[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Sat Nov 25 15:57:32 UTC 2006

This is a rather serious problem, and I regret that more hasn't been
done about it. On the one hand, you /could/ just ban everyone who acts
like this, but I don't think they'd particularly learn. For the most
part, these people just need to mature, and learn to think with their
brains rather than their sex organs. How one would educate these
individuals is another thing entirely, however.

~~Sean

> There are some who would argue that there is no bias against women in
> internet contexts because they receive so much more attention and
> everyone is all "omg grrls" (They're full of crap, btw). However, I'd
> say on Wikipedia, I get more attention when I want something and
> little to no attention when I'm saying something.
>
> The attention I do receive in #wikipedia is often what I would
> consider sexual harassment (I wholly understand that IRC is not
> Wikipedia, but maybe 200 of our editors are there). In #uncyclopedia,
> I kickban anyone that I feel isn't respecting me/my gender as they
> should. However, there I am level 24, bureaucrat and sysop on wiki
> and generally pull more weight. I am afraid to say anything about
> feeling harassed on #wikipedia because it seems that I would be told
> that they were just joking or I need to lighten up or that's not a
> bannable offense. Not that I hate everyone who does it either, and I
> don't even know if they know they're doing it, but it's a shame that
> it's allowed and overlooked. Although I am part of the problem here
> for not speaking up.
>
> On-wiki the problem of gender discrimination is probably not as
> pronounced because one often needs to look at the user page and find
> the area where the user decides or declines to state their gender.
> I'd be interested to know how well-known females are treated compared
> to their well-known male counterparts (I mean admins, etc, those that
> people know are female because they've heard of them), although it
> would seem with the actions of Wikipedia Review, that the answer is
> going to be "less well".
>
> Anyhow, it'd seem that to be female and stick around Wikipedia IRC,
> one has to have very thick skin. I don't know why females, in my
> experience, feel more intimidated to edit Wikipedia or why they
> aren't jumping on the editing bandwagon. They certainly /use/ it..
>
> --Keitei, who's just typed more than she'd intended
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