There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).
I just read this article: "International Collaboration for Women in IT: How to Avoid Reinventing the Wheel" http://iisit.org/Vol7/IISITv7p329-338Craig734.pdf
which is about how the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an international academic computing membership organization) has a women's interest group -- ACM-W -- which is tasked with increasing women's participation in IT -- an equally daunting task. What's mostly interesting about this article is it describes how ACM-W has an ambassador program, with individuals tasked with increasing participation in various countries. In turn these ambassadors report that one size doesn't fit all -- increasing women's participation in IT depends on a variety of factors, including the general status of women's education in a country, and that the techniques one uses to encourage female participation might vary quite a bit depending on other cultural factors.
Of course this is not an earth-shattering conclusion, but it's also clearly applicable to Wikimedia. I haven't seen many papers that take an explicitly international view to the issue of women in IT, so I thought it was interesting.
-- phoebe
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 8:26 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).
You may find it interesting that these kind of large imbalances can arise out of a simple but surprising mathematical truth:
If you have a mixed population with a skill, say skateboarding, that follows the typical normal distribution and one sub-population (e.g. people with red hair) have an average performance only slight higher than another sub-population (blondes), and you were to select the best skateboarders out of the group you would end up with a surprisingly high concentration of the red-hair subgroup, so high that it doesn't at all seem justified by the small difference in average performance.
This is is because in normal distributions the concentration of people with a particular skill falls off exponentially away from the average, so if you take the two distributions (amount of skateboarding skill for red-hairs and blondes) and shift one a very small amount the ratio between the two becomes increasingly large as you select for higher and higher skill levels.
The same kind of results happen when, instead of a difference in average performance, there is simply a difference in the variation. If red-hairs have the same average skate-boarding skill but are less consistent— more klutzes _and_ more superstars this has an even larger impact than differences in the average, again biasing towards the red-hairs.
These effects can be combined, and if there are multiple supporting skills for a task they combine multiplicatively.[*]
The applicability here is clear: There is a strong biological argument justifying greater variance in genetically linked traits in men (due to the decrease in genetic redundancy) which is supported by many studies which show greater variance in males. So all things equal any time you select for extremes (high or low performing) you will tend to tend to end up with a male biased group. (There are small also differences in measured averages between men and women in many areas...)
And many of the 'skills' that are reasonable predictions of someone's likelihood of being a Wikipedian, if we're even to call them 'skills' as many aren't all that flattering, are obviously male super-abundant in the greater world. How many female obsessive stamp collectors do you know? Male? The kind of obsessive collecting trait is almost so exclusively male that it's a cliché, and it's pretty obvious why that kind of person would find a calling in Wikipedia.
One piece of insight that comes out of is that general approaches which make Wikipedia more palatable to "average people", as opposed to uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines, may have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements. (and may also reduce other non-gender related imbalances, such as our age imbalance). So this gives you an extra reason why "more people to edit regardless" is an especially useful approach.
Though are limits to the amount of main-streaming you can do of an academic activity such as encyclopaedia writing. :-)
In any case, I don't mean to suggest that your work isn't important or can't be worthwhile. Only that I think you're fighting an uphill battle against a number of _natural_ (not human originated) biases, and I wish you luck!
[*] A while back I wrote up a longer and highly technical version of this explanation as part of an argument on gender imbalances in computer science with a mathematician. Anyone into math-wankery may find it interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/mf_compsci
I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous (and offensive). Regardless of our genetic predispositions, there are very real cultural issues that frequently drive female contributors away from Wikimedia projects. Many areas of our projects are downright mysogynistic: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3APatriarchy&action=histo... while others are just passively sexist: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Picture_of_the_day/Archive_1#... http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Nudity#Standard_regarding_fem... Not to mention that our trolls seem to favor profiling and harassing female editors: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=18616&st=20&p=107254&...
As long as disrespectful and sexist behavior flourishes unchecked, editing Wikipedia will probably not be an attractive proposition for most women. Unfortunately, this problem seems to be self-perpetuating, as the more the gender ratio is skewed, the more the culture of Wikipedia will tend to tolerate sexist or mysogynistic behavior, and the more women will leave the project. I think instead of trying to figure out some magic interface pheromone for women, we should just start reaching out to more women directly. It would be great if the Foundation's new public policy initiative could do outreach to some Women's Studies programs or if we could promote Wikipedia to women's tech groups like IBM Women in Technology or the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. Any other ideas?
Ryan Kaldari
On 6/16/10 6:04 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 8:26 PM, phoebe ayersphoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).
You may find it interesting that these kind of large imbalances can arise out of a simple but surprising mathematical truth:
If you have a mixed population with a skill, say skateboarding, that follows the typical normal distribution and one sub-population (e.g. people with red hair) have an average performance only slight higher than another sub-population (blondes), and you were to select the best skateboarders out of the group you would end up with a surprisingly high concentration of the red-hair subgroup, so high that it doesn't at all seem justified by the small difference in average performance.
This is is because in normal distributions the concentration of people with a particular skill falls off exponentially away from the average, so if you take the two distributions (amount of skateboarding skill for red-hairs and blondes) and shift one a very small amount the ratio between the two becomes increasingly large as you select for higher and higher skill levels.
The same kind of results happen when, instead of a difference in average performance, there is simply a difference in the variation. If red-hairs have the same average skate-boarding skill but are less consistent— more klutzes _and_ more superstars this has an even larger impact than differences in the average, again biasing towards the red-hairs.
These effects can be combined, and if there are multiple supporting skills for a task they combine multiplicatively.[*]
The applicability here is clear: There is a strong biological argument justifying greater variance in genetically linked traits in men (due to the decrease in genetic redundancy) which is supported by many studies which show greater variance in males. So all things equal any time you select for extremes (high or low performing) you will tend to tend to end up with a male biased group. (There are small also differences in measured averages between men and women in many areas...)
And many of the 'skills' that are reasonable predictions of someone's likelihood of being a Wikipedian, if we're even to call them 'skills' as many aren't all that flattering, are obviously male super-abundant in the greater world. How many female obsessive stamp collectors do you know? Male? The kind of obsessive collecting trait is almost so exclusively male that it's a cliché, and it's pretty obvious why that kind of person would find a calling in Wikipedia.
One piece of insight that comes out of is that general approaches which make Wikipedia more palatable to "average people", as opposed to uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines, may have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements. (and may also reduce other non-gender related imbalances, such as our age imbalance). So this gives you an extra reason why "more people to edit regardless" is an especially useful approach.
Though are limits to the amount of main-streaming you can do of an academic activity such as encyclopaedia writing. :-)
In any case, I don't mean to suggest that your work isn't important or can't be worthwhile. Only that I think you're fighting an uphill battle against a number of _natural_ (not human originated) biases, and I wish you luck!
[*] A while back I wrote up a longer and highly technical version of this explanation as part of an argument on gender imbalances in computer science with a mathematician. Anyone into math-wankery may find it interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/mf_compsci
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On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous (and offensive). Regardless of our genetic predispositions, there are very real cultural issues that frequently drive female contributors away from Wikimedia projects.
[snip]
Ryan,
I believe your post was unnecessarily confrontational. I would expect you to call me out on that kind of thing, so I'm going to call you out on it.
I generally succeed at being thick skinned— but this characterization of my words is hurtful and the witch hunts that sometimes accompany responses like yours are outright frightening. I'm also concerned for other contributors who aren't as online-tough as I am... I know people who wouldn't touch a gender-issues thread with a 10ft poll because they are sure that they'll be misunderstood and burned alive.
We can't improve diversity if we create the impression that anyone who disagrees with the group or shares a contrary view is "the enemy" and fair game for an attack. We should welcome contrary views, even wrong ones, and treat all speakers with patience, respect, and a healthy-helping of assume-good-faith— even when, and especially when, our first impression of their positions is that they are ones which might be harmful to some group or another.
After all, by ferreting out a wrong position and building a good counter argument in a respectful discussion between colleges we build knowledge and skills that help us see and correct the same wrongness everywhere. But that can't happen if we use language to address wrong positions that reflect negatively on the character of the speaker.
... and to get real change on these kinds of pervasive issues we need the broadest input and the broadest buy in. This can't be achieved if the topic is one which people feel is open only to people who know the right things to say and the right ways to say them.
The characterization of my mainstreaming suggestion as "dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women" is exceptionally uncharitable and contributed significantly to my impression that you were trying to make a target out of me. Just so there is no lack of clarity on this point, I'm opposed to "dumbing down" in general and the idea that anything would need to be made _dumb_ to attract Women is completely unsupported by any information that I've seen. Making things more attractive to typical people doesn't mean making them dumber.
... In this case I wasn't even disagreeing with anyone. I'd take your complaint, if not the tone, as a deserved response if I'd dismissed any examples similar to the ones you provided in your post... but I simply didn't. I fully agree that there are "real cultural issues", and that they should be addressed. (Though I would point out, the author of that first horrifying diff-link has long since left the project, so I'm at a loss as to what action I could take now to deal with that particular case).
Any time you can point to clear articulatable problems, I'm all for taking action. Once you've taken care of them, however, it's also important the you keep in mind that some of the imbalances are caused by external factors or indirect non-discriminatory internal ones. By keeping all possible causes in mind, and by maintaining a friendly and positive environment for collaboration, we have the greatest opportunity to get the most benefit in the shortest amount of time.
I apologise for giving you— or anyone else— the impression that my post was intended to reflect negatively on Women. That was certainly not my intention. In fact, what I was saying arguably the converse (and I used a fairly derogatory language to characterize what Wikipedia selection bias that I'd like to see us temper somewhat, "uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines", something which sounds more like a side show exhibit than a human being). I believe Wikipedia's form and practices select for weirdos in many different ways, — some weird in 'good ways', many of then negative weirdnesses, (and, I'm sure many more neutral ones).
Some of those selections conspired against including Women (and people of many other backgrounds), ... fewer conspire against selecting our existing majority population, because our existing population has done a good job of removing the things that irritate them.
...and it's worth bringing up because it can lead to interesting suggestions, like the idea that making Wikipedia less appealing to weirdos can improve diversity in areas which are not obviously strongly connected to the specific weirdness since selecting for extremes magnifies even small differences between groups.
There are plenty of ways that Wikipedia participation rewards being weird— such as having the patience to write a novel defending yourself when someone tries to paint a target on your back... or just having the interest in dealing with an obscure series of commands required to make a wikitext table. By making Wikipedia more mainstream in any area which are not essential to our mission (for example, I wouldn't suggest trying to 'mainstream' our attention to facts) we can expect improvements in diversity (gender or otherwise).
This doesn't mean that we shouldn't worry about fixing the existence of bigoted jerkwads on the projects, nor does the existence of jerkwads justify ignoring all other contributing factors.
Cheers,
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 1:00 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
counter argument in a respectful discussion between colleges we build
If I can't even manage to say "colleague" without screwing it up, how can we assume that anything I say was an insult to anything and not just some kind of unfortunate miscommunication? (sorry for the lack of proof-reading, I must have been too busy vomiting out a large volume of words)
I am probably less clearly spoken than most people here, — pretty shameful considering that English is my native language and isn't for many of the other people on this list— but I am by no means alone in communicating poorly from time to time.
If nothing else I hope that my frequent incoherence can serve as an example of why it is essential to be patient and tolerant when we communicate with others.
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
If nothing else I hope that my frequent incoherence can serve as an example of why it is essential to be patient and tolerant when we communicate with others.
Indeed. And you're being too hard on yourself; I don't think you were incoherent, and you're definitely not frequently incoherent.
