User:G9m9brown/COMM4625Final

Online Communities Final - Wikipedia Reflection
Editing my article and interacting with Wikipedians showed me that despite it being technically open to everyone, certain demographics are responsible for a majority of community participation and content creation. While my experience in the community has been an overall positive one, I did come across/witness many interactions between other users that made me more hesitant to participate in discussion related to certain topics. Through my personal observations and further research it is clear that Wikipedia's community culture and treatment of newcomers has a disproportionately negative effect on non-male, non-white user contributions and their motivation levels to remain in the community.

Despite Wikipedia readership demographics estimating a fairly even gender split with 47% of readers being women, the amount of women editors has been estimated to be, most generously, 16% of the total group. For more active editors who have contributed at least 2,000 edits, this percentage drops to 6%. From its peak in 2007, the number of total active editors (those with at least 5 edits each month) has dropped significantly, slowly becoming generally stagnant in the last couple of years. I believe that many of the problems Wikipedia cites as having no clear solution for (declining numbers of new editors, lack of newcomer retention, vandalism, harassment, etc.) would at the very least be greatly improved if there were more intentional, direct efforts enacted that are aimed at fixing the diversity problems in the Wikipedia community.

Welcoming newcomers and my experience
When I first started exploring Wikipedia as an editor I was extremely intimidated both by the amount of technical knowledge that editing appears to require (at least on first viewing), as well as by the idea of having to interact with the community members. Having the WikiEdu materials available as well as the Sandbox feature helped to give me more confidence when I did eventually start editing existing articles. Sandboxes can help newcomers learn about community norms and practice them without fear of causing damage to public community content, increasing the likelihood of them being confident enough to eventually move on to public contributions.

Because I was being introduced to the community through a class, I think that I was more comfortable possibly making mistakes as I had a professor who would be able to help if I had any conflict with other members. We also submitted weekly assignments to a class wiki page which is a great example of collective socialization tactics where our whole class learned about editing in the community together. Collective socialization can help improve newcomer retention as there is less initial isolation and more positive support and mentorship, improving their view of the community as a whole.

My first time editing an article was one that I found on a Wikipedia list of articles that had minor issues, China's Next Top Model (season 4). I only did minor edits like fixing spelling or grammar, but helped to raise my confidence by showing me that there was not some hostile group of established members watching my every move. For my main contribution, I chose to edit an already existing article (Theyby) that was marked as a stub needing expansion/updates. This made my initial interactions after uploading my first major edits feel less hostile/aggressive compared to interactions I saw my classmates have. They had to deal with their topics' notability being questioned in most cases, whereas mine had already been deemed notable. I think this was one of the major reasons I had more positive interactions up-front and an overall better view of the community than my classmates at the end of the class.

I chose to add the new article sections I wrote incrementally to give other editors the opportunity to comment on my contributions, so that I could hopefully improve upon my other sections before adding them as well. My expanded the "Legal recognition" section substantially with the addition of a table breaking down state laws. I also added a note on the article's talk page asking for feedback from other editors. A little over a week later I added a, "Associated Parenting Style", and expanded the "Motivation" section renaming it "Origins & Motivation" and adding. Shortly after adding these sections the page started to receive more minor edits like cleaning up citations, fixing grammar mistakes, that the article appears in, and  to fit Wikipedia formatting standards. The table I uploaded to the legal section was also expanded by another user with more specific information about laws in and  being added.

A few days after I had uploaded the bulk of my content, there was a from the original title "Theybie" proposed. The debate that followed included multiple opinions on what the best name for the article would be with varying degrees of editor background knowledge on the subject. One user questioned the legitimacy of the article topic in general as not being a novel concept, and cited what turned out to be an unreliable source that did not actually support their claim. The flaws in their argument were pointed out by User:Crossroads who I could see has edits on many related articles.

Crossroads supported changing the name to "Theyby", so as to match the singular form of baby from which the word is partially derived without losing the meaning of the word. I responded in support of their comment and eventually it was decided that consensus had been reached and the article title was changed to "Theyby". I sent a barnstar award to Crossroads to thank them for contributing their ideas to the discussion and for pointing out flaws in other proposed changes, as I felt much more confident adding my defense of the proposed name with a more established user in support of the same idea. They sent me thanks for the barnstar, and I overall felt more positively about contributing to Wikipedia after my interaction with them.

When a new member's first community interactions are positive, they are more likely to be retained. I was surprised to hear about how negative some of my classmates' interactions were, and about how their viewpoint of the community was significantly more negative than mine. My classmates who received no interaction were similarly jaded to the community, believing their contributions were clearly not making a difference.

