Hi Greg, A few comments if you're going to go with "proportion of male vs female authors of the source material used as citations in arbitrary articles":
* Please differentiate between sex (female, male, ...) and gender (woman, man, ...). My understanding from your initial email is that you want to stay focused on gender, not sex. * Unless you have reliable sources about the gender of an author, I would not recommend trying to predict what the gender is. (As you may know, this is not uncommon in social media studies, for example, to predict the gender of the author based on their image or their name. These approaches introduce biases and social challenges.) * Re your question about whether WMF has resources to look into this question in-house: I can't speak for the whole of WMF, however, I can share more about the Research team's direction. As part of our future work, we would like to "help contributors monitor violations of core content policies and assess information reliability and bias both granularly and at scale". [1] The question you proposed can fall under assessing bias in content (considering citations as part of the content). I expect us to focus first on the piece about violations of core content policies and information reliability and come back to the bias question later. As a result, we won't have bandwidth to do your proposal in-house at the moment. Sorry about that. I hope this helps. Best, Leila [1] Section 2 of our Knowledge Integrity whitepaper: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Knowledge_Integrity_-_Wikimedia_Research_2030.pdf On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 9:57 AM Greg <thenatureprog...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Kerry, > Those are all very interesting ways to look at this. I was thinking mostly > along the lines of your first bullet point, but I'd be interested in > research in any of those areas. > > Thanks, > Greg > > On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 5:00 AM <wiki-research-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org> > wrote: > > > Send Wiki-research-l mailing list submissions to > > wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > > wiki-research-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org > > > > You can reach the person managing the list at > > wiki-research-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org > > > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > > than "Re: Contents of Wiki-research-l digest..." > > > > > > Today's Topics: > > > > 1. gender balance of wikipedia citations (Greg) > > 2. Re: gender balance of wikipedia citations (Kerry Raymond) > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > Message: 1 > > Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 20:19:18 -0700 > > From: Greg <thenatureprog...@gmail.com> > > To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Subject: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations > > Message-ID: > > < > > caoo9dnty+odo5oqrmzeg1nze-kynylwntd6acheytbyegk8...@mail.gmail.com> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > > > Greetings! > > > > I was looking for information about the gender balance of Wikipedia > > citations and no one I've asked knows of any work on this topic. Do you? > > > > I think this is an important question. > > > > Here's what I've learned so far: > > > > Wikipedia citations are currently in the form of text strings. There is > > also an initiative to place citations in an annotated structured repository > > (wikicite). I do not know the current status of wikicite or if/when this > > could be used for this inquiry--either to examine all, or a sensible subset > > of the citations. > > > > My perspective is that understanding the gender balance is necessary and > > urgent. The balance could be better, the same, or worse than the citation > > balances we already know, and the scale of the effect is quite large. > > > > Is this a line of inquiry that the wikimedia/wikicite community is > > interested in pursuing? If so, what is the best way to get started? Does > > the WMF have the resources and interest to look into this matter inhouse? > > > > Thanks for your thoughts. > > > > Greg > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > Message: 2 > > Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 13:53:45 +1000 > > From: "Kerry Raymond" <kerry.raym...@gmail.com> > > To: "'Research into Wikimedia content and communities'" > > <wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org> > > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations > > Message-ID: <00ed01d5589d$33e31ed0$9ba95c70$@gmail.com> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > > > Could you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by the gender balance of > > citations? > > > > Are you talking about: > > > > * proportion of male vs female authors of the source material used as > > citations in arbitrary articles> > > * the quality/quantity of citations in biography articles of men vs women? > > * the quality/quantity of citations in articles that are gendered by some > > other criteria (e.g. reader interest, romantic comedy vs action film)? > > > > Kerry > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] > > On Behalf Of Greg > > Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2019 1:19 PM > > To: wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Subject: [Wiki-research-l] gender balance of wikipedia citations > > > > Greetings! > > > > I was looking for information about the gender balance of Wikipedia > > citations and no one I've asked knows of any work on this topic. Do you? > > > > I think this is an important question. > > > > Here's what I've learned so far: > > > > Wikipedia citations are currently in the form of text strings. There is > > also an initiative to place citations in an annotated structured repository > > (wikicite). I do not know the current status of wikicite or if/when this > > could be used for this inquiry--either to examine all, or a sensible subset > > of the citations. > > > > My perspective is that understanding the gender balance is necessary and > > urgent. The balance could be better, the same, or worse than the citation > > balances we already know, and the scale of the effect is quite large. > > > > Is this a line of inquiry that the wikimedia/wikicite community is > > interested in pursuing? If so, what is the best way to get started? Does > > the WMF have the resources and interest to look into this matter inhouse? > > > > Thanks for your thoughts. > > > > Greg > > _______________________________________________ > > Wiki-research-l mailing list > > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > Subject: Digest Footer > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wiki-research-l mailing list > > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > End of Wiki-research-l Digest, Vol 168, Issue 11 > > ************************************************ > > > _______________________________________________ > 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