I think Ryan definitely misread your message, and I think he reacted strongly to what he thought he read. And if you had indeed said what he thought you said, I think his response would have been appropriate -- strong in criticizing the substance, but not personal.
But, he didn't, so it was fair for you to clarify your words, and it was also fair for you to be sensitive about them. These are sensitive topics and sensitive times, and we should all remember to cut each other some slack as we try to grapple with them.
I think a few good things came out of this interchange. I agree with Greg's point that trying to make Wikimedia sites more palatable to non-uber-obsessive technobiblio walking-fact-machines (but still well qualified) types will probably have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than targeting improvements at a specific demographic. Removing Wikitext as a barrier may, in and of itself, have a significant impact on editor diversity.
I also agree with Phoebe's point. We can't treat this as a one-size-fits-all problem. There may be serious contextual differences across different languages and projects that may require different approaches. We need to be aware of this while also addressing the clear systemic problems. It would indeed be interesting to see what we could learn from id.wp's recent experiences.
Which brings me to Ryan's points. There are serious cultural issues that need to be addressed. They may not be systemic -- it's possible, even probable, that there are projects that do not, intentionally or not, create environments hostile to women or other demographics. But when we do see that happen, we need to address it.
Speaking as a man who grew up in a household of women and who works a lot in fields that are predominantly female (nonprofits and facilitation), I'd like to claim that I'm especially sensitive to these issues. Sadly, it doesn't really work that way. This stuff is not simple, and environment can exacerbate things.
In the strategy project alone, there have been at least two instances where I've been guilty of perpetuating an environment that was less than conducive to women. Last September, when a group of us were brainstorming a list of potential candidates for the Task Force Selection committee, the first list was almost entirely men. This was a natural and harmless result; after all, the vast majority of our volunteers are men. However, I asked the group to think harder to see if we could come up with a group that was 50-50 male-female. I wasn't proposing it as some artificial quota that might reward lesser qualified candidates just because they were women. Despite the gender skew of our volunteers, I didn't think it was unreasonable to identify five great women volunteers.
I think we did a good job of this, and I was thrilled by the final makeup of our committee. However, in one of the committee discussions, I once again expressed my hope that we would think a little harder in order to achieve greater diversity in our Task Forces, and I told this story as an example of what I wanted to see. However, I wasn't careful enough with my words, and one of the female committee members interpreted my story to mean that she was only asked to be on the committee because she was a woman. I tried to clarify my words, but the damage had already been done.
The second instance was during IRC office hours several months ago. It was late at night (for me), and I'm pretty sure only men were participating -- you can never be sure with IRC. At one point, some locker room humor started. I chuckled to myself, and let it go. I like locker room humor, and when I'm in a room with a bunch of guy friends, I think it's harmless. The problem is, office hours on a publicly logged IRC channel is not the same as my living room. I realized afterward that women who were on the IRC channel or who read the logs afterward would not have found our interchange welcoming. I've been much more diligent about moderating this since, and Philippe's sensitive facilitation has helped immensely, but the tendency has come up again and again. It's not intentional, but it's not right either.
This stuff will happen, even if we have the best of intentions. We need to be willing to call each other out when we see it happening, and we need to be firm, yet forgiving in how we educate each other. It's a challenge with diversity as a whole, not just with women, and it's a challenge that we should all embrace. It will make our projects better.
=Eugene
Eugene's post is too long for me to snip but it's basically what I would have said if I was in my usual verbose mood.
Basically, I went through a similar thing on strategy wiki selecting the "official members" of the Living People Task Force. After discussion with Cary and Philippe, we went with three men and three women of various strategic targeting levels and it worked out that the selection provided me valuable input in facilitating the project. I think that, when it matters, Wikimedians do not care about gender/race/orientation. I'm a straight male about to turn twenty-nine, I'm definitely not in the majority of the userbase, but I am in the target consumer usage base. Additionally, based on my offline life experience, we absolutely value female userbase as compared to the outside world in the US. Just my opinion there.
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 1:35 AM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.comwrote:
Eugene's post is too long for me to snip but it's basically what I would have said if I was in my usual verbose mood.
Basically, I went through a similar thing on strategy wiki selecting the "official members" of the Living People Task Force. After discussion with Cary and Philippe, we went with three men and three women of various strategic targeting levels and it worked out that the selection provided me valuable input in facilitating the project. I think that, when it matters, Wikimedians do not care about gender/race/orientation. I'm a straight male about to turn twenty-nine, I'm definitely not in the majority of the userbase, but I am in the target consumer usage base. Additionally, based on my offline life experience, we absolutely value female userbase as compared to the outside world in the US. Just my opinion there. -- ~Keegan
I should clarify, "a target usage base".
I've been following this thread and it occurred to me that Phoebe is the lone woman posting to it, so I feel somewhat duty-bound to share my own perspective as a woman editor on English Wikipedia. I don't intend this to encapsulate everything that there is to be said on the subject, and it's a topic I could probably write forever on, so I will only share a few of my observations.
At the time I joined the project, many female administrators and editors were experiencing serious harassment, both on- and off-wiki;while I won't say that scared me away from Wikipedia, it was part of my motivation to select a gender-neutral username and to not openly disclose that I am a woman until a considerable time after I first logged in. (I think most members of the community only discovered I was a woman during my Request for Adminship, and I am still referred to as "he" on a regular basis.) Once my "femaleness" was publicly known, I found there was a definite change in the way that some (but not most) male editors and administrators interacted with me. There's even a comment on my RfA by someone who apologised for teasing me because he didn't realise I was a "lady".
At the same time, because so few women are participating in the various projects, those of us who are visible are often asked to take on additional roles over and above that of editor/administrator. This is both good and bad. In my current role as an arbitrator on my home project, I rarely have the time to do the work that originally brought me to Wikipedia, and I miss being able to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon hitting "random page" and wikignoming my way through a few dozen articles, or clearing out the "speedy deletion" pages. On the other hand, I know I probably have a disproportionate influence on various policies and practices, and I hope that my visibility encourages other women to step into leadership roles or even, for that matter, to feel comfortable in self-identifying as female.
Reading through this thread, I understand Ryan's interpretation of Greg's post and, to be honest, my own interpretation might well have been somewhat similar....if I didn't know Greg. I've met Greg and spoken to him. Just the other night, Greg and I spent the better part of an hour hammering out a step-by-step guide for one aspect of the pending changes variation that is currently undergoing trial on English Wikipedia, and I know beyond doubt that our ability to work together wasn't affected in any way by the fact he's a "he" and I'm a "she". I don't think it's particularly healthy to expect everyone to write in a way that causes no offense to anyone, but I think we all need to be cognizant that *anything* we say can be misread with best intentions.
Eugene hits on an important point: the unintentional seepage of the locker room, which to me includes the use of aggressive language, into various communication channels. I moderate several other mailing lists, and from time to time I've had to step in and point it out fairly bluntly ("there's too much testosterone in this thread"); to be honest, I think this mailing list could use someone saying that a little more often. I can't be bothered investing my valuable time into reading a lot of chest-thumping and finger-pointing, so worthwhile points made in those posts aren't hitting their target. It's my observation that women participants are less willing to invest their time and energy into the endless and circular debates that masquerade as consensus-seeking discussions, and they just move on to something they feel is of greater value. (Many male participants also do the same thing, I should note.) For those who are aware of the endless behavioural debates on various projects, I need to point out that this isn't about civility. I've noticed that experienced wikimedians are very talented at throwing insults at each other without once crossing the civility boundaries.
As I say, these are just a few of my own observations. They've all affected my own participation in the project, and I know they have, to varying degrees, affected the way that other women participate in various projects. I don't know whether there's anything that could change most of them, either.
Risker/Anne
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:00 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.comwrote:
The characterization of my mainstreaming suggestion as "dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women" is exceptionally uncharitable and contributed significantly to my impression that you were trying to make a target out of me. Just so there is no lack of clarity on this point, I'm opposed to "dumbing down" in general and the idea that anything would need to be made _dumb_ to attract Women is completely unsupported by any information that I've seen. Making things more attractive to typical people doesn't mean making them dumber.
As a passive reader of this thread, I'd like to come to both of your defenses.
Greg, I don't think anyone was reading your thread with that as the implication. I certainly didn't take it that way, and I don't think Ryan did. He was making a supplemental point of the issue. No big deal, both posts are well thought out and while slightly contrary in nature, have the same end point.
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous (and offensive). Regardless of our genetic predispositions, there are very real cultural issues that frequently drive female contributors away from Wikimedia projects.
[snip]
Ryan,
I believe your post was unnecessarily confrontational. I would expect you to call me out on that kind of thing, so I'm going to call you out on it.
If it makes any difference, I think you're both right in part -- Ryan is of course correct that there are there are cultural issues on the projects and these may result in real, immediate barriers for specific people who try to edit[1]. I have no idea if Greg is right about this genetic differences theory -- I don't have the math or the biology cred to evaluate such a claim, but do know this is a deeply controversial area[2] -- but your (hopefully larger) point seems un-controversial enough, that making things easier for people who haven't self-selected as editors already, with whatever concentration of traits skewed from the general population such self-selection may produce, will result in a more diverse editorial body in general. And I think we all hope that a more diverse editorial body will lead to a better site culture and less systemic bias in articles (this is of course open to argument, though).
These two things are not mutually exclusive, however. My point was that stereotyping too much about women (via genetic differences, or assuming that all countries are just like the U.S.) is bad for outreach; but not stereotyping at all -- not recognizing that there are techniques we could use to outreach to underrepresented groups, perhaps learning from other outreach done by other organizations with similar goals -- would be unfortunate too.
There's another good conversation about this topic going on here: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#d...
-- phoebe
[1] or even talk about it; as Greg says there are plenty of people I know and respect who have strong views on this topic who won't write about them, because they'll get shot down. I had to think about it for a while myself. [2]. controversial enough that it's gotten a lot of people in trouble scientifically and socially, including the president of Harvard, whom you cite in your other piece; honestly, you should also probably expect serious debate if you go there. Two nice summaries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes, http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/17/summers_remarks_on_wome...
Ask any librarian about what men and women are reading. Men prefer non fictional, women fictional works. Not all of them, of course, but in large majorities. I doubt that that has no consequences for Wikipedia editing behavior. And, as a women once told to a magazine: Women are too polite to correct someone in public. :-) Kind regards Ziko
2010/6/18 Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org:
I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous (and offensive). Regardless of our genetic predispositions, there are very real cultural issues that frequently drive female contributors away from Wikimedia projects. Many areas of our projects are downright mysogynistic: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3APatriarchy&action=histo... while others are just passively sexist: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Picture_of_the_day/Archive_1#... http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Nudity#Standard_regarding_fem... Not to mention that our trolls seem to favor profiling and harassing female editors: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=18616&st=20&p=107254&...
As long as disrespectful and sexist behavior flourishes unchecked, editing Wikipedia will probably not be an attractive proposition for most women. Unfortunately, this problem seems to be self-perpetuating, as the more the gender ratio is skewed, the more the culture of Wikipedia will tend to tolerate sexist or mysogynistic behavior, and the more women will leave the project. I think instead of trying to figure out some magic interface pheromone for women, we should just start reaching out to more women directly. It would be great if the Foundation's new public policy initiative could do outreach to some Women's Studies programs or if we could promote Wikipedia to women's tech groups like IBM Women in Technology or the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. Any other ideas?
Ryan Kaldari
On 6/16/10 6:04 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 8:26 PM, phoebe ayersphoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).
