Leading article: Girl power

Women aren't pulling their weight on the web.

So says Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. Mr Wales has pointed out that the site's editors are dominantly "26-year-old geeky males" and has called for more women to get involved in order to broaden its coverage. It is tempting to argue that women clearly have better things to do than typing away for hours at a time, augmenting an online encyclopedia.

Except that over the past decade Wikipedia has proven itself to be one of the wonders of the web – an impressive communal resource of knowledge. It would indeed be a shame if that resource ended up with a bias to male interests. Mr Wales is right. Women of the web: Wikipedia needs you.