diversity

diversity

The male-female split on Wikipedia is almost inexcusable. I know that there's a lot of gender inequality around the world in general, but we can do a lot better.

But as for the other factors... are we sure that these are actually diversity issues? Common sense is kicking in, and it's telling me that people with no kids just have more time. People without partners just have more time. People in their early 20s just have more time. I'd even go so far as to say that people in academia just have more time.

I'm not sure if other people agree... but rather than arguing about it, it might be helpful to actually get some data about people's time use. Ask people with partners how much time they spend with them. Ask people with kids how much time they spend with them. See if we can find a correlation between someone's education status and how much time they're at work -- actually working.

Still, I agree more diversity is important. Just that it would probably need to focus more on ethnicity and gender.

Randomran21:44, 13 April 2010

I'm going to actually dispute this, while trying to find data: The quilting community (they're hot on my mind right now because they do online community building really really really well, and I went with Jay Walsh to a quilting show this weekend to see how it happens IRL) does a tremendous amount of stuff online: and their demographic is almost exactly opposite ours. When you hold the two against each other, I'm not sure the "no time/more time" argument holds water. :)

but Yeah, we need data.

~Philippe (WMF)21:53, 13 April 2010

Yeah, I freely admit that I'm going on "common sense", which is often wrong. I'm pretty busy these days. But let's try to find some data to understand what a reasonable level of parity might look like.

Randomran23:44, 13 April 2010

I was really disappointed to see the statistics for Wikipedia only centered around "life" statistics: age, sex, relationship status, etc. There were no statistics for ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, or ( a big one) socioeconomic status.

I even noticed when I setup my information for this part of the site ( I am new), there was no place for them to collect almost any information. It's extremely hard to analyze information that is not being collected. It could just look like this(all optional to answer):

Would you like to tell us more about yourself? What is your Ethnic back ground? What would you consider your race? If you have a religion, what is it? What is your level of income?

Msecrest105:10, 6 May 2010

I think we'd all like to see more stats like these. And I think there are opportunities for many groups, not just the Wikimedia Foundation, to do this type of research. For example, most of the current stats were collected by UNU-MERIT, an external organization. I think it was a good first effort with many opportunities for improvement.

A great example of research done with the Foundation and some folks on this wiki collaborating is the Former Contributors Survey Results. I would love to see many more folks organizing research efforts like these.

Eekim18:07, 12 May 2010
 
 
 

Let's separate this into two points. It sounds like we agree that diversity across the board is a good thing. The question is, what's the right number? For example, if you believe that single people have more time than married people, is it realistic to aim for a 50-50 split?

This is a hard question. It's worth looking at the data, but it's also important not to get lost in it. I would reframe it the following way: Can we create different opportunities to contribute to Wikimedia projects that require different amounts of time? For example, the cost of fixing a factual error in Wikipedia is a lot lower than it is to write a new article. If we can create ways to encourage activities that take less time, that may be a way to increase participation and improve diversity.

Eekim22:35, 26 April 2010

That's a really good point. I think we could attract volunteers who have less time to contribute, but it's a question of streamlining those tasks through stronger interface, and steering new users towards low commitment kinds of tasks.

It's actually the same problem that happens in MMOs. If there is stuff happening in the game every day, then how can the game be friendly to people who only have time to play on the weekends? Nobody likes checking in only to find that everything passed them by.

Randomran16:56, 27 April 2010

This is an interesting point about the diversity of editors, particularly the "part-time" editors as opposed to those who seemingly do Wikipedia as a full-time job.

One of my major complaints about Wikipedia is that the decision making process seems to fly by in about a week or so. For those with a short attention span and like to settle issues quickly, that may work, but for those of us who are older and have lives beyond Wikipedia, there are often discussions and "consensus building" decisions that fly by so quickly that often I don't even know about them until the "consensus" has been achieved. I put that word "consensus" in quotes because often consensus is not achieved... except for the obsessive/compulsive types or the full-time Wikipedia editors who have chimed in... and the few passers by that happened to see the discussion too.

I'll be honest here too, this is one of the reasons I have never even bothered to apply for adminship on Wikipedia, as I'm sure I would be shot down for my lack of participation and I don't want to become the full-time admin that some of these zealots insist upon. I have experience with the admin tools on other wiki projects, and I do enjoy some of the heavy lifting and grunt work that goes with access to those tools as well.

Still, what I hate even more is if I'm part way through some side project that I know will take some time to complete, and then some eager-beaver editor not only undoes that whole project but throws up a RfD, kills off the whole thing, and then leaves a rude message (if I'm lucky) on my user talk page. At the very least, this constant rush on decision making is one of the things that is such a turn-off for me on Wikipedia that I rarely even engage in policy decisions any more and certainly don't make any extra effort to see what is going on... as it seems as though my humble opinion on the matter will be treated as irrelevant. That is a turn-off and something that does drive editors away from the project.

Robert Horning13:08, 5 May 2010

This is a really thoughtful reply. I hope other people read it.

Randomran19:28, 5 May 2010
 

I agree with Randomran, and I also agree with the essential point. We need to have multiple levels of contributions, and all levels need to be valued and respected.

Eekim21:52, 5 May 2010
 

Robert Horning, the dynamic that you describe plays itself out in various ways and definitely has an effect on the volunteer editor's level of participation in various tasks. And I think that we may be introducing bias into our decision making and our processes if we have allow them to be designed by our high volume contributors.

We need to find a way to include as many people as possible. One of the main reasons that women give me for not participating more is "too busy". I think that it is not so much a complete lack of time to make any edits but rather something more along the lines of the situations that you describe.

This problem was something that the Wikipedia English Arbitration Committee was faced with on a regular basis for our internal work. It is not a good practice to always have the decision making framed by the person with the most free time so it is important to put processes in places to make sure that the work is spread out across the broad spectrum of the group (be it a committee, wiki, or article).

FloNight♥♥♥09:57, 12 May 2010

FloNight, could you elaborate or give some examples from ArbCom? Dealing with the time differences and commitment differences between editors is a difficult part of consensus building and discussion. The squeakiest wheel usually gets the grease... or at least gets more attention than the other wheels.

Randomran15:28, 12 May 2010
 
 
 
 

Few years ago I did a set of interviews about women in Wikimedia projects: http://millosh.wordpress.com/wikimedia/wikimedia-and-society/women-and-wikimedian-projects/

There are a couple of more interviews which I didn't publish, but the general point is: Working on Wikipedia is extremely stressful. If you try to count female Wikimedians which you know, much more prominent female Wikimedians are not from Wikipedia, but from other projects and WMF/chapters: Commons, Wikisource, WMF, various chapters and committees.

There are some possible solutions:

  1. Make community much more friendly (this is a goal of the Community Health TF).
  2. Make new projects which would start with clear rules about aggression and attract women there.
  3. Social network is important, too. Participating in Wikimedia projects in the sense of causal activity should be more comfortable for women.

The point is that we will always have such split (between 8:2 and 9:1 males) if we don't have a stable basis for getting new female editors.

Millosh21:53, 3 May 2010

Thanks for posting the interviews. Interesting reading. I agree that changes are needed to attract more women and also to attract other people that WMF projects are missing.

FloNight♥♥♥22:13, 3 May 2010

(BTW, I should continue with interviews. Anyone who is willing to participate should take the interview :) )

Millosh22:18, 3 May 2010

I'd really appreciate some deeper analysis of the aggression people are talking about. I definitely think it's there. But it's so hard to point at a specific problem. Maybe if we could get women to talk about actual experiences, we might be able to figure out what kinds of aggression that we can reduce.

Randomran02:55, 4 May 2010

See [1] for the charming list of "warning messages" that some users like to apply with special little programs for the purpose. Note that only the first level, complete with a falsely cheery "Welcome to Wikipedia!", is actually written to assume good faith. I've seen a case (User:Hammy64000) in which an editor was hit with four of the level 3 templates over a few edits. Note also that one of the programs automatically escalates the level of warning based on previous warnings, so that no human being need even take responsibility for deciding not to assume good faith.

