On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 8:21 AM, Slp1 <slp1wiki@yahoo.ca> wrote:

I'm Slp1, an English Wikipedia editor since 2006 who lives in Montreal. I've resonated with a few of the introductions here. Like Sue Gardner, my work settings have always been predominately female. Like Sarah Stierch, my vision of Wikipedia includes facilitating the participation of older women (and men) who may lack the technical skills and confidence to participate. Like many others, I am interested to talk about solutions to improve the gender gap, because of the effect that it has on content.

My initial thoughts:
Based on discussions with other women, the technical aspects of wiki markup etc are challenging and off-putting for many. I'm sure I don't need to say that women are just as capable of learning it, but like it or not, especially for older women and women in more traditional cultural settings, men are more likely to have the background and confidence to try.

Making the WMF projects more user friendly will help other groups of people besides women, too. But imo it will definitely make the WMF projects more inviting to women.

Lack of time is a key factor in why that many women do not learn wiki markup not lack of smarts. If we want content additions from women then we need to make it so that they do not need to study another language to contribute.

The philosophy of wikipedia (consensus decision making, assuming good faith, neutrality) jive well with what I know of women's communication styles, and methods of solving disputes. In conflictual situations, however, these ideals often go out the window, and power-based decision making and interactions come to the fore. Entrenched editing from an ideological position, often accompanied by subtle or not so subtle bullying, is unpleasant for many, but perhaps especially for women, who studies suggest are typically prefer a collaborative approach to conflict resolution.

IMO, the dispute resolution process on most WMF projects does not work for many users. The problems are:

1) Too time consuming for most people.

2) Very complex wiki culture norms that are not necessarily in line with what most people would expect. (For example talking about the situation with other people could cause you to get lectured about violations of Wikipedia policy on canvasing or sockpuppetry.) This is quite confusing and off putting to new and low level users who have no idea of these policies.

3) There is no true resolution in most situation because the issues can (and often are) reopened again.

4) Some people will enter the dispute to deliberately escalate the dispute for secondary reasons that are unrelated to the main issues of the situation. In some situations it can cause serious off wiki harassment of unexpecting user who were unaware that their appropriate comments would draw this unwelcome attention. If being a Wikipedia editor is going to cause weirdo's to contact them and there is not an easy way to stop it except leaving, then many people will decide to stop contributing. IMO, women are more likely to respond by withdrawing in these situations.

That's enough for now. I look forward to learning and helping come up with some good changes to the structural aspects of this project which seem to discourage participation.

In my opinion, if the WMF is going to seriously take a look at changing the demographics of the contributors, then new methods of resolving disputes need to happen.

The changes would most likely need to include different approaches for handling the long term disruptive people. This would include new policies that address the people who deliberately agitate across multiple wikis. We now have the technical means to lock and block accounts across projects but the social environment still has not accepted this solution yet because the norm is to expect people to put up with unpleasantness and harassment.

As I said at the start, I don't think that these changes would apply to only women, but to other groups of people who are put off by the current editing environment.

Sydney Poore
(FloNight)

_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap