Thanks, Sue. Obligatory current event tie-in -
Could we get a more multi-ethnic "I am a Wikipedian" campaign going for the fundraising drive? As attractive looking as Jimmy is, the community isn't a million clones of him. Seeing more of the variety would certainly help attract attention, I think. On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Sue Gardner <sgard...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > On 17 November 2010 13:35, phoebe ayers <phoebe.w...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic <mill...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any >>> African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in >>> a European country without African population, so everything seemed to >>> me quite normal for a long time. > > Oh gosh, I want to jump in here too, super-fast. Good question, Milos :-) > > I think the answer to this question is complicated, but known/knowable. > > Essentially I think it's fairly obvious that US Wikimedians are > disproportionately male and disproportionately white -- like Phoebe, > that's definitely been my own anecdotal experience in meeting > Wikipedians, and although the people we meet face-to-face may not be > perfectly representative of all Wikipedians, we don't have any reason > to think the actual US Wikimedia editor population is dramatically > different from the people we happen to meet. > > I would attribute the maleness and whiteness mostly to the > tech-centricity of the Wikimedia community. We know it's a > tech-centric group, presumably because editors were in the beginning > early adopter types, and continuing because the editing interface is > still relatively non-user-friendly. > > And we know that the tech community in general (in the United States) > skews male, white and Asian ... And that that is self-reinforcing over > time. In fact, this research > http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_14383730?nclick_check=1&forced=true > found that blacks, Latinos and women are losing ground in (Silicon > Valley) tech, not gaining it. > > I would expect that all the factors that skew tech community > demographics, have a big overlap with the factors that skew Wikimedia > community demographics. There's lots of good research and thinking > about that. (For example, the book Unlocking the Clubhouse has lots of > good thinking about gender, and some about African-Americans and > Latino-Americans.) There is lots of available information. > >> We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the >> readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are >> outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both >> want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant >> amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons >> why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I >> can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible >> categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this >> diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we >> should focus not on why so few people out of the general population >> participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and >> how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.***** > > I agree with Phoebe. Wikimedians are unusual in many ways. There's > probably no point in Wikimedia trying to recruit general-population > "women" or "African-Americans" or "Latino-Americans." We are likelier > to succeed if we aim to recruit women, African-Americans and > Latino-Americans who share some of the common Wikimedia > characteristics -- like, a base level of good comfort with technology, > a passion for learning, love of language/words/text, unusually high > intelligence, a good base level of self-confidence, sufficient leisure > time and inclination to volunteer, and so forth. > > My two cents, written fast :-) > Sue > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
