Why Women Have No Time For Wikipedia 579
Andreas Kolbe writes Wikipedia is well known to have a very large gender imbalance, with survey-based estimates of women contributors ranging from 8.5% to around 16%. This is a more extreme gender imbalance than even that of Reddit, the most male-dominated major social media platform, and it has a palpable effect on Wikipedia content. Moreover, Wikipedia editor survey data indicate that only 1 in 50 respondents is a mother – a good proportion of female contributors are in fact minors, with women in their twenties less likely to contribute to Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation efforts to address this "gender gap" have so far remained fruitless. Wikipedia's demographic pattern stands in marked contrast to female-dominated social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest, where women aged 18 to 34 are particularly strongly represented. It indicates that it isn't lack of time or family commitments that keep women from contributing to Wikipedia – women simply find other sites more attractive. Wikipedia's user interface and its culture of anonymity may be among the factors leading women to spend their online time elsewhere.
Re:Obvious Reason (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe women just want to put nice things on pinterest instead of arguing about pedantic bullshit all day.
Women will not put up with deletionists. (Score:0, Informative)
I know I won't. I'm a 34 year-old (as of today!) female, and I stopped contributing to Wikipedia after the asshole deletionists there deleted nineteen of my articles despite the fact that they had an average of seven citations each. Their policy is to require three citations, but the men that run that site are so hateful and hate information so much that they deleted every single one of my articles and sent a male stripper to my home with the message that they wanted to murder me and the rest of my family. That was the last time I contributed to that cesspool. They are horrible. There is no question as to why that shithole of a site contains so little information and as to why so few other women contribute. They hate us, and as they said multiple times, they want us to die.
Re:Women crave Feedback (Score:2, Informative)
There are "likes" for Wikipedia edits, they are called "Thank".
Noticed a gender imbalance in garden clubs too (Score:2, Informative)
It's an outrage! Something must be done!
Maybe women have better things to do with their time than having edit wars all day for free?
Re:Obvious Reason (Score:3, Informative)
I mean, face it, men are just more willing to be the trolls and make life miserable for each other. Women see that and avoid the whole issue altogether.
Turns out that's a steaming pile, who knew eh. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]
They simply see what happens as basically a bunch of horny teenagers with ragers going on, and simply steer clear to avoid the trouble.
Too bad you don't know any actual female gamers: http://www.pokket.tv/wp/wp-con... [pokket.tv]
Re:Articles on the elementary education imbalance? (Score:5, Informative)
Every time you hear about a gender gap in STEM, it's because someone didn't do their homework and are operating from a false premise. The truth is there's no gender imbalance in STEM. This is this is the best kept secret out there: they omit biological _sciences_ from the "STEM" definition because women are an overwhelming majority of those fields. When you add them back in there is. no. gap.
This is all just the result of gender feminists playing games with terminology to benefit their pet projects. It's since taken on it's own life and now people think we need more women in STEM. The REAL gender gap is in education and academia. Men are only about 13% of school teachers and that's got to change if we want our kids to grow up with a balanced view of the genders.
Animal House. (Score:4, Informative)
I thought it might be - well, let us say, instructive - to simply re-post some of the choicer responses to this story, all modded up to +4 or +5.
Because the "social justice warriors" tell you it must be. And if they don't get their way, they'll whine, cry, and call it rape.
Men in general seem to have less tolerance for what they perceive as error and a greater willingness to fight to correct error.
Man? Have you ever dated?? Women are the single most argumentative, must be right, cant change their minds, NEEDS AN APOLOGY EVEN WHEN PROVEN WRONG group out their.
the big problem on Wikipedia is that most edit hurt feelings, especially when you write a lengthy article about your favourite celebrity and someone come behind you and rape all your work with facts. Such senseless rigour are symptom of the patriarchy.