On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If part of
the plan for the growth team is to invite
anonymous editors to sign up, why not tailor some of those invitations
specifically to female anonymous editors? Then you could add a measure,
retention of female editors, to that particular growth project. The
results
should be instructive.
At the risk of biting into something contentious... How would that
work? What would the message say: "Have you considered creating an
account? Its free. Doubly recommended if you're a women!" I have
trouble imagining a gender-specific account creation invitation that
doesn't sound creepy.
Additionally, actually measuring success rates by gender would require
knowing people's gender. Its conceivable that requiring people to
disclose their gender could have a negative impact on the gender gap.
(Or maybe it wouldn't. I have no idea)
--bawolff
____________
I'm not sure what the messaging is planned to look like, but an appeal
oriented towards women doesn't seem like an insurmountable obstacle. "Did
you know only 10% of Wikipedia editors are women? If you are a woman
reading this, we need your help!" And then you can track sign-ups through
that particular message, figuring that a substantial proportion of them
will actually be women.
And you could also ask, during sign-up, for people to self-identify
confidentially. "We're trying to increase the proportion of our fellow
editors who are women, would you mind telling us if you identify as female?
[Y/N]". And then don't publish that anywhere except in aggregate.