Hi there wiki-researchers,
We have 6 days left in Phase 1 of the Wikimedia Inspire campaign https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire and we've received quite a few compelling research proposals. *When you have a moment this week, please peruse these proposals and endorse/comment upon them. *I've included a list of proposals below that seem to have gained some traction and/or are reasonably detailed.
- Expand Russian Wiktionary https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Expand_Russian_Wiktionary
- Debates on facts given in Inspire Campaign mass message https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Debates_on_facts_given_in_Inspire_Campaign_mass_message
- Survey potential female editors to determine the most popular topics of interest https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Survey_potential_female_editors_to_determine_most_popular_topics_of_interest
- References from Gender/Queer studies https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/References_from_Gender/Queer_Studies
- Examination of Gender Biographies https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Examination_of_gender_in_biographies - Research gender affinity for different subjects on Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_gender_affinity_for_different_subjects_on_Wikipedia
- Survey women who don't contribute https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Survey_women_who_don%27t_contribute - WIGI: Wikipedia Gender Index Tools https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/WIGI:_Wikipedia_Gender_Index_Tools - A Consciousness Raising Repository https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/A_Consciousness_Raising_Repository
*Any input or insight you can provide on these proposals will be valuable*: you can ask questions to make them think, suggest methods, theories, or refinements to their research questions, or point the proposers to relevant literature.
For example, the proposal "Research gender affinity for different subjects on Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_gender_affinity_for_different_subjects_on_Wikipedia" would probably benefit from a pointer to the WP:Clubhouse paper http://files.grouplens.org/papers/wp-gender-wikisym2011.pdf, which investigates that phenomenon within the scope of movie articles.
If you find a project particularly compelling, you can even join it as a volunteer or (potential) grantee.
Like I said, any help is helpful! Although keep in mind that not every proposer has the profound depth of research background that you do, My Esteemed Colleagues. So please focus on providing constructive input and assume good faith ;)
Full list of ideas that have been classified as "research" is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire/Ideas_by_theme#Resear...
You can view all ideas at the main campaign page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire
Thank you in advance for your support! I'll update this list in a month or so to let y'all know which of these projects will be going forward with WMF support.
Best, Jonathan
Although it's not a proposal to do research per se, I think this is a proposal that researchers need to support as it's pretty fundamental:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Face_new_editors_with_the_pos sibility_of_specifying_their_gender
In a nutshell, it seeks gender information on sign-up. In my endorsement I wrote:
Endorse. If we don't know the gender of our editors, we can't measure progress towards the diversity objective. Nor can we undertake the range of other research proposed. We should ask for gender on sign-up (of course, with an opt-out) with an explanation of why we are asking. It should be made clear that this information is for WMF's statistical/research purposes and not disclosed to others. We have reports and graphs of editor activity on-wiki; let's offer a couple more lines on those graphs: male and female (and I guess "don't know") to see how they change in response to other changes. Let's provide monthly reports on male/female activities any categories which are large enough to prevent gender identification of individual editors. We need such this "diversity dashboard" to know what is happening and (in broad terms) when/where it's happening.
Indeed, I would probably go further and say we need to also try to encourage existing editors to provide this information too. What's the point of A/B testing a gender-diversity "solution" if we cannot tell if it is changing anything?
I'd encourage anyone with an interest in any gendered research question to support this proposal.
In the interests of CoI, I have no involvement in this proposal and, as far as one can tell with pseudonymous accounts, no connection to its proposers.
Kerry
_____
From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Morgan Sent: Thursday, 26 March 2015 3:15 AM To: Wiki Research-l Subject: [Wiki-research-l] YOUR INPUT NEEDED on Inspire Campaign researchproposals!
Hi there wiki-researchers,
We have 6 days left in Phase 1 of the Wikimedia Inspire campaign https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire and we've received quite a few compelling research proposals. When you have a moment this week, please peruse these proposals and endorse/comment upon them. I've included a list of proposals below that seem to have gained some traction and/or are reasonably detailed.
