Grants talk:IdeaLab/Bring positive discrimination to Wikipedia

Here's the thing

That 13%? Is based on the number of Wikipedians who identify to the community as female. I don't feel the need to put a user box on my user page, or click a button in preferences. Maybe what we need, instead of positive discrimination, is more accurate numbers--maybe encouraging more women to disclose their gender would put the number closer to 50% than you think. Origamite (talk) 17:24, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It could be. But if men and women are equally likely to not putting a userbox or not clicking a button in preferences, then 13% of all the editors that did put a userbox or checked an option is an accurate percentage. The only case where you would be right is if men are more likely to do those things than women. I'm skeptical about that.

However, I fully agree that we need better statistics. --Langus-TxT (talk) 18:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

If Wikipedia is a hostile environment for women, it would be surprising if women didn't publicly identify at a lower rate than men.

However, the 13% figure comes from a survey, not public identification: http://web.archive.org/web/20100414165445/http://wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_Overview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf See en:Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia#Research_findings for context for the number. Emufarmers (talk) 21:50, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

In the 2011 editor's survey, the number dropped to 9%. An informal survey on over 300 (confirmed) feminine editors was carried on. I encourage everyone to read its conclusions here. To the point, when ladies were asked "How do you think that the gender gap can shrink or how do you feel women can be encouraged to participate more?" the second and third more common answers (from a multiple choice) were:

• 39% of respondents feel that female spokespeople would inspire more women to contribute.
• 32% of respondents felt that having more women involved as administrators, on-Wiki leaders, OTRS agents and staff would help.

This idea aims at those aspects. --Langus-TxT (talk) 22:38, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Why do we need affirmative action?

Maybe women just dont want to edit Wikipedia as much as men. CAn we stop with this feminist crap already? Affirmative action has proven a toxic failure in every form tried. Women just dont want these positions or to be a part of administration as much as men.--Metallurgist (talk) 17:29, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

If by feminist crap you're referring to the whole IdeaLab, that complaint should be addressed at Grants_talk:IdeaLab, not in the talk page of any particular idea.

If instead you're claiming that positive discrimination is feminist crap (even if the concept can be applied to any minority) on the grounds that "women don't want these positions" then let me proudly tell you that in my country since 1991 a minimum of 30% of the candidates for congress have to be women,[1] and we've never had issues to get the required number. I imagine that, given the size of Wikipedia, it shouldn't be an issue here either. Today, 37% of our legislators are women.[2] --Langus-TxT (talk) 18:56, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

To add: in the proposal I purposely avoided setting a percentage, so I'm now wondering how can you be so sure that we won't have the required number of competent applications. --Langus-TxT (talk) 19:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The answer is, funnily enough, that we don't need "affirmative action" (or "positive discrimination", or "reverse discrimination" or whatever other silly name one wishes to call "discrimination that for some reason is portrayed by a group of people as being of different moral status than any other similar instance of discrimination".

Two wrongs don't make a right, as the old saying goes. No matter how many times you try and say "Being evil because someone else is evil is alright", it does not make you come off any more convincing than when you initially said it. Hogswallop is hogswallop, no matter the amount of times that it is repeated. Tharthan (talk) 19:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Thing is, I don't see anything morally wrong in positive discrimination. Discrimination is not a bad word per se, and "two wrongs don't make a right" is just a saying, purely a semantic argument. The fact is that positive discrimination has relieved inequity situations in places like South Africa and Brazil.[3] Whether or not it would help Wikipedia in this situation is debatable; I believe it would, but I won't force anyone to think otherwise. It's just a freaking idea. --Langus-TxT (talk) 21:41, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Making that kind of generalisation isn't likely to produce an accurate result, particularly if you're not a member of the group in question. If Wikipedia is the sort of environment that attracts men and repels women (which it is), it will have coverage that's biased toward men (which it does), and besides, it's not just that "women don't want to edit", it's that they find it more intimidating (this has been shown to be the case). If you ignore the fact that potential new editors are being thus intimidated, and then conclude that if women participated equally it would decrease the number of qualified people in such and such a position, the implications of that are rather unfortunate. Ekips39 (talk) 22:39, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Langus-TxT Discrimination, as in "distinct treatment of an individual or group to their disadvantage; treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality; prejudice; bigotry" is bad no matter who does it. It shouldn't matter what your gender is, or what your sexuality is, or what your hair colour is, or what your native language is, or anything like that. All that should matter is one's own personal merit and skill; nothing else. There is indeed much merit to be gotten in making it highly recommended (or, indeed, required) for there to be two or three (or three or four) female members of the arbitration committee. There is not much merit in making arbitrary gender requirements for administrators, and (whilst there may indeed be merit in doing something similar to what I have suggested regarding the Arbitration Committee for bureaucrats) it has yet to be satisfactorily demonstrated as far as I am concerned that such is needed for bureaucrats.

