The event in London I attended yesterday was the final day of Wikimania 2014. Wikimania
is the annual conference held by the Wikimedia Foundation, the
charitable organisation that maintains Wikipedia. Each year, the
conference is held in a different city around the globe; in May 2013,
London's bid to host the conference was successful.
I attended one session at Wikimania: a diversity/gender gap workshop. One of Wikipedia's problems is that male contributors to the site vastly outnumber women (nine-to-one, by official estimates, although I hope that women actually make up a greater percentage than that); the session discussed some ways to close the gender gap. I also attended the closing speech, which was given by Jimbo Wales, who is the founder/co-founder of Wikipedia.
Overall, I had a great time. I met people whom I've known or heard about online for many years and people whom I've already met offline. I still have to sort out my pictures; I'll post a few of them tomorrow.
Glad you had a great time! I hope there's more women too. Can't wait to see pictures!
ReplyDeleteThanks! We definitely need more women editors; it was good to see, however, that women appeared to make up half of the attendance to the conference.
DeleteOk maybe I should have read this first because it answered some of my questions I left in my comment on the part 2 post. Whoops! Anyway, that sounds like a really interesting talk to attend. I wonder why more men than women contribute. Did he touch on that at all?
ReplyDeleteHe didn't touch on it specifically, but he did highlight the need to improve civility on the site, as unfortunately there are a lot of hostile people who are ruining the collaborative environment on which Wikipedia is built. That could be one reason why many female editors don't stick around.
DeleteThere are various reasons why more men contribute than women. One oft-cited reason is that men have more time than women; another is that sites like Wikipedia are regarded as a "man's domain" (in reality, you can contribute no matter who you are!). And another is that women are still not encouraged enough to participate in the tech world and Wikipedia falls under that umbrella. Much of the tech world is misogynistic, sadly. :( That attitude is changing, but not fast enough.