Grants talk:IEG/Beyond the Gender Gap: Understanding Women's Participation in Wikipedia

Interview of single edit editors

Hello! You have a good idea. I think you may get some interesting data if you can interview women who have edited Wikipedia once and then dropped out so that we can understand why they dropped out. This will then help identify strategies that can help increase the number of women contributors. Thanks Vincentvikram (talk) 07:01, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for review and scoring. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period (through 2 May 2016).

The committee's formal review begins on 3 May 2016, and grants will be announced 17 June 2016. See the round 1 2016 schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us at iegrantswikimedia · org .

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 04:33, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Alternative funding secured

Thank you for your consideration of this grant. I have been able to find alternative funding to support the study, so I hope that the IEG funds can be used elsewhere for other important projects! --JoiCorp (talk) 16:44, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Beyond the Gender Gap: Understanding Women's Participation in Wikipedia

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	8.0
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	7.7
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	8.0
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	5.6
Additional comments from the Committee: Gender gap research is always welcome. This project fits with all of Wikimedia's strategic priorities of understanding users better, increasing volunteer retention, and diversifying knowledge. I think there is potential for online impact as part of the work will involve documenting strategies and solutions identified by women editors, whom I believe are missing from other related gender-gap work. How would the applicant ensure diversity among interviewees? Who will they speak with? The project’s storyline could be dramatically different or biased if the applicant does not have a quantitive mind before execution. Clarify the plan on this front. There is so much gossip around gender-gap-related problems on Wikimedia projects. We do not have a single comprehensive scientific study to refer to the issues at hand. Like with all scientific studies, I hope to see this lead to further studies of the problems involved. I think that a systematic qualitative analysis of the gender gap could be particularly helpful in thinking through engagement and mediation strategies. I have concerns about the applicant's ability to reach out to women editors who either are not involved in the gender gap task force and/or women editors who have left with Wikimedia community due to harassment. In-depth interviews is an innovative approach, as we still haven't seen much work in this area, perhaps because it was too time-consuming. I have been waiting for ages when anyone would finally bother to actually speak to the women who are already there! The approach is not particularly innovative in that surveys of editors are quite common, but I think the risks are quite low given the amount of funds/support requested. The proposed research has already been approved by the Purdue University Institutional Review Board (as per https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Beyond_the_Gender_Gap:_Understanding_Women%27s_Participation_in_Wikipedia). The main risk I can see is that the applicant may have difficulty finding 30 women willing to participate in the study. Good approach to study a problem. I would suggest publishing the results on the Wikimedia blog for additional impact. There's a lot of gender gap work being done already but to my knowledge there have not been much qualitative analysis, so I do think this has potential for growth and learning. However, I am concerned that 30-40 women is a very small sample size. I would like to hear more from the applicant about their measures of success. The plan is a bit simplistic, and does not have enough detail. However, the amount requested is very reasonable, so it seems fine. The scope for this proposal is good for a 6-month project. The applicant appears to have little experience with Wikipedia but has theoretical interest. I also like that the applicant has been reviewing existing work on the gender gap and speaking with Mssemantics (a past IEG grantee) about the work on the gender gap mailing list (as per https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2016-April/006291.html) I have concerns about the budget: it implies an hourly rate of $60 USD/hour; 15 transcripts are suggested; 20 is the measure of success (and so the expected minimum?); and the expected number of interviewees is 30-40. I am concerned that there is a discrepancy between cost and the actual amount of work involved. While I do not object to the grant amount, I would strongly recommend a better break-down of the time needed for the actual interviews and research, etc. on an hourly basis, as such discrepancies discussed above will raise questions that could be easily avoided. As this project seems to be built into the applicant’s coursework, it seems quite feasible. There doesn't seem to be much community support or awareness of this project. The applicant has a lack of experience in Wikimedia movements, but perhaps having a good mentor from the community could be a good start. I do not see a whole lot of proposed engagement with the community as a whole. However, I do not believe community engagement beyond the interviewees is necessary for this proposal to reach its goals. That said, I find it critical that the outcome of this research be communicated to the community as a whole as I imagine such feedback will be the first step in seeking resolutions to gender gap issues. If well executed, this project would likely gain support from the many gender gap projects on Wikipedia. I do like how the applicant would be mindful of making inroads within the very specific Wikipedia community, and intersectional in selecting their interviewees. The project has a reasonable budget, but may not be innovative enough to fight the gender gap. The potential outcomes are insufficient to be funded, because we have some studies and they have the same results: "gender gap is bad, new tools could attract new female contributors to WMF projects.". But his project is innovative in interviewing a (random) number of women for opinions about Wikipedia. Neutral for me. In general I think it's a good thing to see more and more research/projects on this topic and for $900 I'm tempted to fund. However, it's unclear to me how this project will scale when larger, more comprehensive studies are currently underway. It would also be nice to see some synthesis or effort to build off previous work. Good project in my opinion; it can grow. Because this project is such a small-scale project, it's hard for me to say whether or not it should be funded. However, the asking amount is relatively low and it's certainly important that women's various voices be heard within this movement.

--MJue (WMF) (talk) 00:28, 3 June 2016 (UTC) on behalf of the IEG Committee