Les sans pagEs/Report 2020

les sans pagEs User Group
Approval date	09 Décembre 2019
Official language(s)	French
Website	https://sanspages.org/
E-mail address	info@sans-pages.org
Mailing list	Mailing List
Telegram	Instagram
Twitter	lessanspagEs
Facebook	les sans pagEs
YouTube	Chaîne YouTube

Les sans pagEs UserGroup mission

The Les sans pagEs is a community effort and an association for users who work on issues related to gender biases and more generally to diversity (territorial, cultural, linguistic, generational, gender, attitudinal and ability, etc.) within the French speaking wikimedia movement.

We seek to proactively

• reduce the gender gap and the gender bias on Wikipedia articles by meeting, attracting and training contributors who understand gender gap issues in Wikipedia and create articles accordingly;
• seek for more Gender equity and make the Wikipedia community more inclusive by meeting, attracting, training, and showing appreciation to new contributors especially underrepresented communities;
• make the Wikimedia community more diverse and engaged by promoting cross-project cooperation and synergy on gender bias and issues and encouraging participants to find resources and support in the Wikimedian movement to facilitate scale-up;
• training facilitators and contributors who want to set up a new project especially related to womynx, LGBTIQ and minorities or subjects that are underrepresented and / or suffering from representation biases on the francophone Wikipedia.

Our project main page : w:fr:Projet:Les sans pagEs

The main objective of the UserGroup is to increase diversity and reduce the gender bias and the gender gap within Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement in general:

• enrich the contents concerning womynx, gender and groups under-represented in Wikimedia projects (especially in French);
• offering space, support and training to people who want to collaborate on projects;
• coordinating people in order to involve more womynx to write on Wikipedia and to improve the quality of the entries;
• creating events, meetings, edit-a-thons, conferences, campaigns aimed at raising awareness of women's and gender issues and increasing the Wikimedia movement worldwide;
• collaborating with other groups that have similar goals: WikiWomen, Wikimujeres, Art + Feminism, Whose Knowledge?, WikiDonne, LGBT, Wiki Loves Women etc.

Our goals in 2020

Green

Increased engagement

We wanted to engage the wikimedia community even further, to make it participate or reflect on gender gap issues. We also wanted to participate to aligned initiatives, as well to promote and facilitate cooperation between aligned sister projects.

This goal was undoubtedly reached, even beyond expectation. 2020 was a very fruitful year, with many new articles created or improved and qualified, host or participation to various discussions around language neutrality, micro-harassment, code of conduct, etc. We also joined several programs organized by other groups as participants or supporters.

Green

Recruit, train and support of new members

We wanted to recruit womynx or more generally people interested by gender and intersectionality issues, to foster a more diverse community. We wanted to maintain support to all of our subgroups, and train its members or contributors willing to set up new projects, building from the success of Noircir Wikipedia.

In spite of 2020 difficulties, we consider that goal was reached. The membership expanded. We provided training sessions, either online or irl (such as the wikidata training event). We continued the support to participants directly on the wiki, or on telegram or through the regular online meetings.

Green

Extend our network

We wanted to further support existing LSP groups (primarily located in Switzerland and France, with some isolated events in other countries), but also to expand geographically in helping new groups to emerge.

In spite of 2020 difficulties, we consider that goal reached (eg, creation of an LSP group in Benin, contacts made in Brussels to creatre a new group, extension to other wikimedia projects such as wikiquote, and birth of new programs with external partners)

Green

Amplify our key messages

We wanted to promote les sans pagEs activities across the general public, in the media and on social media, as well as promote aligned sister projects, in order to encourage more participation to the projects.

That goal was reached, thanks to over a dozen strong media mentions, participation to a few events (covid permit), strong presence on social media.

Green

Building for sustainability

We wanted to create more organizational capacity, in particular around financial and accounting operations.

That was our weakest point for 2020, though progress had been achieved, After the departure of our dedicated accountant who found a permanent job, we decided to hand over the account management to a professional company to make it easier for us to focus on operational activities. We also signed a partnership convention with Wikimedia France, enabling us to bring financial sustainability to our endeavors. Next step is to fundraise to professionalize other parts of activities, becoming too difficult to manage on a volunteer basis. We have also paid special attention to pay work being done on the administrative and reporting level, something that we think should be best practices for the whole movement.

