7 ms·

Inclusivity of editors is a major factor for inclusivity of content. Different demographics have different interests, experiences, and knowledge. It's triviall

Inclusivity of editors is a major factor for inclusivity of content. Different demographics have different interests, experiences, and knowledge. It's trivially obvious that getting a broader subset of society to contribute will also broaden the content. With less than 10% of editors being women, for example, content is guaranteed to be somewhat skewed, even assuming absolutely no ill will by anybody. Among the famous examples are a scientist's entry being deleted as "not notable" just weeks before she won the Nobel Prize. Or, if you prefer quantitative data, that articles about women tend to emphasise their relationships and children (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1501.06307v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1501.06307v2.pdf).

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
I think you’re right here though. For example, the staggering amount of Japanese-centric pages on enwiki shows how the interest of a monoculture can have an outsized impact on the community. But at the same time, why not the free content?
luckylion 6y ago
> Different demographics have different interests, experiences, and knowledge. It's trivially obvious that getting a broader subset of society to contribute will also broaden the content. Wikipedia wants to be an encyclopedia though, not a bag of personal anecdotes and life experiences.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  Look at you go, immediately discarding everything that other persons could contribute on the sole basis that it would be content from people different from yourself, true meritocracy in action!
  - hoseja 6y ago
    And yet, they're also right.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    You're misunderstanding what I wrote. Wikipedia very clearly states that they don't want original research even, much less original experiences and feelings. If you stay with the Wikipedia guidelines, a "diverse team of editors" could shift the areas of focus a bit (both within articles and on what articles get worked on), but the content should largely remain the same. They want to provide well-sourced information, present the major thoughts where no consensus is visible and do it in a way that every reader can go to the sources and check it. If you want more representation of $group on Wikipedia, you'll do much better by publishing more work of $group's members so that it can be cited and quoted on Wikipedia. Just having them on Wikipedia doesn't/shouldn't work, it's not a news paper where somebody may set the topics/angles to be covered.
    - SiempreViernes 6y ago
      So the reason "programming pattern" has more effort put into it relative "knitting pattern" is the lack of written sources about knitting?
      - luckylion 6y ago
        I don't know "the reason", but I find "knitting pattern" to be pretty hard to write a lot about in an encyclopedic context while limiting it to exactly that term. The article as is gives a general outline of what a knitting pattern is. I'm afraid that might trigger you, but I do believe that explaining what a programming pattern is is actually much harder than explaining what a knitting pattern is, as it's much more abstract. And, of course, remember that the article isn't about "knitting", it's about "knitting patterns", so you'd need sources that concern themselves with knitting patterns _as a subject_ and not with individual knitting patterns. There are very detailed articles about knitting, there's an article about common knitting abbreviations (which I don't believe fits into an encyclopedia, but whatever), there's plenty of other stuff about knitting. What did you want to see on an article about knitting patterns? And, as a follow-up, why haven't you added that to the article about knitting patterns?
        SiempreViernes 6y ago
  - thrwaway69 6y ago
    I don't think that's what he means. You are reading too much there. I read that as wikipedia should be factual and facts don't need to care about the background of the person. Citations are always needed. Diversity in race imo is a bad diversity criteria for some things. For one, it separates people living long time at a particular place (think 2-3 generations) as different people because they are not white so they must be different. Anyone who talks about diversity I have seen has stereotypes of their own on what people from different races are like.
    - SiempreViernes 6y ago
      Maybe, but when someone replies to the example of a Nobel prize winner being deleted as non-notable with "[wikipedia is] not a bag of personal anecdotes and life experiences", I have a hard time supposing them to have a well argued position.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Ok, so how did he got from "different demographics have different interests, experiences, and knowledge" to "a bag of personal anecdotes and life experiences". The only way to do so is to discard the interests and knowledge while putting great emphasis on experiences - and immediately assume they will end manifest as bulk personal anecdotes.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        > Ok, so how did he got Way to assume my gender and preferred pronouns. Bet you're glad that HN has no CoC that would get you a stern warning for this. > The only way to do so is to discard the interests and knowledge while putting great emphasis on experiences - and immediately assume they will end manifest as bulk personal anecdotes. No. One very obvious way to do so is to recognize that Wikipedia isn't about interests and experiences and the contributors/authors of articles but about sourced information. It's an encyclopedia, not a social network or a blog. The articles are supposed to represent information gathered from other sources (and they take other literal there, Original Research by the author is not desired [1]), not the knowledge, interests or experiences of the person adding information to the article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
  - textgel 6y ago
    I've got to ask; given that a core point of contributing to HN is "Assume good faith." How does that marry up with this cathy-newman esque tactic universally seen when any discussions around this sort of topic crops up?
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Except we observe empirically that the existing Wikipedia has clear biases in its content.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Care to elaborate? What are they missing?
    - UncleMeat 6y ago
      The context for this discussion has data demonstrating that articles about women have more space dedicated to their relationships and families than articles about men.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        That's it? They found that women are more visible than men on Wikipedia. Like the results where they find that woman are less central etc, the differences are rather small. Given that it's a 9:1 split in genders, you'd expect a bit more obvious results if that was the reason for the results and not e.g. society at large, which Wikipedia largely mirrors. And you'd especially not expect that women are more visible than men. Alas, if you so choose, you can of course interpret that as "the male gaze" and the patriarchal conspiracy keeping the women out of the spot light by ... putting them in the spot light. It seems you focus on one small part of one study and make sweeping declarations about Wikipedia by and large.
        UncleMeat 6y ago
        That's not it. That's one example. Do you want a dissertation?