Once bitten, if the newbie lashes back (e.g. User:James dalton bell), he can then be indefinitely banned for "incivility" (e.g. for calling "control freaks" the people reverting his edits and leaving these templates rather than explaining themselves.)

Wikipedia needs to distinguish newbies and protect their articles from deletion immediately after creation (there's actually a template for that but no newbie knows about it). We need to have a period during which their policy violations are politely explained. And even afterward we need to distinguish between the flagrant policy violations of vandals or those hostile to the project and those made by people with fundamentally honorable intent.

Wnt21:21, 4 May 2010

We don't want to get into trade-offs between quality and friendliness. Once we go down that road, we star a war.

A better solution is to distinguish newbies, and find ways to direct them towards good experiences. I suspect they'd have more luck expanding stubs than they would, say, trying to change a featured article. That's a good way to learn the ropes, too.

Randomran22:00, 4 May 2010

(Sorry for the delayed response, but I haven't looked in on this WMF project in a while.)

The problem isn't "friendliness", or being "newbie-friendly". The problem is that the major Wikimedia projects have attracted a lot of erstwhile contributors, & too many of the established editors abuse the template functions. In other words, they go for the easiest response towards other editors they may not have encountered before. I'm not only an Admin on the English Wikipedia, but I've editted there fairly frequently for coming close to 8 years now, & there have been times where I've been treated like a newbie or worse. (And I've thought about abusing the block function to force them to study very carefully my edit history & talk archives, but it hasn't been worth the possible negative lashback. Yet.)

There is a disturbing tendency for people to make all sorts of social faux pas online they would never even think of doing in their offline life. Not only talk down to newbies, but try to cop attitudes to established users for various reasons. I think this is what some mean when they complain about "incivility", although many think this is another way of saying someone used bad language. We should treat each other with the respect we expect when working together on a project; unfortunately, there are too many who haven't heard of the idea -- or dismiss it entirely.

Llywrch22:25, 2 July 2010

The bad attitudes between established users is a whole other set of problems. As much as I wish there were a general way to address all the incivility and "polite warfare", I think a cultural shift has to happen a bit at a time. Tackle each problem piece by piece. Improving our dispute resolution would help root out bad behavior among the most influential volunteers. Changing processes, so that they don't empower jackasses, that would help too. Finding ways to reduce newbie-biting, or at least taking away the excuses when people do it, that will help.

Otherwise, I agree with you entirely. The standard for incivility has become bad language, which means that all kinds of other disruptive and toxic behaviors are not just tolerated... they're actually rewarded.

Randomran01:01, 3 July 2010

I think you're right, and I think that fact is utterly deplorable, considering that the Orange pillar (4: Code of conduct and etiquette) states: Wikipedians should interact in a respectful and civil manner. Respect and be polite to your fellow Wikipedians, even when you disagree. The way to fix the civility problems is to fall back on this as the yardstick. 1. Is what was said respectful? Is it polite?

This is stated in WP:CIVIL in slightly different language: ...editors should always endeavor to treat each other with consideration and respect. Even during heated debates, editors should behave politely, calmly and reasonably, in order to keep the focus on improving the encyclopedia and to help maintain a pleasant editing environment. So two similar questions: 2. Is a given editor treating another with "consideration and respect"? 3. Is what a given editor is doing/saying helping to "maintain a pleasant editing environment"?

If the answer to any of the questions above is "No" (especially #1 and #2) then it is uncivil and should be dealt with. What will take some doing is getting a group of people together to change Wikipedia culture...but I think I just figured out how to do it.

This will require quite a bit of buy-in, but if we could get a significant number of current administrators to agree to band together to enforce the civility code as written, by measuring communications against the three questions outlined above, they can go out into the talk pages and start to make changes. In the beginning, this is going to require warnings and sanctions, until people start to realize that the expectations and standards have changed.

As everyone knows, I'm a civility apologist, so I'd be happy to coordinate implementation of any sort of project that is agreed upon to further the ends of making Wikipedia a kinder, gentler place to collaborate.

Noraft08:46, 5 July 2010

I would love to see it happen. I have my doubts though. I believe that you can make people polite at gunpoint, which is what we have now, but not sure you can make them respectful or pleasant. I also think the culture of terse/rough communication runs deeper than something that we allowed to happen. I think it might be representative of the population we have. I can't think of a geeky webforum that's nicer than Wikipedia. That's why moderators at geeky forums might focus on swear words and flame wars, but they can't stop people from throwing intellectual jabs at each other.

But if you had a proposal, I'd definitely sign on. The key is finding a way to get that "buy-in" that you're talking about... maybe some kind of viral campaign or something.

Randomran15:48, 6 July 2010

Inasmuch as there have been some thoughtful responses on an apparent problem in the en.wikipedia community, all of you have missed an important subtlety to my point. (Maybe it's just because I did a poor job of explaining it.) My issue is not that we Wikipedians ought to be more civil to each other (although there are times when the appropriate response is, "Fuck you"), but that many Wikipedians fail to even take a moment to learn the basics about the person she/he is debating with -- which leads to faux pas almost as glaring as an established editor putting a warning template on Jimmy Wales' talk page. (Not that Wales hasn't made edits I've considered stupid, but I wouldn't tell him as much with a template.)

If Wikipedians would first take a quick look at another's user page, associated talk page, & edit history -- all of which could be done in a matter of a couple minutes -- then use that information in how she/he respond to that person, I believe it would be an important step forward. Not only would people come to address one another more intelligently, but they would more likely write persuasive messages. And if enough of them did so on a regular basis, we might reach the point where Noraft's crusade for civility would be worth pursuing.

Llywrch04:51, 9 July 2010

I'm tempted to ban all or most message templates. They tend to be completely ineffective. New user templates tend to come off as impersonal, robotic, and unwelcoming. And templating the regulars? It's a disaster, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

It's been a while since I've been on Wikipedia... but I can't remember the last time I saw a template on a user page that was nice.

Randomran07:21, 9 July 2010

Ban message templates oriented to new editors at least.

I'm not supportive to the {{welcome}} used here (wiki strategy) to welcome new contributors.

KrebMarkt12:19, 9 July 2010
 
 

This reply is about a month late, but I did still want to answer. In response to "I believe that you can make people polite at gunpoint, which is what we have now, but not sure you can make them respectful or pleasant," I'd like to say it really depends on socialization. Most people who would tell you to fuck off on an online forum won't do that in person, because it is unacceptable in a RL social context. Those people also won't do it on Wikipedia, because it is unacceptable in that social context as well. Lawyers arguing in court don't make intellectual jabs at the judge, because they know the consequences. Similarly, if we raise the bar (really raise it, with enforcement; not just say it is raised) and start requiring respectfulness, you'll get it. Just like judges get it in court.

Getting buy in from admins is the harder part, I think, but not impossible.

Noraft04:17, 11 August 2010
 

This reply is about a month late, but I did still want to answer. In response to "I believe that you can make people polite at gunpoint, which is what we have now, but not sure you can make them respectful or pleasant," I'd like to say it really depends on socialization. Most people who would tell you to fuck off on an online forum won't do that in person, because it is unacceptable in a RL social context. Those people also won't do it on Wikipedia, because it is unacceptable in that social context as well. Lawyers arguing in court don't make intellectual jabs at the judge, because they know the consequences. Similarly, if we raise the bar (really raise it, with enforcement; not just say it is raised) and start requiring respectfulness, you'll get it. Just like judges get it in court.

Getting buy in from admins is the harder part, I think, but not impossible.

