On Saturday, 4th June, 2005, at 22:28, David 'DJ' Hedley spyders@btinternet.com wrote:
Indeed, the amount of openly LGBT Wikipedians is interestingly high. I don't know why Wikipedia is so appealing to homosexual contributors, but it appears to be that it is.
I'm not entirely sure that this is anything more than a combination of two factors; firstly, that people are likely to feel much less intimidated into concealing their 'defects' [0], and so be more open about themselves; and, secondly, the high-tech world in general and on-line communities in particular do tend [1] to attract a rather larger proportion in population of non-"heteronormative" [2]. It has been theorised [3] that this may be due to a greater level of emotional and general 'intelligence' required to access social networks of this type, which means that such people are more likely to be able to think of themselves as different. Personally, I'm not so sure about this, and the former seems more of a 'goer'.
[0] - In their own fears of others' opinions. [1] - Or, rather, used to, in days of yore when usenet was a blessèd place of tranquility. Umm. :-) [2] - Oh, ye gods, how I detest that term. [3] - But quite possibly not by anyone encyclopædic. ;-)
Yours,