On 11/9/06, Matt R matt_crypto@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
--- Michael Snow wikipedia@earthlink.net wrote:
geni wrote:
Since when did we care about gender on wikipedia?
Since we started using personal pronouns, whenever that was. I wasn't around then, but I suspect it was fairly early on.
Granted, we are sometimes -- but only sometimes -- aware of another editor's gender on Wikipedia, but does it make a big difference? Do I know (say) [[User:SpLoT]]'s gender? Should I care? If I did, would it make much difference to how I would interact with that person? For me, the answer is "no". Admittedly I don't edit articles like [[feminism]], but my experience is that Wikipedia is a place where gender is relatively unimportant. Maybe your experience is different.
It *is* relatively unimportant, I think; certainly it doesn't come up on a regular basis in arbcom or elsewhere. But it's just an interesting observation. Certainly, to echo Charles' point a bit, all other things being equal I'd rather see sane, reasonable people from many different perspectives than from all the same one, and gender is one of the most obvious differences (when the user chooses to tell!).
Perhaps most women are simply smart enough to avoid putting themselves up for a crappy job. ;-)
-Kat whose college quiz bowl nickname, as president, was "token chick"