Our activities in 2020

Overview

In 2020, our activities were both online and offline. As could be expected, the pandemic impacted the activities of the group, but not its effectiveness. Most activities were run face-to-face in January and February. They moved to the online space from March on, with a brief return to physical meetings in Summer and early Fall when the pandemic was running low in Europe. As Fall settled in, with the pandemic flaring again in Europe, we were back online for the rest of the year, except in the newly born Benin group.

Those activities included writing articles, looking for sources, joining online drives, creating resources and collecting tools, setting up lists of articles to create, evaluating the quality and interest of articles, helping other aligned initiatives, etc.

As most participants were locked up at home, from March on, the regular activities of the group became:

• one monthly online meetup to organize the activities of the group and discuss issues;
• Wikimidi: an online meeting regularly happening on Thursday at lunchtime. The goal was to offer a space where contributors could drop in and ask questions, talk about a problem, share ideas or contribute, in French or other languages to reduce the gender gap on Wikipedia. Those events were opened to every person willing to contribute. This activity was initiated in January 2017 on a weekly basis, and was taking place face-to-face in Geneva. In March 2020, the activity was maintained but moved to an online working space using Big Blue Button. Wikimedia working page may be found here : w:fr:Projet:Les sans pagEs/wikimidis Genève; These events were supported financially by Wikimedia CH (food) and the University of Geneva (annual grant).
• Eval sessions: an online meeting happening every Thursday end of the afternoon (and sometimes running pretty late in the evening...); The goal of those sessions was to evaluate articles on the French wikipedia, using Blue Button and Jitsi. This activity was created in the light of the pandemic situation and is still operating. Working page : w:fr:Projet:Les sans pagEs/Évaluation. In December 2020, the community was tracking over 8,000 articles on its evaluation table. The session also became a drop in avenue for people wanting a meeting with the community or to discuss issues related to the project. It created a sense of solidarity and strengthened the relations among contributors;
• In-depth restructuration of the very much outdated gender gap portal on meta for the benefit of the community at large;
• the list of suggested articles was completely restructured and systematized by a professional archivist;
• the project page of les sans pagEs was updated, all subpages recategorized (also chronologically). A "palette" (navigation box) was added facilitating the navigation. The whole structure was rearranged trying to take into account the perspective of a newbie.

Our group also maintained an active presence in terms of communication and outreach, to recruit new editors as well as raise awareness in the public. Several new initiatives were launched, and online engagement on the project discussion pages was at its peak, in spite of fewer opportunities to meet IRL. New partnerships were issued with the Mediatheque de Suresnes, the Woman in Games association, and the Benin user group. Collaboration with the gender studies department of the University of Geneva was strengthened and expanded to a 4-year project to teach Wikipedia at master degree level.

Last but not least, 2020 was a VERY active year with regard to project governance and global movement governance. Let's mention a few : the closure of the now-famous poll regarding language neutrality (écriture inclusive) with the analysis of its outcome, numerous discussions around harassment (include an attempt to document microaggressions), the UcoC discussions, the strategy recommendations prioritizations, all topics in which LSP got fully engaged. As an example of such involvement, Natacha Rault was interviewed by Wikimedia staff Christel Steigenberger to discuss the Universal Code of Conduct. The full video record is available on YouTube.

List of editing activities

Number of articles created as part of LSP activities per month.

Total number of articles indexed by les sans pagEs. The Eval project intends to improve their qualification

Women figures created with keywords from the list of articles improved and created in 2019

Number of participants to the LSP project over time

Some of the pictures which are in the gallery made by Framawiki for the French project "les sans pagEs"

New and significantly improved articles

1592

Offline local activities

We have been running face-to-face activities in several geographical locations.
Typically, groups

• participate in local cultural events to take photos
• organize meetups and workshops
• train new contributors
• organize & participate to Art+Feminism events, Wiki loves pride ect.. - organize editathons with GLAM institutions and/or participate in such events
• join local events organized by other parties and promote LSP

Full list of face-to-face activities held in 2020 (source1; source2)