Noraft04:17, 11 August 2010
 
 
 
 
 
 

For me, the best way to describe the situation in general is that it reminds me of the climate for females in organizations in past decades...like in the 1970s or 1980s. It is not just a matter of hostility in general, or hostility directed at females specifically, although those are a piece of the problem.

Some of the issues can be broken down and explained one at a time. But it is more the situation where the sum is greater than the parts.

FloNight♥♥♥22:14, 4 May 2010

I think we should focus more on people who understand the content (not the formatting) To put it into context, Im 15 and I am a newbie of formatting, although i understand entomology, herpetology and uncertainty systematics quite well, although formatting kind of eludes me, however many of my friends of the same age dont understand the concepts however they do understand the formatting. So i think the results of the survey are dependant on formatting rather than free time

what do you think?

Special:Mike of Wikiworld18:35, 5 May 2010
 
 

I really would like to have more interviews. We know from the 2008 survey that there are few women contibuting to Wikipedia, but there might be more reasons for that than we imagine.

Lyzzy22:22, 5 May 2010
 
 

Speaking as a male, I feel the problem now is too many female editors.
As males, we assume every other editor is male. Therefore when someone damages our favourite article, we will naturally respond as males, namely that damage had to have been both intentional and malicious. Our testosterone is boiling over at this point.
Occasionally, in these cases, the editor was female, and the "damage" was inadvertent and unintentional.

I know from personal experience if you engage in a little friendly banter with a "male" counterpart who is actually female, all sorts of trouble will ensue. It never occurs to that female editor that I am a male who believes himself to be conversing with a second male.

I have thought for a long time that there is a very simple solution to this problem.
The IDs for female editors should be displayed in pink. Label the girls as girls.
Then the boys will know when they are dealing with a girl, and will respond accordingly, which is to say, more nicely.
Now the girls are being knocked about as though they are boys. They are not accustomed to that and they really don't like it.

99.237.208.13102:48, 6 May 2010

Frankly, everyone should be treated with a little more respect. It's a very small subsection of males who respond to that kind of banter. And many men can play that game, but it doesn't mean that it leads to a more productive or enjoyable experience.

Randomran04:19, 6 May 2010
 

99.237.208.131 I thank you for your honesty - you describe exactly the culture that I meet on Wiki: guys having guy-type banter because they assume all editors are male. No malicious intention just an honest mistake. As a girl, I can tell you the pink label for girls thing just aint going to fly. Is there anything else Wiki could do to remind you that you are in a mixed environment? Pink labels for everyone, maybe? A reminder at the top of the editing box that this is a mixed gender environment so play nice?

Dakinijones11:23, 9 May 2010

Thank you 99.237.208.131 and Dakinijones for telling about your personal experiences on wiki. Getting these type of first hand accounts is helpful. Taking the discussions from a theoretical to real life examples reminds us that this is not merely a process driven exercise but is in fact meant to make the community stronger and our end products (articles) better.

Some of our editors are elderly and are not accustom to having young people speak with disrespect to them and I see this cause problems sometimes. And people with professional degrees can be surprised when the discussion are not of a professional nature but rather more of a ruckus at times. So I agree with Randomran that showing all editors more respect is important.

FloNight♥♥♥10:11, 12 May 2010

Let me echo FloNight's thanks. I also think your point about the elderly is important. We need to hear more experiences like these.

One way to make this more clear is social features, specifically more detailed profile information with pictures/avatars that are more prominently displayed in the appropriate places. It would be an interesting experiment to see whether this affected people's behavior toward each other. I would definitely think twice about my choice of words if the person I was responding to looked like my grandmother.

See Proposal:Social Interaction Features for an expansion of these ideas.

Eekim18:17, 12 May 2010

Those are all good points (the grandmothers/elderly thing). I've seen this play out on Chowhound. Most chowhounds seem to be baby-boomers, but I've seen a couple of people self-identify as in their sixties or seventies, alongside pleas for less-rough language. Most people accommodate them: most people don't actually want to offend others, and will try to stop once they're aware that's what is happening.

I've also just read Flo-Night's comment about Wikimedia feeling like the seventies and eighties (from a gender perspective), and ITA, that's exactly what it feels like. Not at every moment in every way, but there are definitely echoes.

Sue Gardner00:48, 17 June 2010
 
 
 
 
 

I think we should focus more on people who understand the content (not the formatting) To put it into context, Im 15 and I am a newbie of formatting, although i understand entomology, herpetology and uncertainty systematics quite well, although formatting kind of eludes me, however many of my friends of the same age dont understand the concepts however they do understand the formatting. So i think the results of the survey are dependant on formatting rather than free time what do you think?

121.216.63.820:44, 5 May 2010

Hi Mike, and welcome! I think most of us would agree that in general, we want to encourage people to focus more on the content and less on the tools. We're not there yet, but we're working on it, and I'm sure there are other ways we can encourage this.

Eekim21:54, 5 May 2010
 

I agree with you totally Gus

71.237.33.3615:30, 6 May 2010
 

Housewives with college degrees have lots of time and the skills to edit, they just are using them here.

Fred Bauder19:06, 7 May 2010
 

I think it is very important to note that everyone has the same amount of time to edit Wikipedia: 24 hours a day. After that, everything is choice, driven by how we prioritize. What we're really talking about is pushing Wikipedia higher on people's priority list. When someone says "X group has more time" what they are really saying is that X group is more likely to have less high-priority time commitments, and this makes them able to prioritize Wikipedia in such a way that they can edit more than other groups. One would assume that a married 31-year-old female air traffic controller with three children will prioritize Wikipedia editing at such a level that it may not get a single minute in the average day. A 19-year-old college student majoring in IT might prioritize it higher.

So then your questions are:

  • How can we cause Wikipedia to be time-prioritized higher in general?
  • How can we cause Wikipedia to be time-prioritized higher in groups where we lack diversity?

A major question underlying the above is: What affects time-prioritization of Wikipedia against other time commitments?

I actually am the managing partner with a management consulting firm and would be happy to do some pro bono work for the Wikimedia Foundation in this research area if it is interested.

Noraft03:41, 8 May 2010

Thanks, Noraft. This is an important point.

It would be wonderful if you would do some research in this area. It would be even better if you could coordinate that with folks who are interested here on strategy wiki.

As a way to frame it, I'd encourage you to think about the Wikimedia movement as your client rather than the Foundation. This, after all, is about movement priorities.

Eekim18:20, 12 May 2010

That would be fine as well, as long as I'm coordinating with a person or group of people officially representing the movement in some way. I'll be attending the Wikimedia Manila annual meeting Friday. Maybe I'll bring it up.

Noraft19:09, 12 May 2010

I'd recommend coordinating via Village Pump, possibly creating a Task force. And yes, it would be great if you brought it up at the upcoming meeting.

Eekim21:56, 12 May 2010

It looks to me that this point

So then your questions are:
How can we cause Wikipedia to be time-prioritized higher in general?
How can we cause Wikipedia to be time-prioritized higher in groups where we lack diversity?

is exactly the wrong one. It assumes that Wikimedia is the centre of the world and that it is entitled to valuable time of valuable people.

If a time-pressed person would decide to devote some valuable time to a Wikimedia project this person is very likely to find that this was a pure waste as the valuable content added fell prey to the normal Wikimedia processes and is gone or perverted quickly.

The whole approach sounds very much like Greece struggling with a budget deficit, crying out "give us more money, we need it badly!"

Why not focus on a strategy that aims at achieving the goals of the movement, rather than on trying to poor "good time after bad time". - Brya 06:28, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Brya06:28, 13 May 2010

"It assumes that Wikimedia is the centre of the world and that it is entitled to valuable time of valuable people."

I disagree. If we want more contributors, we have to make people want to contribute more than they want to do other things, since time is finite. Anytime someone does an activity that takes time, they've spent that time doing something that precludes them doing anything else with that time (i.e. you can only spend from 3pm to 4pm on May 12, 2009 watching television once). If we can get people to contribute to Wikipedia in place of the half hour they might have spent playing Sudoku or watching TV, that's a net gain all around, in my opinion.

