THC Science

Gender gap task force: exploring and closing the gender gap on Wikipedia

Welcome to the Gender gap task force, a task force belonging to WikiProject Countering systemic bias. A task force consists of a group of editors devoted to the management of a particular issue or topic on Wikipedia. This page has been set up to ease coordination of our efforts.

If you'd like to help out in any way, please add your name to the list of participants.

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WP:GGTF

Scope

The aim of the task force is to identify gender bias on Wikipedia (including gender bias in articles, the selection of articles maintained, discussions, editor interactions, policies and implementation of policies), take steps to counter it, and raise awareness of how the gender gap can affect editorial and other decisions.

As WP:BIAS notes, a 2011 Wikimedia Foundation survey found that 8.5 percent of editors were women.^[1] The gender gap has not been closing and, on average, female editors leave Wikipedia earlier than male editors. Research suggests that the gender gap has a detrimental effect on content coverage. Articles of particular interest to women tend to be shorter,^[2] and women typically perceive Wikipedia to be of lower quality than men do.^[3]

Article selection based on gender bias

Wikipedia has a longstanding controversy concerning gender bias and sexism which has been associated with the selection of articles which are maintained in the open-source encyclopedia.^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9] Wikipedia has been criticized^[4] by some journalists and academics for lacking not only women contributors but also extensive and in-depth encyclopedic attention to many topics regarding gender. An article in The New York Times cites a Wikimedia Foundation study which found that fewer than 13% of contributors to Wikipedia are women. Sue Gardner, previously executive director of the foundation, said that increasing diversity was about making the encyclopedia "as good as it could be." Factors the article cited as possibly discouraging women from editing included the "obsessive fact-loving realm," associations with the "hard-driving hacker crowd," and the necessity to be "open to very difficult, high-conflict people, even misogynists."^[5]

Participants

Czar (talk · contribs)
Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs)
SlimVirgin (talk · contribs)
Gobonobo (talk · contribs)
Superbellymonster (talk) 03:29, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
GRuban (talk · contribs)
Samsara9 (talk · contribs)
Carolmooredc (talk · contribs)
Djembayz (talk · contribs)
DStrassmann (talk · contribs)
Piotrus (talk · contribs)
Geraldshields11 (talk · contribs)
The Vintage Feminist (talk · contribs)
BoboMeowCat (talk · contribs)
Obiwankenobi (talk · contribs) Interested in categories
Rosiestep (talk · contribs)
Mssemantics (talk · contribs)
SPECIFICO talk
Tutelary (talk · contribs)
kmccook (talk · contribs)
Mark Miller (talk · contribs)
Maximilianklein (talk · contribs)
Steeletrap (talk · contribs)
Kerry (talk) 22:19, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keilana (talk · contribs)
SusanLesch (talk · contribs)
Lightbreather (talk · contribs)
User:Robert McClenon
Scalhotrod (talk · contribs)

If you have any interest in editing Wikipedia by smartphone, I encourage you to read my essay, Smartphone editing. Thank you.

Tools

This user has earned the
100,000 Edits Award.

Requests for adminship and bureaucratship update
No current discussions. Recent RfAs, recent RfBs: (successful, unsuccessful)

This editor is a **Grandmaster Editor** and is entitled to display this **Lapis Philosophorum Editor Star** with the Neutronium Superstar.

Picture of the day

Heungseon Daewongun (1821–1898) was the title of Yi Ha-eung, the regent of Joseon during the minority of Emperor Gojong in the 1860s. Until his death, he was a key political figure of late-Joseon Korea. The Daewongun is remembered both for the wide-ranging reforms that he attempted during his regency, as well as for what was described by historian Hilary Conroy as "vigorous enforcement of the seclusion policy, persecution of Christians, and the killing or driving off of foreigners who landed on Korean soil". This silk painting of the Daewongun, now in the collection of the National Museum of Korea, was created by an unknown artist circa 1869. It is designated as a Treasure of Korea.Painting credit: unknown

Archive – More featured pictures...

Welcome New Editors! Please feel free to ask any questions on my talk page

Wikipedia can be a tricky place for beginners. I am happy to be of assistance. You may also find Wikipedia:A Primer for newcomers to be a useful introduction to editing. Another great place to get help with editing is the Teahouse, where I am an active host.

