[Gendergap] study about gendered names and IRC

[Ryan Kaldari]

I just read the following paper which describes an interesting study 
that was conducted regarding IRC:
http://www.enre.umd.edu/content/rmeyer-assessing.pdf

The researchers created several IRC bots with different names - some 
female, some male, and some ambiguous. They put the bots in several high 
traffic IRC channels, and had them record all the private messages they 
received. The bots themselves were completely silent.

The bots with male names received an average of 3.7 private messages per 
days that were sexually explicit or threatening. The bots with ambiguous 
names received an average of 24.9 such messages per day. The bots with 
female names received an average of 100 such messages per day!

This is a very sad statistic, and probably goes a long way towards 
explaining why there aren't that many women on IRC these days.

On a happier note, if you want to hang out on IRC and not get sexually 
harassed, you can always join #wikimedia-gendergap!

Ryan Kaldari