It may not be statistically meaningful, but the results are certainly
valuable to discussion. The idea that "women have better things to do",
i.e. don't think contributing to Wikipedia is valuable, is a new one for
me. Since I consider editing Wikipedia to be one of the most valuable
ways I can possibly spend my time (more so than raising children or
curing cancer), this idea had never occurred to me. Is it possible that
men are more indoctrinated to value knowledge, information,
epistemology, etc. and thus see Wikipedia as inherently more important
than women do? I'm not saying this is the case—indeed, it seems like too
easy a scapegoat—I'm just wondering if it's a valid hypothesis. Perhaps
someone should conduct a survey asking "How valuable do you consider
Wikipedia?" and correlate this with the respondent's gender. This also
seems to relate to empathizing–systemizing theory,[1] which
controversially suggests that men (whether due to social or biological
factors) prefer systemizing over empathizing, while women tend towards
the opposite. It may also relate to the fact that men are much more
likely than women to be diagnosed with autism and Asperger syndrome,
although no one is sure why. These are just hypotheses, however, and we
shouldn't jump to any conclusions. I do think, however, that we should
incorporate this idea into future research and see if there are any
significant results.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing_theory
Ryan Kaldari
On 7/10/11 9:32 AM, Nepenthe wrote:
To be frank, a sample this small really doesn't support much of
anything. If the results had been more extreme, perhaps they would be
meaningful, but these data are not sufficient to reject any hypothesis
besides "men and women have totally and utterly different motivations
for editing and for not editing". The survey results do, however, play
into our theory of the situation; I think we have to be aware of
confirmation bias.
Nepenthe
On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 11:10 AM, Laura Hale <la...@fanhistory.com
<mailto:la...@fanhistory.com>> wrote:
Cross posted this to my blog at
http://ozziesport.com/2011/07/why-dont-people-edit-wikipedia-small-survey-results-provide-some-insights/
I tend to be a bit obsessive. An issue that keeps cropping up in
my personal sphere is women editing Wikipedia. Various reasons
keep being offered as to why women don’t edit, if their reasons
are different from those of men, if women don’t edit because they
don’t have time as they are too busy taking care of their
families, etc. I wanted to know why women and men in my particular
peer group didn’t edit Wikipedia. Thus, I posted surveys to my
Facebook and to my LiveJournal. The raw data, as of 10:13am
American Central Standard time could be found at Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/notes/laura-hale/if-you-dont-edit-wikipedia-why-dont-you-edit/10150232414360642>,
LiveJournal <http://partly-bouncy.livejournal.com/923973.html>.
Please feel free to continue to vote. If I have bigger samples, I
can always update this. I had responses from 22 people, 12 males
and 10 females. This isn’t necessarily a representative sample and
if I was looking for that, I’d try much harder to get a larger
response from a bigger group of people. I don’t think you can
necessarily extrapolate out much from this, except to have it help
confirm other smaller samples.As a side note, the Facebook poll
allows people to add their own responses. (The sample size isn’t
statistically significant for one thing and one response can
really change the percentages.) People have and it is possible
that people may have chosen responses had they been available. In
any case, on with the findings.
There were several options offered that no one selected. Those
answers have not been included as the totals would have been 0%
and given the small sample size, it didn’t seem as relevant.