Furthermore, there is a very good reason that "two wrongs don't make a right" is (and has been) a common saying: because it's a generally agreed upon belief in society. Do let me know when "being just as bad as those that you despise makes you the coolest person ever" becomes the new saying, however. I'll go book a trip to Underarock, Nomansland for permanent hermitage immediately after being informed of such.

@Ekips39 For all that is good and righteous, please do not generalise an entire gender. That is the absolute best way to make your point come off jerkish and logically fallacious (with a side of potential no real Scotsman-esque attitude). It doesn't repel all women, it repels many individuals with certain beliefs and standpoints that happen to also be women. I'm am fairly certain that it is repellent towards men (and those that do not identify as male or female) that hold similar beliefs and standpoints as well. The real solution to that problem is to conduct a study on which personality types Wikipedia tends to be biased towards, and address the results of such a study. Not oversimplify the matter by claiming that Wikipedia repels all women.

However, you are indeed correct that, along with the other terrible outcomes that Wikipedia's stupid blasted systematic bias has led to (I have been personally affected by one of those outcomes, mind, so do not think for a second that I in any way support Wikipedia's blatant and deep-rooted systematic bias), there is an undercurrent of hostility by a sickeningly high number of users towards women. That needs to be dealt with post haste. This proposal, left unmodified, would not deal with it in a fashion that I personally feel to be just or affective. Tharthan (talk) 23:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I did not intend to make a statement about all women (since obviously there are a fair number of female editors), and I'm happy to see the point clarified; I was paraphrasing the studies that have been done. I suppose I thought it could go without saying that I was referring to a tendency rather than an absolute, but apparently not. Ekips39 (talk) 21:31, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ekips39 How women being intimidated? And how do the contributors that are “intimidating” these women know that they are women? Seeing as there are no obvious signs that mark women out on Wikipedia. --GIRC V2 (talk) 22:02, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

@GIRC V2: Here is Sue Gardner's article on women finding Wikipedia intimidating. Many women identify themselves with an obviously feminine name, on their user page, or in their preferences. Ekips39 (talk) 19:15, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Requires more data

This proposal will obviously enough not solve entry disparity problems. It is also not at all clear if the "leaky pipeline" model of gender disparity in academia applies to Wikimedia projects.

The relevant statistics for assessing this proposal would not be the proportion of women in the overall editor base, but among the more strongly involved editors who might be interested in an admin position. E.g.

• Is the proportion of women among admins significantly less than the proportion of women among users with >X edits (for some reasonable value of X?)
• Do men succeed more often than women when seeking adminship?

--Tropylium (talk) 19:45, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Those are indeed fair questions. Looking at current numbers at w:Wikipedia:Formal_organization, if we have 34 crats, 700 admins and 18 arbs, their 13% would be:

• 4-5 female crats
• 91 female admins
• 2 female arbs

Just food for thought. It would really be more useful having the answer to your first question. --Langus-TxT (talk) 21:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

My sincere apologies, I didn't know that people saying "Two wrongs don't make a right" was "illegitimate". Must have missed that back when it was never actually true or something like that. Would you also propose that we blatantly start asking for ID cards and banning any editors that any particular user happened to disagree with? Oh! Or maybe you would prefer that we make certain days "Male days" and certain days "Female days". But wait, what about those that don't identify as male or female, are they excluded? Tharthan (talk) 21:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You're at the wrong thread Thartan... and you're diverging from the proposal. w:Slippery slope fallacy comes to mind. --Langus-TxT (talk) 22:01, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually, this made me think of a way where this proposal might be reasonable. If it suggested that at least two or three arbitrators (Perhaps bureaucrats could be discussed as a possibility as well, but I'm not convinced that such should be the case just yet) should be women (or, indeed, needed to be women) then I would be completely on board. What I am not on board with is trying to set a quota for administrators, arbitrators, and bureaucrats (which, I reckon, would end up at an unreasonable number) as is being suggested now. The Arbitration Committee MUST have at least two or three members that are women for it to even have a chance at being considered by any reasonable individual to be balanced. That I can agree with 100%. The other stuff though? Not really. Tharthan (talk) 22:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

It's an idea, it's 100% open to modification (or at least that's how I see it). After all, this is a collaborative effort, right? --Langus-TxT (talk) 22:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I assume that link was meant to be wikipedia:Wikipedia:Formal organization. Ekips39 (talk) 22:16, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You're right, thank you, I've corrected it. --Langus-TxT (talk) 22:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