The bottom line is, if we need more contributors, both the people and the time have to come from somewhere.

Noraft09:33, 13 May 2010

I would appreciate not to see "more contributors" vs. diversity and that is the reason why I like your way to ask your questions. As a longtime editor I know that there is always movement and fluctuation within each wikimedia project. That is a proper way avoid stagnation. And only trying to increase the number of contributors may ignore that different people bring in different thoughts and ideas, which in sum are important for every movement.

Lyzzy17:26, 13 May 2010
 

Exactly. If the purpose is to have more contributors, then it is logical to ensnare people by any means available ("we have to make people want to contribute more than they want to do other things, since time is finite.") However, that does indeed assume that "Wikimedia is the centre of the world and that it is entitled to valuable time of valuable people."

It all depends on what the purpose is:

  • more contributors
  • more diversity among contributors
  • more knowledge contained in Wikipedia (or other projects)
  • a higher proportion of knowledge in Wikipedia (etc)

The strategy to be chosen depends on the purpose. If all that is wanted is more contributors then it is obvious to seek those whose time is least valuable; they have it to spare. Aiming at those with valuable time just to crank up the numbers of 'contributors' is really desperate (and ruthless). - Brya 05:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Brya05:53, 14 May 2010

More diversity among contributors requires more contributors. We can't make the current contributors more diverse; they are as diverse as they are, and the Wikimedia movement has stated that they aren't diverse enough. If you want a greater percentage of any particular demographic to edit Wikipedia, those people must be recruited (hence, more contributors). And to recruit those people, you'll have to make them want to edit Wikipedia more than they want to do something else that currently occupies a part of the 24 hours in each of their days. So you still need to figure out how we can cause Wikipedia to be time-prioritized higher.

Think of it this way: Right now, somewhere, there is a person whose contributions to Wikipedia would enrich it because of her diversity. She does not currently edit Wikipedia, which means Wikipedia is of zero time-priority to her. The 24 hours in each of her days are taken up by activities she finds more important (which is ALL activities). If you want her to edit Wikipedia, you have to get her to time-prioritize Wikipedia higher than something--anything--in her day.

This is a simple case of time economics. Right now, Wikipedia is "over-represented" by under-30 Caucasian males. If you want a higher proportion of females, people over 30, people of various ethnicities, etc., there are only three ways to increase that proportion: get a bunch of the over-represented group(s) to leave, get a bunch of the under-represented groups to come, or some of both. As it isn't inclusive (nor within the goals of the Wikimedia movement) to ask people to leave because of their race, age, or gender, we're going to need to get more contributors in under-represented groups to sign up. But before they do that, they have to want to contribute more than they want to do something else.

Noraft16:00, 14 May 2010

QED. A lot of "have-to's" based on assumptions, in turn based on the central assumption "Wikimedia is the centre of the world and [...] entitled to valuable time of valuable people." It all sounds very desperate and very ruthless, indeed. - Brya 06:23, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Brya06:23, 15 May 2010

That's a very cynical way of looking at it. Yeah, there are valuable people who are not interested, but we're not going to kidnap them. I think we're talking about the valuable people who *are* interested, but they might be limited by the way Wikipedia is organized at present. If time is money, there's definitely a ton of people who would participate in Wikipedia if it were half the cost. That's just common sense.

Randomran14:55, 15 May 2010

It looks like realism to me. When I encounter those who focus on a desired outcome and then plan to deploy activity but ignore the actual problem I am saddened. A parallel case is the bad reputation of Wikipedia in academic circles; there are those who want to organize a PR-campaign to polish up the image, while in reality the quality of Wikipedia is very uneven, with articles ranging from very good to pretty horrible. It is possible to spend any amount of time, money and effort in activities that will not help the actual situation, or even make it worse. - Brya 06:04, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Brya06:04, 16 May 2010

I know you probably thought you were making an analogy, but it really just seemed like you were changing the subject. There's nothing unrealistic that lowering the cost (in time) of something will cause more people to buy it (volunteer their time).

Randomran06:28, 16 May 2010

Talking about changing the topic! There are only a few cases where "lowering the cost (in time) of something will cause more people to buy it (volunteer their time)." will apply, as in "working with LiquidThreads costs 4× as long as the regular way, so I will only rarely bother". In most other cases the analogy is pointless.

Of course there is a real cost (in money) in contributing anything at an encyclopedic level, but there is not much that would reduce that cost. It might be possible to prevent the increase of cost added by the community. - Brya 05:36, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Brya05:36, 17 May 2010

There's a lot we can do to reduce the cost of contributing. Basically, anything that makes it easier or faster, and anything that reduces wasted effort.

Randomran06:20, 17 May 2010

Well, a lot depends on what is meant by "contribute". The costs of contributing content at an encyclopedic level cannot be much influenced by anything done within Wikipedia. But, yes, the cost in time for a user working off a list of tasks-to-do, or of things-missing can probably be reduced. However, it is not unlikely that this will add to the real costs for those who belong to the first group. - Brya 05:20, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Brya05:20, 18 May 2010

Making editing easier should lower the cost for everyone, really. You can't find anyone who really thinks that citation templates are the best way to handle research.

Randomran14:56, 18 May 2010

Well, if that is what you believe ... - Brya 06:53, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Brya06:53, 19 May 2010
 
 
 
 
 

Deploy activity? I've just asked a question: How are you going to get that native Hawaiian who is playing World of Warcraft to decide they'll play for 30 minutes less today, and contribute to Wikipedia? I challenge you to actually answer that question rather than deploring it. Or are you saying that right now, we don't need any more contributors (diverse or otherwise)?

Noraft06:53, 16 May 2010

As I pointed out several times already, it is the wrong question (to ask, to answer). Strategy is about finding the right questions. - Brya 05:40, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Brya05:40, 17 May 2010

I fail to see "How do we get more people from more cultures to participate?" is the wrong question to ask when diversity and participation are two of the stated goals of the movement. Because that's what "How are you going to get that native Hawaiian who is playing World of Warcraft to decide they'll play for 30 minutes less today, and contribute to Wikipedia?" is really asking.

Noraft06:10, 17 May 2010

Maybe if you decide to focus on Hawaiians you might lose at the same time grip on Norwegians which is hopefully not the goal of Wikipedia and not meant by diversity. If Haiwaiians are happy playing more WoW and less contributing to WP (hypothetically of course), I am fine with it. Diversity in my opinion can only mean to be as open to all cultures as possible and not willingly and unwillingly hinder one group from contributing, so to speak staying neutral. I should not mean to focus on the trophies we not yet have collected. Or should it?

134.76.223.216:09, 17 May 2010

I don't think anyone was saying "let's reach out to one group and exclude everyone else". Really, the issue is that the vast majority of Wikimedia volunteers are young white males from English-speaking countries. The goal is to reach out / open up to a lot of different groups.

Randomran18:15, 17 May 2010
 

If I start a club tomorrow, and make it "open to all cultures as possible," that doesn't make it diverse. Diverse is about actual representation, not openness.

The Wikimedia Foundation has already targeted certain cultures/areas for development and are giving grants for development in those areas. So talking about whether particular groups should be targeted is moot: they already are.

My questions relate to how you get someone who is not a contributor to become one. Besides time-prioritization, there are also access factors: they've got to already be computer users. Then they've got to be internet users. Then wikipedia readers. Before those steps are taken, contribution is not possible.

Those who are already habitual internet users are more likely to time-prioritize Wikipedia contributions higer. I bet we could come up with a list of factors that make contribution more likely. Market research can do some pretty amazing things, like tell what occupations and hobbies make someone more likely to be a contributor. Even what sorts of products they own may predict contribution to Wikipedia.

