Just a gentle reminder..that the work we did evaluating edit-a-thons and
workshops when I worked at WMF showed that they do not retain new
editors.[1]
They're good for getting people aware about Wikipedia - and people do edit
while they are at the event, but, newer editors rarely edit AFTER the
event, that is until the next event happens....so they aren't probably the
magic way to solve the gender gap. Even those that involve academics, etc.
I even evaluated my own edit-a-thons that I had implemented and saw the
same trend, much to my dismay.
However, providing quality mechanisms of education, outreach, and help can.
We see that with the Teahouse.
WMF told me a while ago they weren't going to invest in surveys,
programming, etc and that it was up to the chapters and the "community" to
take the initiative and be proactive. That was one of the biggest
challenges of my fellowship - while I worked on two successful projects
(Teahouse/WWC) and am very proud to have done that, I was really sad that
more research and direct outreach was not going to be implemented. I've
said it before and I'll say it again - I was broken hearted that I wasn't
going to do more direct outreach to groups, institutions, and so forth. If
we were able to make womencentric/diversity events part of institutional
change internationally I think we could have seen a larger impact - like
what GLAM-Wiki did. People go around and preach the gospel internationally
and now GLAM-Wiki is almost old news.. lots of people are doing it...
(Of course, WMF now invests in surveys and so forth via the Individual
Engagement Grants)
I wonder if having a chapter implement a survey for a specific language
Wikipedia or something would work? When I did my 2011 survey I did it on my
own, without asking anyone's permission. Now it seems everyone wants to
control who investigates what, but, being a community member helped - I'm
not some scientist from outside trying to put a microscope on a bunch of
Wikipedians...because I am one.
But, these ongoing mass-improvement and participatory projects by women
come and go based on the month ("oh it's women' history month...get out the
laptops and snacks!") and who is organizing. It's becoming more common -
but, we still aren't hearing about women getting together or lot lots of
women regularly editing. I still believe, based on Sue's thoughts, that not
every woman is going to want to edit Wikipedia on a regular basis outside
an event - just like not every man will. Some humans just aren't built to
enjoy it like we all do...
Sarah
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Evaluation_reports/2013/Edit-a-thons
and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Case_studies/WWHM
-Sarah
On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 9:34 AM, Tim Davenport <shoehu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In reply to Kerry Raymond's post...
>
>
> QUANTIFICATION
>
> If "all the studies on female participation come up with low percentages
> around 10%" but there are anecdotes of a significant undercount from
> Teahouse volunteers and such and if female participation at Wikimania
> approaches one-third, would that not seem to fortify my point that there is
> a need for reexamination of the magnitude of the gender gap? What is the
> exact magnitude of the female undercount (or the male overcount)?
>
> This does not even bring up the matter of dynamics — is the gender
> disparity changing over time, and if so, which direction is it moving?
>
> There is only one way to find this out: study, study, study, survey,
> survey, survey...
>
> That WMF has its own editor gender data from 2012 that it is not
> releasing, as has been intimated, is annoying. Still: why is the GGTF
> waiting for San Francisco at all? Why is quantification and surveying not a
> vital part of the task force's mission?
>
> That there is an editorial gender gap is beyond dispute. But how big is it
> really and how is it changing over time?
>
>
> PROACTIVE RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION
>
> So if edit-a-thons don't work, as you indicate, why is the WMF still
> spending money on them? Is it mere symbolism?
>
> I have noted from working with a college class at WP that short-term class
> assignments don't seem to create long-term Wikipedians. Students being
> students, they slam out the minimum required right before deadline and move
> along with their lives. I don't know what does create long-term content
> people, other than a passion about SOMETHING and a desire to share the
> information. Vandal fighters and quality control people may have a
> different motivation.
>
> Let's assume for the sake of the discussion that there is NOTHING that can
> be done proactively to pick the needles out of the haystack — that it is
> impossible for any bureaucratic entity to identify and activate the small
> fraction of 1% of people that will eventually become long-term Wikipedia
> volunteers.
>
> This would mean that the "needles" are going to self-identify by
> registering at WP and beginning work under their own volition. Therefore,
> logically, primary attention should be focused on identifying and
> cultivating "new editors" every day, nurturing the newbies as they start to
> navigate the technical and cultural learning curves. In which case, Ms.
> Stierch's "Teahouse" concept is 100% right on the money.
>
> And that's where the gender gap can be addressed, by making sure that
> every effort is made to teach and acclimate female newcomers in particular.
>
> As for edit-a-thons and outreach recruiting, I personally believe that any
> recruitment that is not focused on teachers and academics will probably not
> produce lasting results. I'm also pretty well convinced that long term
> Wikipedians are made one at a time.
>
> Tim Davenport
> "Carrite" on WP
> Corvallis, OR
>
>
>
> =========
>
> Kerry Raymond wrote:
>
> A. All the studies on female participation come up with low percentages
> around 10% plus or minus a few percent. Of course, it is possible that in
> all of the studies the women are choosing not to self-identify. It is an
> inherent difficulty in any study if people choose to not reveal information.