You might feel that way, Langus-Txt, but I have met many people participating and/or making proposals that are unwilling to compromise. That's what I was very afraid of being the case here. Too many people are uninterested in trying to work together these days. If you are willing to discuss and be open to compromise or just general working together to improve it, then that's great! I'm happy to hear that. Tharthan (talk) 23:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Tharthan: Just wondering, how can we impose a quota of two or three female arbitrators? I have tried doing this in Ukrainian Wikipedia ArbCom election last year: I have nominated 3 women and 2 men for 5 seats. In my view, all of them had reasonable chances of being elected. However, out of my 5 nominations only one user accepted (and it was a woman), and 4 other users didn't accept nominations. In total we ended up having only 2 female candidates and 12 male candidates for 5 seats, with one woman getting 93% and ranked 2nd and another one getting 52% and ranked 9th (the threshold is at 75%). As a result, we have only one female arbitrator. The question is: how could we reach the quota of two or three female arbitrators in our case? — NickK (talk) 23:42, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@NickK: In such a case it would likely be necessary to get another female candidate to replace the one previously nominated that failed to run and then do a revote (with the nominated female that didn't fail automatically marked as being guaranteed the position as the community agreed that she deserved it), ad infinitum until a second female is chosen. Same concept for three. A survey of sorts might also be in order in such a case, to try and determine the reasons behind the problem.

I know that it might seem unfair to (and even incite some backlash from) the male candidates that didn't get the position even though the intial vote said that they could, but in such cases it would be necessary to deeply examine one's merit so that the best candidates were picked.

So, indeed, it would cause much trouble with enforcement, but you know what they say: if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. So those that lost out should just keep trying if they felt that they truly were qualified for the position.Tharthan (talk) 23:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Tharthan: The serious error of your statement is it would be necessary to deeply examine one's merit so that the best candidates were picked. The election of the first woman would mean "community really trusts her, and she deserves this position", thus it would be effectively based on her merit. The election of the second woman would mean "she is a woman, and that's why she was elected". As soon as someone is elected because of their gender (or their race, age, religion or any other protected characteristics), there is no room for examination of one's merit. I know female Wikipedians who would never ever apply for a position of a "female arbitrator" or "female administrator", because they find being considered separately from male candidates as something very offensive. The fact that this seat of a "second female arbitrator" would mean they have to replace someone who is trusted by the community but is of a wrong gender will be a very bad start for potential candidates — NickK (talk) 01:02, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Great Idea! Change your Special:Preferences now!

So one could simply change the status in preferences and increase the chance to get admin? Interesting! Or do you plan some kind of test? ...Sicherlich ^Post 20:35, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

If you feel comfortable with posing as a woman in every talk page of Wikipedia, maybe your point of view and interests are likely to be those of woman... --Langus-TxT (talk) 21:58, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Langus-TxT: why does someone needs to pose? He/she acts as usual. Or is there a behavior code? Just male users write that kind of stuff? ...Sicherlich ^Post 10:04, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

+1. The proposal can hardly be implemented without requiring people to give up their anonymity. On the internet, nobody knows you're a ... man! --MF-W 22:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

+1 from me, I guess it can bring me more hats.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 22:47, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Sure this may happen some of the time, but most people identify strongly enough with their gender that any statement they make about it will be true. We shouldn't give up on this just because a small handful of people might game the system; that would be like saying we shouldn't live healthy lifestyles because we'll eventually die no matter what we do. Ekips39 (talk) 21:39, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Opposition

(This section has been moved from the idea page per the IdeaLab How it works guidelines)

