User:Bides time/Archive 1

Editing Wikipedia is a complete waste of time. If you want to volunteer for something, pick something else that is actually worthwhile.

'''Content published on Wikipedia is not a generally accepted resource to cite for any academic articles or college papers due to its unreliability. It is also shown to be biased against female collaborators'''

Not to mention the fact that the site brings out the worst in humanity and editing is generally considered a vicious sport.

Yahoo News: "Study Shows Gender Bias in Wikipedia, Linux" - "just because a community (like Wikipedia) says that it's open doesn't mean that it isn't hostile to women....The "Free Encyclopedia" Wikipedia's claim to fame is that anyone can edit and contribute to it. To keep errors from cropping up, it has policies that let anyone flag part of an article for review, and allow trusted editors to decide how to present something. The process by which those editors decide, however, is often highly combative and alienating to women." http://news.yahoo.com/study-shows-gender-bias-wikipedia-linux-180400641.html

New York Times: "Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List" - "surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of its hundreds of thousands of contributors are women. About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=0

Wikipedia has "a culture that may discourage women." -- Joseph Reagle, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=0

One has to wonder if these primarily male editors seek to minimize the number and content of entries ABOUT women serving to further alienating the participation of women. But one need not wonder long...

Wikipedia is “open to very difficult, high-conflict people, even misogynists,” he said, “so you have to have a huge argument about whether there is the problem.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=0