I'm not keen on the phrase "female-related content", I posted this
transcript of an exchange I had with an editor
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2015-April/005670.html in April.
When I dared to suggest that women could be interested in topics other than the ones he
suggested - "fashion, cookery, domestic affairs and childrearing" - he responded
with this:
"...the purpose of the task force was to increase
the participation of women of all sorts, not just radical feminists like you apparently
are."
and later:
"... your comments seem to wilfully denigate the
possibility that women could be interested in topics of "traditional" interest
to women."
Regarding English Wikipedia, it is worth remembering that the US, UK, Australia and New
Zealand all have English as their official language, and that Canada has both English and
French, so English Wikipedia isn't an homogenous block.
My experience of well moderated websites in the UK (with their servers in the UK, and
therefore subject to UK law), is that people are simply not allowed to speak that way here
either. As far as I'm aware Jeremy Waldron (from New Zealand), is one of the few to
take on America's first amendment in his book "The Harm in Hate Speech".
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2223860
Marie
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2015 07:57:48 -0400
From: slowking4(a)gmail.com
To: gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Slate on Wikipedia and the gendergap
empty simplistic theorizingneed to do multi-factor analysis of input factors.edtitathons
are gathering data, but sample size is smalldon't really have good data on percentage
participation
my experience is that "female-related content" is improving, but gap remains as
the toxic culture trumps everything else. i.e. low correlation
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 7:47 AM, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com> wrote:
An interesting set of questions, Lennart! Let me first explain why I am looking for
reliable sources on the Gendergap. I have been involved with efforts to reduce the
Gendergap in the Netherlands since 2011. Our big news today is that we have nearly doubled
female participation from 6% (measured in 2013) to 11% according to our latest survey
results from this year. One of the problems I have in discussions regarding the Gendergap
is the whole chicken-and-egg theory about whether women don't participate because of a
lack of female-related content, or whether we lack female-related content because we have
so few female participants. It would be nice to have an article in the Dutch Wikipedia on
the Gendergap to answer these questions without repeating myself constantly, but I see
that so far since publication of that article on the English Wikipedia on 30 April 2014
(called "Gender Bias on Wikipedia" in order to differentiate it from the
"Gender Pay Gap"), only the Turkish Wikipedia has managed to create an article
in their wiki on the same subject.
I would really like to make an article in the Dutch Wikipedia about this, and in this
context we would rely on Dutch "reliable sources" but what they have published
so far is quite thin and only refers to the English Wikipedia, which is not helpful. Slate
is not recognized as a reliable source by the Dutch Wikipedia, and this article, though
interesting, does not touch on the participation gap in the Netherlands or indeed why it
even matters. The Slate article is focused on an edit-war which is not really relevant to
the larger community because as you say, though the language on talk pages in nlwiki can
be very condescending or negative, it's generally not profane like this one. I do
think from conversations I have had and research done by Aaron Halfaker and others, that
the problem stems from the strange need to throw links to help pages at newbies rather
than talk to them normally in language they can understand. Some of the very worst
articles in the Wikiverse are help pages, which are probably bad because they are not
indexed by Google and have too few eyes looking at them. That said, the help pages need a
better "between the lines" analysis for the AfD queue, so that Dutch
abbreviations like "Vrouw-baan" on the Dutch AfD list are interpreted correctly
to mean "This editor is probably a woman promoting her own business and COI policy
applies here" rather than what it sounds like "all women who work should have
their articles be deleted on eye contact". I have also noticed that articles about
women tend to be nominated much more often for deletion than articles by men. Ditto the
books they write, the movies they make, and any notable news items they are the subject
of. I think women give up quicker because they are less tech-savvy at finding their way
around the various bits of behind-the-scenes discussion areas. Often they can't even
find their way to the discussion at the AfD queue or the Village pump.
Why doesn't the Swedish Wikipedia have an article about the Gendergap? What is the
Gendergap in Sweden today?
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Lennart Guldbrandsson <l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
Hello,
Slate recently published a, at least to my eyes, fairly well-balanced article about
Wikipedia:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/12/wikipedia_editing_…
The Gender Gap Task Force gets more than a shout-out:
"Last week, Wikipedia’s highest court, the Arbitration Committee,
composed of 12 elected volunteers who serve one- or two-year terms,
handed down a decision in a controversial case having to do with the
site’s self-formed Gender Gap Task Force,
the goal of which is to increase female participation on Wikipedia from
its current 10 percent to 25 percent by the end of next year. The
dispute, which involved ongoing hostility from a handful of prickly
longtime editors, had simmered for at least 18 months. In the end, the
only woman in the argument, pro-GGTF libertarian feminist Carol Moore,
was indefinitely banned from all of Wikipedia over her uncivil comments
toward a group of male editors, whom she at one point dubbed “the
Manchester Gangbangers and their cronies/minions.” Two of her chief
antagonists in that group got comparative slaps on the wrist. One was
the productive but notoriously hostile Eric “Fuck Wikipedia” Corbett, who has a milelong
track record of incivility, had declared the task force a feminist “crusade ... to
alienate every male editor,” and called Moore “nothing but a pain in the arse,” among less
printable comments; he was handed a seemingly redundant “prohibition” on abusive language.
The other editor was Sitush, who repeatedly criticized Moore for being “obsessed with an
anti-male agenda” and then decided to research and write a Wikipedia biography of her;
he walked away with a mere “warning.” With the Arbitration Committee
opting only to ban the one woman in the dispute despite her behavior
being no worse than that of the men, it’s hard not to see this as a
setback to Wikipedia’s efforts to rectify its massive gender gap. (After
the decision, several editors announced their intentions to resign in protest.)
Moreover, it’s reflective of the challenges Wikipedia faces as it
attempts to retain and improve its content quality and editing force."
Also mentioned, the Chelsea Manning name controversy and the overall fall in editors.
What I miss here and in almost every article in English I've seen on these types of
topics is that English Wikipedia is the only one mentioned. I grant that many readers only
know English, but I for one, don't recognize the same bad language and anti-women
behavior in my daily work on Swedish Wikipedia. We would simply not allow people to speak
that way.
This leads me to wonder how those types of behaviors affect editors. We have a golden
opportunity to A/B test this, because of all our language versions.
So, my question, stated another way, is: if the bad language and anti-women behavior on
English Wikipedia deter editors, and maybe especially female editors, and we have other
Wikipedias with less bad language and anti-women behavior (perhaps), do these language
versions have a higher female-to-male ratio?
And stated a third way: how much do the bad language and anti-women behavior really
influence the gendergap?
Best wishes,
Lennart Guldbrandsson
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http://www.elementx.se
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