Hi Leila,
Thanks for your thoughts.
Having just read Troy Vettese's very powerful essay, Sexism in the Academy ( https://nplusonemag.com/issue-34/essays/sexism-in-the-academy/), I wish this were a top priority.
I stumbled upon a study today--it came up in the Washington Post's excellent series on gender bias in political science. The authors look at a set of award winning political science books and the gender imbalance in the citations drawn from google scholar. I'm linking the piece here in case anyone on this list is interested now, or in the future, in how the patterns on Wikipedia compare.
Washington Post piece: "There’s a gender gap in who wins political science book awards – and in how widely they’re cited" https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/22/theres-gender-gap-who-win... "Just as significantly, women’s award-winning books receive fewer scholarly citations than men’s award-winning volumes — and this disparity has grown, rather than shrunk, in recent years. Over the entire period, APSA award-winning volumes by women averaged 43 percent fewer citations per year than those by male authors."
Paper: "Winning awards and gaining recognition: An impact analysis of APSA section book prizes" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0362331918300867
Best, Greg
On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 3:44 PM wiki-research-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
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Today's Topics:
- Re: gender balance of wikipedia citations (Greg)
- Re: gender balance of wikipedia citations (Leila Zia)
- Wikimania 2019 disinformation meetup follow-up (Leila Zia)
- Upcoming Research Newsletter (special issue on gender gap research): New papers open for review (Mohammed Sadat Abdulai)
Message: 1 Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 09:57:15 -0700 From: Greg thenatureprogram@gmail.com To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations Message-ID: <CAOO9DNuSYzzaVwcdqiWA7pj671z3N43XOSwv6DtW0SxWg= L8GQ@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Hi Kerry, Those are all very interesting ways to look at this. I was thinking mostly along the lines of your first bullet point, but I'd be interested in research in any of those areas.
Thanks, Greg
On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 5:00 AM < wiki-research-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
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- Re: gender balance of wikipedia citations (Kerry Raymond)
Message: 1 Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 20:19:18 -0700 From: Greg thenatureprogram@gmail.com To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations Message-ID: < CAOO9DNtY+oDO5oQrMZeG1NZE-kYNYLWnTD6acHeYTbYeGk8k2Q@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
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
Message: 2 Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 13:53:45 +1000 From: "Kerry Raymond" kerry.raymond@gmail.com To: "'Research into Wikimedia content and communities'" wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations Message-ID: 00ed01d5589d$33e31ed0$9ba95c70$@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Could you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by the gender balance of citations?
Are you talking about:
- proportion of male vs female authors of the source material used as
citations in arbitrary articles>
- the quality/quantity of citations in biography articles of men vs
women?
- the quality/quantity of citations in articles that are gendered by some
other criteria (e.g. reader interest, romantic comedy vs action film)?
Kerry
-----Original Message----- From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:
wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]
On Behalf Of Greg Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2019 1:19 PM To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations
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 _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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Message: 2 Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 10:43:51 -0700 From: Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations Message-ID: <CAK0Oe2uCo70_=ma2b=2d+fvr4GseEVxOP0sh= ELNOpKdCuUfqA@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Hi Greg,
A few comments if you're going to go with "proportion of male vs female authors of the source material used as citations in arbitrary articles":
- Please differentiate between sex (female, male, ...) and gender
(woman, man, ...). My understanding from your initial email is that you want to stay focused on gender, not sex.
- Unless you have reliable sources about the gender of an author, I
would not recommend trying to predict what the gender is. (As you may know, this is not uncommon in social media studies, for example, to predict the gender of the author based on their image or their name. These approaches introduce biases and social challenges.)
- Re your question about whether WMF has resources to look into this
question in-house: I can't speak for the whole of WMF, however, I can share more about the Research team's direction. As part of our future work, we would like to "help contributors monitor violations of core content policies and assess information reliability and bias both granularly and at scale". [1] The question you proposed can fall under assessing bias in content (considering citations as part of the content). I expect us to focus first on the piece about violations of core content policies and information reliability and come back to the bias question later. As a result, we won't have bandwidth to do your proposal in-house at the moment. Sorry about that.
I hope this helps.
Best, Leila
[1] Section 2 of our Knowledge Integrity whitepaper:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Knowledge_Integrity_-_Wi...
On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 9:57 AM Greg thenatureprogram@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Kerry, Those are all very interesting ways to look at this. I was thinking
mostly
along the lines of your first bullet point, but I'd be interested in research in any of those areas.
