Hi Jonathan Cardy, hi all,
I just found something that could enhance our exchange by naming a few more factors than usually discussed on this list:
"In practice, the opportunities for realizing novel, unusual, or less fashionable technological functions are often constrained by a variety of factors: rigid habits, lack of imagination, technical obstacles, vested interests, economic power relationships, social impediments, moral constraints, and the like." Hans Radder, "Critical Philosophy of Technology: The Basic Issues", in: Social Epistemology, Vol. 22, No. 1, January-March 2008, pp. 51-70, p. 59
* rigid habits * lack of imagination * technical obstacles * vested interests * economic power relationships * social impediments * moral constraints * and the like
so, in line with the hegemonic culture on this list, what novel, unusual, or less fashionable *technological functions* could be used to solve the power issues that seem to keep up the gender gap?
best, Claudia koltzenburg@w4w.net Meine GPG-Key-ID: DDD21523 - mehr dazu: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard
---------- Original Message ----------- From:WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com To:Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research- l@lists.wikimedia.org> Sent:Thu, 19 Feb 2015 10:16:42 +0000 Subject:Re: [Wiki-research-l] a cautious note on gender stats Re: Fwd: [Gendergap] Wikipedia readers
Dear Claudia,
As I understand it the evidence for the Gendergap being real includes:
Usernames chosen by people creating accounts Survey responses Gender choices in user preferences Attendees at events Subject preferences among editors In languages where you can't make talk page comments without disclosing your gender, the gender people disclose Discussions amongst editors by email and other online methods Applications for reference resources.
Some of these are more independent of each other than others, the last two are personal experience rather than anything statistically valid. But it is interesting when personal experience is in accord with research.
The only exceptions that I am aware of are where we deliberately target women such as through gender gap events, and I've heard that campus ambassadors are more gender balanced.
I don't dispute that there is a gender gap in the community, that the gender gap is greater amongst established editors than among newbies. As for other genders and whether we have put too much weight on the male/female ratio, it is a big glaring difference and when the debate about gender gap started several years ago now other ratios such as straight v gay didnt seem out of kilter. Since then there has been at least one mistake by ARBCOM and I suspect that the community isn't as Gay tolerant as I thought it was a few years back, so if someone is looking for a research topic it would be useful to know if the community's ratio of gay to straight members is changing over time.
Regards
Jonathan Cardy
On 18 Feb 2015, at 11:23, koltzenburg@w4w.net wrote:
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@gmail.com To:Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research- l@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@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
- 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);
- 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)
- 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;
- 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@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@northwestern.edu To:Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-
research-
l@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@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
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