You may find it interesting that these kind of large imbalances can arise out of a simple but surprising mathematical truth:
If you have a mixed population with a skill, say skateboarding, that follows the typical normal distribution and one sub-population (e.g. people with red hair) have an average performance only slight higher than another sub-population (blondes), and you were to select the best skateboarders out of the group you would end up with a surprisingly high concentration of the red-hair subgroup, so high that it doesn't at all seem justified by the small difference in average performance.
This is is because in normal distributions the concentration of people with a particular skill falls off exponentially away from the average, so if you take the two distributions (amount of skateboarding skill for red-hairs and blondes) and shift one a very small amount the ratio between the two becomes increasingly large as you select for higher and higher skill levels.
The same kind of results happen when, instead of a difference in average performance, there is simply a difference in the variation. If red-hairs have the same average skate-boarding skill but are less consistent— more klutzes _and_ more superstars this has an even larger impact than differences in the average, again biasing towards the red-hairs.
These effects can be combined, and if there are multiple supporting skills for a task they combine multiplicatively.[*]
The applicability here is clear: There is a strong biological argument justifying greater variance in genetically linked traits in men (due to the decrease in genetic redundancy) which is supported by many studies which show greater variance in males. So all things equal any time you select for extremes (high or low performing) you will tend to tend to end up with a male biased group. (There are small also differences in measured averages between men and women in many areas...)
And many of the 'skills' that are reasonable predictions of someone's likelihood of being a Wikipedian, if we're even to call them 'skills' as many aren't all that flattering, are obviously male super-abundant in the greater world. How many female obsessive stamp collectors do you know? Male? The kind of obsessive collecting trait is almost so exclusively male that it's a cliché, and it's pretty obvious why that kind of person would find a calling in Wikipedia.
One piece of insight that comes out of is that general approaches which make Wikipedia more palatable to "average people", as opposed to uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines, may have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements. (and may also reduce other non-gender related imbalances, such as our age imbalance). So this gives you an extra reason why "more people to edit regardless" is an especially useful approach.
Though are limits to the amount of main-streaming you can do of an academic activity such as encyclopaedia writing. :-)
In any case, I don't mean to suggest that your work isn't important or can't be worthwhile. Only that I think you're fighting an uphill battle against a number of _natural_ (not human originated) biases, and I wish you luck!
[*] A while back I wrote up a longer and highly technical version of this explanation as part of an argument on gender imbalances in computer science with a mathematician. Anyone into math-wankery may find it interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/mf_compsci
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After reading the post below, I have nothing to add to today's extensive dialog about men's and women's participation, but I have decided to block Greg Maxwell indefinitely for hate speech against blondes.
Newyorkbrad
On 6/16/10, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 8:26 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).
You may find it interesting that these kind of large imbalances can arise out of a simple but surprising mathematical truth:
If you have a mixed population with a skill, say skateboarding, that follows the typical normal distribution and one sub-population (e.g. people with red hair) have an average performance only slight higher than another sub-population (blondes), and you were to select the best skateboarders out of the group you would end up with a surprisingly high concentration of the red-hair subgroup, so high that it doesn't at all seem justified by the small difference in average performance.
This is is because in normal distributions the concentration of people with a particular skill falls off exponentially away from the average, so if you take the two distributions (amount of skateboarding skill for red-hairs and blondes) and shift one a very small amount the ratio between the two becomes increasingly large as you select for higher and higher skill levels.
The same kind of results happen when, instead of a difference in average performance, there is simply a difference in the variation. If red-hairs have the same average skate-boarding skill but are less consistent— more klutzes _and_ more superstars this has an even larger impact than differences in the average, again biasing towards the red-hairs.
These effects can be combined, and if there are multiple supporting skills for a task they combine multiplicatively.[*]
The applicability here is clear: There is a strong biological argument justifying greater variance in genetically linked traits in men (due to the decrease in genetic redundancy) which is supported by many studies which show greater variance in males. So all things equal any time you select for extremes (high or low performing) you will tend to tend to end up with a male biased group. (There are small also differences in measured averages between men and women in many areas...)
And many of the 'skills' that are reasonable predictions of someone's likelihood of being a Wikipedian, if we're even to call them 'skills' as many aren't all that flattering, are obviously male super-abundant in the greater world. How many female obsessive stamp collectors do you know? Male? The kind of obsessive collecting trait is almost so exclusively male that it's a cliché, and it's pretty obvious why that kind of person would find a calling in Wikipedia.
One piece of insight that comes out of is that general approaches which make Wikipedia more palatable to "average people", as opposed to uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines, may have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements. (and may also reduce other non-gender related imbalances, such as our age imbalance). So this gives you an extra reason why "more people to edit regardless" is an especially useful approach.
Though are limits to the amount of main-streaming you can do of an academic activity such as encyclopaedia writing. :-)
In any case, I don't mean to suggest that your work isn't important or can't be worthwhile. Only that I think you're fighting an uphill battle against a number of _natural_ (not human originated) biases, and I wish you luck!
[*] A while back I wrote up a longer and highly technical version of this explanation as part of an argument on gender imbalances in computer science with a mathematician. Anyone into math-wankery may find it interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/mf_compsci
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On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 5:26 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).
I just read this article: "International Collaboration for Women in IT: How to Avoid Reinventing the Wheel" http://iisit.org/Vol7/IISITv7p329-338Craig734.pdf
which is about how the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an international academic computing membership organization) has a women's interest group -- ACM-W -- which is tasked with increasing women's participation in IT -- an equally daunting task. What's mostly interesting about this article is it describes how ACM-W has an ambassador program, with individuals tasked with increasing participation in various countries. In turn these ambassadors report that one size doesn't fit all -- increasing women's participation in IT depends on a variety of factors, including the general status of women's education in a country, and that the techniques one uses to encourage female participation might vary quite a bit depending on other cultural factors.
Of course this is not an earth-shattering conclusion, but it's also clearly applicable to Wikimedia. I haven't seen many papers that take an explicitly international view to the issue of women in IT, so I thought it was interesting.
-- phoebe
In my admittedly sociologically-slightly-impaired IT oriented mind, I am not sure that the rationales for people to enter the IT field writ large (information technology, computer science, computer engineering, etc) match those for people to contribute to Wikipedia.
However, the generality of opportunity identified there seems useful.
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 6:16 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 5:26 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).
I just read this article: "International Collaboration for Women in IT: How to Avoid Reinventing the Wheel" http://iisit.org/Vol7/IISITv7p329-338Craig734.pdf
which is about how the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an international academic computing membership organization) has a women's interest group -- ACM-W -- which is tasked with increasing women's participation in IT -- an equally daunting task. What's mostly interesting about this article is it describes how ACM-W has an ambassador program, with individuals tasked with increasing participation in various countries. In turn these ambassadors report that one size doesn't fit all -- increasing women's participation in IT depends on a variety of factors, including the general status of women's education in a country, and that the techniques one uses to encourage female participation might vary quite a bit depending on other cultural factors.
Of course this is not an earth-shattering conclusion, but it's also clearly applicable to Wikimedia. I haven't seen many papers that take an explicitly international view to the issue of women in IT, so I thought it was interesting.
-- phoebe
In my admittedly sociologically-slightly-impaired IT oriented mind, I am not sure that the rationales for people to enter the IT field writ large (information technology, computer science, computer engineering, etc) match those for people to contribute to Wikipedia.
However, the generality of opportunity identified there seems useful.
I guess I was thinking more about the commonalities of process: of encouraging people to do something that requires some education but a lot more self-motivation, and involves interacting with a somewhat non-mainstream and sometimes exclusionary culture that may be (to a greater or lesser degree) hostile to their participation. And what I found interesting about this paper, even though it's not a great paper at all, is it gets towards tossing out the idea that how you do that is similar across the board no matter what, that in fact what it means to interact with computer culture varies a lot depending on entirely outside circumstances. I think that we often make this mistake in Wikimedia too, conflating English Wikipedia culture with the culture of all of the projects, or forgetting that what it's like to edit on a small project is very different from what it's like to edit on a big project, and that how we recruit -- if we are recruiting anyone at all -- might vary a lot depending on the combination of circumstances the potential editor is in and what it is they're trying to do.
Like I said, not an earth-shattering conclusion at all, but I've really never seen it expressed much in the context of the women-in-IT problem (which could just be a result of my limited reading). And I don't think we make the case much in Wikimedia either, maybe because there's such a recognizable set of personality traits that truly committed wikipedians tend to possess across the board that it often seems like those traits are the essence of editor-ness.
Greg: I think you're totally right about making things more accessible to the average person -- by which I think we mean not an off-the-scale-encyclopedist-geek -- rather than any special group, and of course you can define average in ways unconnected to gender, cultural background, age, income level, computer skills, etc. I think when making broad changes (e.g. usability) we have to trend towards whatever this average is -- virtually all of our readers get the same interface experience, after all, no matter what their background might be. And any improvements that make it easier to edit for this mythical average population will clearly tend towards benefiting many more people in all categories. When doing outreach, though, I think we have to account for the differences. I'd give a different class on Wikipedia to a bunch of fifth graders than I would to twenty-year-olds than I would to people my dad's age; but really maybe more than age it might be their technical proficiency that I have to account for the most, or their level of academic training, or their general obsessiveness about facts, or their prior knowledge of what an encyclopedia is, or whatever. Generalizing *just* about age -- or just about gender, or a host of other categories -- doesn't really get you very far in the end. But it is also clear, I think, that we haven't even reached all of the hyper-geeky people in the world (of any gender or situation) who might think contributing to wikimedia is really cool, so even if we're only focusing in on this rather indefinable subgroup there's still a lot of work to do.
-- phoebe
p.s. Once upon a time I collected stamps too. There's no hope for me, is there?
Hoi, Have you had a look at the Indonesian competition? The Indonesian chapter organised a competition among students of 10 universities. The result is many more editors for the id.wp and the majority is female. I am convinced that in many countries a similar result can be achieved. Thanks, GerardM
On 17 June 2010 02:26, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).
I just read this article: "International Collaboration for Women in IT: How to Avoid Reinventing the Wheel" http://iisit.org/Vol7/IISITv7p329-338Craig734.pdf
which is about how the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an international academic computing membership organization) has a women's interest group -- ACM-W -- which is tasked with increasing women's participation in IT -- an equally daunting task. What's mostly interesting about this article is it describes how ACM-W has an ambassador program, with individuals tasked with increasing participation in various countries. In turn these ambassadors report that one size doesn't fit all -- increasing women's participation in IT depends on a variety of factors, including the general status of women's education in a country, and that the techniques one uses to encourage female participation might vary quite a bit depending on other cultural factors.
Of course this is not an earth-shattering conclusion, but it's also clearly applicable to Wikimedia. I haven't seen many papers that take an explicitly international view to the issue of women in IT, so I thought it was interesting.
-- phoebe
--
- I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
<at> gmail.com *
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Here are my two cents...
I am organizing now TEDx event in Belgrade. (Unlike others, our speakers will sign contract for CC-BY-SA, too.) And I am carefully watching gender and age involvement at the Facebook page.
Our predispositions were again dominantly male: 5 males and one female in organization. Gender ratio is not better now in organization, while we are trying to make it better.
We had disbalance at the beginning, while not so strong as we have in Wikimedia (something like 55:40, with ~5% of users who are not expressing their gender). It is now 48:46 for males.
So, by age and gender, dominant groups are: * male 25-34: 25% * female 25-34: 23% * female 18-24: 11% * male 18-24: 9% * male 35-44: 9% * female 35-44: 8%
(There are ~400 fans now.)