To me the problem is simple (solution less so): We need more diversity and participation. This will require getting more contributors in groups that are underrepresented. That in turn requires getting people in said groups who are not currently contributing to contribute. These people already fill their day with other activities. We need to figure out how to get them to add Wikipedia to their lives. Adding 30 minutes to a 24 hour day formerly occupied by other things requires removing 30 minutes of another activity (whether that be spending less time doing something, or spending less time doing nothing doesn't matter...that 30 minutes has to come from somewhere).

The Wikimedia Foundation is targeting various groups through local chapters. I'm a member of Wikimedia Philippines. If the Wikimedia Foundation does research, and finds some ways to increase contribution, then gives that information to all the chapters, I highly doubt that Wikimedia Philippines efforts here will hamper the efforts of Wikimedia Norway.

Noraft10:40, 18 May 2010
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I am _so_ late to this conversation. But I am interested in this topic, so I will contribute anyway.

It's actually a fact that females, at every age, are more time-constrained than men. That's been repeatedly proven by all kinds of studies, including very rigorous time-journal-keeping ones. Essentially it's because females, on average, spend more time care-taking for other people than males do: looking after kids, looking after aged parents and other family members, and so forth. Women also typically spend more significantly time on housework than men do. I can't recall specifics, but typically in middle-class and upper-class families the gap is significant (hours per day); in working-class families the gap is still present, but slightly less so (essentially because the working-class man works more at home than the middle or upper class man, not because the working-class woman works less at home than middle or upper class women). This is all well-documented across many cultures. It is also well-documented that on average, men spend more time and money on their leisure activities than women do. So, upshot: it is definitely true that women have less time to edit the Wikimedia projects, relative to men. There may be some unusually egalitarian cultures in which that is less true than average (e.g., maybe the Scandinavian countries) -- but in general, it is a cultural fact.

Philippe's quilting example is about something else, I think -- and this is where it gets slightly more speculative. Women do obviously have _some_ time for leisure pursuits. And they are probably disproportionately expending it outside Wikimedia. (What I mean is, if the average man spends let's say 0.009% of his free time editing the Wikimedia projects, the average woman might spend 0.0000001% of hers. Those are made-up cartoon stats.) I assume that's because men and women are socialized to be motivated by different things, and the motivators that are offered by Wikimedia are disproportionately valued by men relative to women. It's easy to speculate about specifics:

  • In general, women are socialized to develop quilting-type skills rather than computer-type skills. People like doing stuff they're good at.
  • It is possible that quilting is a particularly female-friendly environment -- e.g., maybe it's considered okay to have kids around, so it blends more easily into some women's lives. Editing the Wikimedia projects might be tough with kids underfoot.
  • It is possible that quilting offers more of the social rewards that women have been trained to value -- e.g., friendship, companionship -- compared with Wikimedia.
  • Women are socialized to caretake for others. "Quilting" may offer opportunities for that -- bringing wine, sharing food. Wikimedia may be less conducive for caretaking.
  • Men are socialized to be comfortable with argument. Women are socialized to value harmony. "Quilting" may be less argumentative than "Wikimedia."
  • Men are socialized to be confident. Women are not. One of the major impediments cited by readers who do not edit is that they feel they have nothing to contribute. "Wikimedia" may require more confidence than "quilting."
  • Women, because they have more responsibilities inside the home (caretaking, housework) may feel less inclined to enjoy home-based leisure activities. Wikimedia editing is likely most done at home. For people with lots of home-based responsibilities, 'leisure' may mean leaving the house -- eg, maybe quilting at the house of a friend.
  • Women are socialized to value other people's opinions. Editing Wikimedia is still a non-mainstream pursuit. Quilting may receive, in general, more social approval.
  • We know that people like to do things that they perceive as also done by "people like them." Therefore, if Wikimedia editing is majority male, that creates a vicious circle in which women likely perceive it as not done by "people like me" -- thereby making them less likely to do it.

This list is super-fast and not entirely serious, but you get my drift. Basically, I am saying that there is a boatload of real-world, outside-our-control reasons why women edit less than men. Because they have more demands on their time than men do, because they place a lower priority on their own leisure activities than men do, and because the rewards of editing Wikimedia are non-intentionally (not by design) are more appealing to men, in general, than women. Therefore, it seems to me that we will never achieve 50-50 editing parity: there are too many factors at play that we cannot influence. But, I do believe we can tweak our incentive structure, buy offering more rewards for women to edit, where possible, and taking away impediments to women editing, where possible. That would, I hope, bring us closer to balance.

Some quick examples of rewards:

  • Create messaging asking people to help us. In general, women are socialized to respond to requests for help.
  • Do more thanking -- more barnstars, etc. In general, women are socialized to appreciate being thanked.
  • Offer more opportunity for interpersonal relationship building. Offer mentors, meet-ups, etc. In general, women are socialized to enjoy personal interactions.

Some quick examples of impediments:

  • Continue removing usability barriers. Women are socialized to be less tech-comfortable than men.
  • Reduce curtness, especially with new editors. Women are socialized to be un-confident, to obey the rules, and to value harmony. Disharmony disproportionately drives away women.
  • Find ways to support varying levels of time engagement. This is discussed I think elsewhere in this thread, and it makes sense. If women are time-constrained, and Wikimedia rewards heavy investment of time, that will disproportionately disincentivize women's participation.

Final caveat: I'm talking about women in general; nothing I have said here is necessarily true of any one particular woman. Women vary widely; men do too.

Sorry this is so long -- LOL. I came to the strategy wiki to engage on the goals/priorities conversations, and got sidetracked here even though the conversation's really old! I'll participate more in the goals conversation over the coming few days, I hope.

Sue Gardner20:38, 15 June 2010

ha! I just reread Philippe's quilting comment, and he was actually talking about _online_ quilting communities, which debunks all my face-to-face stuff. But most of what I wrote is still generally applicable, I think :-)

Sue Gardner20:43, 15 June 2010
Edited by another user.
Last edit: 21:09, 15 June 2010

I think you're right it is still applicable. I also think the face to face stuff is important as well. With no scientific (or for that matter very unscientific) studies I do feel that the women who are in the community tend to value "personal" interaction more. Whether that's meetups, skype, IRC or just personal email conversations I feel they like to understand a bit more about the people they are working with then the men do.

The combination of online work with some offline interaction (even rarely) can increase the trust and respect level greatly. Of course that's speaking very broadly and there are obvious exceptions, as a man for example I highly prefer a lot of those personal connections as well. I know you had a post on Foundation-l... oh a month or so ago about how you had met one of the commentators people thought was being rude/abusive and therefore looked at him a different way because you had seen him to be much less so in person. I think it is things like that that are great examples. I know that I felt much more connected to the community after my first meetup and I think more interaction like that could be good both for women and men. Editing to replace sig, edited logged out

Jamesofur 21:04, 15 June 2010 (UTC)21:02, 15 June 2010

Thanks Jamesofur; I agree with you.

And it's funny -- I wouldn't necessarily say that the women currently active on Wikimedia are particularly representative of their gender. (I hope that in saying that, I am being offensive to neither the women on Wikimedia, nor women in general ;-)

I do think it's possible that --even so--- some of them may, sometimes, display gender characteristics that are overrepresented among women generally -- e.g., as you say. they may be better at personal interaction. But I don't think we can assume they are generally representative of their gender.

Which is totally fine. In my view, the women active on Wikimedia today are in a similar position to the women who were starting to break through corporate glass ceilings in the eighties. (My mother was one of those --she was the first female principal in her public school board--, and I've worked with plenty of them -- they were all one generation ahead of me, so they were typically my bosses and sometimes mentors.)

There were a couple of things about those women that seemed to me to be characteristic // common to them all.

