That is interesting! Of course according to the latest stats, chances are 87% that any Wikipedian on the English Wikipedia is male (and we just found out this month that in the Dutch Wikipedia, 94% are male). It would be definitely interesting to fund some research on this specific issue (how people react in AfD discussions to girlish-named-Wikipedians based on female gender assumptions). This week similar research was published on the use of the Wikipedia "Ignore all rules" policy in AfD's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-03-25/Recent_research
2013/3/31, Risker <risker...@gmail.com>: > On 30 March 2013 22:39, Daniel and Elizabeth Case > <danc...@frontiernet.net>wrote: > >> >> >Thank you for sharing this Jane. It's amazing that it's still such an >> issue but yeah, a great example of how deeply >rooted our presumptions >> are. >> >> This actually happened to me, in a way, with one now long-departed >> Wikipedia editor. Despite a female-suffixed username*, I assumed this >> editor was a male because she was a flagrant asshole in some AfDs in a >> way >> that (in my experience) only men ever are. I was actually stunned to find >> out she was indeed a she. >> >> Daniel Case >> >> *As most of us know, username-based gender assumptions cut both ways. >> Users Hersfold and Nancy (see the explanation on his userpage) are both >> men, yet regularly deal with new editors assuming based on their names >> that >> they’re female. And I know they’re not the only ones. >> >> >> > Hersfold and Nancy aren't the only ones. I've almost come to assume that > if a username "sounds" feminine, it's probably attached to a man. Almost > every editor I know whose username ends in an "a" is male. And many > female editors have "male" sounding usernames. > > If Wikipedia has taught me one thing, it is never to assume anything about > the identity of the person on the other side of a username: not age, not > gender, not orientation, not geographical location, or a million other > things that we tend to use to categorize people. > > Risker/Anne > _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