* Expand https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Expand_Russian_Wiktionary Russian Wiktionary * Debates https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Debates_on_facts_given_in_In spire_Campaign_mass_message on facts given in Inspire Campaign mass message * Survey https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Survey_potential_female_edit ors_to_determine_most_popular_topics_of_interest potential female editors to determine the most popular topics of interest * References https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/References_from_Gender/Queer _Studies from Gender/Queer studies * Examination https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Examination_of_gender_in_bio graphies of Gender Biographies * Research https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_gender_affinity_for _different_subjects_on_Wikipedia gender affinity for different subjects on Wikipedia * Survey https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Survey_women_who_don%27t_con tribute women who don't contribute * WIGI: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/WIGI:_Wikipedia_Gender_Index _Tools Wikipedia Gender Index Tools * A https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/A_Consciousness_Raising_Repo sitory Consciousness Raising Repository
Any input or insight you can provide on these proposals will be valuable: you can ask questions to make them think, suggest methods, theories, or refinements to their research questions, or point the proposers to relevant literature.
For example, the proposal "Research https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_gender_affinity_for _different_subjects_on_Wikipedia gender affinity for different subjects on Wikipedia" would probably benefit from a pointer to the WP:Clubhouse http://files.grouplens.org/papers/wp-gender-wikisym2011.pdf paper, which investigates that phenomenon within the scope of movie articles.
If you find a project particularly compelling, you can even join it as a volunteer or (potential) grantee.
Like I said, any help is helpful! Although keep in mind that not every proposer has the profound depth of research background that you do, My Esteemed Colleagues. So please focus on providing constructive input and assume good faith ;)
Full list of ideas that have been classified as "research" is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire/Ideas_by_theme#Resear ch_ideas
You can view all ideas at the main campaign page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire
Thank you in advance for your support! I'll update this list in a month or so to let y'all know which of these projects will be going forward with WMF support.
Best,
Jonathan
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 8:30 AM, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
Although it’s not a proposal to do research per se, I think this is a proposal that researchers need to support as it’s pretty fundamental:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Face_new_editors_with_the_pos... .. ... It should be made clear that this information is for WMF's statistical/research purposes and not disclosed to others. ...
The gender user preference, which that proposal is currently about, is public data. Under the gender preference is the following small print (English; other languages should be similar)
"Setting this preference is optional. The software uses its value to address you and to mention you to others using the appropriate grammatical gender. This information will be public."
It is exposed via User page names and the 'gender' parser functions (see 'gender' on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Magic_words)
Maybe we would see more people filling it in if there was an option for it to be non-public. But then the software is collecting information which is not used by the software.
Or put a different way: what ways can the MediaWiki software benefit from a non-public gender setting?
Hi John! I take your point. OK, let me break this into two parts.
Strategy 1. WMF needs to know (as much as possible) which editors are female/male. It is pointless having a goal in relation to female participation while we neither know what it currently is and whether or not anything we do causes it to change or achieve the designed target. Right now there are a lot of "ungendered" users on Wikipedia, who make it hard to know what is actually going on.
So, having a campaign and or inviting new users to provide their gender would be a Good Thing for measurement.
Just FYI, where is the user's gender revealed? I must say that, other than consulting my own preferences, I have never noticed where my gender or anyone else's is revealed, although I know everyone says it is ... somewhere ...
Strategy 2. It is often suggested in forums like the gender gap mailing list that women (more than men) are reluctant to reveal their gender on Wikipedia (assorted reasons are given). Whether this is true or not, I cannot say, but clearly that mailing list has some participants for whom it is true, but that's only proof-by-a-few-examples. However, if they are correct, Strategy 1 is doomed to failure if women are genuinely afraid to reveal their gender. So if Strategy 1 does not seem to be working, then I think we would have to move to Strategy 2 and collect the data strictly for WMF purposes only in the hope that it might persuade more women (and perhaps men) to reveal their gender.
