I'm glad to hear you're doing this research, and look forward to the
results.
Andreas
On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 5:53 PM, Amanda Menking <amenking(a)uw.edu> wrote:
Hi All,
These are all really good and complex questions because individual
differences, areas of work within Wikipedia, and personal experiences can
greatly affect why an editor of any gender chooses to stay or go. From my
research thus far, I do, however, think the predominant culture and norms
on EN Wikipedia tend to make it more challenging for editors who are more
“feminine” (e.g., not more female or only women).
I have done and am continuing to do some work re: these questions. See
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Women_and_Wikipedia/Midpoint.
Part of the challenge is that interviews (e.g., scheduling, conducting,
transcribing, member checking, coding, analysis) are time intensive, but
the provide much richer and deeper information than surveys. Also,
participants tend to self-select for both. I’ve spoken with only a few
women who don’t like the term “gender gap” and who don’t see a lack of
women participating as a problem in and of itself. Also, I’ve found it
difficult to recruit men to participate. I would love to interview trolls
too, but again—no takers yet.
I’ll be publishing my final IEG report on April 1. If my participants
grant permission, I’ll share the anonymized, redacted transcripts as well
as the survey results and 9 months of Gendergap mailing list data my
students and I have coded and analyzed.
An excerpt from a note (currently in press) I’ve written with Ingrid
Erickson (Rutgers) re: early findings:
Wikipedia, perhaps the most successful large-scale, online
collaboration in the world, is a storied space of democratic values and
meritocracy in action—as many within the CHI and CSCW communities have
extensively detailed [e.g.,13,18,19,22,23,24]. Yet underneath its idealized
veneer, Wikipedia in practice proves to have a notable gender gap. Unlike
user distribution reports on social media platforms, which trend more
toward representative parity or even a greater number of female users [7],
surveys of Wikipedia users indicate the overwhelming majority of
contributors are male [14]. Both the popular media [e.g., 9,21,27] and
scholars [e.g., 1,6,20] have begun to explore Wikipedia’s participation
disparities, raising questions about editor recruitment and retention,
content coverage and bias, and the tension between diversity and
territoriality [10].
Recently, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, admitted that the
Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has “completely failed” [29] to meet its goal of
increasing the number of female participants to 25% by 2015. In February
2011 in response to an article published in The New York Times [5], then
Executive Director of WMF, Sue Gardner, asked her Deputy Director Erik
Möller to create the Gendergap mailing list, a publicly archived listserv
“provided by the Wikimedia Foundation as a communication tool to
collectively address the realities of the gender gap” [28]. In September
2014, a male Wikipedian posted the following message to the list: “I think
there should be a separate site for the gender gap effort […] where women
and men interested in narrowing the gender gap and documenting the existing
problems can exchange views in an atmosphere undisturbed by men pretending
to be women, men opposed to narrowing the gender gap, men arguing that it's
not really proven that the gender gap is a problem.” Even within a
dedicated listserv, the topic of gender parity proves to be volatile. Lam
et al.[20] confirm this social complexity, noting a “culture that may be
resistant to female participation” [20:9].
However, Wikipedia’s gender gap is typically framed as a “woman problem”
[8]. It has been attributed to women’s lack of discretionary time [6],
sensitivity to conflict and criticism [6], desire to be more social [21],
and hesitancy to learn technical skills such as the Wiki mark-up language
[11]. In August 2014, Wikimedia Deutschland published a diversity report
indicating that, although the picture is complex, “lack of time, technical
usability barriers (e.g. navigation, editability), and a variety of
sociocultural and communication issues (style of communication, working
atmosphere) can […] definitely be identified as reasons for low female
participation in Wikipedia” [4].
Despite the perception of the gender gap as a “woman problem,” women do
actively contribute to different language Wikipedias across the world.
Women lead local chapters, sustain sister projects, and work for and chair
the WMF. Women who have similar edit counts to men are more likely to
become administrators [21] and make more sizeable revisions [1] than men
do. This note reports early findings that suggest there is something to be
learned about the possible cause(s) and consequences of Wikipedia’s gender
gap by looking more closely at the experiences of women actively engaged in
the community. What are their experiences like? What challenges do they
face? How do they persevere? We posit that many women Wikipedians engage in
a form of ‘emotion work’ [15], also known as emotional labor, that allows
them to maintain their participation even as the circumstances in which
they engage prove challenging, if not caustic.
I’m happy to share a link to the entire note once it’s available. I’m
also happy to collaborate with others re: future research.
Best,
Amanda / Mssemantics
From: Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com>
Reply-To: "'Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the
participation of women within Wikimedia projects.'" <
gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 5:14 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>rg>,
"'Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the participation
of women within Wikimedia projects.'" <gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] [Wikimedia-l] surveys of active female editors?
+1.
Here are some more questions that I would be interested in having
answers to:
-- What do women who are presently editing find most demotivating about
contributing to Wikipedia?
-- Have they ever thought of throwing in the towel, and what were the
reasons?
-- Based on past experience, what aspect of Wikimedia/Wikipedia culture
would be most likely to cause them to stop editing at some point in the
future?
-- What change, if any, would they welcome most to feel good about
contributing?
You'd need a male control group for comparative work, to establish
whether any of the answers are gender-specific.
Crossposted to gendergap list. (Maybe someone with access to the
research mailing list might like to crosspost this thread there as well.)
Andreas
On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 12:22 AM, LB <lightbreather2(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I want to push a "Like" button on this
one. How. Why. I would love to know
the answer to these questions. Also, for those who aren't active - why?
Lightbreather
On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 12:14 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Are there any surveys of active female editors
which have asked how
they started editing?
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