Thanks for sharing this study, Ryan -- very useful info, and as you say, rather depressing!
I think it's important to note, for those who don't use IRC -- the bit about "high traffic IRC channels" is VERY significant. I hope nobody gets the idea that simply by using IRC in a rather targeted way, that they would have an even remotely similar experience. (i.e., by joining only channels that are of particular interest, like #wikimedia-gendergap or any of the many other Wikimedia channels [1])
For example, I'm logged into IRC nearly every day, and I think I've gotten maybe one message along these lines in my *life* -- which is a lot fewer than 3.7 messages per day! There are many ways to use IRC, and spending time in very high-traffic channels is not something I think would be useful for most people to begin with.
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:30 AM, ChaoticFluffy
<chaoticfluffy@gmail.com> wrote:
Hmmm, interesting. I've often wondered whether I would have had a less pleasant experience fitting into the wiki(p|m)edia IRC channels if I had an obviously-gendered nick. As it is, I get maybe one random pm a month, if that, and most of those are of the vague "hi"-followed-by-silence sort. None that I can remember have ever been sexually explicit, though I think I might have gotten threats once or twice. Maybe one day I'll run my own little experiment and masquerade under a clearly-female name and see how that changes...
-FluffernutterOn Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 2:05 AM, Ryan Kaldari
<rkaldari@wikimedia.org> wrote:
I just read the following paper which describes an interesting study
that was conducted regarding IRC:
http://www.enre.umd.edu/content/rmeyer-assessing.pdf
The researchers created several IRC bots with different names - some
female, some male, and some ambiguous. They put the bots in several high
traffic IRC channels, and had them record all the private messages they
received. The bots themselves were completely silent.
The bots with male names received an average of 3.7 private messages per
days that were sexually explicit or threatening. The bots with ambiguous
names received an average of 24.9 such messages per day. The bots with
female names received an average of 100 such messages per day!
This is a very sad statistic, and probably goes a long way towards
explaining why there aren't that many women on IRC these days.
On a happier note, if you want to hang out on IRC and not get sexually
harassed, you can always join #wikimedia-gendergap!
Ryan Kaldari
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