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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 6:55 AM, Jane Darnell
<jane023(a)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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28 August 2014 12:56, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)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(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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