Hello!
This is a long-winded email. I have broken up my thoughts into
multiple mails for ease-of-threading; this mail is a larger "overview"
and I'm going to include my actual "forward thinking" solutions in a
reply to it so that we can discuss those separately from this.
I am interested in opening a discussion about things that we can do to
help alleviate the gender gap (as well as encourage further
participation across the board). I alluded earlier to the fact that I
have several ideas about this, and I want to open a dialog here (and am
planning to have a broader conversation on-wiki).
First, I suppose I should really introduce myself.
My name is Brandon Harris, though most people seem to know me as "jorm"
or some variant of that (my staff account is "Jorm (WMF)"). I am an
employee of the Foundation - a designer. For the past several months I
have been tasked on-and-off with redesigning LiquidThreads (LQT), which
is a next-generation discussion system.
Originally, I approached the problems of LQT from a position of "how do
I make what is there better." I have since come to the conclusion that
this approach was incorrect, and refocused my thinking to a more
holistic approach to the larger problem of editor participation,
retention, and ease-of-collaboration.
Unfortunately, the "big problem" of editor attraction, retention, and
drop-off is a "death from a thousand cuts." If there were a single
point of failure, we could easily identify it and suture it closed.
That doesn't mean that we can't solve it, however. It just takes a
different approach.
If I were to define the single largest knife, however, I would have to
say that it is social in nature. This is very specifically highlighted
in the "gender gap" problem. Many of the largest communities on the web
have fairly equal gender balances. It is my assessment that a large
part of this is because they have a strong social bend - a bend that
Wikipedia lacks.
I do not believe that WYSIWYG editing is the silver bullet and I think
it is a mistake to focus on that. The "editor hump" is not specific and
it's not that difficult: many, many people write blogs or make websites
with even cruder tools. Once you learn to edit, it's not a problem.
The biggest barrier to editing is one of motivation: people will edit
if they want to edit and it doesn't matter how easy it is to edit if
they don't want to.
We have several barriers here, most of which are social in nature:
* People are not actually aware that they *can* edit
* People do not feel that they have the *right* to edit
* People do not feel that their edits will remain
* People do not wish to deal with the social bureaucracy
* People do not feel that they have anything worth contributing
First, I think that we have to stop thinking about "how to we increase
the number of *editors*" and instead ask "how do we increase the number
of *participants*." This is a subtle but important distinction.
Whenever I sit down to make a product more usable, I think about
several persons in my life who represent typical problems. When
thinking about Wikipedia, I use three personas:
* My father, who knows nearly everything about James Bond and baseball,
and is eager to share that knowledge, but would *never* be an editor;
* My mother, who has advanced degrees in mathematics and English, and
who would probably love to be an editor, but would be horrified by the
culture; and
* My girlfriend's father, a retired engineer who used to work at
Lawrence Berkeley, who would probably be an editor. He would not be
horrified by the culture but would find it tedious and its rules overly
confusing.
All three of them could be rather easily transformed into participants
(and possibly editors, given enough time). For instance, my father
would want to be able to easily discuss facts or statements in the
articles, so giving him obvious tools to do that would transform him
into a participant.
(One way to help do this would be to place a [discuss] link next to the
[edit] link on a page section. With LiquidThreads, we could key that
link to open immediately to an existing discussion about the section (or
create a new one if one wasn't there). Bam! Now he's involved.)
However, the biggest problem (by far) is not "widening the funnel" of
participation on-ramp but rather providing a solid social structure to
ensure that new people in the participant funnel can actually
*participate*. That is the the subject of my next email.
Phoebe wrote:
> Maybe we need a special rule for this mailing list:
> after five posts you have to take a break, step away,
> and try to convince a woman you know that they
> should be contributing to Wikipedia. After they make
> their first edit, come back to the mailing list....
That's a good idea. I had hoped to collect all of the ideas posted as
proposed solutions to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_more_female_editors but the
list volume has been so great I'm swamped, and am worried that I'll miss
some good ones. So if you've proposed a solution or see a solution here you
like, would you please add it to that page?
In the interest of brainstorming I hope we can add every idea without regard
to obvious merit and work on seperating the wheat from the chaff in a few
weeks time.
There are a few ideas there that haven't been posted on this list yet, such
as working with the Girl Scouts (should we propose an editing badge?) and
asking celebrities such as Oprah with a large female audience to encourage
their followers to edit.
Just joining this list; I am an environmental scholar in Chicago and also active in scholarly organizations around women and religion, and environment and religion.
I'd like to second/third/whatever the idea of a "women post to wiki" month. Speaking organizationally, it would be easier to post to lists like H-WOMEN etc, to generate activity for the month. I would hope some of those who post would then continue to contribute.
