Hello Prof.
Chan,
Here is a rough
outline of the data-gathering activities I'd like to complete for
this thesis. I don't know how realistic gathering this large of an
amount of data is, so I would really appreciate any advice you can
give in this respect.
It looks like
I'm heavily leaning towards working mostly with the editing
community, mostly because I think they will be the easiest to access,
and there is much to be learnt from the experiences of current women
editors from this group. I think that most of the insight about what
barriers are faced by women when they are attempting to become
editors will be coming from the A2K team, who is working to bring
more female editors in, though I'm sure current editors will have
faced interesting barriers, as well.
Please do look
over my plan and tell me if it's realistic and, more importantly,
useful!
Data-gathering activities:
Quantitative:
1. Perform survey of English Language
and (maybe only the largest) Indic Language editing communities to
see how many women editors are part of the editing communities
Methods:
-interaction with A2K team and
communities themselves to do a head count (possible language/access
complications, but hopefully A2K team will be able to help with this)
-counting and analyzing names on
mailing lists ( (a)less reliable, as some editors may not be
currently active in the community or even editing, etc. May be
useful for getting an idea of increase/decrease of female editors
over time? (b)
Language barrier as I will not be able to recognize female versus
male names in some of the Indic languages)
2.
Perform survey of English Language and Indic Language community
mailing lists and IRC chats
to see how many female
editors have been actively posting on
the mailing lists and
participating in IRC chats in
the last 5 years
Method:
-Make
a list of all editors who have posted to the mailing list in the last
5 years, with post counts
-Identify
female editors through interaction with communities (they may know of
past editors who
-Compare
how many posts have been made by female editors versus male editors
3. [tentative
idea] Create a data map of
all the edits performed by all active female editors over the last
calendar year, along with any revisions/deletions associated with
their edits
Method:
-Using
editors' names, look up their edit counts, etc. If
this turns out to be less labour-intensive than I thought, maybe I
can go back another year or more.
-OR
put together survey for members of the community that would require
them to identify this information themselves[1]
[1]
A survey may be able to encompass all or a large part of the
information I'm looking for in activities 1-3.
Qualitative:
4.
a) Interviews
(and possibly in surveys for editors):
i) With A2K/Wikipedia team, and
others working for/on Wikipedia in India:
-How would you describe the
condition of female editors in the English-language/Indic language
community? Do they tend to be active in the community? Are their
voices heard? Why or why not?
-What are the barriers faced by
women editors? What is stopping more women from becoming editors?
-What are the challenges in
attracting more women editors?
-What kind of work have you been
doing to encourage more women to take up editing?
-What kind of women are you
targeting? How are you going about this?
-How has the community been
receiving your attempts to bring in more women editors?
-What kind of work have you been
doing with current women editors? Have they been receptive to your
aid? Are they supportive or unsupportive of your efforts?
-What else can be done to bring in
more women editors, and encourage the already-existing editors to
become more active?
ii) With female editors active
in the community
-Can you tell me a bit about
yourself? What do you do? How old are you? What kind of
certifications do you hold (educational attainment)?
-What prompted you to become involved in editing Wikipedia? What
prompted you to continue to stay involved? If you are not involved,
why not?
-Tell me a bit about your editing experiences. What kind of articles
do you tend to edit? How often do you edit? Do you feel that you make
more additions or revisions? How are those edits received? Do you
find that many of your posts are revised and/or deleted? How do you
feel that your knowledge additions/revisions are received?
-Do you feel that you've faced barriers to you participation in the
editing of Wikipedia? If so, what were/are they? Have these changed?
-What has been your experience interacting with the editing community
a) in India b) internationally?
-How do you feel that you are received by the editing community? Do
you feel like your voice is heard? Do you feel like your inputs are
considered?
-Do you face barriers or adversity to your involvement with the
editing community? If so, what were/are they?
-Have you ever felt like you've been treated differently because of
your gender, either in your editing, during your participation in the
community, from other editors, from non-editors, from the general
public, etc.?
