The main thing is figuring out how to measure something, and then proceed
to measure that something with a reasonable frequency, like once a year or
once every two years. Only then can we determine whether we are making
progress at all. We also have to be careful not to confuse our own
"Wikiverse Gendergap" with the already established systemic gender bias in
academia. You can't expect Wikipedia to forge new pathways for women,
Wikipedia should just reflect society at large, due to the acceptance of
"reliable sources" produced by society at large. We aren't ever going to
become radically feminist, but I think in some sense, all of us are
feminists or we wouldn't be subscribed to this list. Though I would
personally agree about subjects such as "fashion, cookery, domestic affairs
and childrearing", these are really hard to measure, so I think we are much
more focussed if we just stick to virtual "weenie counts" in any list. So
whatever the list is, count the proportion of men-women, and then the
proportion of blue to red links for men and women.
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 5:46 PM, Marie Earley <eiryel(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
I'm not keen on the phrase "female-related
content", I posted this
transcript of an exchange I had with an editor
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2015-April/005670.html in
April.
When I dared to suggest that women could be interested in topics other
than the ones he suggested - "fashion, cookery, domestic affairs and
childrearing" - he responded with this:
"...the purpose of the task force was to
increase the participation of
women of all sorts, not just radical feminists like
you apparently are."
and later:
"... your comments seem to wilfully denigate
the possibility that women
could be interested in topics of "traditional"
interest to women."
Regarding English Wikipedia, it is worth remembering that the US, UK,
Australia and New Zealand all have English as their official language, and
that Canada has both English and French, so English Wikipedia isn't an
homogenous block.
My experience of well moderated websites in the UK (with their servers in
the UK, and therefore subject to UK law), is that people are simply not
allowed to speak that way here either. As far as I'm aware Jeremy Waldron
(from New Zealand), is one of the few to take on America's first amendment
in his book "The Harm in Hate Speech".
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2223860
Marie
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2015 07:57:48 -0400
From: slowking4(a)gmail.com
To: gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Slate on Wikipedia and the gendergap
empty simplistic theorizing
need to do multi-factor analysis of input factors.
edtitathons are gathering data, but sample size is small
don't really have good data on percentage participation
my experience is that "female-related content" is improving, but gap
remains as the toxic culture trumps everything else. i.e. low correlation
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 7:47 AM, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com> wrote:
An interesting set of questions, Lennart! Let me first explain why I am
looking for reliable sources on the Gendergap. I have been involved with
efforts to reduce the Gendergap in the Netherlands since 2011. Our big news
today is that we have nearly doubled female participation from 6% (measured
in 2013) to 11% according to our latest survey results from this year. One
of the problems I have in discussions regarding the Gendergap is the whole
chicken-and-egg theory about whether women don't participate because of a
lack of female-related content, or whether we lack female-related content
because we have so few female participants. It would be nice to have an
article in the Dutch Wikipedia on the Gendergap to answer these questions
without repeating myself constantly, but I see that so far since
publication of that article on the English Wikipedia on 30 April 2014
(called "Gender Bias on Wikipedia" in order to differentiate it from the
"Gender Pay Gap"), only the Turkish Wikipedia has managed to create an
article in their wiki on the same subject.
I would really like to make an article in the Dutch Wikipedia about this,
and in this context we would rely on Dutch "reliable sources" but what they
have published so far is quite thin and only refers to the English
Wikipedia, which is not helpful. Slate is not recognized as a reliable
source by the Dutch Wikipedia, and this article, though interesting, does
not touch on the participation gap in the Netherlands or indeed why it even
matters. The Slate article is focused on an edit-war which is not really
relevant to the larger community because as you say, though the language on
talk pages in nlwiki can be very condescending or negative, it's generally
not profane like this one. I do think from conversations I have had and
research done by Aaron Halfaker and others, that the problem stems from the
strange need to throw links to help pages at newbies rather than talk to
them normally in language they can understand. Some of the very worst
articles in the Wikiverse are help pages, which are probably bad because
they are not indexed by Google and have too few eyes looking at them. That
said, the help pages need a better "between the lines" analysis for the AfD
queue, so that Dutch abbreviations like "Vrouw-baan" on the Dutch AfD list
are interpreted correctly to mean "This editor is probably a woman
promoting her own business and COI policy applies here" rather than what it
sounds like "all women who work should have their articles be deleted on
eye contact". I have also noticed that articles about women tend to be
nominated much more often for deletion than articles by men. Ditto the
books they write, the movies they make, and any notable news items they are
the subject of. I think women give up quicker because they are less
tech-savvy at finding their way around the various bits of
behind-the-scenes discussion areas. Often they can't even find their way to
the discussion at the AfD queue or the Village pump.