It is interesting that the only constant is 18-24 age group with stable ration 11%:9% for females for months. In all other age groups we have constant raising of female ratio.
It should be mentioned that a number of females are willing to participate in organization (but the process of adopting someone is not so fast), which means that it is not just a relation between active and passive involvement.
Let's try to compare TEDx event with Wikipedia/Wikimedia: * Both are fancy. * Both are about top achievements of humankind. * Both are about community. Yes, TED treats audience and speakers both as participants. * Wikipedia is more famous than TED. * Age groups are similar. * I don't have any doubt that there is ~50:50 ratio for using Wikipedia, as it is for TED. * TED has much less content, but it has much higher ratio of interesting content per time spent on site. * I am carefully choosing TED talks for Facebook page and we generally have good feedback. However, sometimes I am wrong [1][2] * TED's rule "no political and religious agenda", as well as well defined TED's scope (science, technology, art etc.) saves us from the topics which could potentially produce endless arguing. * Whenever someone has some constructive idea, I am applying it and saying thanks to that person. This makes atmosphere better. * TEDx is not about everyday editing, but about periodical events. However, participation could be treated similarly. Nobody needs to edit Wikipedia every day. * Technical skills needed for participation in TEDx event are much less than those needed for editing Wikimedia projects. * TEDx events are more social. BUT, it is not TED's per se advantage, it is about our leading of Wikimedia communities. We will have regular meetings, probably on weekly basis, out of the main events. * TEDx events and everything around them are much less stressful than editing Wikipedia and trying to find your place inside of one enormous bureaucracy of Wikimedia communities. * TEDx events and communities around them are not mature. We shell see their development. * <for sure something more, it would be good to give a deeper analysis; feel free to give your comparisons>
Some conclusions may be: * Creating featured AND interesting content and gather that content on some separate project. "The Best of Wikimedia" or so. But, not, featured encyclopedic article is not *that* interesting, usually. It is not so interesting to read about Belgrade as the feature article on English Wikipedia. Having a featured article on English Wikipedia raises proud of inhabitants of particular area, but it is not interesting. Contrary, I think that we have a lot of interesting materials at Wikimedia projects, which should be just presented nicely. * One ordinary Wikimedian meetup is usually not so fascinating event. Talking about templates, MediaWiki skins, ideas for getting more content at the best (WWII tanks, airplanes and tactics, ass well as about various disputes on projects at the worst) -- is not so interesting for an outsider. We need to find a better way for present ourselves to the world. * I am thinking intensively about the possibility of splitting communities to those which main interests are in politics, religion and being fans of whatever -- and everybody else. Probably, building community would be much easier without partisans. * WP:BITE is something about we are talking a lot, but I don't see any advancement. Just a couple of months ago, I had on my back a classical example of bureaucratic asshole at en.wp. He thought that he knows Wikipedia bureaucracy better than me ha ha ha :D But, I can just imagine the first impression of any newcomer. BTW, I am rarely editing en.wp. Probably, in two major edits I am getting one bureaucratic asshole on my back. * Lower technical knowledge requirements. If WYSIWYG editor is science fiction, maybe a kind of help for structural writing could be helpful: Write in this box title, write in this box introduction, write in that box section title etc. I don't know... * Make social events. They don't need to be connected with Wikimedia projects by idiot-friendly semantics. They could be about much more interesting things. Promotion of science via talks, events, parties should be perfectly fine for our goals. Finding some pop-star to sing for ~50 or ~500 Wikimedians and their friends would be also fine. * Make some auxiliary ways to involve people who don't want to waste time with many Wikipedia jerks. Wikimedia should actively promote license-compatible sites which content can be used on Wikimedia projects. * ...
[1] - My assumption was that females would like Jamie Oliver's talk. But, it turned out that it is not the case. After I posted one of his talks, I was talking with a couple of females, who ranked his talk as less interesting than tech-related talks. [2] - In a post-modern society, it is not so welcomed to talk against various pseudosciences. Astrology, homeopathy and similar cults are highly ranked at the fanciness scale. Fortunately, TED is pro-science, which makes to me a field to be a little bit arrogant: If you really care about those things, then TEDx event is not for you.
Milos, this is really interesting -- thanks for posting it.
I'm sorry as usual to top-post and not snip (BB), but I did want to make a tiny point about TED. My understanding is they've been super-successful with translations -- a very large and active transcribing-and-translating-of-talks community has developed for them quite spontaneously, and the TED organization has been trying to figure out how best to support them. (I don't mean to suggest the TED organization has been having difficulties in that regard: my impression is they're thrilled.)
I've asked Philippe to take a look at TED's translation community and see if there's anything we can learn from it -- others might want to do the same.
Thanks, Sue
-----Original Message----- From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:21:03 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation
Here are my two cents...
I am organizing now TEDx event in Belgrade. (Unlike others, our speakers will sign contract for CC-BY-SA, too.) And I am carefully watching gender and age involvement at the Facebook page.
Our predispositions were again dominantly male: 5 males and one female in organization. Gender ratio is not better now in organization, while we are trying to make it better.
We had disbalance at the beginning, while not so strong as we have in Wikimedia (something like 55:40, with ~5% of users who are not expressing their gender). It is now 48:46 for males.
So, by age and gender, dominant groups are: * male 25-34: 25% * female 25-34: 23% * female 18-24: 11% * male 18-24: 9% * male 35-44: 9% * female 35-44: 8%
(There are ~400 fans now.)
It is interesting that the only constant is 18-24 age group with stable ration 11%:9% for females for months. In all other age groups we have constant raising of female ratio.
It should be mentioned that a number of females are willing to participate in organization (but the process of adopting someone is not so fast), which means that it is not just a relation between active and passive involvement.
Let's try to compare TEDx event with Wikipedia/Wikimedia: * Both are fancy. * Both are about top achievements of humankind. * Both are about community. Yes, TED treats audience and speakers both as participants. * Wikipedia is more famous than TED. * Age groups are similar. * I don't have any doubt that there is ~50:50 ratio for using Wikipedia, as it is for TED. * TED has much less content, but it has much higher ratio of interesting content per time spent on site. * I am carefully choosing TED talks for Facebook page and we generally have good feedback. However, sometimes I am wrong [1][2] * TED's rule "no political and religious agenda", as well as well defined TED's scope (science, technology, art etc.) saves us from the topics which could potentially produce endless arguing. * Whenever someone has some constructive idea, I am applying it and saying thanks to that person. This makes atmosphere better. * TEDx is not about everyday editing, but about periodical events. However, participation could be treated similarly. Nobody needs to edit Wikipedia every day. * Technical skills needed for participation in TEDx event are much less than those needed for editing Wikimedia projects. * TEDx events are more social. BUT, it is not TED's per se advantage, it is about our leading of Wikimedia communities. We will have regular meetings, probably on weekly basis, out of the main events. * TEDx events and everything around them are much less stressful than editing Wikipedia and trying to find your place inside of one enormous bureaucracy of Wikimedia communities. * TEDx events and communities around them are not mature. We shell see their development. * <for sure something more, it would be good to give a deeper analysis; feel free to give your comparisons>
Some conclusions may be: * Creating featured AND interesting content and gather that content on some separate project. "The Best of Wikimedia" or so. But, not, featured encyclopedic article is not *that* interesting, usually. It is not so interesting to read about Belgrade as the feature article on English Wikipedia. Having a featured article on English Wikipedia raises proud of inhabitants of particular area, but it is not interesting. Contrary, I think that we have a lot of interesting materials at Wikimedia projects, which should be just presented nicely. * One ordinary Wikimedian meetup is usually not so fascinating event. Talking about templates, MediaWiki skins, ideas for getting more content at the best (WWII tanks, airplanes and tactics, ass well as about various disputes on projects at the worst) -- is not so interesting for an outsider. We need to find a better way for present ourselves to the world. * I am thinking intensively about the possibility of splitting communities to those which main interests are in politics, religion and being fans of whatever -- and everybody else. Probably, building community would be much easier without partisans. * WP:BITE is something about we are talking a lot, but I don't see any advancement. Just a couple of months ago, I had on my back a classical example of bureaucratic asshole at en.wp. He thought that he knows Wikipedia bureaucracy better than me ha ha ha :D But, I can just imagine the first impression of any newcomer. BTW, I am rarely editing en.wp. Probably, in two major edits I am getting one bureaucratic asshole on my back. * Lower technical knowledge requirements. If WYSIWYG editor is science fiction, maybe a kind of help for structural writing could be helpful: Write in this box title, write in this box introduction, write in that box section title etc. I don't know... * Make social events. They don't need to be connected with Wikimedia projects by idiot-friendly semantics. They could be about much more interesting things. Promotion of science via talks, events, parties should be perfectly fine for our goals. Finding some pop-star to sing for ~50 or ~500 Wikimedians and their friends would be also fine. * Make some auxiliary ways to involve people who don't want to waste time with many Wikipedia jerks. Wikimedia should actively promote license-compatible sites which content can be used on Wikimedia projects. * ...
[1] - My assumption was that females would like Jamie Oliver's talk. But, it turned out that it is not the case. After I posted one of his talks, I was talking with a couple of females, who ranked his talk as less interesting than tech-related talks. [2] - In a post-modern society, it is not so welcomed to talk against various pseudosciences. Astrology, homeopathy and similar cults are highly ranked at the fanciness scale. Fortunately, TED is pro-science, which makes to me a field to be a little bit arrogant: If you really care about those things, then TEDx event is not for you.
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There is one point around Greg's story about diversities between genders.
Men enjoy in playing war (with real guns, paintball, football, edit war, argument war...). Women enjoy in playing less aggressive games. The only games available on Wikipedia are games for men. Facebook is different. At the basic level, there are games for everyone: men can enjoy argument wars, women can enjoy in searching what is going on with their people around them.
That means that we need games for women. While I think that we should build full social network, just a basic one would help.
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 05:58:31 Milos Rancic написа:
That means that we need games for women. While I think that we should build full social network, just a basic one would help.
Ability to make other editors your "friends", then you could watch their Special:Contributions jointly (see what are your friends editing).
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 05:58:31 Milos Rancic написа:
That means that we need games for women. While I think that we should build full social network, just a basic one would help.
Or perhaps we don't even have to build one, but just use the existing ones. [People are always against making Wikipedia a social network.] Have RSS feeds of articles you created/pictures you uploaded. These could then be connected to Facebook or wherever for your friends to see what are you working on.
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:30 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs wrote:
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 05:58:31 Milos Rancic написа:
That means that we need games for women. While I think that we should build full social network, just a basic one would help.
Or perhaps we don't even have to build one, but just use the existing ones. [People are always against making Wikipedia a social network.] Have RSS feeds of articles you created/pictures you uploaded. These could then be connected to Facebook or wherever for your friends to see what are you working on.
Then you are using Facebook, not Wikimedia. And Flickr is much better for private photos than Wikimedia.
BTW, there is not space for negotiations anymore. Wikimedia will be a social network, too, or it will continue to loose editors.
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 07:37:18 Milos Rancic написа:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:30 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs wrote:
Or perhaps we don't even have to build one, but just use the existing ones. [People are always against making Wikipedia a social network.] Have RSS feeds of articles you created/pictures you uploaded. These could then be connected to Facebook or wherever for your friends to see what are you working on.
Then you are using Facebook, not Wikimedia. And Flickr is much better for private photos than Wikimedia.
Then your Facebook friends will see that you are doing interesting things on Wikipedia projects and will want to do them too.
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 12:40 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rswrote:
Then your Facebook friends will see that you are doing interesting things on Wikipedia projects and will want to do them too.
