User:Yzhou19/sandbox

EDITING

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Research findings and issues

In February 2018, in the Pipeline of Online Participation Inequalities, Shaw and Hargittai concluded from their studies that to solve the problems of participation inequality including gender bias requires a boarder focus on subjects other than inequality. A focus on encouraging participants of all education and skill level, and age groups will help Wikipedia to improve. And let more women know that Wikipedia is free to edit and is open to everyone is critical in eliminating gender bias.

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Efforts to increase female editorship

In July 2014, the National Science Foundation announced that it would spend $200,000 to study systemic gender bias on Wikipedia.

Many Wikiprojects are committed to promoting editors' contribution on gender and female studies, which include "WikiProject women, WikiProject feminism, WikiProject gender studies, and the WikiProject countering systemic bias/gender gap task force".

In 2017, Wikimedia foundation puts a funding of $500,000 USD in building a more encouraging environment for diversity on Wikepedia.

FemTechNet launched "Wikistorming" projects that offer feminist scholarship.

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Causes

Though the proportion of female readership to male readership on Wikipedia is roughly equal (47%), females are less likely to convert themselves to editors (16%). Several studies suggest that there may be a formed culture in Wikipedia that discourages women from participating. Lam et al. link this culture due to a disparity in male-to-female centric topics represented and edited, the tendency for female users to be more active in the social and community aspects of Wikipedia, an increased likelihood that edits by new female editors are reverted, and/or that articles with high proportions of female editors are more contentious.

Collier and Bear in 2012 summarized the reason for working barriers of women in Wikipedia in three words: conflict, criticism and confidence. Conflict means online harassment, trolling and competition which women generally do no like; Criticism refers to women's unwillingness to edit someone else's work and to let their work be edited by someone else; Confidence shows that women are often not too confident about themselves's expertise and ability in editing and contributing to a certain work. Wikipedia's free to edit policy gives Internet users an open platform, while also unconsciously breed a competitive and criticism environment that limits women's incentives to work.

Through examining the power infrastructure of Wikipedia, Ford and Wajcman pointed out another cause that may reinforce Wikipedia's gender bias. Editing on Wikipedia requires "particular forms of sociotechnical expertise and authority that constitute the knowledge or epistemological infrastructure of Wikipedia". People who are equipped with these expertise and skill are more likely to position with power in the Wikipedia. The other, however, are left out, which a large part are women.

Studies also look the gender bias on Wikipedia through a historical perspective. Konieczny and Klein indicated that Wikipedia is just a part of our biased society which has a long history of gender inequality. As Wikipedia records daily activities by individual editors, it serves as both "a reflection of the world" and "a tool used to produce <our world>". Even though gender bias is slowly progressing, it remains an existing problem.