Of course, there is more than one way to skin a potato, but it doesn't mean
that those ways are useful, desirable, or informative. You say that readers
are more likely to access people who are named, than people who are
notable, but isn't that relevant? If notable people are not named, then we
can point at the issue, bring the information to the light and ask for
measures to be taken. Because as it is now, it seems as if we are at the
mercy of what others decide that is relevant, however I believe that the
community also can have a say in identifying media blind spots and
reporting them to the public.
I am not asking for "ongoing research", I am asking for data to back our
claims that wikipedia reflects the bias of the media. OTOH, for research
purposes it would be interesting to:
- evaluate the distribution of sources by gender and area of expertise
- correlation between page views and sources
"It should be noted that there is also an inherent bias in that there are
far fewer biographical articles about women in most categories, as compared
to men."
That is not so injurious. If we have 80% articles about men and 20%
articles about women, however 50% of pageviews go to men and 50% go to
women, suddenly the gender gap would be narrower, as it would show that
women, even with a reduced number of articles, have more public exposure.
Still there would be areas of expertise where men would attract more
pageviews than women, and vice versa, but that would be ok according to my
understanding.
It should be noted however, that in the depths of the gendergap rabbit hole
there is the core of societal (and individual) values, and how individuals
are rewarded in exposure (and money) according to those values. If women
are naturally more skilled than men in certain areas, why is not that
expertise recognized and valued? If our platforms are predominately male,
does it mean that our mission has an inherent gender bias?
@Strainu: thanks for the links!
Micru
On Thu, Dec 6, 2018 at 3:45 AM Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hmm. I think the subject of what you call
"audience bias" is far more
general than the tiny targeted area you're talking about. I'm pretty sure
that readers from Poland are thousands of times more likely to access the
Wikipedia article about [name any town in Poland] than readers in Indonesia
are. I'm pretty sure that readers from all over the world are far more
likely to access articles about people who are named in other publications,
particularly the news media, than they are about notable but comparatively
obscure article subjects who haven't recently been the subject of public
interest. I do not think you have made a good case for considering the
viewing of articles of male subjects vs. female subjects to be directly
linked to "audience bias". We only need to look at the top100 articles
viewed on any project to see that what drives page views is usually some
event external to the Wikipedia projects.
Page view data is pretty readily available - it is available for every
single page on every single Wikipedia (and probably for a lot of other
projects too, I've just never checked). It would require some technical
knowledge to write a script targeting page view information for articles in
selected categories - such as page views of articles about women scientists
- provided there is correct and appropriate categorization of the article.
I'm the first to admit I'm incapable of writing such a script, but there
are lots of Wikimedians who have such skills.
It certainly looks like you are asking for ongoing research to be carried
out on a topic that interests you (and, I am certain, a lot of other
Wikimedians). I am unclear what this kind of metric would tell us about
"audience bias" (or any other kind of bias, for that matter), but there may
be value in better understanding the frequency of viewing of articles in
certain categories and comparing them to related categories; for example,
comparing the frequency of viewing of the average article about a female
architect as compared to a male architect. It should be noted that there
is also an inherent bias in that there are far fewer biographical articles
about women in most categories, as compared to men.
Risker/Anne
On Wed, 5 Dec 2018 at 18:20, David Cuenca Tudela <dacuetu(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi Tilman,
I disagree with your appraisal that there are better venues for my
question. The gendergap mailing list is technically dead, before your
message the last one was from April. The other mailing list is related to
research, not to stats that should be readily available.
From your answer (and the lack of more information) I understand that
there
is a poor (inexistent?) tracking of audience
bias. In my opinion these
data
would be very useful to monitor how visitors
evolve with more
availability
of women's biographies. I have requested it
to be added to the Metrics
Kit.
If anyone else wants to endorse or comment:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_health_initiative/Metrics_ki…
Regards,
Micru
On Tue, Dec 4, 2018 at 2:22 AM Tilman Bayer <tbayer(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> Hi Micru,
>
> in general, there may be better venues to ask this kind of question,
e.g.
> the Wiki-research-l and Gendergap mailing
lists (both CCed). But for a
> partial answer, the paper by Marit Hinnosaar reviewed here looks at
these
stats (if
not their long-term trend):
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2015/December#Does_adve…
> ?
>
> E.g. "On a typical (median) day in September 2014, no one read 26
percent
of the
biographies of men versus only 16 percent of the biographies of
women."
On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 3:35 AM David Cuenca Tudela <dacuetu(a)gmail.com
> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Are there any statistics that track the evolution of page views of
> > male/female biographies in the different Wikipedias?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Micru
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> >
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> >
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
--
Tilman Bayer
Senior Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
--
Etiamsi omnes, ego non
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>