[Gendergap] Hello and a (small!) manifesto

[SlimVirgin]

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 15:23, Daniel and Elizabeth Case
<dancase at frontiernet.net> wrote:
> It doesn't surprise me that Wikipedia would attract such serious Asperger
> cases as this.

I don't think we should be diagnosing anyone, or speaking in terms of
illness. But I do think this touches on a major problem on Wikipedia,
namely the dominance of the male brain. Some academics -- e.g. see
[[Simon Baren-Cohen]]'s ''The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the
Extreme Male Brain'' (2003) -- have discussed certain autistic traits
as being extreme versions of the male brain. I think we can talk about
it without delving into the concept of illness, and simply look at the
phenomena.

Women have male-brain traits too, by the way.

What it leads to on Wikipedia is a singular focus on detail and
systems. Lots of templates and other tools that make editing tough.
Categorization so detailed that things end up being hard to find.
Articles created five minutes ago being tagged for deletion, or tagged
as orphans, or tagged as in some other way inadequate. Policies and
guidelines being imposed rigidly across the board with no room for
editorial judgment.

It makes editing hard even for experienced editors. It can mean the
simplest thing takes hours. Non-male-brain people (of either sex) are
likely to walk away rather than deal with it. So I think it's losing
us editors, and failing to gain us new ones, particularly women.

Sarah

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SlimVirgin