Sam, as I don't think I understand what you are asking, perhaps you could ask your question again maybe with an example distinguishing between written/oral/online/wiki.
Sent from my iPad
On 7 Mar 2015, at 8:57 am, Sam Katz smkatz@gmail.com wrote:
To those following: I think this is a valid question I am raising. The question of whether written communication has a different way of relating than oral, in the context of a wiki, which by definition is collaborative, tracks users but allows anonymous editing, is a valid question.
Anonymity and pen names were first used often times by women.
I will also note that in terms of interface biases, Facebook and other platforms (Acquia Commons) that use photos of their users as adornments, to show what users have posted do worse than wikipedia in terms of encouraging safety and courage ("be bold in editing") among their users.
Clarifying what the question is in this thread is a good first step towards answering it. If I was confused, I stand corrected, but I believe this is an important discussion to have.
On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 4:18 PM, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote: Do you say that as a man or as a woman?
As a woman, you are assumed to be male routinely in real life and online. Many people make no effort whatsoever, letters addressed to "Dr Sir" etc.
Has it got better over the years? Yes, in my real life, it has got somewhat better over the years. But getting involved in Wikipedia and its discussions about gender is like being back in 1970s. "Do we really have a gender gap?" "Does it matter if we have a gender gap?"
Kerry
-----Original Message----- From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Sam Katz Sent: Saturday, 7 March 2015 2:54 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] a cautious note on gender stats Re: Fwd: [Gendergap] Wikipedia readers
hey,
I just want to note that I am not convinced that gender expression online or indeed expression in general is the same as it is in real space. Granted, this may be stylistically what you are trying to prove. But I just wanted to add my two cents, that indeed it may not have a gender bias directly if the structure does not impose it.
On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 9:08 AM, koltzenburg@w4w.net wrote: Hi Frances,
your assumption (an "unknown" user in a language where personal nouns are gendered will always display the masculine form) is correct for deWP, I just tested it from a new dummy account.
you might call it a truly sytemic bias, and especially so because community majority has not seen to changing that space into gender friendly space for all, it seems.
so this adds another item of disharmony to my cautious note on gender stats
best, Claudia ---------- Original Message ----------- From:Frances Hocutt fhocutt@wikimedia.org To:Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent:Thu, 5 Mar 2015 16:43:04 -0800 Subject:Re: [Wiki-research-l] a cautious note on gender stats Re: Fwd: [Gendergap] Wikipedia readers
On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 4:30 PM, Mark J. Nelson mjn@anadrome.org wrote:
Frances Hocutt fhocutt@wikimedia.org writes:
One change that could address the latter incentive is
to change the
defaults on MediaWiki so that masculine grammatical
gender is not the
default for new users. It could be randomly assigned,
and then some men
as
well as some women would have the incentive to set
their gender
preferences.
That's how it currently works, according to the manual,
with the default
gender set to 'unknown': http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgDefaultUserOptions
I'm not sure if that's a recent change, or what's in
effect on
Wikimedia's own wikis, though.
I'm aware that it defaults to "unknown". My understanding--and please correct me if I'm wrong-- is that an "unknown" user in a language where personal nouns are gendered will always display the masculine form (i.e. Usuario for a user of unknown gender on es.wp). So, a male user doesn't need to change his gender in preferences in order to be described accurately where a female user would need to set her gender in order to be described as "Usuaria". Hence, different incentives, and ones that could be addressed with different default behavior for an "unknown" user.
-Frances
------- End of Original Message -------
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