[Gendergap] study about gendered names and IRC

[Pete Forsyth]

Thanks for sharing this study, Ryan -- very useful info, and as you say,
rather depressing!

I think it's important to note, for those who don't use IRC -- the bit
about "high traffic IRC channels" is VERY significant. I hope nobody gets
the idea that simply by using IRC in a rather targeted way, that they would
have an even remotely similar experience. (i.e., by joining only channels
that are of particular interest, like #wikimedia-gendergap or any of the
many other Wikimedia channels [1])

For example, I'm logged into IRC nearly every day, and I think I've gotten
maybe one message along these lines in my *life* -- which is a lot fewer
than 3.7 messages per day! There are many ways to use IRC, and spending
time in very high-traffic channels is not something I think would be useful
for most people to begin with.

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Channels

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:30 AM, ChaoticFluffy <chaoticfluffy at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hmmm, interesting. I've often wondered whether I would have had a less
> pleasant experience fitting into the wiki(p|m)edia IRC channels if I had an
> obviously-gendered nick. As it is, I get maybe one random pm a month, if
> that, and most of those are of the vague "hi"-followed-by-silence sort.
> None that I can remember have ever been sexually explicit, though I think I
> might have gotten threats once or twice. Maybe one day I'll run my own
> little experiment and masquerade under a clearly-female name and see how
> that changes...
>
> -Fluffernutter
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 2:05 AM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari at wikimedia.org>wrote:
>
>> 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<https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.enre.umd.edu/content/rmeyer-assessing.pdf&embedded=true&chrome=true>
>>
>> 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
>>
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>
>
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