Introduction to Research
editSession led by Nazia Akthar, Netha Hussain, Miriam Redi (online), and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
The pre-read pack containing past research related to gender in the Wikimedia movement was sent to all participants.
The Wikimedia Foundation identified that 81% of Wikipedia articles across languages are about men, 80% of active editors self-identify as men and 72% of pageviews come from people who self-identify as men.
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Knowledge gaps taxonomy: The knowledge gap taxonomy allows for finding and classifying evidence of inequalities in the Wikimedia projects. Readers: On Wikipedia, readers tend to read articles about people of similar demographics (gender and age) to them, which makes it important that there is adequate representation of women of all ages in all languages. In every part of the world, men tend to read Wikipedia more often than women. Men also read more articles when they visit Wikipedia than women. Participants: Time and again, researchers have shown that there is an alarmingly low proportion of women contributing to Wikimedia projects. However, there is some room for hope. Newcomers are more likely than earlier to identify as women and gender diverse than seasoned editors on Wikipedia, indicating that there is a steady increase in diversity among editors. Unfortunately, they are also more likely to indicate as having felt unsafe on wiki. Despite the challenges, they contributed to Wikipedia because they strongly identified with Wikipedia’s mission for free knowledge, wanted to share what they know with the world, or wanted to hone their writing and researching skills. Content: While Wikipedias in nearly every language have less number of articles about women compared to men, Wikipedia is likely to have more content and quantity of women’s biographies than traditional encyclopaedias. This gender gap spills over to Wikidata, where a larger gender gap exists in large language communities, with the gap narrowing over time. Although the majority of biographies are about men, the quality of biographies of women and individuals of non-binary gender are slightly higher than that of men. Articles with more interwiki links are likely to be about men, and there is a social bias on Wikipedia to assume male as the standard gender of the subject. Words related to family life, such as ‘marriage’ and ‘children’ are more likely to be associated with articles related to women, while career related words are more linked with men’s biographies. There is also a gender gap in terms of images on Wikipedia, with articles related to men having more images compared to that of women. Similarly, publications by women are less cited on Wikipedia than expected. Policies and practices: Women’s gender plays an important role in their perceived significance on Wikipedia, aggravating the long chain of historical inequalities and marginalizations in which women’s qualifications and achievements are undervalued. Activist editors and trainers of gender gap campaign have often noted harassment existing on Wikipedia and the difficulty in navigating through the large corpus of Wikipedia’s policies, which are not newcomer-friendly. The reliability guidelines on Wikipedia have also been criticised for excluding the complex, lived experiences of several communities. As a result, only a small number of privileged editors get to decide what content is reliable for Wikipedia. |
Research Discovery & Centralization
editSession led by Nazia Akthar, Netha Hussain, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight
Links
- A pre-conference survey was sent to all attendees. Survey notes link (forthcoming). Survey analysis link (forthcoming).
- A pre-read pack of 66 research items was compiled by the Research cohort. It included item title, url, year of publication, year research was conducted, year/type of data dump, type of research, methods/notes, and key findings.
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Part 1, pre-conference surveyeditThe survey analysis was conducted by Miriam, Tanja, and Netha before WikiWomenCamp convened. The results were presented by Miriam and Netha. Key findings based on survey responses are below. Involvement in gender research:
Main areas of interest:
Part 2, other examples of finding gender-related content on wiki-metaedit
Part 3, finding gender-related researcheditWe described where the research cohort found the research items that were included in the pre-read pack:
Using Aha slides, we asked the attendees where they look for wiki gender-related research (forthcoming). Part 4, workshopeditThe session attendees held discussions at four tables regarding the challenges and opportunities of various approaches to forming a centralized place (on Wiki-Meta, Wikipedia, Wikidata, or other) for links to gender-based wiki research. Aha slides responses (forthcoming). AftermatheditNetha, Nazia, and Rosie met with Soukaina after the final Research cohort session to discuss the approaches for adding all wiki gender-related research into Wikidata, and then generating a Listeria list on wiki-Meta at Gender gap/Research on wiki-Meta. Rosie met with Soukaina again 2 weeks later during Wiki Indaba in Agadir to discuss the project further. Soukaina will begin work on the project in December 2023 or January 2024. |
Research Community
editSession led by Nazia Akhtar and Miriam Redi (online)
Objective
editThe overall goal of this session was to facilitate awareness, gather knowledge and information about the Wikimedia research community, as well as enable strong research links, networks, and connections between the participants, among whom a large number had expressed interest in conducting research on the gender gap in the Wikimedia Movement through the pre-camp survey.
Design
editThe session consisted of laying the groundwork for a discussion among the Strategy Cohort participants on what a research community in the Wikimedia Movement looks like/could look like and then conducting a group activity on the same. Its purpose was to collect and collate whatever information we already have and learn more about the research networks associated with the Wikimedia movement that we are not aware of and what more can be done to build on these to make gender-gap research smoother and more fruitful.
To this end, there were two overall questions underpinning the session:
- What are the different streams of research that exist in the Wikimedia movement?
- What are the intersections and collaborations between these streams?
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SummaryeditMiriam Redi of the Research Division (RD) at Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) discussed the role of the RD in developing and supporting research communities. As part of this, she stressed:
Miriam’s presentation also offered open research questions to the Strategy participants to encourage them to conduct research. These were the specific research directions she mentioned:
When asked by a participant whether there was data available on Wikimedia projects other than Wikipedia, Miriam responded that the research team has:
The second half of the session was conducted by Nazia, who identified known streams of research and then posed two AHA slide survey questions.
The next aspect of this session was a table discussion (in pairs) on:
We asked a few pairs to present. Since we did not have enough time to have each and every pair of participants present their ideas before the room, we collected all the sticky-note observations and displayed them on an easel board at the front of the room. Notes were also taken by an official note-taker as well as by a volunteer on the easel board at the front of the room. What follows is a summary of the insights gleaned from all these sources:
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Building a Research Network
editSummary is forthcoming.