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

I think you’re right here though. For example, the staggering amount of Japanese-centric pages on enwiki shows how the interest of a monoculture can have an outsized impact on the community. But at the same time, why not the free content?

luckylion 6y ago

> Different demographics have different interests, experiences, and knowledge. It's trivially obvious that getting a broader subset of society to contribute will also broaden the content. Wikipedia wants to be an encyclopedia though, not a bag of personal anecdotes and life experiences.

SiempreViernes 6y ago
Look at you go, immediately discarding everything that other persons could contribute on the sole basis that it would be content from people different from yourself, true meritocracy in action!
- hoseja 6y ago
  And yet, they're also right.
- luckylion 6y ago
  You're misunderstanding what I wrote. Wikipedia very clearly states that they don't want original research even, much less original experiences and feelings. If you stay with the Wikipedia guidelines, a "diverse team of editors" could shift the areas of focus a bit (both within articles and on what articles get worked on), but the content should largely remain the same. They want to provide well-sourced information, present the major thoughts where no consensus is visible and do it in a way that every reader can go to the sources and check it. If you want more representation of $group on Wikipedia, you'll do much better by publishing more work of $group's members so that it can be cited and quoted on Wikipedia. Just having them on Wikipedia doesn't/shouldn't work, it's not a news paper where somebody may set the topics/angles to be covered.
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    So the reason "programming pattern" has more effort put into it relative "knitting pattern" is the lack of written sources about knitting?
    - luckylion 6y ago
      I don't know "the reason", but I find "knitting pattern" to be pretty hard to write a lot about in an encyclopedic context while limiting it to exactly that term. The article as is gives a general outline of what a knitting pattern is. I'm afraid that might trigger you, but I do believe that explaining what a programming pattern is is actually much harder than explaining what a knitting pattern is, as it's much more abstract. And, of course, remember that the article isn't about "knitting", it's about "knitting patterns", so you'd need sources that concern themselves with knitting patterns _as a subject_ and not with individual knitting patterns. There are very detailed articles about knitting, there's an article about common knitting abbreviations (which I don't believe fits into an encyclopedia, but whatever), there's plenty of other stuff about knitting. What did you want to see on an article about knitting patterns? And, as a follow-up, why haven't you added that to the article about knitting patterns?
      - SiempreViernes 6y ago
- thrwaway69 6y ago
  I don't think that's what he means. You are reading too much there. I read that as wikipedia should be factual and facts don't need to care about the background of the person. Citations are always needed. Diversity in race imo is a bad diversity criteria for some things. For one, it separates people living long time at a particular place (think 2-3 generations) as different people because they are not white so they must be different. Anyone who talks about diversity I have seen has stereotypes of their own on what people from different races are like.
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    Maybe, but when someone replies to the example of a Nobel prize winner being deleted as non-notable with "[wikipedia is] not a bag of personal anecdotes and life experiences", I have a hard time supposing them to have a well argued position.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Ok, so how did he got from "different demographics have different interests, experiences, and knowledge" to "a bag of personal anecdotes and life experiences". The only way to do so is to discard the interests and knowledge while putting great emphasis on experiences - and immediately assume they will end manifest as bulk personal anecdotes.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > Ok, so how did he got Way to assume my gender and preferred pronouns. Bet you're glad that HN has no CoC that would get you a stern warning for this. > The only way to do so is to discard the interests and knowledge while putting great emphasis on experiences - and immediately assume they will end manifest as bulk personal anecdotes. No. One very obvious way to do so is to recognize that Wikipedia isn't about interests and experiences and the contributors/authors of articles but about sourced information. It's an encyclopedia, not a social network or a blog. The articles are supposed to represent information gathered from other sources (and they take other literal there, Original Research by the author is not desired [1]), not the knowledge, interests or experiences of the person adding information to the article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
- textgel 6y ago
  I've got to ask; given that a core point of contributing to HN is "Assume good faith." How does that marry up with this cathy-newman esque tactic universally seen when any discussions around this sort of topic crops up?
UncleMeat 6y ago
Except we observe empirically that the existing Wikipedia has clear biases in its content.
- luckylion 6y ago
  Care to elaborate? What are they missing?
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    The context for this discussion has data demonstrating that articles about women have more space dedicated to their relationships and families than articles about men.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      That's it? They found that women are more visible than men on Wikipedia. Like the results where they find that woman are less central etc, the differences are rather small. Given that it's a 9:1 split in genders, you'd expect a bit more obvious results if that was the reason for the results and not e.g. society at large, which Wikipedia largely mirrors. And you'd especially not expect that women are more visible than men. Alas, if you so choose, you can of course interpret that as "the male gaze" and the patriarchal conspiracy keeping the women out of the spot light by ... putting them in the spot light. It seems you focus on one small part of one study and make sweeping declarations about Wikipedia by and large.
      - UncleMeat 6y ago
        That's not it. That's one example. Do you want a dissertation?