1) They weren't representative of 'typical' women. It's hard to define or even imagine what a typical woman is, but regardless, by definition, those early pathbreakers were unusual. For many, that meant they were unusually smart or dedicated or focused. (One of them, the first female mayor of a major Canadian city, had this line: "Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult." Ha ha.) And some of them had characteristics that made them more-easily-integrated into corporate-male-majority circles, relative to more gender-typical women. For example, they might have a personal style that tended more towards authoritative than warm.... they might be more inclined to show anger rather than fear ..... they might tend to be less harmony-focused and less conflict-averse ..... they might like sports, or pretend to like sports, etc. etc. etc.

Similarly, I would say the women currently active on Wikimedia might overrepresent "typical Wikimedian" characteristics, more-so than "typically female" characteristics.

2) Those pathbreaking women in the eighties were often expected to represent all women and women's interests, which many of them _really_didn't want to do. They wanted to be perceived and evaluated based on their unique skills and characteristics and qualities. But because there were so few of them, they were often expected to represent all women, which many of them resented. (The same is true for any 'diversity' characteristic, of course: at the CBC for example, journalists from visible minority backgrounds often struggled with expectations that they would have special insight into their community-of-ethnic-origin -- which many did not have, and did not want to develop.) It was complicated: they wanted more women around in part so they would themselves be normalized... but they did not necessarily want to make increasing-female-representation their own focus of work.

I think the same thing is true, to some extent, for women on Wikimedia. Probably most would be uncomfortable speaking on behalf of 'all women,' and I expect that many of them would be happy to have a large volume of female participation in the projects, because it would free them to be 'just a person,' rather than 'unusual due to gender.' Free software communities talk a fair bit about this issue --- for example, in this classic essay by Val Henson here: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/

I am not disagreeing with anything you said, just commenting a little -- I will probably stop banging on about gender here soon, but I do find these issues really interesting :-)

Sue Gardner20:08, 16 June 2010

I would really love for someone to do a true systematic study of motivations and barriers for both male and female contributors. I know that Wikisym this year is talking about having a meeting about researching Wikipedia; maybe I can find an ethnographer or something that I can really push towards this.  :-)

~Philippe (WMF)20:27, 16 June 2010

Yeah, I would love that too. (And I am always in favour of research.) But honestly, there is a lot that's already well known and documented -- this is in no way a unique problem, and our circumstances WRT gender aren't that unusual. For example, there's lots of overlap with open source communities challenges, and lots of overlap with females-in-technology challenges generally.

Kirrily Robert's done lots of good writing, as have other LinuxChix and WikiChix people.

Some semi-random interesting reading.....

I think we need to begin acting on what we know, and expanding some of the experiments that have already begun. Lots of it is obvious work, it just needs some focused attention :-)

Sue Gardner21:53, 16 June 2010

Aye I agree, more research (especially wiki oriented) would be great. All I basically have it my own uninformed mind ramblings :)

Thank you for the links, starting to work through them now but very interesting it really is an interesting issue but I think it is the time to look at it and I feel there have to be ways to help it along in a more diverse direction and that is by far the biggest thing since there is definitely economies of scale making it easier as we go.

Jamesofur05:33, 18 June 2010
 
 
 
 
Edited by author.
Last edit: 01:28, 17 June 2010

I think that there are four three major barriers to entry on Wikimedia projects, and I don't feel that they are terribly different for women or men.

1) Usability: If you can't figure out wikicode, you can't edit to any substantive degree. It's as simple as that. Wikicode has grown ever more complex over time, but that's only because it has gained much needed functionality. A combination of two (user selectable) separate editors for Wikimedia projects might solve this, if that were possible: a normal editor, with standard wikicode, and a WYSIWYG editor (shutters), to which new accounts default.

2) Cabal: New users feel like they're being treated as inferiors by established users. They feel that their opinions aren't valued, and that their edits are patrolled. They're right:P. I do this to all newbies I encounter. I try to be polite about it, and I try to AGI, but I don't automatically trust new users (AGI is en.Wikinews's version of AGF. It's different than AGF due to the demanding nature of factchecking news). They usually don't know what they're talking about, and they may well accidentally mis-edit a page and require reversion. That's just the nature of being a newbie.

However, I recall being a newbie, and I didn't like how I was treated. I almost left Wikinews due to the rudeness I encountered, and the sheer, overwhelming weight of the bureaucracy on Wikipedia weighed down on me until I eventually quit editing (beyond minor copyediting). Simply being polite to new users would go a long way to fixing this problem, IMO.

3) I completely forgot: I have no idea what I was planning to write here, but it was awesome, I assure you.

4) Bureaucracy: As mentioned above, Wikimedia's (in particular Wikipedia) level of red tape has become so extreme that you need to sign forms in triplicate before you're allowed to edit any non-backwater page. Whatever happened to "the only rule is that there are no rules"? There are so many rules that new users feel overwhelmed.

Barriers aside, my feeling is that the gender divide is caused almost entirely by two things: 1) women not having as much free time, and 2) women just not seeing the point of participating in Wikimedia projects. These projects are set up with a reward structure similar to those in MMOGs: "increase your online wang" (edit count), "grind XP to level up" (gain admin power), "grind rep" ('win' community discussions *eyeroll*), and "camp spawns" (watch articles of your choice, revert whenever possible in order to show you're good at anti-vandalism). I'm not sure if you're familiar with MMOGs, but they are traditionally geared toward OCD males... and looky there! That's Wikimedia's prime target demographic as well;).

Removing the "grind" from Wikimedia projects, if that's possible, and revamping the reward structure so that it appeals to people that aren't OCD college age males should be our main priorities. I have absolutely no idea how that could be accomplished. For the record MMOG developers are having the same issues. They want to appeal to mass audiences, but are stuck with a total worldwide subscriber base of ~40-50 million due to the OCD nature of their games. Anyone who doesn't tend toward twitchy behaviour finds MMOGs boring in the extreme. The developers would like to change that and expand their audience... but how?

Gopher65talk21:20, 15 June 2010

This is all really interesting -- and some of it is totally new to me. I'm going to do more reading on MMOGs -- feel free to point me towards useful stuff if you know any :-)

(Side note but also interesting -- the book CyberChiefs: Autonomy and Authority In Online Tribes, by Mathieu O'Neill. He studies primitivism.com, Daily Kos, Debian and us, and has some interesting observations about gender.)

Sue Gardner21:58, 16 June 2010
 

Wow...I can't believe I'm joining this discussion just now! :P

While I wouldn't disagree that the "grind" really has a lot to do with editors joining (and subsequently staying) on a Wikimedia project, I think it also has a lot to do with how the projects' image, both internally and externally, has changed over the last ten years. In my part of the woods, people look at the projects as simply resources, and that's it. They see no incentive to edit because they think that people will be doing those things for them, and that's the mindset that we're working to change. On the Tagalog Wikipedia, we have an active campaign to encourage anonymous users and casual readers to edit, and though I'm not sure just how successful the campaign is, I can say that at least we get the message across.

At least here, MMORPGs are popular because not only do we make lots of them every year, and not only are they a billion-peso industry because of all the material that are being sold, but because they are capable of 'clicking' with the population. Now the question is how to make Wikimedia 'click'.

Sky Harbor (talk)03:51, 18 June 2010
 
 

FWIW, everything that Sue says about men vs. women is probably true. But it's also completely incorrect in the following sense: Everything that women suffer in exclusion, men suffer in silence. There are lots of men who reluctantly tolerate the environment on Wikipedia. Don't mistake their (perhaps socialized) ability to do so as a sign that they prefer it. Everything that would make Wikipedia more 'female friendly'--WYSIWYG, clearly organized tasks, a non-ruckus consensus process, dealing with aggressive editors, etc would make the lives of men a lot easier too.

Just because a man fights, doesn't mean he likes to. Just because a woman quilts, doesn't mean that's her preference. We should focus on improving the product universally and not be overly tempted to believe in these very tempting and even accurate gender dichotomies. Flame wars never built an encyclopedia.