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I'm pretty sure my facebook friends don't care what I do for Wikimedia (which is all my info is), they're in it for my awesome status updates.
End thread, we are all pro-female editors.
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:40 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs wrote:
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 07:37:18 Milos Rancic написа:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:30 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs wrote:
Or perhaps we don't even have to build one, but just use the existing ones. [People are always against making Wikipedia a social network.] Have RSS feeds of articles you created/pictures you uploaded. These could then be connected to Facebook or wherever for your friends to see what are you working on.
Then you are using Facebook, not Wikimedia. And Flickr is much better for private photos than Wikimedia.
Then your Facebook friends will see that you are doing interesting things on Wikipedia projects and will want to do them too.
I don't think that it is particularly interesting to see someone's edits. If you are not a passionate Wikimedian, of course.
Besides that, contemporary term for "site" is "social network". There are just more and less successful social networks. Wikimedia is successful social network for a very specific type of demographics: young middle class males. Actually, not so young anymore. I think that we are loosing males from younger generations, too.
That means that we have to work on diversification of our editor demographics. And one edit in ten days is better than no edits at all. We need cleverly created concepts which would make editing easy, fun, causal. With a lot of interesting content around; probably, based on existing Wikimedia content, but not necessary.
The time when wiki concept was new and interesting passed a few years ago. And even Microsoft has better sense for new technologies than us.
For example, our goal is not to make a possibility to read Wikipedia from iPhone. Apple did that. The goal is to have easy access to editing from iPhone.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Some ideas to increase the social aspect of Wikipedia: - - insert a small chat with channels for each chapter (for example where the interwiki links were ;) ) - - make a tab for personal comments for articles, where people can express their feelings - - show the last 10 comments on the right side of the article - - soften the notability criterion - - make a reward system for spell correction (automatically attributed by bot unless reverted), for adding references (must be validated by moderator or voted by users) - - associate galleries of sounds and/or photos that you can expand or browse with one click - - create challenges or games for wikipedia: charades pointing to an article to be discovered, collections to be completed (find ten articles with x or y characteristics), create fantasy articles only useful for the game with a warning that it's only RPG, etc. - - allow a friend system and allow to import them from facebook - - develop the homepage of wikipedia and wikinews so that they combine major news with the major updates of the pages we are watching, and more information about your friends - - allow a button "recommend this article to a friend" with feedback from the friend, like a karma count, a thank you count, or the likes etc.
On 19/06/2010 08:37, Milos Rancic wrote:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:40 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs wrote:
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 07:37:18 Milos Rancic написа:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:30 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs wrote:
Or perhaps we don't even have to build one, but just use the existing ones. [People are always against making Wikipedia a social network.] Have RSS feeds of articles you created/pictures you uploaded. These could then be connected to Facebook or wherever for your friends to see what are you working on.
Then you are using Facebook, not Wikimedia. And Flickr is much better for private photos than Wikimedia.
Then your Facebook friends will see that you are doing interesting things on Wikipedia projects and will want to do them too.
I don't think that it is particularly interesting to see someone's edits. If you are not a passionate Wikimedian, of course.
Besides that, contemporary term for "site" is "social network". There are just more and less successful social networks. Wikimedia is successful social network for a very specific type of demographics: young middle class males. Actually, not so young anymore. I think that we are loosing males from younger generations, too.
That means that we have to work on diversification of our editor demographics. And one edit in ten days is better than no edits at all. We need cleverly created concepts which would make editing easy, fun, causal. With a lot of interesting content around; probably, based on existing Wikimedia content, but not necessary.
The time when wiki concept was new and interesting passed a few years ago. And even Microsoft has better sense for new technologies than us.
For example, our goal is not to make a possibility to read Wikipedia from iPhone. Apple did that. The goal is to have easy access to editing from iPhone.
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On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 4:02 AM, Noein pronoein@gmail.com wrote:
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Some ideas to increase the social aspect of Wikipedia:
- insert a small chat with channels for each chapter (for example where
the interwiki links were ;) )
- make a tab for personal comments for articles, where people can
express their feelings
- show the last 10 comments on the right side of the article
- soften the notability criterion
- make a reward system for spell correction (automatically attributed by
bot unless reverted), for adding references (must be validated by moderator or voted by users)
- associate galleries of sounds and/or photos that you can expand or
browse with one click
- create challenges or games for wikipedia: charades pointing to an
article to be discovered, collections to be completed (find ten articles with x or y characteristics), create fantasy articles only useful for the game with a warning that it's only RPG, etc.
- allow a friend system and allow to import them from facebook
- develop the homepage of wikipedia and wikinews so that they combine
major news with the major updates of the pages we are watching, and more information about your friends
- allow a button "recommend this article to a friend" with feedback from
the friend, like a karma count, a thank you count, or the likes etc.
My jaw just dropped. While I know these are ideas intended to help increase the socialization, this is turning Wikipedia into youtube. The day that happens I'm resigning all my permissions and packing my bags. Softening notability? Fantasy articles? Games? Live comments? No thanks.
I don't think the idea of encouraging women to participate needs these things. I have a fierce dislike for what I consider to be the mind-numbing distraction that social networking sites provide. I'd rather use Wikimedia projects to stimulate my mind, not kill time.
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
My jaw just dropped. While I know these are ideas intended to help increase the socialization, this is turning Wikipedia into youtube. The day that happens I'm resigning all my permissions and packing my bags. Softening notability? Fantasy articles? Games? Live comments? No thanks.
While I would like to see good articles about every episode of whatever on Wikipedia, this was not the point.
The point is to make "personal space" on Wikimedia projects. Adding features to the profile (now: Special:Preferences) will increase number of those who are willing to stay on project.
I don't think the idea of encouraging women to participate needs these things. I have a fierce dislike for what I consider to be the mind-numbing distraction that social networking sites provide. I'd rather use Wikimedia projects to stimulate my mind, not kill time.
You should be able to turn off those features.
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
While I would like to see good articles about every episode of whatever on Wikipedia, this was not the point.
The point is to make "personal space" on Wikimedia projects. Adding features to the profile (now: Special:Preferences) will increase number of those who are willing to stay on project.
I can only speak from my experience on the English Wikipedia, so I'll address this relating to that project:
It will never happen.
We've been through these discussions there before on what is and what is not acceptable use of the space for social networking. We have come to the conclusion that it is not[1] in several different ways[2]. The purpose of the English Wikipedia, and all Foundation projects for that matter, is to provide free knowledge in whatever for it comes in, when it's an encyclopedia or a quote or a sourced document or a book or news. We also have determined that we use a collaborative model to build these project.
Therein lies the key: build these projects. This is accomplished by working together in a communal manner and this is the "social" networking that we need, working together on projects with those of the same interest, or even just wandering around the wikis doing things. So, to me, these ideas as features diminishes the interest of maintaining a volunteer, amateur userbase but one that is dedicated and willing to work together. Akin to the HAM radio system, I think.
There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the time for at the moment. The premise of the presentation is that studies have shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and other measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase motivation. The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and believers in the process do not ask for these rewards. A pat on the back and a "good job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is the only true recognition that is needed. The other fluff only inspires distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals which, in turn, become more important than the end result.
Just my two cents.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT#MYSPACE 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Userpage
on 6/19/10 4:58 PM, Keegan Peterzell at keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>.
There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the time for at the moment. The premise of the presentation is that studies have shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and other measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase motivation. The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and believers in the process do not ask for these rewards. A pat on the back and a "good job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is the only true recognition that is needed. The other fluff only inspires distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals which, in turn, become more important than the end result.
Yes! Prizes denote direct competition as in sports or, more subtly, with the science & arts awards.
Person-to-person affirmation goes a very long way; and is what collaboration & community should be based upon. Give them the climate, and they will give you the culture.
Marc Riddell
English Wikipedia has numerous contests during the year. Some people regularly participate in them and enjoy them.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Contest is an example of one that is ongoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MILCON
Picture of the year is popular with some people on Commons.
While everyone does not want to be involved in contests, they appeal to some people and I see no problem with us introducing more of them in WMF projects to see if they will draw people into the movement.
I feel the same way about encouraging new ways to get different groups of people involved with WMF projects.
If gaming can be used to promote an interest in WMF then that is goodness. Puzzles, board games, and even more complex fantasy games using content might be a draw for some people. If someone wants to develop them I would not stand in there way.
Combining community service and socializing is very common in community organizations, and is appealing to many people. By adding more social components to WMF projects, we will most likely draw in people that otherwise would not volunteer. I see this as an important tool and one that should not be dismissed if we are going to broaden the base of our volunteers.
Sydney Poore (FloNight)
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
on 6/19/10 4:58 PM, Keegan Peterzell at keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>.
There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the
time
for at the moment. The premise of the presentation is that studies have shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and
other
measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase motivation. The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and
believers
in the process do not ask for these rewards. A pat on the back and a
"good
job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is
the
only true recognition that is needed. The other fluff only inspires distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals which,
in
turn, become more important than the end result.
Yes! Prizes denote direct competition as in sports or, more subtly, with the science & arts awards.
Person-to-person affirmation goes a very long way; and is what collaboration & community should be based upon. Give them the climate, and they will give you the culture.
Marc Riddell
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Sydney,
I agree with your thoughts here. But you are talking about activities community members can participate in. I am talking about how those community members interact with each other.
Marc
on 6/19/10 5:58 PM, Sydney Poore at sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
English Wikipedia has numerous contests during the year. Some people regularly participate in them and enjoy them.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Contest is an example of one that is ongoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MILCON
Picture of the year is popular with some people on Commons.
While everyone does not want to be involved in contests, they appeal to some people and I see no problem with us introducing more of them in WMF projects to see if they will draw people into the movement.
I feel the same way about encouraging new ways to get different groups of people involved with WMF projects.
If gaming can be used to promote an interest in WMF then that is goodness. Puzzles, board games, and even more complex fantasy games using content might be a draw for some people. If someone wants to develop them I would not stand in there way.
Combining community service and socializing is very common in community organizations, and is appealing to many people. By adding more social components to WMF projects, we will most likely draw in people that otherwise would not volunteer. I see this as an important tool and one that should not be dismissed if we are going to broaden the base of our volunteers.
Sydney Poore (FloNight)
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
on 6/19/10 4:58 PM, Keegan Peterzell at keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>.
There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the
time
for at the moment. The premise of the presentation is that studies have shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and
other
measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase motivation. The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and
believers
in the process do not ask for these rewards. A pat on the back and a
"good
job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is
the
only true recognition that is needed. The other fluff only inspires distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals which,
in
turn, become more important than the end result.
Yes! Prizes denote direct competition as in sports or, more subtly, with the science & arts awards.
Person-to-person affirmation goes a very long way; and is what collaboration & community should be based upon. Give them the climate, and they will give you the culture.
Marc Riddell
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Oh, I agree that thanking someone for their service to WMF projects is important, too. We need to do more to recognize the invaluable contributions that we people make to keep the various projects going.
But, in addition to giving encouragement though thanks and recognition, I support introducing social features into our projects. The main benefit and focus for the on site features would be the ability for people with similar interests to connect with each other as they work together on site.
See the list of ideas from the strategic planning process.
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Recommendations/Community_heal... recognition
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Recommendations/Community_heal... features
Sydney
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
Sydney,
I agree with your thoughts here. But you are talking about activities community members can participate in. I am talking about how those community members interact with each other.
Marc
on 6/19/10 5:58 PM, Sydney Poore at sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
English Wikipedia has numerous contests during the year. Some people regularly participate in them and enjoy them.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Contest is an example of one that
is
ongoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MILCON
Picture of the year is popular with some people on Commons.
