I should explain that I am a resident of the Netherlands, where we have a central statistics bureau which includes census statistics that you can query for free and download your own datasets in xls format. As a data analyst I have spent lots of time gathering such data and reporting on it in Microsoft Excel, which is still my tool of choice. I frequently read news stories about published reports that misinterpret data and I sometimes will check the cited data against published open data sources. I base my conclusions on that experience as well as my personal experience. It may also be helpful to explain that many of my friends are or were stay-at-home moms. I agree that most of the questions served in public surveys do not seem to be formulated by data analysts.
I am proud to say that after a rocky start I can finally edit Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons on my iPad, but I couldn't tell you what I did to set it up. I have successfully uploaded several photos with my android app to Wiki Loves Monuments. I do know that I tried to make an edit on someone else's iPhone this week and was stopped short by the mobile interface.
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 9:35 AM, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 6:55 AM, Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com wrote:
You can start by asking around in your own circle of aquaintance, and
I'll
bet that such research will make you quickly realize that hard stats will be very hard to discover, since in my circle, most of the women I know
are
married and though their household contains a desktop, the desktop is
owned
and operated by their husband, not them.
I use (primarily) my carbon-fiber beast of a desktop, with my wife using primarily a laptop. The use of "desktop" to (presumably) refer to laptops is very confusing here, and would make accurate data gathering more difficult, not less.
We both use a tablet and/or phone, but only when away from the real machines or for very quick stuff. Doing real work on a tablet/phone is a pain in the ass, not just on Wikipedia but for anything. If I have a decent amount of text to type, I'll take a real keyboard and two monitors, not one "keyboard" taking up half of a 4" screen, thanks very much. I can't even imagine trying to make a significant edit to an article on a phone, no matter how good we make the interface. Even in a visual editor, articles require the entry of a lot of text, not the Facebook-style "I'm here, having a great time!"
That's a usage pattern that's very common with couples in my experience. It's apparently not in yours. That's why the plural of anecdote is not evidence.
In any official questionaire served to them however, they are probably asked whether their household
has
one, not whether they themselves are the primary user of one.
Why would they be? If we're trying to determine use patterns, it's silly to ask about the simple presence of something, but that's easy to fix.
"What device do you primarily use when accessing the Internet?" (Alternatively, or as a followup, "What type of device do you routinely use to access the Internet? Check all that apply.")
[ ] A desktop computer [ ] A laptop or notebook computer [ ] A tablet or smartphone
Not that hard to design a question that addresses the user directly, by not just access to a given device but actual use of it. If we need that data, we ought to actually gather it.
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 8:29 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
On 28 August 2014 12:56, Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with Gerard, and would add that a good portion of the new
readers and "missing female editors" do not own or operate a desktop
and
are only available on mobile and tablet, so this is not only where the
new
readers are, but also where the "first edit" experience is for most
women
(and sadly, a corollary to that is that they don't try again after
their
first edit failure). mechanics of how this would work. We could do it, but reforming WMF is
Every year we see many expensive surveys and funded research on women and Wikipedia, so presumably there are some verifiable statistics to support Jane's assertion that a significant difference between readers of Wikipedia is that men are significantly more likely to own or have access to a desktop compared to women that they might edit from.
Can someone provide a link to the research that demonstrates this is more than apocryphal?
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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