• Wikimercredi à l'AMR - 8 Jan 2020
• Wikimidi at Genève Uni Dufour-Novae
• Week-End Wikidata Training in Marseille - 10-12 Jan 2020
• Wikimidi at Genève Uni Dufour-Novae - 16 Jan 2020
• Atelier Wikidata in Paris, locaux Wikimedia France rue de Cléry - 17 Jan 2020
• Wikisource autrices à Paris (France). - 18 Jan 2020
• Wikimidi at Genève Uni Dufour-Novae - 23 Jan 2020
• Wikimidi at Genève Uni Dufour-Novae - 30 Jan 2020
• Archiwiki Matrimoine. Permanence des sans pagEs Med. Montpellier (France) - 1 Feb 2020
• Wikimidi at Genève Uni Dufour-Novae - 06 Feb 2020
• Atelier ordinatrices à la Gaité Lyrique (Paris) - 8 Feb 2020
• Wikimidi at Genève Uni Dufour-Novae - 13 Feb 2020
• Wikimidi at Genève Uni Dufour-Novae - 20 Feb 2020
• Wikisource autrices à Paris (France) - 22 Feb 2020
• Wikimidi at Genève Uni Dufour-Novae - 27 Feb 2020
• L’Université avec un grand Elle(s) at l'université de Lille (France) - 2 March 2020
• Gender in the making à l'Institut d'études genre de l'Université de Genève (Switzerland) - 02 March 2020
• Wikimidi at Geneva - 05 March 2020
• Wikimidi at Geneva - 12 March 2020
• Conference and workshop at the Université des femmes, Brussels
• Meeting with médiathèque de Suresnes (Paris) - 17 July 2020
• Inauguration of Constellation - 18 July 2020
• Atelier Wikisource autrices des Journées du matrimoine à l'Opéra Comique à Paris - 20 Sept 2020
• Launch of the sans pagEs Benin Group in Cotonou - 12 Dec 2020
• Atelier du groupe des sans pagEs Bénin in Cotonou - 19 Dec 2020
• Atelier du groupe sans pagEs Bénin - 26 Dec 2020

Online activities

Full list of online activities held in 2020 (source1; source2; source 3)

• Wikimidi online - 26 March 2020
• Wikimidi online - 9 April 2020
• Evaluation and maintenance of articles - 23 April 2020
• Wikimidi online - 23 April 2020
• Wikisource autrices en ligne - 25 April 2020
• Atelier les sans pagEs online - 25 April 2020
• Collaboration with LGBTIQ projects for the organization of an Month of pride with a francophone page
• Wikimidi online - 01 July 2020
• Videoconference presentation of GLAM initiatives run by LSP to the French Archivists association - 01 June 2020
• Launching les sans images project aimed at adding illustrations to articles - 6 July 2020
• Wikimidi online - 20 Aug 2020
• Eval. - 20 Aug 2020
• New project launched on womynx classical musicians - Aug 2020
• Wikimidi online - 26 Aug 2020
• Eval - 10 Sept 2020
• Eval - 17 Sept 2020
• Eval - 24 Sept 2020
• Eval - 1 Oct 2020
• Eval - 8 Oct 2020
• Eval - 15 Oct 2020
• Marathon d'écriture pour lutter contre l'invisibilisation des femmes racisées - 16 Oct 2020
• Eval - 22 Oct 2020
• Wikimidi - 22 Oct 2020
• Eval - 29 Oct 2020
• Wikimidi - 29 Oct 2020
• Femmedi - 31 oct 2020
• Eval - 5 Nov 2020
• Women of Limoges (France) edit-a-thon (- Nov 2020
• Eval with the participation of Raystorm (alias Maria Sefidari, ChairWomen of Wikimedia Foundation) to address the issue of harassment of non-binary and trans contributors on the village pump. A statement of support was issued by the foundation after further talk with the LGBT user group.- 12 Nov 2020
• Eval - 19 Nov 2020
• Eval - 26 Nov 2020
• Eval - 3 Dec 2020
• Eval - 10 Dec 2020
• Online meeting Women in Video Games to prepare the launch. - 14 Dec 2020
• Meeting Horizons académiques - 14 Dec 2020
• Atelier Wikisource Autrice - 17 Dec 2020
• Eval - 17 Dec 2020
• Online meeting and training for the womynx in video game project - 21 Dec 2020
• Online meeting Horizons académiques - 22 Dec 2020
• Online meeting Horizons académiques - 29 Dec 2020