Why doesn't the Swedish Wikipedia have an article about the Gendergap?
What is the Gendergap in Sweden today?
On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Lennart Guldbrandsson <
l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
Slate recently published a, at least to my eyes, fairly well-balanced
article about Wikipedia:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/12/wikipedia_editing_…
The Gender Gap Task Force gets more than a shout-out:
"Last week, Wikipedia’s highest court, the Arbitration Committee, composed
of 12 elected volunteers who serve one- or two-year terms, handed down a
decision in a controversial case having to do with the site’s self-formed Gender
Gap Task Force
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_gap_task_force>,
the goal of which is to increase female participation on Wikipedia from its
current 10 percent to 25 percent by the end of next year. The dispute,
which involved ongoing hostility from a handful of prickly longtime
editors, had simmered for at least 18 months. In the end, the only woman in
the argument, pro-GGTF libertarian feminist Carol Moore
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carolmooredc>, was indefinitely
banned from all of Wikipedia over her uncivil comments toward a group of
male editors, whom she at one point dubbed “the Manchester Gangbangers and
their cronies/minions.” Two of her chief antagonists in that group got
comparative slaps on the wrist. One was the productive but notoriously
hostile Eric “Fuck Wikipedia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&diff=prev&oldid=624229392>”
Corbett, who has a milelong track record
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Civility_enforcement/Evidence>
of
incivility
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive855#Personal_attacks_and_incivility_by_Eric_Corbett>,
had declared the task force a feminist “crusade ... to alienate every
male editor
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Interactions_at_GGTF/Proposed_decision#Eric_Corbett>
*,*” and called Moore “nothing but a pain in the arse
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&diff=prev&oldid=625749585>,”
among less printable comments; he was handed a seemingly redundant
“prohibition” on abusive language
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Interactions_at_GGTF/Proposed_decision#Eric_Corbett_prohibited>.
The other editor was Sitush
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sitush>, who repeatedly
criticized Moore for being “obsessed with an anti-male agenda
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Sitush&diff=624275036&oldid=624267508>”
and then decided to research and write a Wikipedia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Sitush/Carol_Moore>
*biography*
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Sitush/Carol_Moore>
of her
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Sitush/Carol_Moore>;
he walked away with a mere “warning.” With the Arbitration Committee opting
only to ban the one woman in the dispute despite her behavior being no
worse than that of the men, it’s hard not to see this as a setback to
Wikipedia’s efforts to rectify its massive gender gap. (After the decision, several
editors announced their intentions to resign in protest
<https://www.mail-archive.com/gendergap%40lists.wikimedia.org/msg04083.html>.)
Moreover, it’s reflective of the challenges Wikipedia faces as it attempts
to retain and improve its content quality and editing force."
Also mentioned, the Chelsea Manning name controversy and the overall fall
in editors.
What I miss here and in almost every article in English I've seen on these
types of topics is that English Wikipedia is the only one mentioned. I
grant that many readers only know English, but I for one, don't recognize
the same bad language and anti-women behavior in my daily work on Swedish
Wikipedia. We would simply not allow people to speak that way.
This leads me to wonder how those types of behaviors affect editors. We
have a golden opportunity to A/B test this, because of all our language
versions.
So, my question, stated another way, is: if the bad language and
anti-women behavior on English Wikipedia deter editors, and maybe
especially female editors, and we have other Wikipedias with less bad
language and anti-women behavior (perhaps), do these language versions have
a higher female-to-male ratio?
And stated a third way: how much do the bad language and anti-women
behavior really influence the gendergap?
Best wishes,
Lennart Guldbrandsson
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