> There's a parallel talk into it chapter about gender gap. This gap is part
> of a larger gap involving software development in general; there are few
> programmer women. I presume, that this highlights a similarity between wiki
> and a software development environment; and really many from most
> enthusiast, and productive contributors are too programmers.
>
> But... as you know, the profile of a programmer is far from the profile of a
> woman; consider the famous statement "The three chief virtues of a
> programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.". Then consider the pedia
> statement "Be bold!", that is a gentler way to name "hubris". :-)
>
> Is gender gap so mysterious?
>
> Alex
I would disagree with "Be Bold" = Hubris I have always thought "Be Bold" as
being about being comfortable with making mistakes. I certainly would consider
myself "bold" in general and more bold than the average woman in practical
terms
on the wiki, but I still very much feel the Midwestern US taboo against
thinking
too well of oneself and self-promoting which hubris should overcome. In my
experience boldness comes from a different place; that of having a trial and
error mentality to approaching the world in general. But I suppose boldness
could come from thinking oneself superior also.
> On 02/09/2011 11:18 PM, DaB. wrote:
> > sure. I asked the toolserver-database:
> >
> > en.wikipedia:
> > Male: 233312
> > Femaile: 46973
> > All user: 13959842
>
<snip>
>
> Now, if a woman uses a male pseudonym,
> she would obviously self-declare as a man,
> so we can't know if this correlates to real
> gender. We could only measure the setting.
>
I would hesitate to judge what might be a male pseudonym. In my experience any
pseudonym, given it is not displayed in pink or the userpage is not covered in
hearts or something, will be treated as male. I never intended to self-declare
as male, but was treated as male for many years. I did consciously decide to
accept what I perceived as the benefits of being treated as male and not
correct
anyone. When someone years ago raised the argument that the lack of visibly
female Wikipedians might be a barrier to larger numbers of women joining
Wikipedia, I changed the coloring of my signature and don't remember being
treated as male since then.
Birgitte SB
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