Participation to drives and other contests organized by other groups

• Participation to the Tell us about her drive organized by Wiki Loves Women, to add structured data to Commons - March 2020
• Participation to the photo contest Wiki Loves Folklore - March 2020
• Participation to the Wikiconcours, a writing drive on the French Wikipedia - March/April 2020
• Participation to the American Month on Wikipedia - Oct 2020
• Participation to the SheSaid drive organized by Wiki Loves Women, to add quotes from notable womynx to Wikiquote - Nov/Dec 2020

Governance

Usergroup meetings

• 23th of March, UG meeting
• 19th of Avril, UG meeting
• 26th of May, UG meeting
• 24th of June, UG meeting
• Annual Meeting in Fribourg. Group discussion and contribution with focus of designing a Charter - 28/30 Aug 2020
• 25th of Oct, UG meeting and CoC violations training
• 30th of Oct, UG meeting for strategy prioritization
• Meeting for prioritization of recommendations by affiliates - Strategy 2030 - 6 Dec 2020

Community engagement and global governance

• Participation to French ArbCom (comité d'arbitrage) elections - March 2020
• Proposition to rename a WikiProject - March 2020
• Participation to the Live twitch organized for the new edition of the wikimooc - March 2020
• Participation in WMF surveys
• Participation in UCoC discussions
• Participation to LGBT user group activities

Communication, social media and outreach

Communication, in the media and on social networks is a major element of les sans pagEs strategy as it allows both to recruit new participants and raise awareness about gender equity (or lack thereof).

Les sans pagEs is very frequently contacted by journalists for interviews and comments. As such, the UG and its members are regularly mentioned in the news. All media mentions are available.

Press review 2020

1. Lou Cercy, Les sans pagEs : féminiser Wikipédia, 50-50, 11 septembre 2020
2. Thomas Chauvineau, Matrimoine : l'histoire peut-elle aussi s'écrire au féminin ?, France Inter, 19 août 2020
3. Chams Iaz, Wikipédia: un collectif pour que les femmes ne soient plus des « Sans pagEs », Le Temps, 19 juin 2020
4. Julien Lausson, Vers un code de conduite et une modération durcie sur Wikipédia pour endiguer le harcèlement, Numerama, 26 May 2020
5. AJ+ https://twitter.com/ajplusfrancais/status/1256644626024468480, 2 mai 2020, par Tanguy Garrel
6. Sophie Mincke, Le confinement? Une bonne occasion pour enrichir Wikipédia , RTBF.be, 23 avril 2020
7. Liliane Charrier, "sans pagEs" en action : 5000 femmes de plus en quatre ans sur Wikipédia francophone 06 March 2020
8. Le Bonbon, On comble le fossé des genre sur internet, 21-23 février 2020
9. Catherine Frammery, L’écriture inclusive, mère de toutes les batailles ?, Le Temps, 17 février 2020
10. SNCF, Le chiffre du mois 18% de femmes seulement sur Wikipedia, 30 janvier 2020
11. Lucille Bonin, Écrire des biographies pour Wikipedia, 17 janvier 2020
12. Hélène Combis, Wikipédia : seulement 18% de pages pour les femmes, France Culture, 8 janvier 2020

Facts and figures about social media accounts

Ephemeride on Instagram by DesLapilli

The most active communication channels used by les sans pagEs are its Twitter account, its Facebook account, and the telegram channel.

