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
Greg, Thanks for worrying. This is a known problem and yes, Wikipedia contributes to the Gendergap in citations and no, it's not an easy fix, since it is the fault of systemic bias in academia. So fewer women are head author on scientific publications, and it is generally only the head author that gets cited on Wikipedia. This is not just a problem with written works in the field of politics. I spend most of my time working on paintings and their documented catalogs, so generally I only notice and fix this problem in art catalogs. Women rarely appear as lead author mentioned. I will always add them in to descriptions when I add items for their works on Wikidata, but I can not always find them! Sometimes I can't even create items for them because all I have is a name and a work and nothing else available online anywhere. You see this most often with women who spent entire careers working at a single institution and the institution doesn't bother to promote their work or even list them in exhibition catalogs. With luck there might be a local obituary, but not always. If you have suggestions how to set up a Wikiproject to tackle this it would be a good idea. In my onwiki experience the Women-in-Red community can be very positive in their response to gendergap-related issues for women writers. Jane
On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 6:17 AM Greg thenatureprogram@gmail.com wrote:
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
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