Hi,
Thank you all for your feedback. I've incorporated a number of them and
updated the report. It's now publicly available
<https://civilsociology.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/closing-the-gender-gap-on-w…>
to share with folks who are interested.
@Jonathan, I agree that a future direction should be understanding the
ecology of editors through a substantive analysis. I've added commentary
to the end mentioning this and am considering expanding this research in
that direction.
@Emilio: The low participation rate on the web varies by website, so we
know it's not internet usage in general, but something about communities
like Wikipedia, Quora, Reddit, and Uncyclopedia specifically. As for
comparing international parliamentary rates, I've done some work with
collaborators gathering the gender of contributors across 55 Wikipedias.
The analysis isn't finished, hence we have put it up anywhere, but the
results show that the Arabic, Suomi, Estonian, Nordic, and English language
Wikipedias are the closest to gender parity.
@Jane: I believe understanding the life-cycle of editors is important to
breaking down forces causing gender disparity. To a certain extent, we've
done a lot of research on the issue. The editor numbers suggest though
that the gender gap starts early in that the majority of new editors are
male. I'd love to see a project on why women make up fewer first-time
editors. Research aside, as someone who'd like to see this problem solved
in the next ten years, I'm more reticent to say we need more years of
research before we try to solve this problem.
Thank you all for your comments!
Jason
--
Jason Radford
Doctoral Student, Sociology, University of Chicago
Visiting Researcher, Lazer Lab, Northeastern University
*Connect*: LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/in/jsradford>, Twitter
<http://www.twitter.com/jsradford>, University of Chicago
<http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Ejsradford/>
*Play Games for Science at Volunteer Science
<http://www.volunteerscience.com>*
Many people on these lists design and use tools that depend on action=query (beyond bots). If you do, please read the following:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: "Brad Jorsch (Anomie)" <bjorsch(a)wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] API BREAKING CHANGE: Default continuation mode for action=query will change at the end of this month
> Date: June 2, 2015 at 10:42:47 PM GMT+2
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, mediawiki-api-announce(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>
> As has been announced several times (most recently at
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-April/081559.html),
> the default continuation mode for action=query requests to api.php will be
> changing to be easier for new coders to use correctly.
>
> *The date is now set:* we intend to merge the change to ride the deployment
> train at the end of June. That should be 1.26wmf12, to be deployed to test
> wikis on June 30, non-Wikipedias on July 1, and Wikipedias on July 2.
>
> If your bot or script is receiving the warning about this upcoming change
> (as seen here
> <https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages>, for
> example), it's time to fix your code!
>
> - The simple solution is to simply include the "rawcontinue" parameter
> with your request to continue receiving the raw continuation data (
> example
> <https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&rawcontinue=1>).
> No other code changes should be necessary.
> - Or you could update your code to use the simplified continuation
> documented at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Query#Continuing_queries
> (example
> <https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&continue=>),
> which is much easier for clients to implement correctly.
>
> Either of the above solutions may be tested immediately, you'll know it
> works because you stop seeing the warning.
>
> I've compiled a list of bots that have hit the deprecation warning more
> than 10000 times over the course of the week May 23–29. If you are
> responsible for any of these bots, please fix them. If you know who is,
> please make sure they've seen this notification. Thanks.