While everyone does not want to be involved in contests, they appeal to
some
people and I see no problem with us introducing more of them in WMF
projects
to see if they will draw people into the movement.
I feel the same way about encouraging new ways to get different groups of people involved with WMF projects.
If gaming can be used to promote an interest in WMF then that is
goodness.
Puzzles, board games, and even more complex fantasy games using content might be a draw for some people. If someone wants to develop them I would not stand in there way.
Combining community service and socializing is very common in community organizations, and is appealing to many people. By adding more social components to WMF projects, we will most likely draw in people that otherwise would not volunteer. I see this as an important tool and one
that
should not be dismissed if we are going to broaden the base of our volunteers.
Sydney Poore (FloNight)
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
on 6/19/10 4:58 PM, Keegan Peterzell at keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>.
There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the
time
for at the moment. The premise of the presentation is that studies
have
shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and
other
measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase
motivation.
The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and
believers
in the process do not ask for these rewards. A pat on the back and a
"good
job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is
the
only true recognition that is needed. The other fluff only inspires distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals
which,
in
turn, become more important than the end result.
Yes! Prizes denote direct competition as in sports or, more subtly, with the science & arts awards.
Person-to-person affirmation goes a very long way; and is what collaboration & community should be based upon. Give them the climate, and they will
give
you the culture.
Marc Riddell
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
One thing we can do would be to make contributors' names more visible. Translators for WMF stuff too (Ting Chen made a good point about the latter in Alexandria). Many websites gives clear credits to contributors - not only for-profit media, but websites whose content is mainly written by volunteers, like Global Online. In TED related translations, their translators' names are on the same webpage of video or transcript, and much visible than in MediaWiki history pages.
On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 12:47 AM, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
Oh, I agree that thanking someone for their service to WMF projects is important, too. We need to do more to recognize the invaluable contributions that we people make to keep the various projects going.
But, in addition to giving encouragement though thanks and recognition, I support introducing social features into our projects. The main benefit and focus for the on site features would be the ability for people with similar interests to connect with each other as they work together on site.
See the list of ideas from the strategic planning process.
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Recommendations/Community_heal... recognition
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Recommendations/Community_heal... features
Sydney
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
Sydney,
I agree with your thoughts here. But you are talking about activities community members can participate in. I am talking about how those community members interact with each other.
Marc
on 6/19/10 5:58 PM, Sydney Poore at sydney.poore@gmail.com wrote:
English Wikipedia has numerous contests during the year. Some people regularly participate in them and enjoy them.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Contest is an example of one that
is
ongoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MILCON
Picture of the year is popular with some people on Commons.
While everyone does not want to be involved in contests, they appeal to
some
people and I see no problem with us introducing more of them in WMF
projects
to see if they will draw people into the movement.
I feel the same way about encouraging new ways to get different groups of people involved with WMF projects.
If gaming can be used to promote an interest in WMF then that is
goodness.
Puzzles, board games, and even more complex fantasy games using content might be a draw for some people. If someone wants to develop them I would not stand in there way.
Combining community service and socializing is very common in community organizations, and is appealing to many people. By adding more social components to WMF projects, we will most likely draw in people that otherwise would not volunteer. I see this as an important tool and one
that
should not be dismissed if we are going to broaden the base of our volunteers.
Sydney Poore (FloNight)
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
on 6/19/10 4:58 PM, Keegan Peterzell at keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>.
There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the
time
for at the moment. The premise of the presentation is that studies
have
shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and
other
measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase
motivation.
The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and
believers
in the process do not ask for these rewards. A pat on the back and a
"good
job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is
the
only true recognition that is needed. The other fluff only inspires distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals
which,
in
turn, become more important than the end result.
Yes! Prizes denote direct competition as in sports or, more subtly, with the science & arts awards.
Person-to-person affirmation goes a very long way; and is what collaboration & community should be based upon. Give them the climate, and they will
give
you the culture.
Marc Riddell
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 2:56 PM, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
One thing we can do would be to make contributors' names more visible. Translators for WMF stuff too (Ting Chen made a good point about the latter in Alexandria). Many websites gives clear credits to contributors - not only for-profit media, but websites whose content is mainly written by volunteers, like Global Online. In TED related translations, their translators' names are on the same webpage of video or transcript, and much visible than in MediaWiki history pages.
I think that would be a great idea, although it does have some nuts and bolts - some way or another, one will have to filter out those who did just minor edits, for example, or people who do not want their edits to be named. Then again, the strength of our system is that our system doesn't need to be perfect, if it's community-editable things will probably work out quite reasonable. I myself would be much in favor of it, and if I did not fear the "that's not how we do things" and "that's unwiki" crowd, I might even have considered doing a test with it.
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Wikipedia should be kept a neutral repository of knowledge, not a social ground for games. Once you take the path of creating a futile community, there is no way to talk about the long term goals of the WMF, the vision, the ethics, the humanity, the knowledge. You just have people who are here to have fun and to socialize. It would add noise, not signal.
Moreover, I think attracting readers is very different from attracting editors. I don't see how it would be positive to convince people to edit articles with superficial reasons in mind.
However external sites could use the content for games or comments (like Facebook does). This way, the site originating the "fun attitude" would be distinct from the site about knowledge. Wikipedia would get attention without being invaded.
On 19/06/2010 23:58, Sydney Poore wrote:
English Wikipedia has numerous contests during the year. Some people regularly participate in them and enjoy them.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Contest is an example of one that is ongoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MILCON
Picture of the year is popular with some people on Commons.
While everyone does not want to be involved in contests, they appeal to some people and I see no problem with us introducing more of them in WMF projects to see if they will draw people into the movement.
I feel the same way about encouraging new ways to get different groups of people involved with WMF projects.
If gaming can be used to promote an interest in WMF then that is goodness. Puzzles, board games, and even more complex fantasy games using content might be a draw for some people. If someone wants to develop them I would not stand in there way.
Combining community service and socializing is very common in community organizations, and is appealing to many people. By adding more social components to WMF projects, we will most likely draw in people that otherwise would not volunteer. I see this as an important tool and one that should not be dismissed if we are going to broaden the base of our volunteers.
Sydney Poore (FloNight)
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.netwrote:
on 6/19/10 4:58 PM, Keegan Peterzell at keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>.
There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the
time
for at the moment. The premise of the presentation is that studies have shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and
other
measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase motivation. The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and
believers
in the process do not ask for these rewards. A pat on the back and a
"good
job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is
the
only true recognition that is needed. The other fluff only inspires distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals which,
in
turn, become more important than the end result.
Yes! Prizes denote direct competition as in sports or, more subtly, with the science & arts awards.
Person-to-person affirmation goes a very long way; and is what collaboration & community should be based upon. Give them the climate, and they will give you the culture.
Marc Riddell
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 6:23 PM, Noein pronoein@gmail.com wrote:
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Wikipedia should be kept a neutral repository of knowledge, not a social ground for games. Once you take the path of creating a futile community, there is no way to talk about the long term goals of the WMF, the vision, the ethics, the humanity, the knowledge. You just have people who are here to have fun and to socialize. It would add noise, not signal.
Moreover, I think attracting readers is very different from attracting editors. I don't see how it would be positive to convince people to edit articles with superficial reasons in mind.
My main point is that we could be more fun and accomplish our work better because we would have more hands doing the work. I don't see doing hard work and fun as being mutually exclusive.
However external sites could use the content for games or comments (like Facebook does). This way, the site originating the "fun attitude" would be distinct from the site about knowledge. Wikipedia would get attention without being invaded.
Yes, integrating with social networking sites and perhaps other real world venues would be a good way to add a social side to WMF.
Sydney Poore
On 19/06/2010 23:58, Sydney Poore wrote:
English Wikipedia has numerous contests during the year. Some people regularly participate in them and enjoy them.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Contest is an example of one that
is
ongoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MILCON
Picture of the year is popular with some people on Commons.
While everyone does not want to be involved in contests, they appeal to
some
people and I see no problem with us introducing more of them in WMF
projects
to see if they will draw people into the movement.
I feel the same way about encouraging new ways to get different groups of people involved with WMF projects.
If gaming can be used to promote an interest in WMF then that is
goodness.
Puzzles, board games, and even more complex fantasy games using content might be a draw for some people. If someone wants to develop them I would not stand in there way.
Combining community service and socializing is very common in community organizations, and is appealing to many people. By adding more social components to WMF projects, we will most likely draw in people that otherwise would not volunteer. I see this as an important tool and one
that
should not be dismissed if we are going to broaden the base of our volunteers.
Sydney Poore (FloNight)
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Marc Riddell <
michaeldavid86@comcast.net>wrote:
on 6/19/10 4:58 PM, Keegan Peterzell at keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>.
There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the
time
for at the moment. The premise of the presentation is that studies
have
shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and
other
measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase
motivation.
The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and
believers
in the process do not ask for these rewards. A pat on the back and a
"good
job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is
the
only true recognition that is needed. The other fluff only inspires distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals
which,
in
turn, become more important than the end result.
Yes! Prizes denote direct competition as in sports or, more subtly, with the science & arts awards.
Person-to-person affirmation goes a very long way; and is what collaboration & community should be based upon. Give them the climate, and they will
give
you the culture.
Marc Riddell
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 5:23 PM, Noein pronoein@gmail.com wrote:
Moreover, I think attracting readers is very different from attracting editors. I don't see how it would be positive to convince people to edit articles with superficial reasons in mind.
I'm glad to see that you were being saterical before. I thought you had more sense than that.
Attracting consumers is a much more complicated issue than attracting editors. Editors seem to find their niche or go away.
Attracting readers takes a constant vigilance over how Wikimedia projects are portrayed in media, pop culture, and casual conversations. There is a fine balance there. The readers part dabbles with the interaction of editors. We want readers to fix typos, clean up things, and monkey about. To make them into editors, they have to have A) the interest B) a positive experience and C) the desire. Desire is different from interest, because that is the compulsion to stick around and I consider this to be the most important part.
However, if we can gain at least interest, that is half of the battle even though there are three parts. It is important that we, as the ones with desire, foster the environment to invite the casual reader into at least understanding what we're doing. We all know about the popular misconceptions are about Wikimedia projects, and we are bound to educate and relate to the reader if we want to cause the tipping point of creating an environment that is open, welcoming, but also importantly goal-oriented. This ties into the congruant thread, but I'm avoiding cross-posting.
In other words, editors find their own interests and where they fit in. If we are going to encourage *reader* participation, that requires active encouragement from the community to develop a sense of trust. It's true that you can't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. That also applies to print and online sources and what your neighbor tells you the other neighbor did. We have the capacity to actively correct ourselves and each other, which is a medium more powerful than most realize.
It's up to us.
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On 20/06/2010 04:33, Keegan Peterzell wrote:
Attracting consumers is a much more complicated issue than attracting editors. Editors seem to find their niche or go away.
Attracting readers takes a constant vigilance over how Wikimedia projects are portrayed in media, pop culture, and casual conversations. There is a fine balance there. The readers part dabbles with the interaction of editors. We want readers to fix typos, clean up things, and monkey about. To make them into editors, they have to have A) the interest B) a positive experience and C) the desire. Desire is different from interest, because that is the compulsion to stick around and I consider this to be the most important part.