Thanks, Greg
On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 5:00 AM <
wiki-research-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org>
wrote:
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- gender balance of wikipedia citations (Greg)
- Re: gender balance of wikipedia citations (Kerry Raymond)
Message: 1 Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 20:19:18 -0700 From: Greg thenatureprogram@gmail.com To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations Message-ID: < CAOO9DNtY+oDO5oQrMZeG1NZE-kYNYLWnTD6acHeYTbYeGk8k2Q@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
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
Message: 2 Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 13:53:45 +1000 From: "Kerry Raymond" kerry.raymond@gmail.com To: "'Research into Wikimedia content and communities'" wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations Message-ID: 00ed01d5589d$33e31ed0$9ba95c70$@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Could you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by the gender balance
of
citations?
Are you talking about:
- proportion of male vs female authors of the source material used as
citations in arbitrary articles>
- the quality/quantity of citations in biography articles of men vs
women?
- the quality/quantity of citations in articles that are gendered by
some
other criteria (e.g. reader interest, romantic comedy vs action film)?
Kerry
-----Original Message----- From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:
wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]
On Behalf Of Greg Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2019 1:19 PM To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations
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 _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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Message: 3 Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 13:36:17 -0700 From: Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Wikimania 2019 disinformation meetup follow-up Message-ID: <CAK0Oe2sodYJpkuhSqgo3dtfDr= NQ5EK1TdH16F6BOkTyFho9Rg@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Hi,
This message is for those of you who attended the disinformation meet-up [0] in Wikimania 2019 [1] or others who may be interested.
The notes from our meet-up are now posted in the bottom of the page [0].
I was tasked to see if space.wmflabs.org is the place for us to
continue conversations about this topic. The answer is yes. Thanks to the help of Elena Lappen, we now have a dedicated subcategory for disinformation: https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/c/research/disinformation . Feel free to subscribe, watch, and/or post new topics if you're involved in this space.
- If you are new to this conversation, please read the purpose of the
subcategory at https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/about-the-disinformation-category/949 and welcome! :)
Best, Leila
[0] https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2019:Meetups/Disinformation [1] https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2019:Program
Message: 4 Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 22:43:53 +0000 (UTC) From: Mohammed Sadat Abdulai masssly@ymail.com To: Research Into Wikimedia Content and Communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Upcoming Research Newsletter (special issue on gender gap research): New papers open for review Message-ID: 1625269943.668598.1566513833343@mail.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Hi everyone, We’re preparing for the August 2019 research newsletter and looking for contributors. Please take a look at https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WRN201908 and add your name next to any paper you are interested in covering. Our target publication date is on 31 August 11:59 UTC. As usual, short notes and one-paragraph reviews are most welcome. For the August edition, we are planning a special issue focusing mainly on recent gender gap/gender bias research. (Upcoming special issues topics may include health and education.) There are about 20 papers from this area on our todo list which will all be covered in the August issue, either as a mere list item or - with your help - in form of a more informative writeup or review. They include:
Analyzing Gender Stereotyping in Bollywood Movies
Breaking the glass ceiling on Wikipedia| journal
Breastfeeding, Authority, and Genre: Women's Ethos in Wikipedia and
Blogs
- Cyberfeminism on Wikipedia: Visibility and deliberation in feminist
Wikiprojects
Gender and deletion on Wikipedia
Gender imbalance and Wikipedia
Gender Markers in Wikipedia Usernames
How do students trust Wikipedia? An examination across genders
Investigating the Gender Pronoun Gap in Wikipedia
It’s Not What You Think: Gender Bias in Information about Fortune
1000 CEOs on Wikipedia
- Mapping and Bridging the Gender Gap: An Ethnographic Study of Indian
Wikipedians and Their Motivations to Contribute
- People Who Can Take It: How Women Wikipedians Negotiate and Navigate
Safety
Redressing Gender Inequities on Wikipedia Through an Editathon
Similar Gaps, Different Origins? Women Readers and Editors at Greek
Wikipedia
- Simulation Experiments on (the Absence of) Ratings Bias in Reputation
Systems
The Gendered Presentation of Professions on Wikipedia
Who Counts as a Notable Sociologist on Wikipedia? Gender, Race, and
the “Professor Test”
- Who Wants to Read This?: A Method for Measuring Topical
Representativeness in User Generated Content Systems
- Women and Wikipedia. Diversifying Editors and Enhancing Content
through Library Edit-a-Thons
Masssly and Tilman Bayer
[1] Research:Newsletter - Meta[2] WikiResearch (@WikiResearch) on Twitter
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