-What
do you feel could be done to
improve the experiences of women editors, and bring in more editors?
iii)
[possibly] From
women editors not involved in the community
-Same questions as above for women
editors involved in the community, but with less questions about
their involvement (I'll simply ask: “Why are you not involved in
the editing community?”)
b) Documentary research
-What barriers are women facing to
their involvement in Wikipedia? In the Indian context, how much of
this lack of women participation is due to physical/infrastructural
barriers? How much is it due to educational barriers? How much is it
due to language barriers? How much is it due to cultural barriers?
-Verification requirements of
Wikipedia, the issue of authoritative or verifiable sources, and
epistemological debates within Wikipedia about what knowledge is.
-What roles do cultural narratives surrounding the authority of
knowledge play in women's participation in editing/adding to the "sum
of all knowledge"?
-What role does the inclusionist
versus revisionist debate play into cases where things that are
typically viewed as "Women's knowledge" (knowledge that is
traditionally/culturally feminine or associated with the female
gender) are revised/deleted for being insignificant or having "no
indication of importance"?
Notes
on data-gathering activities:
Quantitative:
1.
Required to determine exactly who I will be working with as my
research subjects, and to understand how large of a sample size I am
working with. Also gives me a better idea of the male-to-female
editors ratio, which is a required data-point for the research,
particularly when it comes to the justification of this research
project. This is basically the first step of the research
2.
While this doesn't give us much of an idea of how many women are
editing Wikipedia actively, it does give us an idea of how active
women are in the editing community, upon which inferences of how
often their voices are heard, if they are having input into the
on-going development of Wikipedia and the Wikipedia platform, etc.
Analyses of the repercussions of “missing” female voices can be
performed.
3.
This is where I get into the hardcore quantitative editing data that
will hopefully lead to some indices on what women are editing, how
they are editing (are they making additions, or revisions?), how
often their posts are being revised/deleted, etc. This could make a
really cool and useful chart/graph. I should petition the Wikimedia
Foundation to commission
the creation of a data map of all edits/additions of all declared
female editors, as well as the deletions/revisions afterwards. I'm
sure the outputs of that could be compared to statistics about how
often pages are edited/revised, etc. If those kind of stats are
available.
Worries:
-I'll
need statistics on male editors to make a comparison for analysis
-This,
of course, limits my sample size to active editors, and can not reach
editors that are not active in the communities. How do I reach
non-active editors? How do I reach infrequent editors? How does this
diminish the legitimacy of my research and its intended outputs?
-Mailing
lists: Not just editors posting (I myself have posted on the mailing
list), so requires me to look up each poster's name, see if they have
an editing account, label them as infrequent/average/frequent
editors, etc. I believe that these would still useful statistics,
however, so I am more than willing to put in the leg work for this.
-These
seem quite labour-intensive (though I'm not actually too worried
about this—I have the time and the determination!), and I wonder if
a survey could be put together that could be circulated on the
mailing lists that could gather a large amount of the data I'm
looking for (like gender, account names, edit counts, data from both
male and female editors...As well as some possible qualitative data
points
which will be discussed below)
-However,
the issues with surveys is response. I would just have to hope I got
a good response. Further, for the Indic language communities, I would
have to get the surveys translated, and the responses translated. I'm
sure this could be done.
Qualitative:
4. a) iii) Only issue I foresee is
getting access/in touch with women that are editors but are not
active in the community. May not even include them as research
subjects, as I seem to be leaning heavily towards working only with
the community...Problematic?
b) The majority of which will
probably be done once the writing of thesis begins in September...
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Research Definitions:
“Editor”:
Someone who edits or who has edited wikipedia, and possesses an
editing account
“Active
Editor”: Someone who currently edits Wikipedia
“Infrequent
Editor”: Someone who currently edits Wikipedia research to find
out number
“Average
Editor”: An editor who currently edits Wikipedia on this
measurement shall be determined with more literature review)
“Frequent
Editor”: An editor who currently edits Wikipedia
“Involved
Editor”:
An editor who is active and involved in their respective editing
community
“Community”/
“Editing Community”: Come up with definition for this, not
just mailing list but...etc.