1. Affirmative action is an unmitigated disaster. Women just dont want to be involved in editing or administrating as much as men. There is no need to force a quota, which will yield inferior administration. There is no objective reason why there should be 50% men and 50% women in everything. Its time to stop giving in to feminist crap.--Metallurgist (talk) 17:31, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
2. The Wikipedia community is composed of volunteers. It doesn't make sense to establish a quota system when there's no limit to the number of administrators and/or bureaucrats we can promote: we'd end up either unfairly limiting men willing to contribute in administrative roles, or unduly promoting women simply for the sake of representation (which could backfire given how easy it would be to, ah, digitally crossdress). It isn't even worth talking about the Arbitration Committee, since those positions are elected. This doesn't seem in the interest of the projects. I would appreciate encouragement and support for women interested in greater permissions, but outright discrimination is not something I can silently tolerate. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 17:59, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
3. Positive discrimination is still discrimination. Discrimination, especially that which comes at the detriment of others, is always bad. JoshuaKGarner (talk) 18:19, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
4. Insane idea, not only that, it's against Foundation policy (wmf:Resolution:Nondiscrimination).--AldNonymous^Bicara? 18:27, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
5. This is the wrong approach to take. Editors should be getting access to the admin tools, getting elected to Arbcom, etc. because they are qualified for the position (which even now many are not). We should not be selecting people for these, male, female or other, just because of some self directed requirement. Reguyla (talk) 18:30, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
6. Absolutely no, per Reguyla et al.. Positive discrimination is treating the womens as idiots. People should be chosen because his or her is qualified, not because of his or her sex. -- M\A 18:38, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
7. There is no such thing as positive discrimination. Discrimination is discrimination. This is not "Brave New World". Propaganda and forced compliance to asinine nonsense is never the way to make things better. It is sick and twisted to do such things. I much prefer some of the other proposals than I do this one. Tharthan (talk) 18:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
8. That statistic is depressingly-low, but the other dissidents are right; if women are not drawn to the community as it is now, establishing a quota is not going to spontaneously create more women who are drawn to the community. The likely outcome is that some of the (qualified) male administrators will be removed from their positions in favor of less-motivated female administrators. Futur3g4ry (talk) 19:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
   1. The fact that all the dissenters were moved off the main page is yet another reason to oppose this idea. Futur3g4ry (talk) 02:50, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
9. Firstly, we don't know how many women are actually here - only the reported number; much of the difference between the number of self-identified men and self-identified women may simply be tht men prefer to tell everyone, and women prefer not to. And, of course, the fact that some user claims to be a woman (or a man, as the case is) doesn't mean that they are. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:42, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
10. Positive discrimination? I can't think of discrimination being positive. Let's not turn the wiki into a social experiment. Affirmative action is not a good idea for Wikipedia. It doesn't promote the most successful candidates in the real world and would reduce admin quality. As far as I am aware, Wikipedia is edited by anonymous volunteers and I don't really care what gender folks are. Editors here tend to be type-A, not testosterone-driven.--NortyNort (talk) 20:13, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
11. Personally, I found the expression of the problem to be insulting and the proposed solution to the problem to be silly. The problem is that too many people are driven away from editing by abusive people. I suspect that those aggressive people are mostly male, but do not know that to be a fact. I've no doubt that testosterone is a contributing factor to the display of aggression but to express the problem in such terms is truly obnoxious and simplistic. The solution to the problem is to reduce tolerance for aggressive behavior regardless of its source. The answer is to remove the editing privileges almost immediately from such aggressive people, and the period of banning should increase with each transgression. How would one implement a quota system when we do not know for a fact the gender of the individuals involved? Anyone could pose as male or female here. Zedshort (talk) 21:29, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
12. Per my explanations below in #How can we do this?. In brief, there is no way of doing this without harm to the community — quota can be reached either by reducing the number of males in these positions or by putting pressure on potential female candidates ("we need you as a female to reach the quota, not as a qualified user") — NickK (talk) 22:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
13. Since there are an unlimited number of open admin/bureaucrat spots, and they are filled by !election, this will either necessitate reducing the number of men, or increasing the number of women. Assuming we increase the number of women, this will entail getting people into those positions that would otherwise not be in those positions. These people would also have to pass community !elections, which would probably not allow underqualified women editors in, and if the women editors were qualified, they would probably have already became an admin. Also, ArbCom would necessitate reducing men in order to get more women, which would mean that women would not necessarily be subject to the same standards as men, as the current standards mean that mostly men are in ArbCom. If we want to fix the inequality in the administration positions, we must recruit more female editors to edit in the first place, as some of them would then trickle up to the highest position. Chess (talk) 00:22, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
14. Getting close to a 50/50 gender split would be beneficial, but setting a quota of minimum female administrators is a dangerous way to do it, as it makes it harder for qualified males and easier for unqualified females to get positions. Efforts to shrink the gender gap need to be done by encouraging more females to contribute, not forcing them to or forcing males not to. Thereppy (talk) 00:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
15. Discrimination is wrong in principle. Discrimination is against WMF policy. Quota may favour less able candidates. May not be possible to verify gender of candidates. Probably undesirable to do so (privacy). Quota will create a negative perception of the competence of the female sysops etc and opposition to them. Sysops etc are not analogous to the example given (members of a legislature). More like janitors. May encourage hat-collecting: sysop status is not a "trophy": WP:NOBIGDEAL. James500 (talk) 06:19, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

    Why is it not possible to post a comment that does not endorse this idea on this page? Why are the opposition compelled to post on the Talk Page? This layout seems to encourage a very biased view of the proposal. Most strange. Zedshort (talk) 21:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

    Because, of course, that would make the proposal look bad. And we can't have that. That might make it fail. Only those that agree with something should be allowed to speak. Didn't you grow up in a society that oppresses all views but those of the mad partisans, Zedshort? Get with the program! <sarcasm> Tharthan (talk) 21:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

    This seems like "discussion" of the way the page is being maintained and not actually for this endorsement in particular. More appropriate for the talk page of this page or that of the guidelines in which the the action of moving the page was executed, no? Blurpeace 21:57, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