>
> AAlertBot
> AboHeidiBot
> AbshirBot
> Acebot
> Ameenbot
> ArnauBot
> Beau.bot
> Begemot-Bot
> BeneBot*
> BeriBot
> BOT-Superzerocool
> CalakBot
> CamelBot
> CandalBot
> CategorizationBot
> CatWatchBot
> ClueBot_III
> ClueBot_NG
> CobainBot
> CorenSearchBot
> Cyberbot_I
> Cyberbot_II
> DanmicholoBot
> DeltaQuadBot
> Dexbot
> Dibot
> EdinBot
> ElphiBot
> ErfgoedBot
> Faebot
> Fatemibot
> FawikiPatroller
> HAL
> HasteurBot
> HerculeBot
> Hexabot
> HRoestBot
> IluvatarBot
> Invadibot
> Irclogbot
> Irfan-bot
> Jimmy-abot
> JYBot
> Krdbot
> Legobot
> Lowercase_sigmabot_III
> MahdiBot
> MalarzBOT
> MastiBot
> Merge_bot
> NaggoBot
> NasirkhanBot
> NirvanaBot
> Obaid-bot
> PatruBOT
> PBot
> Phe-bot
> Rezabot
> RMCD_bot
> Shuaib-bot
> SineBot
> SteinsplitterBot
> SvickBOT
> TaxonBot
> Theo's_Little_Bot
> W2Bot
> WLE-SpainBot
> Xqbot
> YaCBot
> ZedlikBot
> ZkBot
>
>
> --
> Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
> Software Engineer
> Wikimedia Foundation
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi,
Since participating in the Inspire campaign, I got interested in the
question of exactly how many women would be needed on Wikipedia to close
the gender gap. I ran some simulations and came up with some fairly
radical numbers. For example, according to my calculations, there are so
few current and new female editors that, even if every current and new
active, female editor stayed active for ten years, we wouldn't close the
gap.
I've posted the results
<https://civilsociology.wordpress.com/2015/05/31/closing-the-gender-gap-on-w…>
to my blog. It's password protected so I can share the results and get
feedback without making it pubic. You can access them by using the
password "wikipedia". I'm hoping some of you with experience researching
gender representation on Wikipedia would be able to catch any errors.
Thanks!
Jason
--
Jason Radford
Doctoral Student, Sociology, University of Chicago
Visiting Researcher, Lazer Lab, Northeastern University
*Connect*: LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/in/jsradford>, Twitter
<http://www.twitter.com/jsradford>, University of Chicago
<http://home.uchicago.edu/%7Ejsradford/>
*Play Games for Science at Volunteer Science
<http://www.volunteerscience.com>*
The May 2015 issue of the Wikimedia Research Newsletter is out:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/06/02/research-newsletter-may-2015/
In this issue:
1 German study finds Wikipedia's pharma articles accurate and largely complete
2 Notable women "slightly overrepresented" (not underrepresented) on Wikipedia, but the Smurfette principle still holds
3 Editors who use user talk pages are more involved in high-quality articles
4 "Wikipedia, collective memory, and the Vietnam War"
5 Survey of secondary school use of Wikipedia
6 Briefly
6.1 "User engagement on Wikipedia, a review of studies of readers and editors"
6.2 Freedom of panorama in Europe
6.3 Talking like an admin: linguistic mimicry and network centrality on Wikipedia
••• 8 publications were covered in this issue •••
Thanks to William Skaggs, Max Klein, Piotr Konieczny, Gamaliel and Jonathan Morgan for contributing.
Masssly, Tilman Bayer and Dario Taraborelli
---
Wikimedia Research Newsletter
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/
* Follow us on Twitter/Identi.ca: @WikiResearch
* Receive this newsletter by mail: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/research-newsletter
* Subscribe to the RSS feed: http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/research-2/wikimedia-research-newsletter/feed/
The May 2015 issue of the Wikimedia Research Newsletter is out:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2015/May
In this issue:
1 German study finds Wikipedia's pharma articles accurate and largely complete
2 Notable women "slightly overrepresented" (not underrepresented) on Wikipedia, but the Smurfette principle still holds
3 Editors who use user talk pages are more involved in high-quality articles
4 "Wikipedia, collective memory, and the Vietnam War"
5 Survey of secondary school use of Wikipedia
6 Briefly
6.1 "User engagement on Wikipedia, a review of studies of readers and editors"
6.2 Freedom of panorama in Europe
6.3 Talking like an admin: linguistic mimicry and network centrality on Wikipedia
••• 8 publications were covered in this issue •••
Thanks to William Skaggs, Max Klein, Piotr Konieczny, Gamaliel and Jonathan Morgan for contributing.
Masssly, Tilman Bayer and Dario Taraborelli
---
Wikimedia Research Newsletter
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/
* Follow us on Twitter/Identi.ca: @WikiResearch
* Receive this newsletter by mail: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/research-newsletter
* Subscribe to the RSS feed: http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/research-2/wikimedia-research-newsletter/feed/