Note if strategy 2 succeeds where Strategy 1 did not, it gives us a minimum estimate of what proportion of women (and men) might be deliberately concealing their gender from public view. If that is a significant chunk of people, you have to start the research to find out why this is so. Given that social media stats show a majority of female participants, it seems that disclosing gender is not bothering women on those platforms.
If both strategy 1 and 2 fail, then we are back where we are right now, suspecting there is a significant gender gap, lacking the hard evidence to convince the skeptical that it is so, and unable to tell if any changes are making any difference to the situation or whether any goal has been achieved.
Without some semi-reliable measurement of gender, any gender goal or strategy or even conversation is pretty much dead in the water.
As to your question about the MediaWiki software, could the collection of demographics be a configuration option to allow whoever is rolling out a Mediawiki instance to decide what basic demographics they wanted to try to collect. While the male/female is a matter of concern to WMF at the moment, I guess other organisations might have other demographic concerns.
Kerry
On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 9:42 PM, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
Hi John! I take your point. OK, let me break this into two parts.
Strategy 1. WMF needs to know (as much as possible) which editors are female/male. It is pointless having a goal in relation to female participation while we neither know what it currently is and whether or not anything we do causes it to change or achieve the designed target. Right now there are a lot of "ungendered" users on Wikipedia, who make it hard to know what is actually going on.
So, having a campaign and or inviting new users to provide their gender would be a Good Thing for measurement.
Just FYI, where is the user's gender revealed? I must say that, other than consulting my own preferences, I have never noticed where my gender or anyone else's is revealed, although I know everyone says it is ... somewhere
It's possible it isn't, in English (does anyone know for sure?), because English verbs have no gender marker. But many languages have mandatory gender in their verbal systems, and thus, for example, their equivalent of "User:Person thanked you for your edit" would have the equivalent word for "thanked" as X if Person is female or Y if Person is male.
A.
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 3:55 PM, Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 9:42 PM, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
Hi John! I take your point. OK, let me break this into two parts.
Strategy 1. WMF needs to know (as much as possible) which editors are female/male. It is pointless having a goal in relation to female participation while we neither know what it currently is and whether or not anything we do causes it to change or achieve the designed target. Right now there are a lot of "ungendered" users on Wikipedia, who make it hard to know what is actually going on.
So, having a campaign and or inviting new users to provide their gender would be a Good Thing for measurement.
Just FYI, where is the user's gender revealed? I must say that, other than consulting my own preferences, I have never noticed where my gender or anyone else's is revealed, although I know everyone says it is ... somewhere
It's possible it isn't, in English (does anyone know for sure?), because English verbs have no gender marker. But many languages have mandatory gender in their verbal systems, and thus, for example, their equivalent of "User:Person thanked you for your edit" would have the equivalent word for "thanked" as X if Person is female or Y if Person is male.
Any user template can use/display it using the gender parser function. I believe any UI component, like JS gadgets, can use/show it.
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 12:52 AM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 3:55 PM, Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 9:42 PM, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
Hi John! I take your point. OK, let me break this into two parts.
Strategy 1. WMF needs to know (as much as possible) which editors are female/male. It is pointless having a goal in relation to female participation while we neither know what it currently is and whether or not anything we do causes it to change or achieve the designed target. Right now there are a lot of "ungendered" users on Wikipedia, who make it hard to know what is actually going on.
So, having a campaign and or inviting new users to provide their gender would be a Good Thing for measurement.
Just FYI, where is the user's gender revealed? I must say that, other
than
consulting my own preferences, I have never noticed where my gender or anyone else's is revealed, although I know everyone says it is ... somewhere
It's possible it isn't, in English (does anyone know for sure?), because English verbs have no gender marker. But many languages have mandatory gender in their verbal systems, and thus, for example, their equivalent
of
"User:Person thanked you for your edit" would have the equivalent word
for
"thanked" as X if Person is female or Y if Person is male.
Any user template can use/display it using the gender parser function. I believe any UI component, like JS gadgets, can use/show it.
It's also able to be fetched through the API: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&ususers=1...
-Frances
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