Greetings!
I was looking for information about the gender balance of Wikipedia
citations and no one I've asked knows of any work on this topic. Do you?
I think this is an important question.
Here's what I've learned so far:
Wikipedia citations are currently in the form of text strings. There is
also an initiative to place citations in an annotated structured repository
(wikicite). I do not know the current status of wikicite or if/when this
could be used for this inquiry--either to examine all, or a sensible subset
of the citations.
My perspective is that understanding the gender balance is necessary and
urgent. The balance could be better, the same, or worse than the citation
balances we already know, and the scale of the effect is quite large.
Is this a line of inquiry that the wikimedia/wikicite community is
interested in pursuing? If so, what is the best way to get started? Does
the WMF have the resources and interest to look into this matter inhouse?
Thanks for your thoughts.
Greg