Hi Jonathan Cardy and all, (see below for some software issues)
I agree with your argument, WereSpielChequers/ Jonathan Cardy, and I would
like to hear more details about
many pieces of evidence
since these, I am told,
usually form a good basis for hypotheses that might
be used in qualitative studies. It seems to me that my attempt at starting
thought experiment I quote a few lines from here
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2015-
February/004188.html
might have produced similar data; or might be restarted in a different
setting, maybe
btw, my apologies, and thank you for your clarification. Actually, I did not
intend to quote the statement in any personal attribution kind of way, but for
a reversal experiment of the wording.
I was assembling a few bits and pieces from different parts of different
threads, and this was my way of making sure people would find the context
again if they chose to; next time, I will try to look for a different method of
presenting material for any language games.
re "the Wikipedia community" I'd say that since it constitutes itself in
adhoc
teams, every user is a member, even if only for one edit or just by adding a fe
pages to a watchlist after registration -- irrespective of the number of
accounts the person behind a login name might be using to join the game
board Wikipedia. From my point of view, there simply is a large variety in
how people use any of the functions (or a combination of them) that the
software of the platform offers -- and any and all use cases contribute to what
makes the Wikipedia community. I do not have any romantic inclinations
here. If it is an open system it is an open system for all use cases and their
inventors, be they acting adhoc way or in a kind of more systematic gaming -
- that one might have to regard as systemic after all.
so if mediawiki enables users to behave like bullies, my question would be:
does anyone have any insights as to the chances of changing the software to
make Wikipedia a less welcoming place to users behaving like bullies?
or would most experts currently say that mediawiki software does not have
anything to do with it ;-) ?
best,
Claudia
---------- Original Message -----------
From:WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com>
To:Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-
l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent:Tue, 17 Feb 2015 20:52:10 +0000
Subject:Re: [Wiki-research-l] a cautious note on gender stats Re: Fwd:
[Gendergap] Wikipedia readers
My comment "It could even test the theory that
the
community is more abrasive towards women. We know
that we are less successful at recruiting female
editors than male ones, I'm not sure if we have
tested whether we are more successful at retaining
established male editors than female ones, and if
so whether we are losing women because they are
lured away or driven away." Seems to have been
shortened to me saying that "the community is more
abrasive towards women". Before people continue
using that quotation and attributing it to me, may
I point out that I regard it as an interesting
theory worth researching, not as a proven
statement. I don't doubt that we have a massively
male skew in the community, I have seen too many
pieces of evidence that all point that way to
doubt that. I am also fairly sure that women, and
I'd add gays are more likely to be attacked by
trolls and others from outside what I regard as
the wikipedia community than straight white men
like myself. But I don't know if the community is
more abrasive to women or in what way it is, and I
would be interested to see more research done in
that area.
Regards
Jonathan Cardy
> On 17 Feb 2015, at 08:00, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Claudial,
> I responded to your questions in the text - hope it's readable.
> Jane
>
> ____WereSpielChequers wrote:
> "the community is more abrasive towards women"
>
> I think he is simply referring to earlier discussions where the conclusion
was "the community can be perceived to be abrasive" and this conclusion,
in
yet other discussions led to this conclusion, which should be rephrased as
"the community is more often perceived as abrasive by women than by men"
>
> ____Kerry wrote:
> "But I would agree that if an organisation sets a target (25% women in
this
> particular case) and then does not put in place a
means of measuring
the
> progress against that target, one has to question
the point of
establishing a
> target."
>
> ___Claudia (responding to Kerry):
> I think one has to question the point of not putting in place a means of
> measuring the progress...
> and also ask why, if the issue is a high priority (allegedly, one might add,
in
> speeches at meetings, in interviews with the
press...) this organisation
does
> not fund any top level research... - or does it?
>
> I think here you are forgetting about the "holy shit graph" which shows a
reduction in the number of active editors over time. This is much more of a
direct threat to the Wikiverse than the gendergap, which, as has been stated
before, is only one of many serious gaps in knowledge coverage. Oddly, I
think it is one of the easiest of all "participatory gaps" to measure, but we
seem to constantly get stranded in objections to ways that previous editor
surveys have been held, leading to the strange situation of never actually
being able to run even one editor survey twice. Since we have not yet been
able to establish any trend at all, we are only comparing apples to oranges.
>
> ____Aaron wrote:
> "higher quality survey data"
> __Claudia (responding to Aaron): ...how does one recognize low
quality..?