I'll just say this for emphasis: user interface, user interface, user interface. When editing Wikipedia is as intuitive as sewing a quilt (which is not even that intuitive), women will find their way in droves, and the men who have already populated the site will like it that much more for many reasons.

69.142.154.1007:07, 10 August 2010
 

I find this [1] post on foundation-l today very interesting. Because if the arguments in the post are turned around, reducing the "skills required to participate" and making it more attractive to a more divere set of editors to participate, would make the editor community converge exponentially towards diversity.

See also:

http://www.slideshare.net/terriko/how-does-biology-explain-the-low-numbers-of-women-in-cs-hint-it-doesnt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/mf_compsci

Dafer4500:32, 18 June 2010
 

I'd like to see how our demographics vary with general internet demographics. Having every gender and ethnicity represented will be fantastic, but we need to see where we are relative to general internet usage. I don't know the statistics off the top of my head, so we'll use Gardnerian made up cartoon stats, but if 70% of internet users are male, but 90% of Wikipedia editors are male, we know that we're even over-represented for the general population. Similarly, we may find that we're actually doing better than general internet demographics in some areas, and if so, we may find it useful to study why. If we can identify variables that we have some control over, we might use those to improve participation of other target groups.

Noraft14:04, 18 June 2010

Since 2005, the number of females and males online in the United States has been pretty close. See 2005 stats.. As this article points out, the lower percentage of females that use the internet needs to be adjusted to account for there being more females than males in the US. 2007 US stats shows more females on line than males. Being aware of these stats, I have long felt the difference in the ratio between male to female editors on Wikipedia English is a product of the WMF and Wikipedia culture rather than a biological gender trait or a more general socialization of English speaking women.

More current general world wide stats from the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future. Again, the overall gap is more narrow than found on WMF projects.

Of particular interest is the finding that more females keep a blog on the internet, and more females display photos on the internet. IMO, women engaged in these activities would be prime target for recruitment into WMF projects. At the present time, WMF is not doing a good job capturing the energy and interest of these women. (As Phillipe points out earlier in this discussion, some specialty topic dominated by females like quilting have a strong internet presence.)

IMO, women and other under represented groups will need to be invited/recruited, and the culture of WMF projects will need to be adjusted to accommodate them when they arrive if we will retain them as editors. Some of these changes are happening already such as the focus on making the sites more user friendly for people that are less technically savvy. But other changes will be needed, too.

It will be important to acknowledge the discomfort that current users will feel when proposals are made for changes. And we need to help everyone adjust to the idea that changes are truly needed in order for WMF to accomplish its mission.

FloNight♥♥♥16:44, 18 June 2010

Here's a link that might be interesting for people here -- a gender breakdown of user-contributed-content sites. (It actually labels itself as analyzing gender on social networking sites, but I don't think that's accurate -- or at least, I do not myself consider sites like Flickr and YouTube social networking.)

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/who-rules-the-social-web/

What's interesting is that the majority of user-contributed-content sites are female-majority -- including e.g., Twitter, Ning, Flickr, Facebook. Some of the reasons for that are obvious, and don't apply to us and the work we do. But still, it gives me some hope :-)

Sue Gardner22:04, 18 June 2010
 

I'd be willing to bet that we could use articles of interest to women to introduce them to editing. For example, if we went to a large online quilting community and asked for their help in fixing up quilting related articles on Wikipedia, we might see an infusion of editors that represent groups that are under represented on Wikipedia (in this case, women). Existing online groups focused on a particular topic could have a WikiProject just for their area of interest. "Hey ladies, we need help with our quilting articles. We'd like to make a proposal for you to start WikiProject quilting. It benefits your online community, because that will get a mention in one or more of the quilting articles (e.g. in a "Quilting Associations" section or an "External Links" section or something) which will drive traffic to your website, and it helps us because of the expertise you bring in creating and maintaining quality articles."

Something along those lines might be worth thinking about.

Noraft00:03, 19 June 2010

Yes, targeting specific groups to help cover our gaps in coverage seems a sensible approach. How would you envision this happening? Would it be informal invitations? Or would there be an organized effort to invite/recruit target groups and assist them in editing?

The difference (at least in theory) could be the amount of official staff support that the initiative/project receives.

If it is a formally organized effort, would this be an initiative that falls under Public Outreach or a separate program?

IMO, for this type of effort to be truly successful as a long term initiative it will need organized staff support to help maintain the momentum as volunteers come and go.

FloNight♥♥♥08:35, 19 June 2010

I disagree.

Paid staff are there to support and empower the volunteers so the volunteers can create and distribute the content.

Staff work on the software framework and foundation (easier editting, better support for other writing systems).

Volunteers do outreach. There is no "under-represented" group anywhere that doesn't have at least one representative here. That person is the start of outreach to their community.

Filceolaire10:12, 19 June 2010
 

The way I see it, the staff would not be doing the actual outreach work in terms of contacting outside groups. Instead, the work of staff would be helping provide the support structure and organization for the initiative. Currently, many of our wikiprojects and other initiatives fall apart because volunteers lack the time, and knowledge or skill about how to manage a project. An editor being enthusiastic about a topic does not mean that the person has the ability to lead a project. Having a staff person act as a resource would be helpful in many instances.

FloNight♥♥♥10:33, 19 June 2010

There's danger in assuming that the staff will "do" the work of outreach. I think (and I believe Frank would agree) that the role of the outreach staff is to, as FloNight says, create systems and processes by which the Foundation can support the work of the volunteers and work as a part of the community to do outreach. I really hope it doesn't become the "role" of the Foundation.

~Philippe (WMF)23:04, 19 June 2010
 

I think outreach can be done very effectively by the volunteers. You could basically set up target-specific WikiProjects that are not only tasked with maintaining articles on their topic area, but bringing in new editors. We could test this right now with existing WikiProjects. If it appears to work, we could then start creating WikiProjects in particular target areas.

For example, right now, I could go to quilting related Wikipedia articles, identify contributors who appear to have a good deal of knowledge about quilting, contact them and see about getting a WikiProject Quilting set up. Once it is set up, we have them recruit from outside Wikipedia.

I'm actually learning a lot about internal recruitment right now through my efforts with the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors for the May 2010 and July 2010 Backlog Elimination Drives that they are doing (which I am coordinating). We made some changes to our marketing program that has resulted in more than double the number of signups so far, and may be triple before the July drive is over. I'm fairly certain that some of the techniques we've used would work for any WikiProject.

I also think that the Foundation would do well to never forget that the number one social need of human beings is the need for approval. This is why Wikipedians have collectively dumped tens of thousands of hours into creating service awards, barnstars, userboxes, and other forms of recognition. WMF can (and should) use this to its advantage, and besides, every nonprofit organization should have a recognition program for volunteers. An award designed and bestowed by WMF would motivate volunteers to move mountains.

Noraft10:29, 21 June 2010

Two quick comments on this thread:

  • I think it would be a lot to ask someone to dive directly into a wikiproject: wikiprojects can be pretty daunting, because they require an understanding of Wikimedia editorial standards and practices which new people don't have. And I also think people need baby steps to determine if Wikimedia is right for them, before they commit to as more social/collective experience.
Just speaking out of my own experience, I would never have participated in a wikiproject as a first step, regardless of how interested I was in the subject matter. My first edits were fixing small obvious mistakes --like typos and grammatical errors-- I needed to get my feet wet safely, before I was ready to make any kind of real commitment.
So upshot: I think that contacting subject-matter experts is a good idea. People are much likelier to contribute in an area they have expertise in. And people are much likelier to edit if they are invited. (I think that's particularly true for women.) But I wouldn't start people off with a wikiproject: I would let them make some small non-controversial edits to get their feet wet first.
I wonder if someone should do some experimentation -- just trying to recruit subject-matter experts to edit in their sphere. If it seems to work, we could talk about how to institutionalize support for it.
  • Regarding approval, I think Wikimedians are more motivated by approval/thanks from each other, rather than by approval/thanks from the Wikimedia Foundation. And we at the staff would be very happy to support volunteer initiatives designed to recognize and honour great work. Currently the only contest I'm aware of is the Commons Photo of the Year: if people wanted to self-organize to create additional contests/awards, I think that would be terrific. Be bold!
Sue Gardner18:49, 21 June 2010

I think WikiProjects as they currently exist are daunting to outsiders. What currently exists is not what I'm talking about, and maybe I shouldn't have used the word "WikiProject."

