http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_Wikipedians How did we go from a dozen to 1,700? Some other category got renamed and redirected? Or some bot added everyone who had one of the user boxes in that category?? Looked at a few and didn't see evidence someone manually added them all. FYI. CM _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

>Visit sarahstierch.com <http://sarahstierch.com><<

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_Wikipedians How did we go from a dozen to 1,700? Some other category got renamed and redirected? Or some bot added everyone who had one of the user boxes in that category?? Looked at a few and didn't see evidence someone manually added them all. FYI. CM _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

>Visit sarahstierch.com <http://sarahstierch.com><<

On 9/24/12 3:35 PM, Emily Monroe wrote: "Those infoboxes"? You mean, the kind that I have on my userpage? Or userboxes? GAH. I meant userboxes. DOH! :) -Sarah From, Emily On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 5:34 PM, Sarah Stierch &lt;sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing listGendergap@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap -- *Sarah Stierch* *Museumist and open culture advocate* _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

So. The implications of this. Good, bad, or does it really achieve anything? From, Emily

On 9/24/12 3:37 PM, Emily Monroe wrote: I'm not sure if there really is any good or bad implication, so to say. All it shows is that, in theory, there are approximately 1700 people in English Wikipedia who may identify as a female. I wonder how many of these editors are active. -Sarah -- Sarah Stierch _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

To me it seems beneficial to have a broadly accessible opportunity to formulate and answer questions about self-identified women on Wikipedia. The benefit is in empowering researchers and our community to pursue interesting questions -- but by definition, we don't know what the questions are yet :) -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] On Sep 24, 2012, at 3:39 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote: anything? All it shows is that, in theory, there are approximately 1700 people in English Wikipedia who may identify as a female. _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

So, what are the questions?

Well, I am a GED graduate on disability, if that helps. From, Emily On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 6:01 PM, John Vandenberg &lt;jayvdb(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 5:49 AM, Emily Monroe &lt;emilymonroe03(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Why do women start? Why do women quit? Is it different from reasons men quit? Is there a sector where outreach has a higher conversion rate into Wikipedian Women? Is there an age bracket where outreach has a higher conversion rate into Wikipedian Women? (e.g.) I suspect that our women typically come from glam & education, whereas our men typically come from IT & law. -- John Vandenberg _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

One little note - I did utilize these userboxes when inviting female editors (or presumed female) to participate in my Women and Wikimedia survey last year. -Sarah On 9/24/12 4:09 PM, Pete Forsyth wrote: Yeah, I agree with John, those sorts of question becomes easier to answer when there's more immediate information available (even if the information isn't perfect or complete). In addition, I can imagine that exploring the category and looking at user pages might inspire the formulation of more detailed questions. As an analogy, today I was reading a biography of political analyst Nate Silver, famous for being the first to call the 2008 U.S. presidential election. One of his earlier claims to fame, as a baseball statistician, was extending the work of Bill James, a famous baseball statistician. He looked for patterns in pitching performance that took into account physical characteristics -- e.g., height and weight. I would guess that Silver's inspiration to start that project originated with the greater accessibility of data in his era (the 2000s) than James' era (the 1980s). In other words: if you remove obstacles, surprising things can happen. In one case, you can end up with a huge and fascinating encyclopedia. Perhaps in another, you can end up with useful research about gender and Wikipedia. Removing barriers isn't a measurable benefit in itself, but it can support the emergence of things that are beneficial. -Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] On Sep 24, 2012, at 4:02 PM, Emily Monroe wrote: Well, I am a GED graduate on disability, if that helps. From, Emily On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 6:01 PM, John Vandenberg &lt;jayvdb(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap Pete Forsyth peteforsyth(a)gmail.com 503-383-9454 mobile _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing listGendergap@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap -- *Sarah Stierch* *Museumist and open culture advocate* _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

There is another way to look at the number of females who have identified themselves as female. I don't know if you remember when you first signed up, you probably ended up at Special:Preferences where you entered an email address. On that same page there is a field where people can opt to provide their gender. I've got a user script that tells me the rights of a user when I go to their user page, but at the same time it also tells me their gender if stated by usage of the appropriate symbol. Thus, this information is publicly accessible as far as I am aware and so a Toolserver query or similar could be run to get a list of users who have identified themselves as female through their preferences. I don't know if this has been discussed before, I've only fairly recently joined this mailing list, but it could be a good way to find an active base of female editors to ask your questions to other than the ones that have used the user box or are actively participating in gender gap discussions.