> But we know women make up large proportions of social media users, so if
> women’s participation in Wikipedia is actually higher than studies show due
> to reluctance to self-identify, it begs the question of why they are so
> unwilling to self-identify in the content of Wikipedia but not in other
> contexts. Either way, it points to some problem. The last Wikimania recently
> released data that does show a higher level of female participation, about 1
> in 3, I think. It would be interesting to see how the male/female numbers
> break down across the various types of attendees, e.g. WMF staff, Chapter
> members, event organisers, etc. My suspicion is that women are in higher
> proportion among staffers, chapters, etc and this skews the Wikimania
> participation. I don’t know how scholarships are awarded and whether women
> are at any advantage in that process.
>
>
>
> B. A very interesting research
> paperhttp://files.grouplens.org/papers/wp-gender-wikisym2011.pdf shows that
> women
> are less likely to survive the newbie stage than men. But, perhaps contrary
> to what many expected, their data does not suggest that women are more
> easily discouraged by being reverted (they show men and women’s survival
> rates in the face of reversion are similar) but that more women’s edits are
> reverted than men’s edits and this is the cause of higher attrition among
> women. This has caused me to wonder if women as newbies are more attracted
> to articles where the risk of reversion is higher perhaps because there are
> more policies to be considered (e.g. biographies of living people, noting
> that women are predominantly the purchasers of “celebrity” magazines which
> deal mostly in content related to living people). The paper does show that
> men and women edit in different areas (men are more likely to edit in
> geography and science for example) but the analysis is too high level to
> answer my question. The other inherent limitation in any study of newbies
> that there is nothing in the initial signup to Wikipedia that asks you about
> your gender (even optionally) so very few newbies are self-identifying as
> either male or female at that time. So, it’s actually very hard to study the
> non-surviving female newbies because you can’t find them. This often means
> our study of the experiences of newbies is based heavily on those who are
> still around later to be studied or surveyed which introduces survivor bias
> into the study. So this may be a consideration in relation to the findings
> of this paper. Interview studies keep pointing to women not liking the
> abrasive environment of Wikipedia. Civility is a part of that issue.
> Although I think it’s not so much about the use of specific words, but
> rather a general culture of aggression. The people who use the swear words
> are simply much easier to spot and hold up as examples of the broader
> problem than those who engage in equally aggressive behaviour but do so
> citing [[WP:Policy]] and use the undo-button.
>
>
>
> C. In relation to pro-active recruitment, I do a lot of that here in
> Australia, edit training and edit-a-thons. While some of the edit-a-thons
> have targeted women participants and are therefore predominantly women, edit
> training events are generally not so targeted and attract both women and
> men. From all of that I believe that women are not inherently disinterested
> in contributing to Wikipedia. However, these events do not seem to create
> ongoing editors (whether female or male) and this experience is not unique.
> A recent survey by the foundation found that this is the case all over the
> world. Generally, the one-event approach to edit training isn’t sufficient.
> Greater success seems to come from regular events usually in a
> university/college setting, but regular events are a challenge to resource
> with volunteers (we have other things that have to be done in our lives).
> Interestingly, most of the people who currently attend our sessions are
> middle aged and older. Many struggle with the markup; I hope the visual
> editor will address some of that problem. So I think we need to look at
> diversity in terms of age as well as gender. But I don’t think outreach is
> really the answer because it cannot be done at the necessary scale. It’s not
> that we need to have a team of mentors, we need everyone to be willing to
> help one another.
>
>
>
> D. One thing I learn from our outreach is that many of the newbies
> (male and female) have unpleasant experiences even during the outreach
> events as well as soon afterwards. Their edits are reverted (for what seems
> to me to be no justifiable reason), new articles being speedily deleted or
> splashed with messages about policies they don’t know about and don’t
> comprehend, or left in an eternal limbo of rejection in Article for
> Creation. These folks are all “good faith” and they are all newcomers but
> the policies of “assume good faith” and “don’t bite the newbies” are
> completely ignored. We have many editors who are very aggressive. I have no
> idea if they are just angry with the world as a whole, or actually enjoy
> bullying the newbies. While obviously there are benefits to a culture of
> mentoring, even when I am in hand-holding edit-training mode (about as
> mentoring as it gets and I provide my contact details off-wiki as well as
> on-wiki for any follow-up), it’s difficult for me to justify to them why the
> newbie’s edits are being undone because the edits simply aren’t that bad.
> The situation makes me very angry. It is not as if it is the same small pool
> of editors creating these problems where maybe one could try to take action
> against them. It seems that we have such a huge pool of aggressive editors
> that our newbies will randomly attract the attention of one of them. (Or it
> may be that some bullying personalities are actively on the lookout for
> victims and newbies are a soft target).
>
>
>
> So, all in all, I think if we need to go back to first principles “the
> encyclopaedia anyone can edit” and see that the aggressive nature of the
> community is working against this intention and seek to curb that
> aggression. I think curbing the aggression would result in more editors both
> male and female. So in that light, I would have to say that I find the
> ArbCom decision distressing as it appears to acknowledge and reinforce that
> the aggressive culture is both dominant and should continue to be so.
>
>
>
> Kerry
>
>
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>
>
--
Sarah Stierch
-----
Diverse and engaging consulting for your organization.
www.sarahstierch.com
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