However, if we can gain at least interest, that is half of the battle even though there are three parts. It is important that we, as the ones with desire, foster the environment to invite the casual reader into at least understanding what we're doing. We all know about the popular misconceptions are about Wikimedia projects, and we are bound to educate and relate to the reader if we want to cause the tipping point of creating an environment that is open, welcoming, but also importantly goal-oriented. This ties into the congruant thread, but I'm avoiding cross-posting.
Thank you for these deep thoughts.
In other words, editors find their own interests and where they fit in. If we are going to encourage *reader* participation, that requires active encouragement from the community to develop a sense of trust. It's true that you can't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.
Oh, by the way, I see how that weakness can be a strength: you are allowed to doubt and thus, correct. "It's true that you can't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. It's true that you can correct the mistakes." "It's true that Politicians and Religious have manipulated their own articles. It's true that they ultimately failed." "It's true that we know less than the paper Encyclopaedia, it's true that we're learning faster." Etc.
Also, I think there is a kind of academicians that could help us: epistemologists? What are they saying about the Wikipedian knowledge? I think they would be interested to study the way knowledge is collected, built, organized, checked, debated, trusted. This is currently mostly popular culture but maybe the same mechanisms could be applied to science. Anyway, I think I have a way to reach Mario Bunge [1] and ask him for his opinion. Would it be worth the effort?
One question that seems important to me: how can wp can help the science and can the epistemology help wp?
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Bunge
On 20/06/2010 01:18, Milos Rancic wrote:
As well as dopamine works during the work, not when the prize has been get: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s
But, it is just about money and goods, as well as that part of psychology is at the very beginning. Social rewards are much more powerful. (Note that there are many social stigmas because people won't do something for money or goods.) I believe that we would have an editor boom just with "like" button for edits, talk comments and comments [on Wikinews].
Insightful links. "If/then rewards narrow our focus".
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
While I would like to see good articles about every episode of whatever on Wikipedia, this was not the point.
The point is to make "personal space" on Wikimedia projects. Adding features to the profile (now: Special:Preferences) will increase number of those who are willing to stay on project.
I can only speak from my experience on the English Wikipedia, so I'll address this relating to that project:
It will never happen.
We've been through these discussions there before on what is and what is not acceptable use of the space for social networking. We have come to the conclusion that it is not[1] in several different ways[2]. The purpose of the English Wikipedia, and all Foundation projects for that matter, is to provide free knowledge in whatever for it comes in, when it's an encyclopedia or a quote or a sourced document or a book or news. We also have determined that we use a collaborative model to build these project.
Therein lies the key: build these projects. This is accomplished by working together in a communal manner and this is the "social" networking that we need, working together on projects with those of the same interest, or even just wandering around the wikis doing things. So, to me, these ideas as features diminishes the interest of maintaining a volunteer, amateur userbase but one that is dedicated and willing to work together. Akin to the HAM radio system, I think.
You are missing the point again :) I am not talking about transforming user pages into MySpace pages, but about new layer at all Wikimedia projects, which would stay at the place of Special:Preferences. So, it is about personal space, which rudimentary exists inside of watchlist and similar. It is also about customization. For example, as a registered user, I want to have customized Main Page for myself. Also, those who don't want to use that, they should be able not to use.
Treat it as a feature which extends logging in to the site. During the 1990s the most of sites didn't have log in option. The first "social" extension of the log in option was profile. The last are social networking extensions.
We've implemented the first one, but we've stopped after it. And time is passing and new projects are passing us with options which aren't treated as the edge of technology or something specific, but as a common part of being on Internet.
HAM is exactly something which shouldn't be our model. *Social* (in contrast to technological, military or whatever) impact of HAM community is around zero. Although I am a GNU/Linux admin and although I am including HAM drivers whenever I compile kernel ("just in case..." :) ), the only time -- known to me -- when HAM network had wider social impact was during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Nothing before, nothing after.
Contrary, our social impact is for a couple of years at the civilization scale and there is no sense to go backward. Besides building the encyclopedia, Wikimedia community has already built cultural movement of unprecedented scale. And present MediaWiki implementation is not enough to support the movement. In other words: Wikimedia is not just Wikipedia.
There was a great TED speech that I need to look up but don't have the time for at the moment. The premise of the presentation is that studies have shown time and time again that things like games, prizes, awards and other measures of gratitude are only temporary measures to increase motivation. The folks that work for you that are the truly motivated ones and believers in the process do not ask for these rewards. A pat on the back and a "good job, thanks for your work because I value it very much" occasionally is the only true recognition that is needed. The other fluff only inspires distraction from the goal because it's creating other little goals which, in turn, become more important than the end result.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
As well as dopamine works during the work, not when the prize has been get: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s
But, it is just about money and goods, as well as that part of psychology is at the very beginning. Social rewards are much more powerful. (Note that there are many social stigmas because people won't do something for money or goods.) I believe that we would have an editor boom just with "like" button for edits, talk comments and comments [on Wikinews].
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 6:18 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
You are missing the point again :) I am not talking about transforming user pages into MySpace pages, but about new layer at all Wikimedia projects, which would stay at the place of Special:Preferences. So, it is about personal space, which rudimentary exists inside of watchlist and similar. It is also about customization. For example, as a registered user, I want to have customized Main Page for myself. Also, those who don't want to use that, they should be able not to use.
I do get your point, Milos. I tend to ramble, so perhaps you aren't getting mine :)
I would like to keep anything like this off of WMF projects. That does not discount the notion that these social ideas are not beneficial. What I am saying is that facebook is now working with Wikipedia content, so keep it there. They already have the society and software to keep up with the ideas that have been floated in this thread. We can always improve how we deal with inter/intra relations, but I don't think that these ideas are solution to the problems outlined.
There are other methods of utilizing social network websites for our benefit in garnering new editors, retaining old ones, and interesting potentials. I don't think that these implementations to MediaWiki will be the solution to that. Other means are far more fruitful, I think, and keeping our processes how they are do promote stability which promotes interest. People, as a whole, don't like change.
Thanks for finding that TED link :)
On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 1:18 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
As well as dopamine works during the work, not when the prize has been get: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s
Watch this, too: http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation/
Just a comment in general and not a reply to anyone specific.
The ultimate goal of Wikipedia is building an Encyclopedia, and all the activities around it (Talk pages, discussion pages, IRC channels and so on) are intended to support these goals. Sure, we have a friendly discussion on a talk page every now and then, but most of our efforts are related to improving Wikipedia. Some people join us because they love a free information society. Other join us because they like writing or want to share knowledge. And some people just enjoy reading Wikipedia, making small corrections every now and then. The reasons to join are legion - Of course they equally include spamming, PoV pushing and vandalizing as well but i will be ignoring the negative ones for now.
Yet Wikipedia is not a social network or a game site. We are certainly a community, but we are not myspace, facebook or youtube just to name a few. People should be here to create an encyclopedia, not to play games, chat or whatever. People who join for those reasons are likely not here to create an encyclopedia in the first place, and there are other sites on the web which satisfy their desires a lot better then we can. I do not believe in the citizendium model where only verified experts receive full privileges while the normal people receive a function somewhere in the back, but at the very least we should draw a line between "Interested in creating an encyclopedia" and "Not here to create an encyclopedia". If we go the social network route we will soon be swarmed with people that add literally nothing at all to the project itself ("Give me Kudo's." - "Oh, you like kittens to? Lets chat!" - "i found the secret article after just 10 minutes!"). Sure, our editor count might rise if we offer diversions, but this is similar to edit count - Quality over Quantity.
If anything i would say there are two types of editors who may quit - the one's who don't like Wikipedia, and the ones who don't understand Wikipedia. The former group are the PoV pushers, the people who are not really interested in writing an encyclopedia, the vandals and the spammers. The second group consists out of people who simply don't get all the rules, who find the Wikisyntax to difficult, who get warned when they try to edit and so on. If anything we should focus or recruitment efforts on the second group, as they are the ones who are potentially interested in helping with Wikipedia. We certainly should not be changing Wikipedia just to cater to the former group.
For now we will just have to be satisfied with the editors that do join us. Writing an encyclopedia is not the only thing one can do in his free time, and some people simple prefer other diversions. That doesn't mean we shouldn't spread the word about Wikipedia to interest people, but neither does it mean that we should adapt Wikipedia for the sake of attracting the largest amount of people we can.
~Excirial
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 10:29 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:53 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
My jaw just dropped. While I know these are ideas intended to help
increase
the socialization, this is turning Wikipedia into youtube. The day that happens I'm resigning all my permissions and packing my bags. Softening notability? Fantasy articles? Games? Live comments? No thanks.
While I would like to see good articles about every episode of whatever on Wikipedia, this was not the point.
The point is to make "personal space" on Wikimedia projects. Adding features to the profile (now: Special:Preferences) will increase number of those who are willing to stay on project.
I don't think the idea of encouraging women to participate needs these things. I have a fierce dislike for what I consider to be the
mind-numbing
distraction that social networking sites provide. I'd rather use
Wikimedia
projects to stimulate my mind, not kill time.
You should be able to turn off those features.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On 19/06/2010 19:53, Keegan Peterzell wrote:
My jaw just dropped. While I know these are ideas intended to help increase the socialization, this is turning Wikipedia into youtube. The day that happens I'm resigning all my permissions and packing my bags. Softening notability? Fantasy articles? Games? Live comments? No thanks.
I don't think the idea of encouraging women to participate needs these things. I have a fierce dislike for what I consider to be the mind-numbing distraction that social networking sites provide. I'd rather use Wikimedia projects to stimulate my mind, not kill time.
Then I made my point. I think futilizing wikipedia is the worst thing we can do.
On 19/06/2010 07:30, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
???? Saturday 19 June 2010 05:58:31 Milos Rancic ??????:
That means that we need games for women. While I think that we should build full social network, just a basic one would help.
Or perhaps we don't even have to build one, but just use the existing
ones.
[People are always against making Wikipedia a social network.] Have
RSS feeds
of articles you created/pictures you uploaded. These could then be
connected
to Facebook or wherever for your friends to see what are you working on.
Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
[...] Besides that, contemporary term for "site" is "social network". There are just more and less successful social networks. Wikimedia is successful social network for a very specific type of demographics: young middle class males. Actually, not so young anymore. I think that we are loosing males from younger generations, too.
That means that we have to work on diversification of our editor demographics. And one edit in ten days is better than no edits at all. We need cleverly created concepts which would make editing easy, fun, causal. With a lot of interesting content around; probably, based on existing Wikimedia content, but not necessary.
The time when wiki concept was new and interesting passed a few years ago. And even Microsoft has better sense for new technologies than us.
For example, our goal is not to make a possibility to read Wikipedia from iPhone. Apple did that. The goal is to have easy access to editing from iPhone.
Isn't an iPhone one of those gadgets with about 10 cm of screen and no keyboard? Why would we want to encourage some- one to edit with such a device? It must be very frustrating to do so properly, and we don't profit, in fact it is to our disadvantage if it's done improperly.
While I appreciate the efforts to encourage wider partici- pation, IMHO we should make sure that we keep the quality of our "products" and our "human resources" in mind. No edits at all may be better than one edit in ten days for probably 99% of the population. And I don't think that we will at- tract the right 1% who will wander the libraries and the web in search of the missing pieces of information, tackle thick books and pause before clicking on the "Save" button to es- timate whether their edit will find the approval of their peers, by emphasizing that editing is easy or fun - because it isn't. And it probably shouldn't be.
Tim
On 22 June 2010 00:10, Tim Landscheidt tim@tim-landscheidt.de wrote:
Isn't an iPhone one of those gadgets with about 10 cm of screen and no keyboard? Why would we want to encourage some- one to edit with such a device? It must be very frustrating to do so properly, and we don't profit, in fact it is to our disadvantage if it's done improperly.