Nothing is daunting when you already know someone on the inside who says "This is our clubhouse. Here's the secret knock." And I think that's the beauty of WikiProjects doing outreach. You bring someone right in and surround them with warmth and Wikilove. Right now your new editors walk into a somewhat sterile environment where they don't know anyone. Of course coming into Wikipedia and immediately being confronted with WikiProject Assessment tables and to-do lists would put any new editor off, but put together right, a group of Wikipedians with expertise in a particular area tasked with outreach to non-Wikipedians with interest/expertise in that same area would do really well. You could actually run it in parallel with an existing WikiProject (in the current sense of the term). Call the outreach side a WikiClub (or something). WikiClub Quilting brings in quilters, gets them interested and acclimated, then when they are ready, they can cross the threshold into WikiProject Quilting and do the more advanced stuff, but they're always welcome to hang out at WikiClub Quilting and help the new folks, or talk with the old ones who are doing outreach.

Regarding approval, respectfully, Sue, how would you know whether Wikimedians are more motivated by approval/thanks from each other, rather than by approval/thanks from the Wikimedia Foundation? You're on the inside. I'm out here with everyone, and I can tell you that the Foundation is seen by many editors as a ghost-like entity whose presence is felt, but who is rarely seen. We interact with admins, not Foundation staff (which is how it should be, but creates a feeling like seeing a Foundation employee is like seeing a supernatural creature, or bigfoot). Whether WMF likes it or not, there is a perception of hierarchy, and above admin, bureaucrats, and stewards, there are WMF staff. None of which I had ever interacted with (to my knowledge) before engaging in discussion here.

I think you'd prefer Wikimedians to be more motivated by approval/thanks from each other than from the Wikimedia Foundation. As a CEO myself, so would I if I was in your position; its less WMF resource intensive. But I can tell you that whether they would admit this or not, any Wikimedian given a special citation only awarded by the Foundation, for work that was of special significance to the Foundation, would likely be more proud of that award than any other they received. I'm not saying you should have staff start photoshopping awards...just be aware that a WMF Award would be a powerful motivator, if the time comes for WMF to mobilize the troops for something.

Noraft20:26, 21 June 2010
 

You know, the more I think about this, the more I see benefits. If we take our WikiProject Quilting example above, when they do outreach, they're coming into contact with fellow quilters, making a connection, and when that non-Wikipedian creates their account, they'll get a Welcome! message from someone they already know, which will dramatically cut their bounce rate. Further, they'll make their first contribution by editing a subject they love, in an environment with helpful people who are like them (fellow quilters) to answer their questions and help out. And as they'll be joining WikiProject Quilting as soon as they become editors, they'll belong to something, which will help increase their feelings of belonging to Wikipedia as a whole.

Noraft19:44, 21 June 2010
 
 
 
 
 

Glad to see some good thoughts from the foundation on this. Outreach is a big part of it. But fixing the community is another big part: more accessible, easier learning curve, more friendly.

Randomran23:29, 20 June 2010

Sorry to revive a dormant thread. But this issue bugs me and I think it is more complex than the base numbers. At different times I have been active in very different parts of Wikipedia, and yes the mainstream vandal fighting, new page patrol and anything to do with deletion are I believe overwhelmingly male. Copy editing, article review and typo fixing are I think more balanced, or at least less extremely imbalanced. Of course on t'web no one knows you are a dog and some of our pinkest most "feminine" userpages and signatures have turned out to be middle aged men. But I've met some of these people on Skype and at meetups,

But I'm pretty sure that the actual article writing process is rarely the problem.

Equally the technology re infoboxes and all that malarky, we have editors who just fix bits of content, and as long as they are doing good work they are unlikely to get bitten. But newpage patrol and recent changes patrol are very male, and the race to find the right deletion tag for new articles can make the article creation process somewhat intimidating.

WereSpielChequers21:42, 23 July 2010

Well as it is now the English wiki article creation process is a sort of "Secure a drop zone for contents".

KrebMarkt08:10, 24 July 2010
 
 

Daft (or perhaps not so daft) suggestion here. Female contributors are well represented elsewhere on the net. Facebook, LinkedIn, Livejournal, Myspace, 2nd Life.

Can we not design surveys on those which don't specifically mention the surveying organization (common to do market surveys "blind" as it prevents bias) but explores what motivates and leads to editing or involvement on those sites and how users on those sites see editing on other sites (such as Wikipedia and A.N. Other). Request if they would mind following up the survey, and offer a choice of rewards - paid-for credit on sites where users have credits, etc.

The aim would be to survey MySpace users and learn what motivates both genders and various broad age-bands to edit, also look at common motivators and demotivators on Wikimedia and see how MySpace users feel about those, and ask MySpace users how they see editing on (eg) Facebook and Wikipedia to get cross-confirmation and direct perceptions. Do the same on 2-3 other major sites. We might get to see what women and other minority groups feel and how Wiki editing is seen by others who do contribute on other sites.

We may not be able to influence the balance of web use in a culture but we should be able to find out why some sites have a better gender balance than us and what motivates female contributors on those sites (or demotivates on ours) that we're not doing, or providing.

(Useful resource: Benchmarking)

FT2 (Talk | email)16:47, 24 July 2010

Having such surveys would surely be a good idea. I would be interested to know the results. But its probably not easy to find the right questions to ask. Wikipedia is different from a social network like Facebook. It has different aims. So it will be difficult to compare it and transfer the results. On the other side I am sure that the non WYSIWYG way of edition articles produces a barrier that is especially disliked by women.

134.76.223.209:14, 26 July 2010
 

I think a survey is a good idea too. But keep in mind that this is a VERY well-studied topic and we are unlikely to discover anything new.

According to a 2005 study, men are more "actors" and women are more "interacters" online. But even in the interaction space, Women are different. Women like to use the internet to interact with family, friends, and colleagues. Men interact too, but more with "special interest groups". (I guess that would include Wikimedia, since we're not family or face-to-face friends.)

There's some more recent stuff, since the eruption of social networking.


This one is more of the same... although an interesting/promising factoid is that UK women create more content. I wonder what kind of content that is, and if it's compatible with Wikimedia's vision?

A survey couldn't hurt, but it almost isn't necessary. There is a TON of literature out there about this topic.

Randomran16:37, 26 July 2010

There's a lot of research we could datamine. Not having read it my question would be, upon reviewing it, does it target our area of interest as outlined in my previous post?

I suspect they would give a lot of useful background, many answers, and inform our survey of areas to focus on, or questions that are already well answered elsewhere by specialist studies - but they wouldn't replace it. Our focus is quite specific.

FT2 (Talk | email)18:05, 26 July 2010

Seems to me we just need to get more specific. There might be some scholarly papers about different types of content creation, and how it differs by gender. But there's always some value in a survey in being able to ask specifically about Wikipedia.

Randomran15:56, 28 July 2010
 

More allready existing information on the topic. Have not read it myself, but thought I better link to it from here as there seems to be quite a lot of interest around this topic and someone might be interested in digging into it.

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2010/Women_on_the_Web_How_Women_are_Shaping_the_Internet

Dafer4522:46, 29 July 2010