It may not be statistically meaningful, but the results are certainly valuable to discussion. The idea that "women have better things to do", i.e. don't think contributing to Wikipedia is valuable, is a new one for me. Since I consider editing Wikipedia to be one of the most valuable ways I can possibly spend my time (more so than raising children or curing cancer), this idea had never occurred to me. Is it possible that men are more indoctrinated to value knowledge, information, epistemology, etc. and thus see Wikipedia as inherently more important than women do? I'm not saying this is the case—indeed, it seems like too easy a scapegoat—I'm just wondering if it's a valid hypothesis. Perhaps someone should conduct a survey asking "How valuable do you consider Wikipedia?" and correlate this with the respondent's gender. This also seems to relate to empathizing–systemizing theory,[1] which controversially suggests that men (whether due to social or biological factors) prefer systemizing over empathizing, while women tend towards the opposite. It may also relate to the fact that men are much more likely than women to be diagnosed with autism and Asperger syndrome, although no one is sure why. These are just hypotheses, however, and we shouldn't jump to any conclusions. I do think, however, that we should incorporate this idea into future research and see if there are any significant results.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing_theory

Ryan Kaldari


On 7/10/11 9:32 AM, Nepenthe wrote:
To be frank, a sample this small really doesn't support much of anything. If the results had been more extreme, perhaps they would be meaningful, but these data are not sufficient to reject any hypothesis besides "men and women have totally and utterly different motivations for editing and for not editing". The survey results do, however, play into our theory of the situation; I think we have to be aware of confirmation bias.

Nepenthe

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 11:10 AM, Laura Hale <laura@fanhistory.com> wrote:
Cross posted this to my blog at http://ozziesport.com/2011/07/why-dont-people-edit-wikipedia-small-survey-results-provide-some-insights/


I tend to be a bit obsessive. An issue that keeps cropping up in my personal sphere is women editing Wikipedia. Various reasons keep being offered as to why women don’t edit, if their reasons are different from those of men, if women don’t edit because they don’t have time as they are too busy taking care of their families, etc. I wanted to know why women and men in my particular peer group didn’t edit Wikipedia. Thus, I posted surveys to my Facebook and to my LiveJournal. The raw data, as of 10:13am American Central Standard time could be found at Facebook, LiveJournal. Please feel free to continue to vote. If I have bigger samples, I can always update this. I had responses from 22 people, 12 males and 10 females. This isn’t necessarily a representative sample and if I was looking for that, I’d try much harder to get a larger response from a bigger group of people. I don’t think you can necessarily extrapolate out much from this, except to have it help confirm other smaller samples.As a side note, the Facebook poll allows people to add their own responses. (The sample size isn’t statistically significant for one thing and one response can really change the percentages.) People have and it is possible that people may have chosen responses had they been available. In any case, on with the findings.

There were several options offered that no one selected. Those answers have not been included as the totals would have been 0% and given the small sample size, it didn’t seem as relevant.

Response All Male Female All % Male % Female %
The atmosphere on Wikipedia is not conducive to random user editing. 10 4 6 45.5% 33.3% 60.0%
I have better things to do. 8 3 6 36.4% 16.7% 60.0%
Not enough time to contribute. 5 2 3 22.7% 16.7% 30.0%
I don’t want to research citations to support my edits. I can fix grammar/typos. 4 2 1 18.2% 25.0% 10.0%
I know people who were treated poorly. Why subject myself to that? 3 2 1 13.6% 16.7% 10.0%
There is no community. 2 2 0 9.1% 16.7% 0.0%
They keep deleting my edits. 2 0 0 9.1% 16.7% 0.0%
The editing window is confusing and I don’t understand the markup. 1 1 1 4.5% 0.0% 10.0%
I used to edit but people treated me poorly so I quit. 1 2 0 4.5% 8.3% 0.0%
After being overwritten incorrectly, with no dialogue as to why, & just knowing 1 1 0 4.5% 8.3% 0.0%

There are some differences in responses between men and women, which appears to support the general conclusion that men and women have different reasons for (not) contributing to Wikipedia and that gender specific type engagement may be needed. One of the arguments that I’ve heard is that women would like to contribute to Wikipedia but they just do not have the time because they need to take care of their families. This small sample appears to suggest this isn’t the case: Women, much more than men in this sample, just have better things to do. I’ve talked to a few women in this sample about this to try to understand what better things they have to do, because I’ve heard the argument that women do use this type of technology and some people don’t understand why, if women do blogging and other online content creation, why they don’t contribute to Wikipedia. In this particular sample, the women I talked to explained it to me as they have a set of things they prioritise in what they do. In the case of one non-contributor, they do contribute to another wiki that immediately ties into her interests. Beyond that, she has learned that her contributions have value and that value can be realised by getting paid for them by writing for sites like associated content and squidoo. There isn’t the inherent value that can be realised when contributing to Wikipedia, so why should she spend the time contributing? This appears to be supported because of the six who said they have better things to do, only one female also said she didn’t have enough time to contribute.

A lot of the answers appear to have to do with community and negative interactions. Six women answered yes to “The atmosphere on Wikipedia is not conducive to random user editing.” as a reason why they don’t edit. This compares to only four of the twelve men. This was a common theme when I talked some of the women in this sample: The community is not supportive, things get undone, there aren’t people helping guide new contributors and serving as mentors. There isn’t much positive feedback. If you run into problems, you have to go ask for it yourself and then you get in trouble for canvassing. More experiences editors are involved in areas and they don’t do anything when it looks like there are obvious problems to the random female editor. The situation reminds me a bit of wikiHow. I haven’t edited there in a while, but I’ve generally highly respected what Jack Herrick and other admins have done with their wiki culture as a whole. They make welcoming a big thing. They provide lots of positive feedback. They appear to work on community. They offer ways to get recognition for your contributions. People involved in running it have always seemed highly accessible, even if they aren’t. wikiHow also appears to place a priority on civility that English Wikipedia only gives lip service to. Evidence? Become a wikiHow Admin states a criteria of being an admin: Empathy and kindness – Admins exist to serve the broader community of editors and readers. A demonstrated history of treating others with kindness and mutual respect is a necessity.

Beyond those two of The atmosphere on Wikipedia is not conducive to random user editing. and I have better things to do with my time., no answer had more than 50% of the female response… and worth noting, women had that. The male respondents didn’t have a voting block similar to that. The largest male response was The atmosphere on Wikipedia is not conducive to random user editing., with 33% answering that as a reason. The next largest male block I don’t want to research citations to support my edits. I can fix grammar/typos. , with 25% citing that as a reason. That response is not necessarily a community response, suggesting community problems so much as content policy and I don’t know how to address that.

I’d love to do a bigger survey with more results, see if responses change with more respondents. I do think it supports the idea that lack of time is not the major reason that women don’t contribute and that technology and the format discourage women from contributing. Only one female cited that as an issue. A refocus and reprioritisation may be needed if the goal is to increase female contributions to English Wikipedia.

I post and then two more people vote, one male and one female. If I get another ten total responses, I’ll update with new totals.



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