    That's a fair enough point. Feel free to move it to the area where the guideline in question is being discussed (if such an area is present). I agree that the proposal section shouldn't be littered with discussion of a different topic, but nevertheless this is a point that definitely needs to be brought to attention. So, again, feel free to move it to the page discussing the guideline in question (or whatever the equivalent is). Tharthan (talk) 22:02, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

    Honestly, as far as I know, this has always been the case on IdeaLabs/Grants pages (it isn't a new thing for this campaign). One of the ideas being that even if not many people endorse that it is more encouraging for interested in submitting other options to see only a few endorsements then seeing huge amounts of opposition and the idea that if it's a bad idea it won't get a whole lot of endorsement and/or people will discuss the problems with the proposal on the talk page. Edit: Reference to How it works page (which is old, not for this campaign) Jalexander--WMF 22:29, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

    Shouldn't we be encouraging people to stand up, be bold, and declare what they believe in? Rather than essentially censoring the proposal page (I am not at all saying that that was the intention when it was chosen to make things the way that they are now, but that it is often nevertheless being used in such a manner by those that don't like criticism [constructive or otherwise] of their ideas; a big no-no in community projects like Wikimedia's), why not simply shrink the text of the opposes, or make it so that only "support" gets a button, whilst those that oppose must add the opposition in manually? Tharthan (talk) 23:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

16. Should we have quotas for under-represented races? Should people from under-represented regions be given preference for staff roles? A female spokesperson would be fine. However,making women administrators not because of their actual ability, but just because they're women, is a bad idea. This is insulting, because it implies that women are less capable of being administrators, even though this is not true. If a female and a male editor are applying to be administrators, then, the gender shouldn't matter. The better person for the job should be accepted. But in the end, the admins don't dictate Wikipedia policy or really represent users. They keep things together. Admins are not like heads of state. Zaixionito (talk)
17. Oppose. Talent goes before gender. It requires a lot of effort to get to know the inside out of Wikipedia. A lot. That means that only those who really, really, really want it, will probably up to the job.Wereldburger758 (talk) 05:29, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
18. I strongly oppose this idea, as there is no legitimation for lowering the election threshold for any group. The ability to be a good administrator is not more concentrated in any demographic group. Lowering the election threshold would therefore increase the number of incompetent administrators. --Liberaler Humanist (talk) 12:05, 9 March 2015 (UTC).
19. Strongly oppose. Why are we as humans obsessed with forcing things? If women want to be contributors and admins they will. Everyone has a choice and there is no restriction here. I thought that was what feminism was all about? To be honest this proposal made me nauseous. This is taking a step backwards, not forward. We as a species need to stop obsessing over trivial things such as chromosomes and realize that we are all just humans. Knowledge and ability is what qualifies one to be an admin (etc.), not your gender identity. This goes against everything that was ever fought for in the name of female rights. --Bathes (talk) 00:45, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
20. Strongly Oppose. Although I believe that it would be great for more women to participate on Wikipedia, I see no reason for this to occur. Positive discrimination is a faulty concept which attempts to impose discriminatory practices in favor of a given demographic in order to artificially balance a perceived disparity. My first issue with this is: why does there need to be a balance? Perhaps men are more interested in editing than women, or perhaps some women choose the "male" option to anonymize their identity. Secondly, how will this actually improve Wikipedia? Women are just as valuable as men and forcing a balance in demographics will solve nothing; what should matter is the quality of Wikipedia's content, not the sexual identity of its authors. Thirdly, how is this fair to the male demographic? It assumes that a male majority is a bad thing, despite how the fact of these individuals being male does not impact the quality of their work. Switching out a male for a female of equal work ethic and integrity would solve nothing and only give the illusion of equality. Fourthly, why is an equal representation of sex necessary on Wikipedia? This is not a social justice forum, nor is it a political board to represent women's rights. Wikipedia is first and foremost a site for compiling and verifying the world's information. Even the Manual of Style states as much. Overall, I find this initiative to be foolish and pointless, and misleads Wikipedia in an unnecessary direction. I support women's equal rights like any other rational human being, but an artificially forced equal representation of both sexes is a waste of time and resources, especially when no discernible benefit can be gleaned from it. I think this project is not necessary and, in fact, it could be deleterious to Wikipedia. See my full explanation here. Nøkkenbuer (talk) 21:21, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
21. The proposal is about get more women as administrators because is supposed that if there is more female administrators then we can encourage more women to join to WP. But, first: here is not data about women rejected unfairly as administrators, second: requirements to become and administrator are based on the level and accuracy of editions. If you artificially increase the number of females as administrators you will get people than will do nothing, or worst, will do things wrong, third: unlike “political systems” there is not a limited number of places of administrators. The gap can not be attributed to disadvantages of the “contest” for the seat. There is a gap in the number of female contributors then you have a gap in everything about the activity of Wikipedia. And fourth: be an administrator is not a position of privilege or “power”, is about do tasks, most of these routine tasks. To say “empower yourself by blocking vandals, merging articles, renaming pages and more…” is not the way to reduce any gap.--SirWalter (talk) 07:13, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
22. Oppose, positive discrimination to prevent negative discrimination is still discrimination. We should be focused on finding good and intelligent people to be on Wikipedia, not enforcing some ridiculous gender/race/sexual-orientation quota. --Cmckain (talk) 03:13, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Hmm...

