[Gendergap] Nine Reasons Women Don't Edit Wikipedia

[rupert THURNER]

On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 20:04, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> I did a superfast compilation of online comments by women talking
> about why they don't edit Wikipedia:
>
> http://suegardner.org/2011/02/19/nine-reasons-why-women-dont-edit-wikipedia-in-their-own-words/
>
> A couple of things struck me: Most of the reasons cited by women for
> not editing probably apply to men too. Most are deeply rooted culture
> stuff that will take time to change. And I was particularly interested
> to read women saying they believe the bar for notability is higher for
> the topics they write about, than it is for 'male' or 'ungendered'
> topics.
>
> Thanks,
> Sue
>

hi sue, that sounds really interesting, i immediately tested the reasons
with people i know. the answers i got were:
 * no time,
 * no interest,
 * what is wikipedia / you can edit wikipedia?

while "no time" is a very prominent and simple reason, this would match
every person. as at the end of the day it is a decision between editing
wikipedia and watch tv, edit wikipedia and hike, edit wikipedia and blog,
...

then i looked at edit counts of arbitrarily chosen women i know the user
name of [1], starting with you as you wrote this email. as participating in
wikipedia is a social thing, i was wondering who dragged you into wikipedia,
and whom did you drag into it?  and how? how much of your free time /
holiday do you spend for wikipedia?

coming from edit counts i then looked at user profiles, blogs, titters, etc
to get an impression about the internet / social network participation in
general. again a couple of arbitrary links [2].

then i was wondering about you, beeing related to the internet business and
the social aspects of it for an eternity in internet terms of time. and i
thought about richard branson, who stated in "loosing my virginity" that his
market surveys often include only one opinion: his own. if richard branson
is right, then we can take sue gardners edit count as indication, that the
whole thing is moving in the right direction :)

take your last trip i can remember, going to india. highly successful from a
professional pov, there is now a chapter, etc. you took the time to prepare
the travel, to read about the region and the people, you took the time to
blog/twitter about it, to write a report to the wmf board, but did you edit
the article about india? did you upload a foto to commons?

what needs to be changed that you would have done this?

rupert.

[1] just a few edit counts ...
* sue in en:
http://toolserver.org/~river/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=Sue%20Gardner&dbname=enwiki_p
* sue in commons:
http://toolserver.org/~river/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=Sue%20Gardner&dbname=commonswiki_p
* angela recent contributions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Angela
* angela in en:
http://toolserver.org/~river/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=Angela&dbname=enwiki_p
* delphine in fr:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A9cial:Contributions/Notafish
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jimbo_Wales

[2] user profiles ...
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sue_Gardner
* http://www.linkedin.com/in/suegardner
* http://au.linkedin.com/in/angelabeesley
* http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jimmy-wales/0/a8b/919
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo
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