The statistic comes from querying the English Wikipedia database. This
includes a table of user preferences which itself is where the on-wiki
preferences stores information like preferred gender.
Here's the SQL for anyone interested (it includes other redundant
stuff, I was re-using something I already had to hand):
SELECT user_name,
user_editcount,
LEFT(user_registration,4) AS reg,
GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT ug_group SEPARATOR ' ') AS grps,
GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT CONCAT(up_property,':',up_value)) AS prop
FROM user u
LEFT JOIN user_properties ON up_user=u.user_id
LEFT JOIN user_groups ON u.user_id=ug_user
WHERE user_name="''' +u +'''"
AND up_property="gender"
GROUP BY user_name
ORDER BY user_editcount DESC;
(Where "u" is a variable iterating over the listed voters.)
As others are pointing out, the statistic of 1/590 is a fact, but it
does not have a context of the sample space. I.e. we know that using
user-preferences is not the way that most people declare stuff about
their identity. If userboxes are more popular that might be an
indicator, however it is difficult to draw any conclusions based on
any retrospective metrics like these, which has been the norm for
discussions on whether there is systemic bias on Wikipedia for many
years, invariably resulting in few solid actions being taken.
Perhaps one meaningful conclusion is that the fact that in this vote
there was a lack of process to ensure that systemic bias was avoided
or measured. It would be better if votes such as Arbcom's or trustee
elections took active steps to ensure diversity in the voting
community, and the candidates standing (I believe this is already an
active process for inviting WMF trustee candidates or appointed
posts). Having the measurements of diversity would then be a good test
as to whether the communications plan was effective and the strategic
targets for improvement were being met.
Fae
On 9 December 2014 at 13:25, Katie Chan <k...@ktchan.info> wrote:
> On 09/12/2014 13:14, Fæ wrote:
>>
>> Checking the votes at
>>
>> <https://vote.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?limit=1000&title=Special%3ASecurePoll%2Flist%2F392&dir=prev>
>> against the English Wikipedia database, shows an interesting
>> statistic. Of the 590 votes cast only *one* voter has an account
>> marked with their gender as female.
>
>
> I think your data here is flawed because I count at least multiple voters
> who have their account preferences set to be described using female
> pronouns. Are you actually querying English Wikipedia or Vote-Wiki?
>
> KTC
>
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> Katie Chan
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