[WikiEN-l] WikiWomen (was Partial deletion)

Wed Jul 16 19:00:39 UTC 2003

sannse wrote:

>I haven't bothered to correct those on Wikipedia who have presumed I'm
>male - it hasn't bothered me and doesn't seem worth the typing.  But since
>seeing you comment on this I've realised you are right - we have a tendency
>to presume anyone without an obviously female name is male.  And I do it
>myself all the time.  I can't think of a single contributor with a
>gender-neutral name that I picture as female (unless they have identified
>themselves as such).
>  
>
Well, on this issue it's usually a reasonable assumption -- at least in 
most places where online discussion takes place, the participants are 
invariably 90-95% male (and sometimes it's more lopsided than that -- 
take a look at [[Slashdot]]'s demographics...).  In fact, often you're 
better off presuming even (or perhaps especially!) people with 
obviously-female names are male.  Wikipedia may be somewhat more 
diverse, though I doubt it'd be possible to get good statistics.  But in 
any case once we "assume everyone is male" people start noticing a few 
times we're wrong about it, we start getting more wary about assuming in 
the future (or so's the hope anyway).  It's in places that every time 
you assume someone's male it turns out they actually *are* male that 
it's hard to change to become less presumptuous. :-P

-Mark