I do call the Dutch Wikipedia a hostile editing environment, but I am not
convinced that environment is more hostile to women than to men. It is
decidedly hostile to all newcomers and all outsiders, where I would
consider outsiders to be people who make edits less often than once per
month.
I never thought about whether women get the silent treatment more than men,
butif they do, this could just be a byproduct of women having an innate
interest in things more appealing to women than to men, and with a female
editor population of 6%, someone with those interests is more likely to get
the silent treatment just because of female editor scarcity. That said, it
is also quite possible that the silent treatment is some sort of symptom of
discrimination, though I would need to see some numbers to be convinced of
it.
On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 5:27 PM, Carol Moore dc <carolmooredc(a)verizon.net>
wrote:
Good points, Jane Part of a hostile editing
environment is the "either
they ignore you or they insult you" phenomena. I'm sure a lot of women do
quit for just the reason Jane describes - being ignored.
I got that quoted phrase from a woman complaining about it in some
mainstream article a few years ago. That made a lot of my experiences in
email finally comprehensible. I found if I came up with a good idea, I
was ignored. If I said something a bit outrageous in conjunction with that
idea, some people might actually note the idea and comment on it, among all
the outraged guys complaining about whatever (unladylike?) comment I made
in conjunction with it.
By the time I came to Wikipedia I was aware of that behavior and trying to
find new strategies to get appropriate attention. Of course, on Wikipedia
one doesn't have to go out of one's way to get attention if one regularly
practices correcting editors, reverting them, seeking third opinions or
going to noticeboards, any of which some editors also consider outrageous -
particularly if the editor is perceived as being a women.
Of course, if the editors in a specific culture - as where Jane was
editing - choose to ignore women even when they are disagreeing with them
or, in their eyes, acting outrageous, then that observation would not hold.
CM
On 12/30/2014 10:21 AM, Jane Darnell wrote:
Hmm. I stopped editing the Dutch Wikipedia because it just wasn't any fun
anymore. I would never say I experienced barriers to entry or that there
were barriers to continued participation. It is more that there was a
continuous vacuum of silence that made participation feel like I was on an
island all of the time. I was never invited to the discussion table on any
specific subject, and if I stumbled across one, once there, my replies to
statements were never answered directly, but indirectly in replies to
others. I was never addressed personally and asked for an opinion. That
doesn't happen regularly on Commons or the English Wikipedia either, but I
feel much less on an island in bth of those projects and much more a part
of a community. Any contribution I made to an ongoing discussion on the
Dutch Wikipedia just stopped the discussion altogether or was simply
ignored. I vaguely remember a few deletion discussions where my objections
were brushed off with ridiculous arguments - so ridiculous that I wouldn't
know what to reply in all seriousness. Of course I can't back this up with
diffs and it is just a feeling, but it's because of the feeling that I
stopped contributing. I guess I also got tired of always linking to
redlinks in my area of interest - there are just more people working in my
area of interest on the English Wikipedia, so that I feel I can lean more
on the work of others.
On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 4:03 PM, Carol Moore dc <carolmooredc(a)verizon.net>
wrote:
This point is so important I gave it its own
subject line. Perhaps
this language can be worked into the statement of purpose of all the WMF
Gender gap projects... I also think Kerry should turn her whole excellent
statement into an essay for the WMF site and it should be linked from GGTF
main page.
On 12/29/2014 4:07 PM, Kerry Raymond wrote:
Does it matter? Believe me, a lot of people get really stuck at this
point and frame it as “well, if women don’t want to edit Wikipedia, does it
really matter? It’s their choice, isn’t it?” This is something that really
needs to get reframed. Yes, of course, many women don’t Wikipedia because
they simply aren’t interested in doing so (ditto many men). But there are
barriers to entry and barriers to continued participation by women who are
interested in doing so compared to men. Try to reframe it “are women
equally able to edit Wikipedia” or “are there barriers to women editing?”.
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