In studying user data, it was found that "new members to a project who receive more communication from existing editors during the month that they join subsequently edit more on project pages (and in Wikipedia in general) and stay active in the project for a longer period". Contrastingly, when a newcomer has their initial edits reverted they are much more likely to stop participating and leave the community. When looking at revert data, it is shown that newcomer edits are reverted at a disproportionately high rate. I witnessed many of my classmates sour towards the community quickly based on constant reverts of their edits, lack of communication from experienced editors, and the perceived aggressiveness of the few encounters they had.

The community gender gap
In my time on Wikipedia I would sometimes click through random profiles and read their past interactions, and there were more than a few users that I came across who had edit histories that were either very focused on questioning if gender discrimination is a real problem on the site or had many edits with undertones of misogyny. When examining the effect of gender bias on the community, it is important to look at the different experience that users who self-identify as women on their profiles have versus the experience of other members (these other members can either explicitly state they are male, or will be generally assumed to be a man if they don't say otherwise). It is a commonly cited strategy for women editors to not disclose any personal information, specifically their gender, in an attempt to mitigate the amount of negative interactions they receive purely based on perceived inherent "lack of neutrality" by male editors. Additionally, there is a norm amongst women editors to self-filter and suppress opinions that may cause upset among the majority male editor community, "if a woman wants to last as an editor on the site, there are certain fights she just doesn’t pick". Gender, in fact, is one of the most prominent topics that have a higher likelihood to cause "strong feelings" among the male Wikipedian community.

If the gender gap continues to not be prioritized as a serious problem by the largely male editor community/ArbCom, Wikipedia's content will continue to be less accurate and comprehensive than it could be. Diversity in a population affects more than just how members directly interact with each other. Which articles are created/deemed "notable" enough is entirely up to the consensus of the community. As said above, the vast majority of regularly active Wikipedians are men and evidence has been collected that a greatly disproportionate amount of proposed articles about famous women or topics that have a majority-women following are often dismissed as "frivolous" and denied.

When articles about women do pass the notability threshold, they "are more likely to mention their gender and relationship status than articles about men". Editing choices related to wording and categorization have the capability to turn women away from wanting to participate in the community entirely. One woman who wanted to try being an editor was surprised to find movie pages would often describe rape scenes as "sex scenes", sometimes even going as far to call what occurred "making love". Whenever she or any other editors tried to change this wording, it was immediately reverted and she was told that "rape" is not a neutral word like "sex" is, so calling these scenes rape would not be permitted even in cases where that was explicitly what occurred in the film. The lack of awareness and minimization of sexual assault made this woman feel unwelcome participating further in the community. Editors often accuse users with dissenting opinions in debates related to anything regarding sex or gender as being "feminazis" who are simply pushing an agenda to silence men. Because of a lack of women editors to object to content that is hostile towards women, potential new women editors are driven away by said content creating a "cyclical kind of sexism".

When demographic studies in 2011 exposed the severity of the editor gender gap, the Wikimedia Foundation set a public goal of having women make up at least 25% of its editor population by 2015. When that year came it was disclosed that their efforts had "completely failed" and there was little-to-no quantifiable change in the demographic makeup of their editors. To their credit there have been attempts from the Foundation to implement initiatives in support of increased participation from women in recent years, but they have been met with vehement objections from male editors en masse, with some even promising to "fight [the initiatives] to the death". One of the proposed ideas that caused a large negative reaction was a women-only space for women editors to discuss challenges they face online and to offer support to each other. Even when a program specifically focuses on increasing the participation of women, the gender gap has persisted. The Foundation's Inspire Campaign offers funding for projects aimed at increasing the number of women editors, but only 34% of the proposed projects were even submitted by women.

One way to improve female Wikipedian retention is to give newcomers access to more veteran female members who indicate a willingness to help in teaching or training. For newcomers in general, receiving mentorship from more established members makes them more likely to continue their participation and gives them more insight into proper behavior in the community. One study found that women appear more interested in becoming collaborators (measured through edits to User/User talk pages) but have a more difficult time making the transition to regular contributor and are more likely to completely stop editing compared to men.

Wikipedia is a massive online community that connects people from across the world and allows them to share knowledge with each other and the rest of the internet, leaving the site vulnerable to biases from the real-world being reflected in its content. Despite being open for anyone on the internet to access, there is a hierarchy where "those who have been around the longest have the most control" and newcomers often feel intimidated or chased away by the community culture. Because the Wikipedia editing community has been historically overwhelmingly comprised of men, this puts male users in positions of higher perceived power over any women who join.

Even if initiatives to increase the number of women joining succeed, if there is not a direct change to the male-centered culture as well then the likelihood of retaining many of these new members is low. Diversity of topics and overall content quality will never be able to reach their full potential while the gender gap still remains. I have experienced being a part of the Wikipedia community first-hand now and I believe it has the potential to expand and evolve its culture. My experience was luckily a positive one but even just exploring the site I came across interactions between other users that made me hesitant to engage with any even slightly contentious topic.