> Hmm. I just looked and I couldn't find the
criticism of the various editor
surveys. Is this stashed somewhere on meta? Or do
we need to sift through
reams of emails until we find all the various objections? Objections galore, as
I recall.
>
> ___Claudia: which "related participation gaps" do you have in mind here?
> Off the top of my head, some of these would be
>
> 1) lack of geographical editor coverage such as active editors in rural
areas
or even in whole states such as Wyoming or South Dakota and the
whole "Global South participation problem" (the Global South participation
problem is even helped along inadvertently by the new read-only "Wikipedia-
zero" effect);
> 2) lack of topical expertise on subjects that
technically don't lend
themselves well to the Wikiverse, such as auditory
fields (musical
production) or visual fields (how to paint, how to make movies, how to
choreograph motion)
> 3) lack of topical expertise on subjects that
legally don't lend themselves
well to the Wikiverse, such as articles about
artworks under copyright that
cannot be illustrated in an article;
> 4) lack of topical editor coverage on subjects
previously shut out - there
is still unwillingness by a whole group to re-enter the
Wikiverse after being
banned (earlier shut-outs such as blocking whole institution-wide ip ranges
for vandalism or whole areas of expertise such as groups of writers for their
COI editing, carry with them a history of anti-Wikipedia sentiment that lasts a
long time in various enclaves)
>
> ___Claudia:
> and, again, in which language version(s)?
> That's easy - the languages that we can technically support but don't yet
have Wikipedias for and the languages for which we don't even have the
fonts to display them.
>
> best,
> Claudia
>
>
>> On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 7:41 AM, <koltzenburg(a)w4w.net> wrote:
>> Hi WereSpielChequers, Kerry, Aaron and all,
>>
>> ____WereSpielChequers wrote:
>> "the community is more abrasive towards women"
>>
>> this may be stats expert discourse, but let me show you how the
question
>> itself has a gendered slant.
>> imagine what would happen - also in your research design - if it read:
"the
>> community is less abrasive towards men"
- how does this compare to
the
>> first question re who are "the
community"?
>>
>> and again, re phasing ten years in 2011 and four years on, which
language
>> version(s) are hypotheses based on?
>>
>> ____Kerry wrote:
>> "But I would agree that if an organisation sets a target (25% women in
this
>> particular case) and then does not put in
place a means of measuring
the
>> progress against that target, one has to
question the point of
establishing a
>> target."
>>
>> I think one has to question the point of not putting in place a means of
>> measuring the progress...
>> and also ask why, if the issue is a high priority (allegedly, one might
add, in
>> speeches at meetings, in interviews with the
press...) this organisation
does
>> not fund any top level research... - or does
it?
>>
>> ____Aaron wrote:
>> "higher quality survey data"
>> well, and how does one recognize low quality and how come it is so
low?
>> and "quality" by whose
epistemological aims and standards?
>>
>> "causes and mechanisms that drive the gender gap (and related
>> participation gaps)"
>> which "related participation gaps" do you have in mind here?
>> where would these gaps be situated in terms of areas of participation?
>> and, again, in which language version(s)?
>>
>> best,
>> Claudia
>>
>> ---------- Original Message -----------
>> From:aaron shaw <aaronshaw(a)northwestern.edu>
>> To:Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-
>> l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Sent:Mon, 16 Feb 2015 20:50:17 -0800
>> Subject:Re: [Wiki-research-l] a cautious note on gender stats Re: Fwd:
>> [Gendergap] Wikipedia readers
>>
>> > Hi all!
>> >
>> > Thanks, Jeremy & Dariusz for following up.
>> >
>> > On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 5:58 AM, Dariusz
>> > Jemielniak <darekj(a)alk.edu.pl> wrote:
>> >
>> > > As far as I recall, they did a follow-up on this topic, and maybe a
>> > > publication coming up?
>> >
>> > Sadly, no follow ups at the moment.
>> >
>> > If we want to have a more precise sense of the
>> > demographics of participants the biggest need in
>> > this space is simply higher quality survey data.
>> > My paper with Mako has a lot of detail about why
>> > the 2008 editor survey (and all subsequent editor
>> > surveys, to my knowledge) has some profound limitations.
>> >
>> > The identification and estimation of the effects
>> > of particular causes and mechanisms that drive the
>> > gender gap (and related participation gaps)
>> > presents an even tougher challenge for
>> > researchers and is an area of active inquiry.
>> >
>> > all the best,
>> > Aaron
>> ------- End of Original Message -------
>>
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