[WikiEN-l] An observation

Thu Nov 9 16:10:28 UTC 2006

--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> 
> > Since when did we care about gender on wikipedia?
> 
> Since we started using personal pronouns, whenever that was. I wasn't 
> around then, but I suspect it was fairly early on.

Granted, we are sometimes -- but only sometimes -- aware of another editor's
gender on Wikipedia, but does it make a big difference? Do I know (say)
[[User:SpLoT]]'s gender? Should I care? If I did, would it make much difference
to how I would interact with that person? For me, the answer is "no".
Admittedly I don't edit articles like [[feminism]], but my experience is that
Wikipedia is a place where gender is relatively unimportant. Maybe your
experience is different.

But to respond to your original point, I just can't see that there exists
special and distinct male and female perspectives that would make much
difference in ArbComm matters. Surely we just want sensible, wiki-savvy,
plain-old *people*? I'm open to persuasion otherwise.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

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