- Wikipedia
In December 2011, there were 5,780 women of all ages from New Zealand who were interested in Wikipedia on Facebook.[1]
New Zealand editors on the English Wikipedia often communicate through a national noticeboard, their national WikiProject and, much less frequently, at meetups. Auckland has hosted six meetups. At the first in June 2006, three of eight participants were women. At the second meetup, two of the eight participants were women; at the third in August 2007, two of twelve were women. At the fourth in October 2008, none of the five people attending were women. At the fifth in May 2010, two of the eight participants were women, as were two of the six people who attended in April 2011. (See w:Wikipedia:Meetup/Auckland.)
New Zealand editors are less visible on other projects, and in many cases the few Kiwis are male. On the Simple English Wikipedia, the only active New Zealander is a female administrator; articles related to topics of national interest are rarely kept up to date by regular editors, often relying on drive-by edits from en.wikipedia editors. On the English Wikibooks, the book on New Zealand history is a featured book. However, much of the NZ-related content is contributed by anonymous editors or editors from other projects who write a book but do not become an active part of the community. On the English Wikinews, there have been active New Zealand editors at various points in the project's history. There is also a Māori Wikipedia, which has a low level of participation but is a stable project. In the period between November 2010 and October 2011, 11.6% of the traffic to Maori Wikipedia was from this country.[2] English Wikipedia has few visible, highly active female Kiwi contributors. One of them updates articles related to women's sport, especially netball, in New Zealand. She also helps maintain Australian netball articles. Another is involved as a wiki gnome, helping to clean up articles and assisting new users with getting articles passed through articles for creation.
The only New Zealander to get a participation grant from Wikimedia Australia to attend RecentChangesCamp 2012 is female. She will be the first Kiwi to attend RecentChangesCamp in Australia, the third time it has been held in the country.
In 2011, there was a small push by Australians and one or two Kiwis to try to establish a national chapter in the country. Two of the people who were approached as potential leaders included women, one of whom was the head of Creative Commons New Zealand.
- New Zealand women perspective to free knowledge
- Unknown
- Women in New Zealand
- The Foundation
During the December 2011 fundraising appeal, no Kiwis, men or women, were featured are part of the appeal.
During the 2011 Summer of Research, the WMF hired eight research fellows. Of these, only one was female, and she was from the United States. There were four males from American universities, The other researchers included men from a Japanese university, a Swiss university and a Canadian university. There were no research fellows, male or female, from this country.
Woman? (Tick.) Wikipedian? (Sometimes, So Tick.)
editHi. I am female Wikipedian from the southern half of the North Island who has only recently returned to Wikipedia to check if things have changed much. I suspended my involvement just after (ironically) completing a survey on women's experiences of Wikipedia. Although I was aware I was a minority, I did not realise by how much. Knowing helped explain the (what seemed to me) perplexing behaviour of some of my fellow editors. I found out about this page through Maori Wikipedia, which I sometimes contributed to. I will check back in again sometime next week to see if anyone responds to this note.Te Karere (talk) 07:55, 29 April 2012 (UTC)