Speak but the word! Patricia Monaghan (DePaul University and Black Earth Institute)
There are events all over the country - UN Foundation lunch in DC, Tina
Brown conference in NY, Women Deliver 100 list launch, a bunch more. How
about Wikimedia Ambassadors tag on training sessions for women at those
events?
Frances Kissling, visiting scholar
Center for Bioethics, UPenn
202 368 3954
..as a lady Wikipedian I am proud to say that I just completed my 100th
Wikipedia article.. (it still has a bit of work to be done..but..)
/Nana on a Dolphin/ by the sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle.
So, not only is it my 100th, but, it's a female artist, and a female
themed artwork...and it's currently on loan as a public artwork at the
National Museum of Women in the Arts!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nana_on_a_Dolphin
#yay!
--
Sarah Stierch Consulting
Historical, cultural & artistic research, advising & event planning.
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.sarahstierch.com/ <http://www.sarahstierch.com>
Thanks, SV, Patricia, everybody else.
There are lots of groups who would publicize this
but not in time for March 8th.
Women are experts in so many fields of study, not just Women's History.
There's no need for Women Post to Wikipedia Month to be March.
These are two different areas -
1.) "Women's History"
2.) "Women are Experts too."
In fact, I would rather that it *not* be during Women's History Month
just to make sure that the two areas are not confused with each other.
Women are to be encouraged to post to any topic.
So separate these two events.
Let's do this during August or September so it can be done correctly.
A logo sounds nice as long as it's not pink.
- Susan Spencer Conklin
I've proposed some very common sense code of conduct principles here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_Gap#Mailing_list
This list is getting lots of participation so I think it's a good time
to agree on some basic behavioral principles. If you have things to
add, please add them, if you want to discuss, please use the
discussion page.
Thanks!
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
As a novice and newcomer, I am fascinated by these discussions (although I admit some are soaring over my head).
March is indeed only a few weeks away. However, a lot of academic email lists, which could draw some great women contributors, post every day. On H-NET, there are a number of such lists, such as H-WOMEN with hundreds of members including graduate students, who I believe might well be some of the most active contributors.
Some academics deplore Wikipedia. I have several colleagues who deplore its very existence. (Yes, I have pointed out the studies that compare it to printed encyclopediae, but to no avail.) However, others are less bigoted. And in my experience, graduate students welcome the chance to "publish" in areas they are researching and about which they are writing.
If there were to be a concerted campaign during Women's Hist Month (US), it would have to be organized pretty quickly--like, this week. Might be too much. I'd certainly post hither and yon if this does come about.
Or there's always next year....cheers Patricia
PS Us amateurs don't know the difference between an editor and someone who just posts. I am referring above to getting women to post. Editing is beyond my ken at the moment. Or maybe I'm making a distinction w/ no difference.
An idea I had recently (I was going to submit it officially, and all that
rigmarole) might be useful. I'll let you lot be the judge of that.
As far as I can see, we have two problems here. The first is that the female
demographic of editors is tiny. The second, and more crucial if we're to
work on the first, is that we don't know why this is. We can point to a
dozen different things which show why editing in *general* is turning some
off, but not (that I've seen) anything that applies specifically - or has
more of an impact than it would on men - to women.
One idea I've been playing around with might hit both at the same time. On
en-wiki, we've got the contrib team, which is designed to help act as a link
between the WMF and community in regards to outreach. We/it have been doing
work that involves going to universities, and acting as a gateway for new
editors coming onto the site. What we could try is posting a geolocated
banner notice that applies to specific IPs of say, Vassar College, a
women-only college in the United States. This banner would contain
testimonials from current editors (all or mostly female) about how enjoyable
it is to edit, the impact editing has made on them, and so on, along with a
link to a pre-established gateway to introduce people to editing Wikipedia.
The advantage of this - if it goes well, we get a pool of intelligent,
educated female editors to help address the gender gap. If it goes *badly*,
we get something almost as useful - a pool of disenchanted potential
editors, all from a relatively controlled demographic (reducing the chance
of statistical errors) who we can easily contact to work out what exactly it
is that hindered them from editing. Either we help address the gap, or we
work out *how* to help address it. The only issue I can see is that banner
notices don't currently allow for geolocation that's any more specific than
the country, but if this idea gets sufficient traction and seems like a good
idea to the foundation, I don't see how that couldn't be addressed
relatively quickly.*
What do people think?
Oliver
*Although I am not a techie.
@Sarah,
March sounds good, but it might be hard to pull off a
project to create a "Women Post to Wikipedia" month
in 2 weeks. Could we get a little more lead time?
@Interface discussion:
It would be great if Wikipedia's interface were improved,
but it isn't part of the gendergap problem. To say that
it particularly affects the posting of women more than men
is is pure conjecture. The interface affects everyone -
that's not conjecture.
So, enough of the "women are ____ because ____" statements.
It's demeaning and humiliating, so stop.
- Susan Spencer Conklin