Augmented reality.
Wikipedia's coverage of local history and geography benefits if we can get edits from people on the move.
While I appreciate the efforts to encourage wider partici- pation, IMHO we should make sure that we keep the quality of our "products" and our "human resources" in mind. No edits at all may be better than one edit in ten days for probably 99% of the population.
Given that 99% of the population is over 6 billion people 1 edit every ten days would result in a lot of worthwhile edits.
And I don't think that we will at- tract the right 1% who will wander the libraries and the web in search of the missing pieces of information, tackle thick books and pause before clicking on the "Save" button to es- timate whether their edit will find the approval of their peers, by emphasizing that editing is easy or fun - because it isn't. And it probably shouldn't be.
If wikipedia is to survive it needs to be fun. If wikipedia is going to get a broad coverage it needs to be easy.
If wikipedia is to survive it needs to be fun. If wikipedia is going to get a broad coverage it needs to be easy.
Exactly!
Given that 99% of the population is over 6 billion people 1 edit every ten days would result in a lot of worthwhile edits.
As to the best of my belief the healthier (more natural, organic) future of WP and all other projects is contribution of wast amount of people who work not so regularly - mainly when "curiosity strikes" versus fierce/fanatic :-P activity of (relatively) very small ...tribe of wp-geeks (like we are :) ).
pavlo
On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 3:21 AM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 22 June 2010 00:10, Tim Landscheidt tim@tim-landscheidt.de wrote:
Isn't an iPhone one of those gadgets with about 10 cm of screen and no keyboard? Why would we want to encourage some- one to edit with such a device? It must be very frustrating to do so properly, and we don't profit, in fact it is to our disadvantage if it's done improperly.
Augmented reality.
Wikipedia's coverage of local history and geography benefits if we can get edits from people on the move.
While I appreciate the efforts to encourage wider partici- pation, IMHO we should make sure that we keep the quality of our "products" and our "human resources" in mind. No edits at all may be better than one edit in ten days for probably 99% of the population.
Given that 99% of the population is over 6 billion people 1 edit every ten days would result in a lot of worthwhile edits.
And I don't think that we will at- tract the right 1% who will wander the libraries and the web in search of the missing pieces of information, tackle thick books and pause before clicking on the "Save" button to es- timate whether their edit will find the approval of their peers, by emphasizing that editing is easy or fun - because it isn't. And it probably shouldn't be.
If wikipedia is to survive it needs to be fun. If wikipedia is going to get a broad coverage it needs to be easy.
-- geni
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Tim Landscheidt tim@tim-landscheidt.de wrote:
While I appreciate the efforts to encourage wider partici- pation, IMHO we should make sure that we keep the quality of our "products" and our "human resources" in mind. No edits at all may be better than one edit in ten days for probably 99% of the population. And I don't think that we will at- tract the right 1% who will wander the libraries and the web in search of the missing pieces of information, tackle thick books and pause before clicking on the "Save" button to es- timate whether their edit will find the approval of their peers, by emphasizing that editing is easy or fun - because it isn't. And it probably shouldn't be.
Tim
spoken like a true wikipedian :)
(are you sure that editing isn't fun, though? I'm pretty sure that if most of us didn't derive at least some joy from it (at some point in our editing careers) we wouldn't be here having this conversation.)
I find it helpful to translate the question of whether editing is an inherently elitist activity -- as it may well be -- by thinking of analogies in the sphere of my day job, which is being a librarian in a big university library.
To be a librarian -- or even to be a successful grad student or professor -- you have to really, really like to do research. A lot. You have to find true pleasure and satisfaction in chasing down the world's most obscure references or figuring out how to make sense of the literature on some topic. You have to be a total research nerd, in other words.
But we cannot do research *for* every single student who wanders through our doors (I serve a school of 30,000 people). We have to help them figure it out how to do it themselves. And there's been a real push in the last 20 years or so to move academic librarianship from the model of the cranky old scholar who might let you touch the books, to the model of teaching "information literacy" -- how to research and evaluate information for yourself. I do a whole lot of teaching, and it can be frustrating to watch student after student work on their papers and do a bad job of their research and their bibliographies, and complain about how it's not easy to do research, when you know that it's possible to do it better. But my job is not to do it all for them: it's also to aid them along the paths of becoming scholars themselves. There's a real temptation to say "research isn't supposed to be easy! It's supposed to be a rite of passage into the academy! Get a backbone, kids!" But I think collectively in the profession we have basically come to the understanding that taking that attitude doesn't make it any easier for non-librarians and non-academics to navigate our crazy, unusable systems -- doesn't make people of any age any more likely to actually do research -- and that maybe, just maybe, if we do enough outreach, and work enough on making our systems easier and better, we'll reach more people overall as well as only the people that are predisposed to become information nerds themselves.
I think of Wikipedia the same way. Sure, not everyone wants to or has the ability to edit. And hey, there's a lot to be said for being motivated enough to do it that you learn the systems without any help, becoming a part of the community the way most of us did. But just relying on those mechanisms does restrict our editor base a lot, and saying that only those people willing to jump through many interface and social hoops can join the club is just as unhelpful for our worldwide community of researchers and writers -- and the world of scholarship in general -- as keeping the books chained up in the library was.
-- phoebe
I like (and support) most of all the following wording
... there's a lot to be said for being motivated enough to do it that you learn the systems without any help, becoming a part of the community the way most of us did. But just relying on those mechanisms does restrict our editor base a lot, and saying that only those people willing to jump through many interface and social hoops can join the club is just as unhelpful for our worldwide community of researchers and writers
From that point of view we see two thresholds/barriers in front of
each WP-newcomer: * to master craft of research; * to master system (with DIY "facepages"/profiles, indents and signatures in discussion, etc.) - that is interface hoop; * becoming part of the community (socialization) - social hoop. oh, actually there are three of them :)
Yes we (all of us) were motivated, even fanatic :) enough to survive in so Spartan conditions, but should we insist that all newcomers have to go same way?
Yes, one of favorite proverbs says "Wind from the North creates Vikings" but I'm not sure that Wikipedia needs only Vikings :)
Sincerely,
Pavlo
On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 12:59 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Tim Landscheidt tim@tim-landscheidt.de wrote:
While I appreciate the efforts to encourage wider partici- pation, IMHO we should make sure that we keep the quality of our "products" and our "human resources" in mind. No edits at all may be better than one edit in ten days for probably 99% of the population. And I don't think that we will at- tract the right 1% who will wander the libraries and the web in search of the missing pieces of information, tackle thick books and pause before clicking on the "Save" button to es- timate whether their edit will find the approval of their peers, by emphasizing that editing is easy or fun - because it isn't. And it probably shouldn't be.
Tim
spoken like a true wikipedian :)
(are you sure that editing isn't fun, though? I'm pretty sure that if most of us didn't derive at least some joy from it (at some point in our editing careers) we wouldn't be here having this conversation.)
I find it helpful to translate the question of whether editing is an inherently elitist activity -- as it may well be -- by thinking of analogies in the sphere of my day job, which is being a librarian in a big university library.
To be a librarian -- or even to be a successful grad student or professor -- you have to really, really like to do research. A lot. You have to find true pleasure and satisfaction in chasing down the world's most obscure references or figuring out how to make sense of the literature on some topic. You have to be a total research nerd, in other words.
But we cannot do research *for* every single student who wanders through our doors (I serve a school of 30,000 people). We have to help them figure it out how to do it themselves. And there's been a real push in the last 20 years or so to move academic librarianship from the model of the cranky old scholar who might let you touch the books, to the model of teaching "information literacy" -- how to research and evaluate information for yourself. I do a whole lot of teaching, and it can be frustrating to watch student after student work on their papers and do a bad job of their research and their bibliographies, and complain about how it's not easy to do research, when you know that it's possible to do it better. But my job is not to do it all for them: it's also to aid them along the paths of becoming scholars themselves. There's a real temptation to say "research isn't supposed to be easy! It's supposed to be a rite of passage into the academy! Get a backbone, kids!" But I think collectively in the profession we have basically come to the understanding that taking that attitude doesn't make it any easier for non-librarians and non-academics to navigate our crazy, unusable systems -- doesn't make people of any age any more likely to actually do research -- and that maybe, just maybe, if we do enough outreach, and work enough on making our systems easier and better, we'll reach more people overall as well as only the people that are predisposed to become information nerds themselves.
I think of Wikipedia the same way. Sure, not everyone wants to or has the ability to edit. And hey, there's a lot to be said for being motivated enough to do it that you learn the systems without any help, becoming a part of the community the way most of us did. But just relying on those mechanisms does restrict our editor base a lot, and saying that only those people willing to jump through many interface and social hoops can join the club is just as unhelpful for our worldwide community of researchers and writers -- and the world of scholarship in general -- as keeping the books chained up in the library was.
-- phoebe
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I've started page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_encourage_participation
Feel free to add your ideas.
If the page with the same idea exists elsewhere -- let's say at Strategy Wiki -- please merge pages and let the list know.
On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 10:13 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
I've started page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_encourage_participation
Feel free to add your ideas.
If the page with the same idea exists elsewhere -- let's say at Strategy Wiki -- please merge pages and let the list know.
There's lots of great research and proposals on encouraging participation at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Participation
=Eugene
On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Eugene Eric Kim eekim@blueoxen.com wrote:
There's lots of great research and proposals on encouraging participation at:
Thanks! This page [1] has the similar scope, actually.
[1] - http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Attracting_and_retaining_participants
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 08:37:37 Milos Rancic написа:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:40 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs wrote:
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 07:37:18 Milos Rancic написа:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 7:30 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs
wrote:
Or perhaps we don't even have to build one, but just use the existing ones. [People are always against making Wikipedia a social network.] Have RSS feeds of articles you created/pictures you uploaded. These could then be connected to Facebook or wherever for your friends to see what are you working on.
Then you are using Facebook, not Wikimedia. And Flickr is much better for private photos than Wikimedia.
Then your Facebook friends will see that you are doing interesting things on Wikipedia projects and will want to do them too.
I don't think that it is particularly interesting to see someone's edits. If you are not a passionate Wikimedian, of course.
If your friends are so disinterested in Wikipedia that they aren't even interested in your contributions to it, why would they be interested in using Wikipedia as their social network?
Anyway, I made this so anyone who would like to experiment, can. http://toolserver.org/~nikola/snrss.php
On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.rs wrote:
Дана Saturday 19 June 2010 08:37:37 Milos Rancic написа:
I don't think that it is particularly interesting to see someone's edits. If you are not a passionate Wikimedian, of course.
If your friends are so disinterested in Wikipedia that they aren't even interested in your contributions to it, why would they be interested in using Wikipedia as their social network?
I am not interested in my own edits. They are very boring. I don't have any especial interest in, let's say, Mardetanha's edits at fa.wp as I don't know Persian. However, he is my friend and I am interested in what is going with him. I can inform myself about him at Facebook or at Twitter, but I could do that at Wikimedia, too. Which means that I could spend much more time on Wikimedia and probably to make some fix or a little bigger edit anywhere. Instead, I am just doing my bureaucratic tasks, while I am socializing at some other place. Which gives my content there, not to Wikimedia.
Дана Wednesday 23 June 2010 18:27:43 Nikola Smolenski написа:
Anyway, I made this so anyone who would like to experiment, can. http://toolserver.org/~nikola/snrss.php
I see that people who tried it either haven't written any new articles recently or have encountered a bug (on non-English Wikipedias). Write an article and/or try again :)
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