Some users supporting this have said that they think Wikipedia should take the "progressive" stance.

That is the most nonsensical thought ever, as Wikipedia is not here to be partisan. That's the whole point. Wikipedia is supposed to be a neutral source of information that anyone can contribute to.

Like I said, if you wish to make Wikipedia run like the government in Brave New World, I very strongly doubt that anyone is going to be able to stop you (logic and reason doesn't really matter much these days, it seems, nor do morals).

However, any problems that are caused because of introduced sexist discriminatory tactics are on your hands, and absolutely no one else's. As far as I am concerned, they would still be on your hands even if the Wikimedia Foundation supported this. Purely your fault if bad things happen, and you had ought to stand responsible if such bad things are brought to light in the future if you have any sense of dignity. Those that propose mad backwards tactics are the only ones truly guilty if such mad backwards tactics destroy a community. Tharthan (talk) 21:51, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

How would this be done?

This sounds nice on the face of it, but it doesn't say how we would get more women into these positions. The method I like best is to be more proactive about recruiting women into advanced positions, without any difference in what standards are applied to them. Someone once mentioned lowering the bar for women at RFA, but I don't think that kind of thing is a good idea because it values what they are over what they do, and may result in qualified women going into "the closet" because they wish to be judged only on their merits or dislike "standing out", while unqualified women (and possibly some men) may claim to be female just to gain more power. It would also address the symptom rather than the underlying problem, the latter being that we don't have enough female editors in general and we may want to solve that before we start worrying about how many of them have advanced permissions. (The ratio of females to males seems to be the same regardless of user rights.) Ekips39 (talk) 22:04, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

As for the how, I have no idea.. Your idea is good and surely uncontroversial. The quota system, on the other hand, if set low enough (at least at first) could yield the required amount of viable candidates without lowering the bar. Whether the "sweet spot" at this point in time is 1%, 9% or 15% is beyond me.

Regarding the symptom vs underlying problem, check this. When those 300+ female editors were asked "How do you think that the gender gap can shrink or how do you feel women can be encouraged to participate more?" the second and third more common answers (from a multiple choice) were:

• 39% of respondents feel that female spokespeople would inspire more women to contribute.
• 32% of respondents felt that having more women involved as administrators, on-Wiki leaders, OTRS agents and staff would help.

Those are merely opinions, but at least they come from the affected party. --Langus-TxT (talk) 23:12, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

How can we do this?

I would be happy to see it, but how can we do it? There are three main models for elections on Wikipedia:

1. Candidates can be nominated at any time, and they are elected if their support is higher than a threshold (e.g. administrator elections)
2. There is a fixed time for nominations, and all candidates with support higher than a threshold are elected (e.g. steward elections)
3. There is a fixed time for nominations, and a fixed number of top candidates is elected (e.g. Arbcom elections).

I looked into election systems in different countries, and positive discriminations works well only if one has to vote for party lists — in this case list composition is typically required to be 50/50. However, it is impossible in Wikipedia as Wikipedia had no party lists at all. The only ways to implement positive discrimination in Wikipedia I am aware of are the following:

1. Male candidates for adminship must be nominated simultaneously with female candidates. The problem here is a) that not all users disclose their gender, b) that it is hard to find qualified candidates for adminship in general, c) that it is even harder to find the candidate of a necessary gender in a given moment. On several occasions I have nominated an equal number of male and female candidates (for sysop and arbcom elections), and it was hard to convince people to accept these nominations no matter what was their gender. Thus the only likely result will be a drop in number of administrators (e.g. if we have 100 sysops and 13 of them are female, we will end up having 13 male and 13 female sysops).
2. Do not elect male stewards unless there are enough female stewards elected. In Stewards/Elections 2015 this would result in 0 stewards elected, as the only candidate identified as female failed to get the necessary support
3. Elect female arbitrators even if they get less support than male arbitrators (e.g. if we need to elect 10 arbitrators with 50/50 representation and there are only 2 women in top-10, we will elect 3 more women even if they had lower support). This will typically result in lower support of Arbcom by the community, as some of Arbcom members will be elected even if community does not support them. Bear in mind that a female candidate does not necessarily mean a candidate trusted by the community, and a community can not trust a female candidate same way it does not trust a male candidate.

