4 ms·

I'm particularly interested in how the MediaWiki software is the cause of harassment and gender inequity. I think there may be a good argument for it, but I'd l

• DanBC 11y ago
  One theory is that the wp interface is off-putting to most women and some men, which leads to a gender imbalance. That gender imbalance leads to odd situations. Many wp arguments are won by the people who have the time to outlast their opponents. So, for a long time some rape scenes in films were described as sex scenes, and the rape word was being removed. That's pretty hostile.
• sparkzilla 11y ago
  I wrote a blog post on how Wikipedia's software choices cause the Gender Gap [1]. In short, the MediaWiki software gave power to the initial users of the software, who were mainly men. As the site grew, the software was not updated to devolve power to other groups, such as women and minorities, in part because the dominant group thought they were/are doing good work. In Wikipedia might is right and the end justifies the means. It's not just women, men find themselves routinely harassed on Wikipedia, and that's IMHO a fault of software, that doesn't have enough checks and balances on its various power structures. I came to realize this empirically because my site, which also crowdsources news and biographies, has up to 80% female participation. [1] http://newslines.org/blog/the-sexists-at-the-top-of-wikipedia/ http://newslines.org/blog/the-sexists-at-the-top-of-wikipedi...