CNET UK – Top 10 Girl Geeks

CNET UK has published a list of the Top 10 girl geeks. I was excited to read the list, my excitement is gone and replaced with a resounding, "huh?" Clearly some names make sense, but when you get past 3-4, they went the wrong way at the fork-in-the-road. Tara has a list of the women of Web 2.0. Rob offers some other suggestions for this list.

This list must have been created just to get some buzz for CNET because I have just deducted two points from the reputation from CNET. And it worked, it is on Slashdot with over 200 replies (mostly bashing)

The names on the list:

1. Ada Byron – World's First Programmer
2. Val Tereshkova – Went to Space
3. Grace Hopper – Found Computer Bug
4. Daryl Hannah – Eco-Friendly Geek Icon
5. Rosalind Franklin – Chemist
6. Mary Shelley – Wrote Frankenstein
7. Lisa Simpson – Future President
8. Marie Curie – Polonium in her pockets
9. Aleks Krotoski – Very chic geek
10. Paris Hilton – Famous girl gamer

Paris Hilton?!?!?!?! Paris is on every single top 10 list around.  I mean seriously, is this some kind of joke list? If they were to create a list for men, would Batman and Dilbert appear on the list? I could probably come up with 100 names today that should be on this list before Paris Hilton. Really disappointing.

Read the comments on Slashdot and CNET UK. Some of the interesting comments include:

• "It must be very empowering to women to know that it's apparently impossible to compile a list of even ten prominent geek women without padding it with fictional characters and vacuous celebrities."

• "The list is an insult to women, and in particular geek women. Having filler like Lisa Simpson is bad enough, but Paris Hilton? If the list were of the top 10 men, would it include Dilbert and some-random-male-game-playing-celebrity?"

• "Did I just see Madame Curie and Rosalind Franklin compared with Paris Hilton and Lisa Simpson? One two time Nobel Prize winner and another near Nobel Prize winner compared to a coke snorting self promoting gamer and a cartoon character."

• "Now where's Susan Kare? The designer of original Mac OS, Windows 3 and OS/2 Warp Icons and most importantly: Solitaire graphics."

• "thanks for once again, taking women with brains seriously by picking a cartoon and an empty-headed stick figure. you should have just called this "top 8 girl geeks". Oh, and thanks for re-enforcing an already hostile work environment – I'm sure the guys are glad to see that they've been right all along."

• "You have got to be kidding me. You aren't being edgy or cool. Including Paris and a freaking cartoon character just takes any respectabilty this list could possibly have and throws it out the window. Oh wait, I think you forgot Sandra Bullock, she played a geek in The Net." — I like this one – The Net rocket – those IP addresses, the hitting escape wipes the system, cmon CNET get her on the list!

• "I can't believe that they omitted Emmy Noether, one of my role models and possibly, IMO, the greatest geek girl of all time. Despite the incredible sexism and rise of the nazi rule that she faced during her day, she was brilliantly accomplished, contributing huge amounts to the fields of commutative algebra and theoretical physics."

• "The list is an insult to women, and in particular geek women. Having filler like Lisa Simpson is bad enough, but Paris Hilton? If the list were of the top 10 men, would it include Dilbert and some-random-male-gameplaying-celebrity? Honestly, there are lots of girl geeks (a lot have been mentioned in other posts, I'd like to add Jeri Ellsworth that would far better fit the list. The only thing this list proves, it the author's inaptitude as a journalist."