[WikiEN-l] NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors

[Risker]

On 31 January 2011 11:18, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 31 January 2011 15:30, Charles Matthews
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> > I have stated my views on site politics on this list not so long ago.
> > Basically the "reform" party comes over as the "complacent" party as far
> > as the gender gap is concerned (sadly). So I'd like to see people
> > standing for ArbCom being asked what they intend to do about it.
>
>
> It's January. ArbCom could start enforcing civility amongst admins
> now, bring it off successfully and have huge success to talk about by
> voting in December.
>
> (I outlined a version of this to FT2 and Chase Me Ladies at the 10th
> Anniversary bash and neither shrieked in horror. A complaints
> procedure would be a crank magnet. Keep it to "going forward", nothing
> past; require asking the admin nicely first; vexatious complainants
> told to go away after. Admin behaviour will rapidly modify as they'll
> do *ANYTHING* to keep the bit. Admins get more crap than they deserve
> from the querulous, but this is hardly an onerous proposal. Anyone
> feel up to pushing it through? Arbcom could start this now based on
> WP:NPA and WP:BITE as policies, but will probably prefer to get at
> least a little explicit buy-in.)
>
>

I do find it ironic that former members of the Arbitration Committee are
proposing that Arbcom go around enforcing "civility" on admins (and everyone
else?) when they know perfectly well that it's far outside the scope of the
committee to do so. Aside from a genuinely urgent situation, or one that is
outside of the community's ability to address (e.g., admin socking), there
has been an unchanging view that Arbcom should not be prosecuting matters
that have not been brought to it by the community; in other words, we aren't
supposed to go hunting for our own cases . And, I disagree with the belief
that David has just expressed; in my own observation the *better* admins
(more civil, more thoughtful) are the first ones to throw in the bit when
their administrative behaviour is challenged. To them, it is a tool, not
something precious that they'll do anything to retain - or regain.

Nonetheless, this thread is supposed to be about the gender gap. For the
first time AFAICT, Arbcom has three sitting members who are women; that's
still only 17% of the committee. It's not possible to get an accurate
breakdown of how many administrators are female; many admins do not reveal
their gender, nor are they expected to. A reasonable estimate of the
percentage of administrators who are *openly* female is around 10-15%.

The so-called "civility issue" is only one thing that turns off female
participants. Another is the need to master significant amounts of technical
information before being able to edit.  An example is the use of templates
all over the place - they are difficult to understand and clutter the
editing window horribly, but failure to use them means dunning notices on
talk pages and reverts because something wasn't "done right".  Entire areas
of the project are very unfriendly to those who do not hold the extreme
libertarian views of openness (I recently saw a comment on AN/I that
suggested we should actively seek out video displays of all sexual acts),
and sexism is blatant in certain topic areas. On the whole, women seek
consensus in a different manner than men do - women tending to be more
compromising and seeking middle ground, whereas men tend to use force of
numbers and who argues the loudest. (Anyone else notice how "consensus" at
RFA and AfD and ANI seems to be increasingly numerically based, instead of
by quality of policy-based argument? Notice how administrators get pummeled
for using common sense or relying on policy instead of the vox populi?)

It's also not very easy for new editors, male or female, to find places to
ask questions or to receive some guidance. Heaven forbid that they find AN/I
before they find a reference or help desk.

Risker/Anne