[WikiEN-l] An observation

Fri Nov 10 02:53:38 UTC 2006

Matt R wrote:

>--- 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.
>  
>
In terms of their individual qualifications, I agree that we mostly just 
want sensible people regardless of gender. My concern is for the 
composition of the overall pool, and getting a broad selection of 
well-qualified candidates. There are many different perspectives that 
would be valuable, but with respect to gender, a very easy one comes to 
mind. The Arbitration Committee has periodically dealt with cases of 
harassment, and doubtless such cases will unfortunately recur. We have 
had instances where women on Wikipedia have been systematically harassed 
on account of their gender, and women generally have a particular 
appreciation of that concern; I doubt anybody could effectively harass 
men on Wikipedia based on their being male.

I would add that fundamentally, few of us have the perspective of being 
in a permanent minority, as opposed to the shifting "political" 
minorities over a given point of debate. In terms of the overall editor 
population (for the English Wikipedia), we primarily have just two 
groups that qualify as sizable and recognizable minorities that interact 
with a prevailing majority group. These two are women and non-native 
English-speakers. Their input is valuable, and potentially helpful in 
working with smaller or less identifiable minorities (some of whom are 
even more under-represented). It should be cultivated instead of 
trending toward tyranny of the majority.

--Michael Snow