• Twitter: 2500 followers and over 12000 tweets by March 2021: https://twitter.com/lessanspagEs
• Facebook: more than 1500 followers by early 2021, regular posts + interactions with newbies and supporters: https://www.facebook.com/sanspages/
• Telegram channel: https://t.me/joinchat/I8LRjhLO8GhX2VwxEhPPhQ
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lessanspages/ Instagram. Launched in 2018. Currently 221 posts and 1001 followers. 80 posts were published in 2020
• Discord: https://discord.gg/57ev3xCjDq. The discord channel was created in November 2020!
• blog: https://sanspages.org
• Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgKeCR7Nt65TWFQ7sdFq31g. 58 followers in May 2021
• Mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/lessanspages

A new outreach activity is born on Instagram

Drawings made by artists to illustrate articles with missing illustrations in 2020

A new contributor began showcasing articles on Instagram from December 2020 on. Since December, she (sometimes supported by another contributor) explore the list of all articles indexed by « les sans pagEs » via Petscan. There are currently 9000 articles indexed. Amongst those, she extracts notable people born on a specific day. She analyses query results (between 10 to 30 a day) and then builds a calendar, trying to make sure to present a selection highlighting the diversity of gender and origin. She also tries to select well-written pages and as many as possible pages with photos. After the images are selected, she summarizes in 2-3 sentences the life of each person and adds relevant hashtags to the posts. On average, this represents about 20 posts per month.

As of May 2021, the calendar (éphéméride in French) initiative is still ongoing and generating a significant increase of visits to the Instagram account. The team is now thinking of using this calendar to create quizzes.

A new outreach activity is born to illustrate articles

A new contributor began in July 2020 to ask the collaboration of artists to illustrate articles missing imaages by drawing then, generating widespread interest on Instagram. This new kind of contribution is gaining momentum and adding a touch of creativity to the austere encyclopedic design, one point that has been known to refrain women from contributing.

Membership

Our local groups and friends

1. Ateliers Femmes et Féminisme (Nantes)
2. Biographies des femmes en Suisse
3. Archiwiki Matrimoine (Hérault)
4. Les sans pages Med
5. Les sans pagEs Tunis
6. wikimidis Genève
7. Les sans pagEs Paris
8. Les sans pagEs Valais
9. WikiMercrediMAMCO
10. Les sans pagEs Limoges (NEW)
11. Femmes et personnes non binaires dans le jeu vidéo (NEW)
12. Gender in the making à l'Université de Genève (NEW)
13. Les sans pagEs Bénin (NEW)

Individual membership

Membership can be evaluated beyond 250 members but exact figures are difficult to estimate with precision due to...

1. Membership depends whether one talks of membership of the usergroup (completely open to anyone interested) or membership of the legal association (restricted)
2. Members can sign their names on meta (24 people) or they may add their name in the main participant list (237 people) on the French Wikipedia, but they may also indicate their name only in the subgroups, such as here for Benin.
3. individual membership for the online part of the project can also be assessed through the number of contributors who actively choose to publish articles in the newly created or upgraded articles section. Statistics of these contributions between July 1rst 2019 to June 3, 2020 show 291 contributors, 18 total newbies, 32 regular contributors among which 11 sysops, the others being people who created their account mostly after 2016. These people constitute the heart of the online wiki project page.

The UserGroup is open to all genders. Communication with members will primarily happen on the project wiki talk page by design, but the telegram channel is also a very active and lively space for discussion.

Expansion

In terms of results and statistics, le les sans pagEs project aquired 52 new particpants registered as showing an interest in the project. More than 100 new accounts joined the project in 2020, of which 24 continued to contribute in 2021. 33 out of these newbies published a new article on the francophone wikipedia. 26 of them particpated to more than one event or project, some of them making their first edits to wikidata, commons, wiktionnary, wikiquote and wikisource. We had an active group working solely on wikisource which succesfully trained 4 newbies to wikisource, These 100 newbies came from Bénin (14), Paris (20), Limoges (3), Lille, online workshops (8), Africa (1), Lille (10), Geneva (11), Toulouse (1), Montpellier (1). Full results concerning newvbies can be found here.

Photo gallery

• 
  Sans pagEs workshop on December, 26th 2020 in CNFC, Benin
• 
  Sans pagEs workshop on December, 26th 2020 in CNFC, Abomey-Calavi
• 
  Preparation meeting on work lists for Women and Videogames group
• 
  Constellation inauguration and Libraqueer visit on July, 18th 2020, Paris.
• 
  LSP visit. January, 10th 2020, Marseille.
• 
  Poster of Sans pagEs Ordinatrice 2020 workshops. A presentation can be found.
• 
  Drawings during Fribourg meeting
• 
  Lunch during Fribourg meeting
• 
  Brainstorming
• 
  A group meeting without a museum visit would not be complete... (museums were opened ???)