Call me Cullen, or call me Jim

My real name is Jim Heaphy. I have been contributing to Wikipedia since June 28, 2009. I became an administrator on July 23, 2017. I am committed to the principles of Wikipedia, including the neutral point of view, and try to improve articles in areas where I have some expertise or interest. I always appreciate constructive criticism.

As a child, I spent many pleasurable hours browsing the World Book Encyclopedia but never imagined back then that I would be an encyclopedia editor myself one day. Despite its problems in some areas, I truly think that Wikipedia is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and am proud to make my own small contributions to this worthy project.

I was born and raised in the Detroit, Michigan area and will always consider Detroit my home town. However, I have spent over 2/3 of my life in California, and am now thoroughly a Californian.

I worked myself through college slowly. I attended City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University. I graduated from the University of San Francisco with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1982. My major was Human Relations and Organizational Behavior.

I now live in Grass Valley, California, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. I am 72 years old, and am a married male with two adult sons. I have been self employed as a small business owner in the construction industry for nearly 30 years, and have been an occasional freelance writer and public speaker for decades. I am now semi-retired and do paying work only an hour or two a day.

My interests

I have a lot of interests, among which are American history, Abraham Lincoln, California, the history of mountaineering, the Sierra Nevada, Mount Shasta, the Arts and Crafts movement, Native American artists, San Francisco, wine, cooking, plein air landscape painting, photography, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, antique and classic cars, the history of Michigan, and Judaism. I am fascinated with American politics but try to keep it a small part of my editing. I am a book lover, and enjoy fact checking and adding useful references to existing articles, as well as writing new articles on notable subjects that interest me. Please let me know if signs of bias creep into anything I write.

I strive to be fair in my editing and broad about the kind of articles I work on. I am a Democrat, but wrote an article I'm very proud of about a Republican I admired, Norman Livermore. I am a Jew, but wrote an article about a Hindu religious festival, Kalpataru Day and a Russian Orthodox church, Holy Virgin Cathedral. I am an American, but have expanded articles about people from all over the world.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

When editing on Wikipedia, I always strive to make improving the encyclopedia my highest priority. I edit most often in areas I care about, but I also edit in areas I've learned about and become interested in through Wikipedia, especially in Articles for Deletion (AfD) debates.

I have been a member of the Sierra Club since 1976, and many of my early contributions to Wikipedia have to do with notable people and places associated with the Sierra Club and the mountains of California in some way. I am disclosing my club membership, but also want to state that I am not now nor have ever been an officer or employee of the club, and my contributions are my own, and not coordinated with anyone else. Over the years, I have become a generalist editor, and no longer focus in that specific area, although I still care very much about those topics.

I am self-employed in the construction industry, and provide a very specialized service on a freelance basis. I am partially retired but still enjoy working. My small business specializes in repair and maintenance of Solid surface and Granite countertops. I've done relatively little editing in these areas, with the exception of one related article I wrote, Oxide jacking. I discussed this article with other experienced editors, to be sure that I was on the right track.

I will always disclose and freely discuss any potential conflict of interest. I pledge that adherence to Wikipedia's Five Pillars and all applicable Wikipedia policies and guidelines will always come first for me as an editor.

I do some training and consulting about editing off-Wikipedia, but do not engage in any paid editing on Wikipedia.

User:ChesPal and User:AmCanDave

My wife edits Wikipedia under the username ChesPal, though she isn't as active as I am. She had an idea for her first article, she and I worked on it together, and developed it at the San Francisco WikiWomen's Edit-a-Thon. The article is Amish dolls. She has also written a second article, Shawnee Pottery, and has done a great job expanding existing articles William B. Ide Adobe State Historic Park and Lion Brand, with a bit of assistance from me.

My son David has begun editing Wikipedia, under the account AmCanDave. He has made some edits to Arlen Ness, with my assistance and guidance, as he has learning disabilities. He would like to do more editing, based on his own research and interests. I will assist him with Wiki markup, but his contributions are his own.

Antidote to drama

I like this perceptive essay on problematic Wikipedia editors, Observations on Wikipedia behavior, and recommend it to anyone who is interested.

