On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 20:04, Sue Gardner <sgardner@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 ...
[2] user profiles ...