Wikipedia Wants Women

Are you a woman who wants to share her knowledge with the world and the millions of young students trying to find sources for the research papers they’ll be finishing at the last minute in the upcoming school year? Apply to work for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is calling for more women to become editors of the popular online user-generated encyclopedia to balance its editorial staff of “geeky males” and broaden its coverage.

Wales explained that internal research at the company showed that nine in ten of its contributors are male and that their average age was 26, which made the website a solid source for science and technology. But he’s worried the lack of diversity in the staff’s community of editors hurt the accuracy of other subjects.

“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,” Wales said. “At the moment, we are relatively poor in a few areas; for example, biographies of famous women through history and issues surrounding early childcare.”

Here is the problem: any company promoting gender diversity gets a good point or two. But women are not only knowledgeable on the subject of other women and childcare. In fact, there are probably plenty of women who can out-geek the men at Wikipedia right now.

So any ladies interested by the job should take it to fill the holes in the online encyclopedia, and then to show the boys just how much women know about guy stuff.

Contact the author here: sedera@morningquickie.com