User:Feminist/Thoughts on Wikipedia

08:53, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

 * Wikipedia’s decline, and its difficulty to attract new content creators

Wikipedia has a steep learning curve. It is difficult for a new editor to grasp Wikipedia’s numerous policies and guidelines quickly; often they lose interest halfway through. This makes it difficult for Wikipedia to attract new editors.

Suppose someone with no previous knowledge of Wikipedia editing makes an edit to an article that does not comply with a policy. Say, that person failed to cite a source appropriately or added information with incorrect formatting. In most cases, the edit would be reverted, without notifying the editor. Usually the new editor would give up by this point. If the editor persists, or asks the reason why the edit was reverted, they would usually receive a response consisting of links to policies. Some editors would bite the bullet and read through the policies cited (which may often require also reading through other policies, since they are based on each other), and they may become regular editors. The majority, however, would not find Wikipedia editing to be worth their time.

It gets even worse if a new editor tries to create a new article. Most new editors would not have read through all relevant policies (e.g. WP:GNG, WP:NOT, WP:BLP for biographies, WP:SNGs for specific article subjects, WP:categorization, WP:MOS, etc.) prior to creating an article. In most cases they would model their article based on articles of similar topics, which are often of low quality anyway. The average Wikipedia article is low quality because the number of active editors and administrators keep declining, while the number of articles keep growing, thus there simply aren’t enough editors to maintain the quality of each article. Take a look at a number of random articles via Special:Random, you should see what I mean. These low-quality articles continue to languish because there aren’t enough editors and admins to clean them up. What happens after they create an article? In many cases, the article would be nominated for deletion at WP:Articles for deletion (AfD). It is difficult for new editors to defend their articles in AfD discussions because most deletion rationales are incomprehensible to people without an in-depth understanding of Wikipedia policies. Often editors don’t even link to the policies they cite in an AfD discussion. Take a look at a few AfD discussions (you may be interested in discussions listed on WikiProject Deletion sorting/Women) and you should understand how someone writing their first article may find it difficult to understand what topics can they write articles on. The need to defend an article from deletion is also a turn-off for many people.

Now, I agree that there should be limits as to what topics should Wikipedia cover. The number of active editors is limited and they can only take care of so many articles. However, it would save a lot of time and effort if a new editor was made aware of what can be included, and how to write a Wikipedia article in the first place, so that the article created would not be deleted (read: wasted) or require major fixes.

This is why WP:EDITATHONs often don’t work well. The aim of editathons is to recruit a large number of people to create one or two articles each about a common topic, let’s say women in art. The problem is, because participants may not be aware of relevant Wikipedia policies prior to creating an article, many of these articles turn out to be low-quality. Many of them are nominated at AfD then deleted. Again, effort is wasted. Rarely do participants of editathons continue as active Wikipedia editors. This poses a problem as the articles they create are neglected and become outdated.

Another problem with new articles is integrating them into Wikipedia. WP:Orphan articles are articles that lack links from other relevant articles. This means readers may not come across a newly written article unless they specifically search for it.


 * Gender imbalance

The extent of Wikipedia’s gender imbalance is well documented on the web. This includes the lack of female editors, the lower quality of articles about topics of interest to women, and the lesser number of biographies of women than biographies of men.

I think the main reason for the imbalance in male and female editors would be because Wikipedia editors tend to be unfriendly to each other. In general, women tend to value socialization more than men, which is why the majority of users of social media such as Instagram and Pinterest are women. However, being friendly with other editors is often frowned upon on Wikipedia, as editors may often assume that you are trying to push a viewpoint or agenda on an article through the help of others. There is a good reason for this, but often editors would feel uncomfortable with making friendships open.

Another reason is Wikipedia’s usability. Men tend to be more tech-savvy and care less about aesthetics than women. However, Wikipedia’s editing interface is archaic and require an understanding of MediaWiki markup code. This means men would be generally more willing to put up with Wikipedia’s interface than women. There have been efforts by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) to fix this, such as WP:VisualEditor and WP:Flow, but most implementations are notoriously buggy and difficult to use. It’s interesting, considering that the WMF’s income from donations has risen every year (see WP:CANCER).

Regarding the lack of coverage and poor quality of topics of interest to women, it’s simple. People tend to be interested in topics that they can identify with, or are relevant to them. Male editors would naturally prefer writing about topics that are relevant to men, and prefer to write about topics from the perspective of men. As men dominate Wikipedia, it’s natural for Wikipedia’s coverage of women topics to be weaker. Now, I do not think Wikipedia should try to achieve 50% biographies being articles of women. Wikipedia articles are based on coverage of a topic in independent sources. Because women have historically been subjugated by men, the coverage of women in book publications would naturally be weaker than the coverage of men, and Wikipedia would reflect that. However, it is still no excuse for the generally low quality of women topics on Wikipedia.


 * From Wikipediocracy
 * Why women have no time for Wikipedia, contains an explanation of why the gender gap exists
 * Wikipedia and the war on women’s dignity and Wikipedia – Men and children first, show the problems with coverage of women topics on Wikipedia


 * From Wikipedia
 * Gender bias on Wikipedia
 * WP:WAW, WP:WMN – about how to write about women on Wikipedia. The fact that these exist shows that many editors find trouble with writing women biographies. See also the WP:WIR project.
 * Wikipedia Signpost/2015-09-30/Op-ed – shows problem with the lack of administrators on Wikipedia. Still a problem up until now, WP:RFA by month shows that the number of administrators promoted has hovered at a low level. See also User:Worm That Turned/Rant On/Adminship. A decline in the number of active admins is a problem because there are fewer people who help clean up inappropriate content and protect pages from damage.