The Missing Masses: Investigating the Absence of Women and Non-Cis People among Wikipedia Editors/Relation to Previous Research
Relationship of the Proposed Missing Masses Study to Previous Research[edit]
Why do we need to do this study :[edit]
The best known studies on the Wikipedia gender gap have been mostly online surveys distributed through the platform itself. These surveys, though insightful, are constrained by the focus of the questions asked and the limited options given. We seek to address these constraints by away from Wikipedia itself, and moving to the level of the community, crafting a survey instrument that is very focused on addressing and understanding the gender gap, providing opportunties for open responses from respondents, and creating a sustainable path for future research using in-depth qualitative methods. Though qualitative studies have previous been conducted, none of them are anywhere as large as the data set we ultimately seek to generate. Most contain interviews of 15 or fewer women. In addition, these interviewers have mostly admitted that they are external to the community and have admitted that they had very limited access to these communities. By first building a large network of community organizations and working through them to reach out to women and non-cisgender editors, we have the opportunity to reach far more individuals than has been previously accomplished. Much of the previous work has been guided by of quantifying the gender gap problem, in orther words seeking to say “Yes we have a problem, and it is of this magnitude”. The proposed project is seeking to move beyond this stage and investigate the detailed experiences of editors on the other side of the gender gap, in order to discover how the problem can be solved. We seek to ask “What are the experiences of editors, and thus the solutions to these problems”.
While some work has been conducted investigating women editors, there are no particular studies on non-cisgender editors or communities within the larger Wikipedia ecosystem. The most comprehensive studies have not been conducted in the past few years. We have no recent data on how the issue of the gender gap may have changed, for better or worse, in recent history. Given the rate of social change and current focus in many places on issues of gender and representation, new work clearly seems to be called for. The Wiki platform itself is an important part of the experience of editors, not just the interactions between editors. There have been not many specific studies done in terms of interactions when it comes to the technology or design aspects of wikipedia; most of studies are concentrating on community aspects. However, the experience of editors have of the platform itself are also important, and may play a large role in shaping their overall experience of Wikipedia and the influence their interaction with the community.
Bibliography[edit]
- http://cscs.res.in/dataarchive/textfiles/creating-knowledge2019-mapping-the-nature-of-content-and-processes-on-the-english-wikipedia-sohnee-harshey-tiss
- https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/65775
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Harassment_Survey_2015_-_Results_Report.pdf
- WP: clubhouse? an exploration of Wikipedia’s gender imbalance
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Editor_Survey_Report_-_April_2011.pdf
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_gap_task_force/Media_and_research