Thanks, WSC. All very interesting.
I've been thinking about Wiklpedia citations less in terms of kudos and more in terms of a feedback loop. The cited sources get a significant amount of attention (1 click per 200 pageviews is the number I saw recently). When I imagine total Wikipedia traffic, that's huge. How many students are finding sources this way? How many academics? And how many of these citations are finding their way back into academic publications via this mechanism?
Assuming this is happening to some degree, the gender imbalance of the citations is also reflected. If the Wikipedia imbalance is the same as the one in academia, that's one thing; if it is better on Wikipedia than it is in academia, that's reason to celebrate; if the balance is worse, that's concerning. In fact, if the gender imbalance conforms to my fears instead of my hopes, and is magnified by the massive website traffic, I imagine it could even explain the growth in the citation disparity researchers note in their study of political science texts. (I link to that study in a previous post; it was mentioned in the Washington Post recently)
There is a very real possibility that Wikipedia is making the citation gender gap worse. I think we need to understand what is happening and take immediate action if the news is not good.
Greg