The main problem we need to solve is convincing qualified female users to become candidates at administrators, bureaucrats or arbitrators elections, but I don't see how this problem is related to gender — from my experience convincing a male user and a female user is an equally difficult task. There is no particular problem with support of qualified female candidates, the problem is a lack of qualified female users who want to nominate themselves. The only possible impact of the quota here will be a negative pressure ("come on, nominate yourself, we need you as a woman, not as a qualified user, as we don't reach the quota").

To sum up, I don't see a way to impose a quota without harming the community — NickK (talk) 22:31, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

This seems to have rendered my above section redundant, and it's more thorough to boot. Oh well. Ekips39 (talk) 22:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, your section was not there when I started writing. You can merge them together if you like — NickK (talk) 22:47, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Is there nearly enough potential admins?

From what I've seen Wikipedia does not have enough admins or people willing and able to be admins, for this to work you need a surpplus of suitable admins without this all you'll get is either bigger admin shortages, or inept admins, I don't think either would help anyone. Halfhat (talk)

I think he's proposing to emasculate the male admins. I can prepare a list male-identifying admins for desysoping. Dispenser (talk) 21:52, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

No one would seriously propose such a silly thing, so bringing it up doesn't help anyone. (And are you comparing desysopping to castration?) Ekips39 (talk) 22:10, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, Dispenser. Unwarranted attacks/mockery like your last comment are the reason why we are lacking feminine input. Why don't you try proposing a new idea? --Langus-TxT (talk) 22:16, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

It was obviously tongue-in-cheek, prompted by the aggressive tone of the campaign without any clear actionable items. Of course, I do more than just talk. Dispenser (talk) 00:29, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

"Aggressive tone of the campaign", really?? Jeez... --Langus-TxT (talk) 00:42, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Normative / Practical / Procedural problems with this

I'll preface this saying that I think affirmative action as a whole is good in the real world, and has greatly helped bring women into areas where the glass ceiling previously stopped them from going. That said...

• Affirmative action assumes a parity of participants along gender lines - 50/50. This is not the case on Wikimedia. Assuming the contributor pool to be the "population", and admin/crat/steward/other groups to be the positions which women are currently barred from, affirmative action would only be attempting to bring the participation of women in these groups to parity with their participation in the Wikimedia community as a whole. That is 13%; hardly a laudable goal.
• Positive discrimination brings with it misrepresentation backlash; people think (perhaps correctly so) that the only reason women fill these positions is because they are women. How will this proposal get around this serious issue that could undermine community trust in the institutions of adminship (and other user groups) further?
• Toxicity is not a male issue; any deconstructive analysis finds similar veins of irresponsible communication regardless of gender. It's an issue with anonymity and a perceived lack of consequences combined with a potential lack of social skills that can lead to toxic communication, not the fact that Wikimedia is male-dominated. So what benefits do you seek to find from adding more females in these established authority positions?
• On the topic of deconstructive approaches, why is this not being proposed instead of positive discrimination? As someone who studies a bit in social justice, seeing any "positive discrimination" proposal strikes me as very outdated. Look at some of the modern approaches instead.
• There are societal factors beyond what we can control here that prevent women from contributing here in similar quantities to men. There are definitely some factors that we can control here, and let's do that. But positive discrimination doesn't seem to be the best approach.

Procedural note: The removal of opposition to the talk page is rather dishonest and implies that there is a greater margin of support for this than there currently is. The opposition section should be replaced on the main page IMO. Ajraddatz (talk) 00:02, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I want to make some observations:

• 13% of female admins would hardly be something to disregard so easily. I don't know the number right now, but given that there are 700 admins, that would equate to about 90 female admins. Dispenser, are you able to prepare a script similar to the one you made here to address this question?
• You may be right about incivility not being a gender-related issue but related to anonymity. However, that was secondary to the idea. The real benefit is generating a Wikipedia more encouraging for women. I explained that here.

I'm interested in those deconstructive approaches you mention, and I have to admit I'm not following you. Could you expand on that? Can a new idea be generated from that? --Langus-TxT (talk) 03:13, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure about enwiki, but out of 42 stewards only one is female. You're right that it would be better for this number to be more representative of the % of female editors, with increasing female editing being the long-term goal. That does make sense.

By deconstructing I mean looking, from a normative lens, at what makes the role of administrator default to the male gender. Arguably, if it were not an implicitly gendered concept, then we would see a proportional number of female admins - I don't think that we do. Rather than "forcing" female editors into "power" positions, it would be more responsible to figure out why they aren't there in the first place - you'll then know the factors that prevent them from engaging in that area and can figure out solutions to those problems. It is unfortunately not a practical solution, but it can lead to one far more effective than one which doesn't take that step back first.

