I don't think it's necessarily a question of "is the community more abrasive towards women?". Apart from specific pockets of misogyny that seem to have been the catalyst for some of the recent ArbCom matters, I don't think it's likely to be the case in general. I expect the community is probably equally abrasive to men and women. The better question is "do women want to be in an abrasive environment?". I think the answer to that is "mostly not". Analysis of women's interactions usually shows a strong tendency towards consensus building. This is very different to the Bold-Revert-Discuss culture of Wikipedia. Women are much more like to Discuss-Discuss-Discuss.
Kerry _____ From: wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of WereSpielChequers Sent: Wednesday, 18 February 2015 6:52 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] a cautious note on gender stats Re: Fwd:[Gendergap] Wikipedia readers My comment "It could even test the theory that the community is more abrasive towards women. We know that we are less successful at recruiting female editors than male ones, I'm not sure if we have tested whether we are more successful at retaining established male editors than female ones, and if so whether we are losing women because they are lured away or driven away." Seems to have been shortened to me saying that "the community is more abrasive towards women". Before people continue using that quotation and attributing it to me, may I point out that I regard it as an interesting theory worth researching, not as a proven statement. I don't doubt that we have a massively male skew in the community, I have seen too many pieces of evidence that all point that way to doubt that. I am also fairly sure that women, and I'd add gays are more likely to be attacked by trolls and others from outside what I regard as the wikipedia community than straight white men like myself. But I don't know if the community is more abrasive to women or in what way it is, and I would be interested to see more research done in that area. Regards Jonathan Cardy On 17 Feb 2015, at 08:00, Jane Darnell <jane...@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Claudial, I responded to your questions in the text - hope it's readable. Jane ____WereSpielChequers wrote: "the community is more abrasive towards women" I think he is simply referring to earlier discussions where the conclusion was "the community can be perceived to be abrasive" and this conclusion, in yet other discussions led to this conclusion, which should be rephrased as "the community is more often perceived as abrasive by women than by men" ____Kerry wrote: "But I would agree that if an organisation sets a target (25% women in this particular case) and then does not put in place a means of measuring the progress against that target, one has to question the point of establishing a target." ___Claudia (responding to Kerry): I think one has to question the point of not putting in place a means of measuring the progress... and also ask why, if the issue is a high priority (allegedly, one might add, in speeches at meetings, in interviews with the press...) this organisation does not fund any top level research... - or does it? I think here you are forgetting about the "holy shit graph" which shows a reduction in the number of active editors over time. This is much more of a direct threat to the Wikiverse than the gendergap, which, as has been stated before, is only one of many serious gaps in knowledge coverage. Oddly, I think it is one of the easiest of all "participatory gaps" to measure, but we seem to constantly get stranded in objections to ways that previous editor surveys have been held, leading to the strange situation of never actually being able to run even one editor survey twice. Since we have not yet been able to establish any trend at all, we are only comparing apples to oranges. ____Aaron wrote: "higher quality survey data" __Claudia (responding to Aaron): ...how does one recognize low quality..? Hmm. I just looked and I couldn't find the criticism of the various editor surveys. Is this stashed somewhere on meta? Or do we need to sift through reams of emails until we find all the various objections? Objections galore, as I recall. ___Claudia: which "related participation gaps" do you have in mind here? Off the top of my head, some of these would be 1) lack of geographical editor coverage such as active editors in rural areas or even in whole states such as Wyoming or South Dakota and the whole "Global South participation problem" (the Global South participation problem is even helped along inadvertently by the new read-only "Wikipedia-zero" effect); 2) lack of topical expertise on subjects that technically don't lend themselves well to the Wikiverse, such as auditory fields (musical production) or visual fields (how to paint, how to make movies, how to choreograph motion) 3) lack of topical expertise on subjects that legally don't lend themselves well to the Wikiverse, such as articles about artworks under copyright that cannot be illustrated in an article; 4) lack of topical editor coverage on subjects previously shut out - there is still unwillingness by a whole group to re-enter the Wikiverse after being banned (earlier shut-outs such as blocking whole institution-wide ip ranges for vandalism or whole areas of expertise such as groups of writers for their COI editing, carry with them a history of anti-Wikipedia sentiment that lasts a long time in various enclaves) ___Claudia: and, again, in which language version(s)? That's easy - the languages that we can technically support but don't yet have Wikipedias for and the languages for which we don't even have the fonts to display them. best, Claudia On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 7:41 AM, <koltzenb...@w4w.net> wrote: Hi WereSpielChequers, Kerry, Aaron and all, ____WereSpielChequers wrote: "the community is more abrasive towards women" this may be stats expert discourse, but let me show you how the question itself has a gendered slant. imagine what would happen - also in your research design - if it read: "the community is less abrasive towards men" - how does this compare to the first question re who are "the community"? and again, re phasing ten years in 2011 and four years on, which language version(s) are hypotheses based on? ____Kerry wrote: "But I would agree that if an organisation sets a target (25% women in this particular case) and then does not put in place a means of measuring the progress against that target, one has to question the point of establishing a target." I think one has to question the point of not putting in place a means of measuring the progress... and also ask why, if the issue is a high priority (allegedly, one might add, in speeches at meetings, in interviews with the press...) this organisation does not fund any top level research... - or does it? ____Aaron wrote: "higher quality survey data" well, and how does one recognize low quality and how come it is so low? and "quality" by whose epistemological aims and standards? "causes and mechanisms that drive the gender gap (and related participation gaps)" which "related participation gaps" do you have in mind here? where would these gaps be situated in terms of areas of participation? and, again, in which language version(s)? best, Claudia ---------- Original Message ----------- From:aaron shaw <aarons...@northwestern.edu> To:Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research- l...@lists.wikimedia.org> Sent:Mon, 16 Feb 2015 20:50:17 -0800 Subject:Re: [Wiki-research-l] a cautious note on gender stats Re: Fwd: [Gendergap] Wikipedia readers > Hi all! > > Thanks, Jeremy & Dariusz for following up. > > On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 5:58 AM, Dariusz > Jemielniak <dar...@alk.edu.pl> wrote: > > > As far as I recall, they did a follow-up on this topic, and maybe a > > publication coming up? > > Sadly, no follow ups at the moment. > > If we want to have a more precise sense of the > demographics of participants the biggest need in > this space is simply higher quality survey data. > My paper with Mako has a lot of detail about why > the 2008 editor survey (and all subsequent editor > surveys, to my knowledge) has some profound limitations. > > The identification and estimation of the effects > of particular causes and mechanisms that drive the > gender gap (and related participation gaps) > presents an even tougher challenge for > researchers and is an area of active inquiry. > > all the best, > Aaron ------- End of Original Message ------- _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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