Legal entity

The association was founded in January 2017 in order to manage the received funds. It is based in Geneva and aims at supporting financially the activities deployed by the wikimedian project to reduce the gender gap.

Board

Board composition as of January 2020,

• President : Natacha Rault
• Treasurer: vacant after departure of Esther Espelt (moving to Spain)
• Secretary: Gala Papillon

Our main partners

Our supporters

• Wikimedia France
• Unige
• Wikimedia CH
• Wikimedia Foundation
• Women in games
• Médiathèque de Suresne
• Gaité Lyrique

The LSP UserGroup was financially supported in 2020 by Wikimedia France through an annual grant. The 2020 Annual Meeting was financially supported by Wikimedia CH.

Other affiliates/projects we collaborated with

• 
  Women in Red
• 
  Wiki Loves Women
• 
  AfroCROWD User Group
• 
  Art+Feminism User Group
• 
  Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group
• 
  WikiDonne
• 
  Wiki Matrimoine
• 
  Noircir_Wikipédia
• 
  Frauen in Rot

Learnings and next steps

During the midst of the pandemia, we focused on making outreach online within the Wikimedia community mostly to have the participation in the project grow. The effort on the online meetings have been a supportive activity especially for people suffering from isolation in the midst of the confinements.

A new GLAM project in collaboration with the Gender studies department of the University of Geneva has been launched, aiming at introducing teaching contribution to gender studies related aspects in French. 20 students contributed, the project was extended to a 4-year program financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation. This recognition of our work in academic surroundings is very important for us and it helps to shape a good image of the Wikipedia ecosystem.

Growing the project page online has been an objective to have focus brought on wikipedians who work in the shadow and remain invisible, compared to people who meet in events and beneficiate from the most media coverage. There is a gap to be filled there, bridging between IRL events and online contributing (the latter producing most of the content available in the end to read).

We also focused on "' readership" by trying to promote content via social medias, with new initiatives on Instagram. The idea was that while the Twitter account is posting newly published articles, the Instagram account would focus on previously published quality articles on the birthday dates of remarkable womynx. It has been a success, bringing high engagement, along with the "sans image" campaign.

Work on the charter has been made, we are the only nonprofessional UG with its own designed code of conduct and charter for facilitators and trainers or LSP referents. The next step will be to see if it is compliant with the UCoc, and to design a " consequence ladder" and people responsible for applying it, as this has not been done yet. This work was done because the setting of the wikimedia movement is sometimes prone to facilitating competition among emerging groups tackling similar issues. We believe that promoting sorority, transparency and accountability, as well rewarding and remuneration process for people who organize, train, and facilitate are necessary steps to promote a more friendly and inclusive environment. We should share with our friends, acknowledge other people's work, and also accept every contribution whether it is consequent or not. Work needs to be done on meritocracy and governance, engaging womynx and minorities who already find it difficult to contribute to the management of a UG or associated association is a challenge.

Work on promoting a more friendɭy atmosphere is continuing, we are exploring what other FLOSS communities do, the challenge of open wikis where everybody can edit putting the stakes really high. We believe in a community-led moderation approach. coupled with the implementation of the new UCOC. In 2021, three of our members will be taking the anti harassment course of the WMF.

We selected and contractualized a professional company for bookkeeping duties to have more precise and professional management of our financial accounts, and are now looking for members to join the board of trustees of our association. Two people are not enough, and we need a treasurer, after the departure of our treasurer to Spain. We thank her for her engagement and patienceǃ The next steps will be to make 2020 accounts available publicly, we are working on that. Our main sponsor, Wikimedia France, is being very supportive and helpful throughout these troubled times.

We hope to resume IRL activities in august 2021, starting with our traditional annual meeting. This time we will hopefully have people from the new Bénin group.

We will also look for people wanting to work on the WordPress website to showcase what we do and publish press releases and public reports. This should be a focus for 2022 after a failed attempt in 2020, due to the strains that COVID put on volunteers.

2021 will mark our fifth birthday and we are working on a fanzine to have our wonderful community express what Les sans pagEs means to themǃ

Further notes