Response All Male Female All % Male % Female %
The atmosphere on Wikipedia is not conducive to random user
editing. 10 4 6 45.5% 33.3% 60.0%
I have better things to do. 8 3 6 36.4% 16.7%
60.0%
Not enough time to contribute. 5 2 3 22.7% 16.7%
30.0%
I don’t want to research citations to support my edits. I can fix
grammar/typos. 4 2 1 18.2% 25.0% 10.0%
I know people who were treated poorly. Why subject myself to
that? 3 2 1 13.6% 16.7% 10.0%
There is no community. 2 2 0 9.1% 16.7% 0.0%
They keep deleting my edits. 2 0 0 9.1% 16.7%
0.0%
The editing window is confusing and I don’t understand the
markup. 1 1 1 4.5% 0.0% 10.0%
I used to edit but people treated me poorly so I quit. 1 2
0 4.5% 8.3% 0.0%
After being overwritten incorrectly, with no dialogue as to why, &
just knowing 1 1 0 4.5% 8.3% 0.0%
There are some differences in responses between men and women,
which appears to support the general conclusion that men and women
have different reasons for (not) contributing to Wikipedia and
that gender specific type engagement may be needed. One of the
arguments that I’ve heard is that women would like to contribute
to Wikipedia but they just do not have the time because they need
to take care of their families. This small sample appears to
suggest this isn’t the case: Women, much more than men in this
sample, just have better things to do. I’ve talked to a few women
in this sample about this to try to understand what better things
they have to do, because I’ve heard the argument that women do use
this type of technology and some people don’t understand why, if
women do blogging and other online content creation, why they
don’t contribute to Wikipedia. In this particular sample, the
women I talked to explained it to me as they have a set of things
they prioritise in what they do. In the case of one
non-contributor, they do contribute to another wiki that
immediately ties into her interests. Beyond that, she has learned
that her contributions have value and that value can be realised
by getting paid for them by writing for sites like associated
content and squidoo. There isn’t the inherent value that can be
realised when contributing to Wikipedia, so why should she spend
the time contributing? This appears to be supported because of the
six who said they have better things to do, only one female also
said she didn’t have enough time to contribute.
A lot of the answers appear to have to do with community and
negative interactions. Six women answered yes to “The atmosphere
on Wikipedia is not conducive to random user editing.” as a reason
why they don’t edit. This compares to only four of the twelve men.
This was a common theme when I talked some of the women in this
sample: The community is not supportive, things get undone, there
aren’t people helping guide new contributors and serving as
mentors. There isn’t much positive feedback. If you run into
problems, you have to go ask for it yourself and then you get in
trouble for canvassing. More experiences editors are involved in
areas and they don’t do anything when it looks like there are
obvious problems to the random female editor. The situation
reminds me a bit of wikiHow. I haven’t edited there in a while,
but I’ve generally highly respected what Jack Herrick and other
admins have done with their wiki culture as a whole. They make
welcoming a big thing. They provide lots of positive feedback.
They appear to work on community. They offer ways to get
recognition for your contributions. People involved in running it
have always seemed highly accessible, even if they aren’t. wikiHow
also appears to place a priority on civility that English
Wikipedia only gives lip service to. Evidence? Become a wikiHow
Admin <http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-wikiHow-Admin> states a
criteria of being an admin: /Empathy and kindness – Admins exist
to serve the broader community of editors and readers. A
demonstrated history of treating others with kindness and mutual
respect is a necessity./
Beyond those two of The atmosphere on Wikipedia is not conducive
to random user editing. and I have better things to do with my
time., no answer had more than 50% of the female response… and
worth noting, women had that. The male respondents didn’t have a
voting block similar to that. The largest male response was The
atmosphere on Wikipedia is not conducive to random user editing.,
with 33% answering that as a reason. The next largest male block I
don’t want to research citations to support my edits. I can fix
grammar/typos. , with 25% citing that as a reason. That response
is not necessarily a community response, suggesting community
problems so much as content policy and I don’t know how to address
that.
I’d love to do a bigger survey with more results, see if responses
change with more respondents. I do think it supports the idea that
lack of time is not the major reason that women don’t contribute
and that technology and the format discourage women from
contributing. Only one female cited that as an issue. A refocus
and reprioritisation may be needed if the goal is to increase
female contributions to English Wikipedia.
/I post and then two more people vote, one male and one female. If
I get another ten total responses, I’ll update with new totals./
--
twitter: purplepopple
blog: ozziesport.com <http://ozziesport.com>
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