[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Wed Nov 22 02:34:43 UTC 2006

On 21/11/06, niht-hræfn <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:

> The recent thread on the low numbers of women applying for ArbCom and
> subsequent discussion about systemic bias and under-representation of
> women has led me to wonder about the nature of gender-related
> systemic bias on the English Wikipedia. As far as "gender is
> irrelevant" goes, this is simply not true. Gender of editors really
> does matter as far as coverage and quality thereof goes. Most of the

I'm thinking of a conversation with a feminist friend who considers
Wikipedia hopelessly patriarchally biased and useless to harmful. I
pointed out we had recognised the systemic bias issue. I also asked
her to think about solutions that include the assumption that
Wikipedia is not going to go away.

- d.