Categories I've Created

Contributions to Featured articles

Sunbeam Tiger, Today's featured article for June 21, 2013, a photo, a very small contribution, but I am pleased to have made that contribution.
Walt Disney, Today's featured article for December 5, 2016 includes two photos I took.
Canadian drug charges and trial of Jimi Hendrix, Today's featured article for December 13, 2015, includes contributions to content which I'm proud of, although GabeMc deserves most of the credit for bringing this to Featured article status. I am just happy to have been part of the process.

Major contributions to Good articles

I have also done significant copy editing at Hotel Polen fire. Although I did little direct editing, I provided recommendations on the talk page, and ongoing advice to the most active editor at Gun show loophole.

I am proud of these articles, appreciate the input of other editors, and also, I invite any editor to pitch in and help improve any of these articles.

Articles I've written (I don't own them, I just started them)

Collaborations with other editors

Articles I've expanded, revised and/or added photos to

Found at Articles for Deletion, and helped to keep by improving

My record in Articles for Deletion debates

As of June 10, 2013, I have participated in 1528 Articles for deletion debates. I used SW's AfD Statistics Tool to analyze my participation in the 250 most recent deletion debates as of that date. Of the debates where there was a clear consensus, I was with the consensus 88.5% of the time. I recommended "Keep" 44.4% of the time, "Delete" 46.6% of the time, "Merge" 0.4% of the time and "Redirect" 8.5% of the time. I make a sincere effort to reflect Wikipedia's policies, guidelines and established consensus in my participation in Articles for Deletion debates.

My redlinks

Possible future article ideas. Feel free to discuss on my talk page, or write one yourself.

My DYKs

You can see them here.

My Barnstars, Badges and Awards

You can see some of them here. Others can be found in my archives.

News media coverage of my Wikipedia editing

Huffman, Jennifer, American Canyon man moonlights as Wikipedia editor; Increasing Knowledge, One Article at a Time, Napa Valley Register, March 2, 2014
Raskin-Zrihen, Rachel, American Canyon man researches, edits Wikipedia, Vallejo Times-Herald, July 7, 2014
Fu, Alison, Wikipedia enthusiasts convene at Berkeley edit-a-thon, Daily Californian, September 23, 2013
Young, Nora, The unsung heroes protecting Wikipedia from disgruntled Bachelor fans, Spark, March 18, 2018

Video of my presentation about the Teahouse

You can watch a YouTube video of my December 21, 2016 presentation at the Wikimedia Foundation office in San Francisco. I also gave this presentation at WikiConference North America in San Diego in October, 2016. I analyzed one month of conversations at the Teahouse.

Promotional templates

User box

Feel free to place this user box on your user page. {{WP:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_gap_task_force/gendergaptaskforce}} which creates

This user is a member of the
Gender gap task force
(GGTF).

Invite others!

Invite others to join! To perform a request, insert {{subst:Gender gap TF invitation}} into their talk page. This results in the following welcome message:

We invite you to join Gender Gap task force. There you can coordinate with users who are trying to identify gender bias on Wikipedia (including gender bias in articles, in editor interactions, policies and implementation of policies) and take steps to counter it. If you would like to get involved, just visit the Gender Gap task force. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me or other members of the task force.Happy editing, Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 16:37, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mind the Gap Award

To use this award paste the following template with your own message on the userpage: {{subst:Mind the Gap Award|1=Put your message here. ~~~~}}

		Mind the Gap Award
		Your message here.

To do

Improve biographies of women in the professions

Useful infoboxes to add: Infobox engineer, Infobox officeholder, Infobox artist, Infobox scholar, Infobox person, etc.

Improve "Resource", "Policy" and "Help" pages

Many resource pages on Wikimedia.org and English Wikipedia are outdated and/or need improvement.
Many policy pages need to deal better with issues of concern to women, particularly. Wikipedia:Civility, Wikipedia:No personal attacks, Wikipedia:Harassment and Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.
Many "help" pages need improvement so the language is clearer and less unnecessarily technical.

Categorization

Ensure that categories are used in accordance with the guideline above. Promote changes in the FA and GA criteria to ensure that promoted articles are correctly categorized. (Note: There is a main Category:Women and thousands of categories that have "Women" in their titles. There also are a couple thousand categories with "female" in the title.)

Write essay

Following this suggestion, write an essay on the problems women editors face, and how and whether Wikipedia's dispute-resolution processes can help. Consider ideas from this geek feminism page.

