On 1 June 2014 01:39, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 1 June 2014 04:26, James Salsman
<jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
...
...
selects strongly against women.
Where is the evidence that women have more difficulty understanding
wikitext than men?
(Probably drifting to "Increase participation by women")
As someone who has run editathons on women focused topics, I found
this an odd comment that does not match anecdotal experience. New
women users seem little different to men in the issues that arise, and
though I have found myself apologising for the slightly odd syntax,
given the standard crib-sheet most users get on with basic article
creation quite happily.
There are far more commonly raised issues such as the complex issues
associated with image upload (copyright!), or the conceptual
difficulty of "namespaces" which mean that some webpages behave
differently to others. None is something that appears to "select
strongly against women", though the encyclopedia's way of defining
notability can make it harder to create articles about pre-1970s
professional women, purely because sources from earlier periods tend
to be biased towards men.
If there are surveys that wiki-syntax is more of a barrier for women
than men (after discounting out other factors), perhaps someone could
provide a link?
Fae, I don't know if wiki-syntax in and of itself is more of a barrier for
women than men. What I do know is that wiki-syntax is a lot harder today
than it was when I started editing 8 years ago, and that today I would
consider it more akin to computer programming than content creation. That
is where the barrier comes in.
The statistics for percentage of women employed in computer-related
technology is abysmal; we all know that. Even organizations that actively
seek out qualified women (including Wikimedia, I'll point out) can't come
close to filling all the slots they'd willingly open, because there simply
aren't that many qualified women. They're not filling the seats in college
and university programs, either.
Eight years ago, only about a quarter of English Wikipedia articles had an
infobox - that huge pile of wiki-syntax that is at the top of the
overwhelming majority of articles today. There were not a lot of
templates; certainly the monstrous templates at the bottom of most articles
today didn't exist then. The syntax for creating references was
essentially <ref> insert url </ref>; today there is a plethora of complex
referencing templates, some of which are so complex and non-intuitive that
only a small minority of *wikipedians* can use them effectively. I know
wiki-syntax, and I have found it increasingly more difficult to edit as
time has gone on. I don't think it's because I'm a woman, I think it's
because I'm not a programmer - and women who *are* programmers are only a
small minority of all programmers, so it follows that women are less likely
to have the skills that will help them sort through what they see when they
click "Edit".
It's exactly why I've been following and keeping up with the development of
VisualEditor - because I believe it will make it easier for those who
aren't particularly technically inclined to contribute to the project. I
believe it's the route to attracting a more diverse editing population,
including but not limited to women. And I think that it's pretty close to
being ready for hands-on use by those who are new to our projects, now that
it can handle pretty well most of the essential editing tasks. It's not
perfect, but it's getting there.
Risker/Anne