Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2014 06:39:38 +0100
From: Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first
three weeks]
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<CAH7nnD3meyLLRFd+ssS-trSajXRreq0uiDOm07M_9nx-oiqyTw(a)mail.gmail.com>
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On 1 June 2014 04:26, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
...
...
selects strongly against women.
Where is the evidence that women have more difficulty understanding
wikitext than men?
(Probably drifting to "Increase participation by women")
As someone who has run editathons on women focused topics, I found
this an odd comment that does not match anecdotal experience. New
women users seem little different to men in the issues that arise, and
though I have found myself apologising for the slightly odd syntax,
given the standard crib-sheet most users get on with basic article
creation quite happily.
There are far more commonly raised issues such as the complex issues
associated with image upload (copyright!), or the conceptual
difficulty of "namespaces" which mean that some webpages behave
differently to others. None is something that appears to "select
strongly against women", though the encyclopedia's way of defining
notability can make it harder to create articles about pre-1970s
professional women, purely because sources from earlier periods tend
to be biased towards men.
If there are surveys that wiki-syntax is more of a barrier for women
than men (after discounting out other factors), perhaps someone could
provide a link?
Fae
FWIW, I think that Lila said at the Zurich hackathon that she had found research
indicating that fewer women click the "edit" button than men do. That sounds
like a phenomenon that could use some research and experimentation.
Also, the Individual Engagement Grants Committee and WMF have funded a research project in
this IEG round focused on women's participation.