Ask any librarian about what men and women are reading. Men prefer non fictional, women fictional works. Not all of them, of course, but in large majorities. I doubt that that has no consequences for Wikipedia editing behavior. And, as a women once told to a magazine: Women are too polite to correct someone in public. :-) Kind regards Ziko
2010/6/18 Ryan Kaldari <[email protected]>: > I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological > differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be > possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous > (and offensive). Regardless of our genetic predispositions, there are > very real cultural issues that frequently drive female contributors away > from Wikimedia projects. Many areas of our projects are downright > mysogynistic: > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3APatriarchy&action=historysubmit&diff=290490477&oldid=290436986 > while others are just passively sexist: > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Picture_of_the_day/Archive_1#POTD.27s_depiction_of_women > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Nudity#Standard_regarding_female_vs_male_genitalia > Not to mention that our trolls seem to favor profiling and harassing > female editors: > http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=18616&st=20&p=107254&#entry107254 > > As long as disrespectful and sexist behavior flourishes unchecked, > editing Wikipedia will probably not be an attractive proposition for > most women. Unfortunately, this problem seems to be self-perpetuating, > as the more the gender ratio is skewed, the more the culture of > Wikipedia will tend to tolerate sexist or mysogynistic behavior, and the > more women will leave the project. I think instead of trying to figure > out some magic interface pheromone for women, we should just start > reaching out to more women directly. It would be great if the > Foundation's new public policy initiative could do outreach to some > Women's Studies programs or if we could promote Wikipedia to women's > tech groups like IBM Women in Technology or the Anita Borg Institute for > Women and Technology. Any other ideas? > > Ryan Kaldari > > On 6/16/10 6:04 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: >> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 8:26 PM, phoebe ayers<[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on >>> and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning >>> process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of >>> underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all >>> fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless). >>> >> You may find it interesting that these kind of large imbalances can >> arise out of a simple but surprising mathematical truth: >> >> If you have a mixed population with a skill, say skateboarding, that >> follows the typical normal distribution and one sub-population (e.g. >> people with red hair) have an average performance only slight higher >> than another sub-population (blondes), and you were to select the >> best skateboarders out of the group you would end up with a >> surprisingly high concentration of the red-hair subgroup, so high that >> it doesn't at all seem justified by the small difference in average >> performance. >> >> This is is because in normal distributions the concentration of people >> with a particular skill falls off exponentially away from the average, >> so if you take the two distributions (amount of skateboarding skill >> for red-hairs and blondes) and shift one a very small amount the ratio >> between the two becomes increasingly large as you select for higher >> and higher skill levels. >> >> The same kind of results happen when, instead of a difference in >> average performance, there is simply a difference in the variation. If >> red-hairs have the same average skate-boarding skill but are less >> consistent— more klutzes _and_ more superstars this has an even larger >> impact than differences in the average, again biasing towards the >> red-hairs. >> >> These effects can be combined, and if there are multiple supporting >> skills for a task they combine multiplicatively.[*] >> >> The applicability here is clear: There is a strong biological argument >> justifying greater variance in genetically linked traits in men (due >> to the decrease in genetic redundancy) which is supported by many >> studies which show greater variance in males. So all things equal any >> time you select for extremes (high or low performing) you will tend to >> tend to end up with a male biased group. (There are small also >> differences in measured averages between men and women in many >> areas...) >> >> And many of the 'skills' that are reasonable predictions of someone's >> likelihood of being a Wikipedian, if we're even to call them 'skills' >> as many aren't all that flattering, are obviously male super-abundant >> in the greater world. How many female obsessive stamp collectors do >> you know? Male? The kind of obsessive collecting trait is almost so >> exclusively male that it's a cliché, and it's pretty obvious why that >> kind of person would find a calling in Wikipedia. >> >> One piece of insight that comes out of is that general approaches >> which make Wikipedia more palatable to "average people", as opposed to >> uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines, may have a greater >> impact at reducing gender imbalance than female centric improvements. >> (and may also reduce other non-gender related imbalances, such as our >> age imbalance). So this gives you an extra reason why "more people to >> edit regardless" is an especially useful approach. >> >> >> >> Though are limits to the amount of main-streaming you can do of an >> academic activity such as encyclopaedia writing. :-) >> >> In any case, I don't mean to suggest that your work isn't important or >> can't be worthwhile. Only that I think you're fighting an uphill >> battle against a number of _natural_ (not human originated) biases, >> and I wish you luck! >> >> >> >> [*] A while back I wrote up a longer and highly technical version of >> this explanation as part of an argument on gender imbalances in >> computer science with a mathematician. Anyone into math-wankery may >> find it interesting: >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/mf_compsci >> >> _______________________________________________ >> foundation-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
