Claudia, thanks! To be clear, I do not think that
gender-stereotyped-female-content has only been created by women. On the
contrary, most of it, just like the rest of the Wikiverse family of
projects, has been created by men. I do feel however, that the probability
of young women contributing to (for example) articles about historical
costume items such as hoop skirts (for example) is higher than that for
men. Just as I feel that the probability of young men contributing to (for
example) articles about digital power, such as electrical motor controllers
(for example) is higher than that for women. Personally, I think the need
for both articles is high and that both subjects are under-represented in
the English Wikipedia.
Jane
On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 11:04 AM, <koltzenburg(a)w4w.net> wrote:
Hi Jane, thanks, I like your argumentation,
and I do agree with your slant in general, yet
hi all, second thoughts: with so many female user contributing to 'general'
topics already, why should non-female human beings not be able and willing
to contribute more good content on, e.g., clothing and cooking? Maybe some
gender stereotypes need to be done away with here in order to close content
gaps. Answers sought :)
best,
Claudia
---------- Original Message -----------
From:Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com>
To:Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-
l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent:Tue, 2 Jun 2015 08:51:57 +0200
Subject:Re: [Wiki-research-l] Gender Estimates Feedback
Jason, thanks for your work. The problem you are
trying to solve, however, is still not well-
defined. Yes, we lack female editors, and yes,
this probably has an adverse effect on our
content. Until we understand why the women are not
participating, and why when they do, they drop off
more rapidly than men, it is fruitless to try to
ramp up participation among women. In fact, this
could worsen the situation if we manage to gain on
board tons of women who leave in frustration after
a few weeks or months, never to come back. We
would then be damaging our chances to gain editors
who could be become highly valued contributors.
Other, unrelated research has shown that
reversions have a tendency to drive people away
very effectively, and new users have become more
likely to be reverted since 2006. My suspicion is
that women are affected by reversions more than
men. If we think of this whole problem area as a
multi-step process, then I think we need to set up
something like this for every nth new user (male
or female, whoever agrees to participate): 1) one-
on-one interviews at start of sign-up 2) periodic
checkup interviews per month 3) exit interviews at
end of 3-month non-activity period.
Once we understand the issues affecting newbies
better, we can implement changes (or not) that can
improve our lopsided participation profile (not
just for gender but for all other participation
gaps as well). On the content side, there is
nothing preventing us from actively and
aggressively starting translation efforts to
spread the female biographies we already have
across more language versions of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia suffers from the gendergap in academic
bias and is in fact worse by definition, because
Wikipedia follows academia, and does not create
original research
(according to policy). Notability issues (because
women didn't make the grade in early dictionaries
of biography) become more prominent for women,
just as they do for under-privileged non-white-US
groups, so the women's biographies that are
already out there in some language version are
probably notable enough to be translated into any
other language version. Having female biographies
to read in any Wikipedia category breeds the
creation/addition of more biographies by
encouraging a "copycat" effect. Similarly, as
women tend to be more oriented towards family
issues, education, and daily life, we should
aggressively ramp up coverage such as round-the-
world customs regarding graduation ceremonies,
weddings, funerals, baby showers, etc. Also,
things like clothing items and accessories,
fashion trends, and cooking utensils are all notoriously
under-covered on Wikipedia in all languages,
whereas lots of content that is there in some
language could just be translated across wikis.
It is my expectation that Wikidata will make such
translation tasks trivial and building interfaces
to add content through translations is a type of
contribution that can attract casual new users
without seeming too threatening (in terms of
potentially being reverted).
Jane
On Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 2:09 AM, Jason Radford <jsradford(a)uchicago.edu>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Since participating in the Inspire campaign, I got interested in the
> question of exactly how many women would be needed on Wikipedia to
close
> the gender gap. I ran some simulations and
came up with some fairly
> radical numbers. For example, according to my calculations, there are
so
> few current and new female editors that,
even if every current and new
> active, female editor stayed active for ten years, we wouldn't close
the
> gap.
>
> I've posted the results
> <https://civilsociology.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/closing-the-gender-
gap-on-wikipedia-results-from-some-simulations/>
> to my blog. It's password protected so I
can share the results and get
> feedback without making it pubic. You can access them by using the
> password "wikipedia". I'm hoping some of you with experience
researching
> gender representation on Wikipedia would be
able to catch any errors.
>
> Thanks!
> Jason
> --
> Jason Radford
> Doctoral Student, Sociology, University of Chicago
> Visiting Researcher, Lazer Lab, Northeastern University
> *Connect*: LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/in/jsradford>, Twitter
> <http://www.twitter.com/jsradford>, University of Chicago
> <http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Ejsradford/>
> *Play Games for Science at Volunteer Science
> <http://www.volunteerscience.com>*
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
------- End of Original Message -------
_______________________________________________
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l