Removed from circulation per below. ResMar 14:10, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I feel honored to see this Signpost issue draw attention to my post, it's a pleasant surprise! However, I think it should be made clearer that this isn't actually the text that was published on the blog. Hidden in the version history of the page is Resident Mario's note that this is a "down-edited version", which at least involved the removal of several sections with important information, possibly also other meaning-changing edits (I haven't checked yet). This has already led to understandably confusion about important missing content, see Andreas' comment below.
The actual text of the blog post can be found here: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/04/30/how-many-women-edit-wikipedia/ . I would appreciate it if this Signpost version could a) link directly back to it (this is good practice for syndicated content in general), b) explain that the full version with additional information can be found there, and c) credit ResMar for his edits. The byline should not imply that this is the text that I wrote and published. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 09:20, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Is there a reason the sample size for the UNU-MERIT survey isn't indicated? It was well over 50,000 (or around 60,000, if ex-contributors are included, as they were in the other surveys listed). Could this info be added? --Andreas JN466 07:24, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
The following struck me as odd:
Because they only reach users who visit the site during the time of the survey, these surveys target active users only. And depending on methodology, users with higher edit frequency (which, as some evidence suggests, are more likely to be male) may be more likely to participate as respondents.
It almost seemed to suggest that we should imagine that there are lots of active women editors who just didn't see the survey because they weren't active ... I guess there is a useful point in that though: a gender gap can express itself not just in the numerical difference in male/female editor counts, but also in the numerical difference between male/female edit counts.
If the numbers of male and female editors were the same, but males made 95% of the edits, that would still be an enormous gender gap. Equally so if male contributors edit every day, while female contributors only edit twice a month. Empirical data on this might be useful: if the public wants to understand who edits Wikipedia, it probably makes more sense to count edits rather than editors.
See also the preceding paragraph: many users create accounts without ever editing (for this reason, the 2011/12 editor surveys contained a question on whether the respondent had ever edited Wikipedia, and excluded those who said "no". Without this restriction, female percentages are somewhat higher). This seems to imply then that there are lots of women who register an account but never edit – an interesting fact in itself, but little consolation. --Andreas JN466 07:24, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
The article says, comparisons are possible for comparable populations, and in this post we present such trend statements for the first time.. I imagined this would look at data for a specific country or language, and describe an apparent development of time. But I've read the article twice now, and I don't see any significant statement on trends in particular populations. Were they left out? --Andreas JN466 07:24, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
All of the studies seem to have been trying to measure percentage of all editors who are women, rather than the percentage of all edits that are done by women. Percentage of wikipedia done by women is what matters, right? Wouldn't measuring the latter be more natural, and more important? And it would be relatively easy to implement in a survey that avoids most/all of the biases of volunteer web-surveys: randomly sample from all edits ever, or from all edits in en.wikipedia during 2014, or whatever other defined universe of edits. Take 1000 or some number. There will be fewer editors than edits, say 650 editors, because prolific editors will have multiple edits in the sample. Seek to determine the gender of each editor in the sample. Present results in terms of fraction of edits by women, with +/- 90 percent certainty. Also present results for fraction of Wikipedia impact by women--i.e. weighting by the size of each edit--also with +/- 90 percent certainty.
This general approach is more costly per datum acquired, but it requires a much smaller sample (than in web-surveying) to achieve results of equivalent or significantly better accuracy. There are standard means to determine sample sizes required to get results of any degree of accuracy. All of this is routine methodology. No doubt Tbayer and others understand all of this. So, why not use this approach? Isn't it important to get to some truth on this, what percentage of Wikipedia is women-added?
Note: it is very important to try very hard to get every editor involved to share their gender information (and truthfully) for the results to be valid. So perhaps giving incentive by paying for participation is needed, and/or setting up procedure so editors can be confident the info will be kept confidential, and it is necessary to try hard to track down all of the editors, including those who are no longer active. Where gender of editors for some edits, nonetheless, cannot be ascertained from routine efforts, some further study of the likely bias there should be done, e.g. by applying extraordinary efforts to get some info from a subsample of those difficult-to-reach editors. All of this, too, is routine methodology. --doncram 11:38, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
As a relatively new editor, I was wondering if any surveys have tried to detect gender differences in feelings about the experience of editing? My own personal speculation is that the failure to enforce WP:GF and WP:BITE could be a factor. In the case of some women I know, I would not recommend editing because I know they'd quit after encountering the hostility that certain veteran editors (even certain administrators) display toward editors who are making good-faith edits of controversial articles. This sometimes descends to the level of cyberbullying, as happens in some other online realms. The subculture undoubtedly can be discouraging to many white male editors, but my guess would be -- and it would be interesting to have survey data on this -- that women and underrepresented minority editors would tend to be especially put off by insults, condescension, threats to "show you the door" (this was said to me just today by a veteran editor), etc. I would also speculate that editors from the Global South would be put off by insults and condescension from American or European editors. So my query is: Have surveys tried to get at the reasons for attrition from Wikipedia editing, and especially get at any differences across gender or other lines? Thanks.NightHeron (talk) 17:15, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
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