[Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[Marco Chiesa]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh a gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I suppose that it could help up to some extent. However, we have at
> least one -- already identified or not -- big systemic problem. And it
> looks to me that it is not connected exclusively to African Americans.
>

I think this is part of a general dilemma about the so-called new
technologies. On a very broad approximation, Internet (and Wikipedia)
has from its beginnings been created and dominated by white, male,
relatively young and tech-savvy people, and these demographics have
tended to shape it to their own values and style. The rest of the
world (which represents a large majority of the population),
participates less in Internet/Wikipedia. I think both "these groups
are less interested in Wikipedia" and "these groups find a more
hostile environment" explain why these demographics are so
underrepresented.
Compared with the rest of Internet, I guess Wikipedia has been
successful in attracting not-so-young people (people involved in
teaching in particular), I'm not sure about other demographics.
Cruccone