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The amount of "creative" writing on our site is very limited. Each post in our system has to follow a particular format, and we have a feedback loop so that the

The amount of "creative" writing on our site is very limited. Each post in our system has to follow a particular format, and we have a feedback loop so that the writer can improve their posts, based on those formats. For example a movie post is formatted in a very specific way [1]. I found no difference at all between the output of minorities and white writers. A bigger and more rigorous sample would have given more insight. It's interesting because Wikipedia is known for its gender gap: 90% of its writers are young, white, highly educated males. So therefore most people think that Wikipedia-like content can only created by those kind of people. Instead, I found I could create almost exactly the same content by restricting the format and the users actions, irrespective of the class of person adding the information. In fact, as the site stands it was created maybe 70% by women. [1] http://help.newslines.org/knowledge-base/add-a-movie-post/ http://help.newslines.org/knowledge-base/add-a-movie-post/

savanaly 11y ago
Oh ok. I remain always curious about the benefit of diversity in these projects then. It is constantly touted as a good and it makes intuitive sense to me that it would be, but I was wondering if that manifested in the content they produced in particular.
- sparkzilla 11y ago
  I see what you mean now. In our site, a larger percentage of women contributors doesn't affect the quality of the posts, but does add more diversity to their content. For example, women are more likely to add news about magazine covers, music performances, and celebrities, while men seem to prefer to add posts about politics and issues. If we only had men contributors then the latter would be overrepresented. We can see the effect of the gender gap on Wikipedia in the content too. Topics like porn stars, games and politics are overrepresented, while other topics that women would be more interested in, are neglected.

savanaly 11y ago

Oh ok. I remain always curious about the benefit of diversity in these projects then. It is constantly touted as a good and it makes intuitive sense to me that it would be, but I was wondering if that manifested in the content they produced in particular.

sparkzilla 11y ago
I see what you mean now. In our site, a larger percentage of women contributors doesn't affect the quality of the posts, but does add more diversity to their content. For example, women are more likely to add news about magazine covers, music performances, and celebrities, while men seem to prefer to add posts about politics and issues. If we only had men contributors then the latter would be overrepresented. We can see the effect of the gender gap on Wikipedia in the content too. Topics like porn stars, games and politics are overrepresented, while other topics that women would be more interested in, are neglected.