Possible affirmative action program

Over one year ago before completing her term of leadership for Wikimedia, Sue Gardner had set a policy goal for getting women enrollment at Wikipedia up to 25% by 2015. It is now evident at the start of July 2014 that this goal can only be reached, in a realistic sense, for enhanced women enrollment only if Wikipedia is willing to offer an affirmative action preference for women editors as an incentive to encourage participation in the future of a gender neutral version of Wikipedia. Ought Wikipedia to endorse an affirmative action program adapted to incentives for showing preference to edits originating from women editors in an attempt to rectify previous and current gender imbalances, and to do this in order to make a realistic attempt to attain enhanced enrollment levels for women editors at Wikipedia. These goals were set out by Sue Gardner in her 2011 NY Times interview.^[5] Ought some "level" of protection be determined as applied affirmatively to women editors (for some useful period of a few months or even several months). For example, there could be an affirmative strengthening of registered women editors by requiring that two editors be required to form consensus before being allowed to revert edits placed by women editors. Other forms of affirmative action preference could also be made available for discussion.

Resources

Gender Gap at Wikimedia page has many links to articles, research, discussion and action items. Some of the most relevant are below.
WikiWomen's Collaborative which includes Wikiwomen blog at Wikimedia
Gender gap strategy 2013 has related strategies
Gender Gap email list details
on Wikipedia Month Women on Wikipedia Month
Wikipedia:WikiWomen's History Month
Wikipedia:Workshop for Women in Wikipedia how to run workshops and who is doing them
Wikipedia:Teahouse A great place for new users to get questions answered
Wikipedia's main Help page
Wikipedia:Dispute resolution explains various Wikipedia processes

Related projects in other communities These will have useful information, but aren't necessarily organized by or run for Wikimedia communities.

Wikipedia Women, a Facebook page
Geek Feminism Wiki, a Wikia site
GeekFeminism, a blog
The Ada Initiative, a non-profit working to increase participation of women in open technology and culture

Related WikiProjects

Notes

^ "Editor Survey Report – April 2011", Wikimedia Foundation, accessed 7 January 2011.
^ Shyong (Tony) K. Lam, et al, "WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia’s Gender Imbalance", WikiSym’11, 3–5 October 2011.
^ S. Lim and N. Kwon, "Gender differences in information behavior concerning Wikipedia, an unorthodox information source?", Library & Information Science Research, 32(3), 2010, pp. 212–220.
^ ^a ^b Cassell, Justine (February 4, 2011). "Editing Wars Behind the Scenes". New York Times.
^ ^a ^b ^c Noam Cohen, "Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia's Contributor List," The New York Times. Found at The New York Times, January 31, 2011.
^ "Wikipedia's Women Problem". Nybooks.com. 2013-04-29. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
^ Wikipedia's Sexism Toward Women Novelists
^ Dunn, Gaby (2013-05-01). "Does Sexism Lurk?". Dailydot.com. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
^ Zandt, Deanna. "Yes, Wikipedia is Sexist". Forbes.com. Retrieved 2013-11-19.

[1] "Editor Survey Report – April 2011", Wikimedia Foundation, accessed 7 January 2011.

[clubhouse-2] Shyong (Tony) K. Lam, et al, "WP:Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia’s Gender Imbalance", WikiSym’11, 3–5 October 2011.

[3] S. Lim and N. Kwon, "Gender differences in information behavior concerning Wikipedia, an unorthodox information source?", Library & Information Science Research, 32(3), 2010, pp. 212–220.

[nytimes-4] Cassell, Justine (February 4, 2011). "Editing Wars Behind the Scenes". New York Times.

[nytimes_a-5] Noam Cohen, "Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia's Contributor List," The New York Times. Found at The New York Times, January 31, 2011.

[6] "Wikipedia's Women Problem". Nybooks.com. 2013-04-29. Retrieved 2013-11-19.

[7] Wikipedia's Sexism Toward Women Novelists

[8] Dunn, Gaby (2013-05-01). "Does Sexism Lurk?". Dailydot.com. Retrieved 2013-11-19.

[9] Zandt, Deanna. "Yes, Wikipedia is Sexist". Forbes.com. Retrieved 2013-11-19.

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