[Gendergap] Why women and wikis do mix...

[Laura Hale]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:09 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

> On Signpost:
>
>
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-03-07/In_the_news
>
> http://lola-pr.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-women-wikis-do-mix.html
>
> Fred
>

Not a fan of either.  The author has an assumption and explains it.  There
is a lot of research on the design elements, but it doesn't go anywhere or
appear to have any solid basis beyond: I think this and my friends think
this.  We like pretty! This appears to be right up there with: "I have free
time! So I will contribute to Wikipedia!"  Yes, fine.  Great.  And you have
free time... so why are you motivated to edit Wikipedia instead of updating
Facebook?  There is a motivation gap that is totally missing there.

There is a lot of research on design, its principles and how to do it right.
Yes, there are differences between male and female web users.  Cite the
research for it and then make relevant.

Moss, G., Gunn, R. and Heller, J. (2006), Some men like it black, some women
like it pink: consumer implications of differences in male and female
website design. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 5: 328–341.
doi: 10.1002/cb.184 is one such study that talks about design principle
differences between men and women.

Interesting conclusions from that paper on page 335:

This indicates
that the hypotheses generated from earlier
literature as to the greater likelihood of women
to seek ease of navigation is not borne out by
the results of this study. In fact, the reverse
could be said to be the case with femaledesigned
sites being linked up to a wider range
of subject sites.

Also on page 335:

Based on the work of Tannen (1990), it was
hypothesised that the language used in the
male-produced websites would contain more
features indicative of overt competitiveness
than the female-produced sites would. As the
results in Table 3 indicate, this finding is also
borne out by the present study:
The results reveal statistically significant
differences on four of the five language
elements, with females showing a statistically
greater tendency than the males to employ
abbreviations, self-denigration, non-expert and
informal language. These differences suggest
greater overt competitiveness on the part of
the males in the sample than the females.


On page 336:

In statistical terms, females are statistically
significantly more likely than males to use
rounded rather than straight shapes to avoid a
horizontal layout, to use more colours for
typography irregular typography, informal
images and more of certain specific
colours (white, yellow, pink and mauve) for
typography.


There is a lot of research out there and falling back on it, using it, seems
very important if the goal is to provide actionable information for WMF to
make design changes to better cater to both sexes.  Make Wikipedia look
pretty is good but isn't very actionable in terms of giving that advice.
(And the Vector skin appears to be a big step in that direction.)  I
honestly think though, if motivation could be tapped into, this would less
of an issue because there are plenty of sites which don't follow the
research and have large female contributor bases.  Think Facebook, MySpace,
LiveJournal and FanFiction.Net.
-- 
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com
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