Ultimately, if positive discrimination were to work, it would need to be a very specific form of affirmative action that aims to attract female candidates and support them through the process without sacrificing any of the current standards or allowing sub-par female candidates to get in. Some group which could specifically reach out to female editors and help engage them in the positions. The quota system you are proposing will just lead to misrecognition backlash (see the opposition section above). Ajraddatz (talk) 04:14, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

One could argue that 'if it were not an implicitly gendered concept, then we would see a proportional number of female admins,' but that's not reason to assume it. One can argue for nearly anything. Perhaps the debate that's needed first is whether that's so or not. Otherwise one may end up trying to fix something that's not broken. Truly, if you expect to get broad based support for any action whatsoever, you can't skip this step and merely assume that a disparity must be the result of inequity.OckRaz (talk) 15:59, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

SELECT SUM(up_value="female"), SUM(up_value="male"), SUM(up_value IS NULL), COUNT(*)
FROM user_groups AS a
LEFT JOIN user_groups AS b ON b.ug_user=a.ug_user AND b.ug_group="bot"
LEFT JOIN user_properties  ON   up_user=a.ug_user AND up_property="gender"
WHERE a.ug_group="sysop" AND b.ug_group IS NULL;

Of the 1359 enwiki admins: 56 (9%) selected "She edit wiki pages", 600 (91%) selected "He edits wiki pages", 697 have not made any selection, and 6 are bots. Typically we can expect the same opt-in and opt-out ratios for both genders, although the position's prominence or age may deter participation. I tried also to get numbers for the active editors, but my queries keeps timeout after 10 minutes. Dispenser (talk) 05:25, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Again, what Ajraddatz trying to say are, most of the endorser trying to putting cart before the horse.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 06:27, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, those numbers are quite impressive to be honest... if they are accurate, it would seem that genders' presence is mirrored in the adminship.

Ajraddatz, I was thinking yesterday of the idea you've mentioned: a group of editors/admins/staff specifically monitoring for new female editors to lend a hand and offer guidance, without being too invasive. Sounds rather a great idea, don't you think?

On the procedural note I forgot to add the following: it feels morally wrong for me too to take the opposition to talk page, but if you think about it, WMF is right in doing this. That way, passing visitors don't get discouraged of proposing a new idea (you have to admit that the tone of the opposition is not the best one --your comments and few others being the exception). And, after all, WMF will have the final saying in the matter (which, incidentally, makes me now realize that this was not the correct vein to propose this change). --Langus-TxT (talk) 14:48, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

@Langus-TxT: I would like to see such a group created. If the WMF wants to pour money into it, then even have a staff member to help coordinate it and set it up. If you'd like, I could create a proposal for it (or you could). I generally think that the opposition should be kept on the main page, but at the same time all of the opposition here is really disheartening. Wikimedia already has a reputation of being full of "fedora-wearing anti-feminists" and looking at a lot of the comments to these proposals seem to really reflect that. I think that any solution to the gender gap moving forward needs to frame it as being aimed at increasing participation in general, focussing on a specific group that is under-represented. That said, there are many systemic and cultural factors that prevent women from contributing that are external to these projects. But we can certainly do as much as possible to overcome barriers that are constructed here and not elsewhere. Ajraddatz (talk) 22:31, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

@Ajraddatz: go ahead, and please leave a link here when it's done, so we can endorse it :)

I've already thrown out another crazy idea and I have plans for another one so... I don't want to be blocked for spamming or anything like that haha.

Cheers --Langus-TxT (talk) 01:29, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

testosterone-driven aggressiveness

Others cited an opposition to that POV at Address the gender gap, under "Women will make Wikipedia a nicer place". --AVRS (talk) 23:22, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I've inserted a link to this section. --Langus-TxT (talk) 02:16, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

On a careful examination of all the data, I have to say that I find Adrianne Wadewitz's conclusions questionable. In Assumption #3: Women will edit underrepresented topics, Adrianne argues that the findings of Lam et al in this respect are probably wrong because "many female editors don't note their gender at all" (by using preferences and such). I'd tend to disagree. The paper found a correlation between gender and areas of interest, and I'm sticking to it. So does es.Wikipedia when launching its Wikipedia:Día de la Mujer 2015 campaign.

More to the point, on Assumption #4: Women will make Wikipedia a nicer place Adrianne interprets the paper's findings as contrary to this belief. However, the study doesn't attribute the contentiousness of some topics to women, they just note that women edit on them anyways (H3a F-Uncontentious: Females tend to avoid controversial or contentious articles --not a minor finding actually). Moreover, the way of measuring disagreements was by looking whether or not the article was protected in any way. This is just my opinion but, given that one of the two topics of female interest was found to be People, the researchers should have taken into account that biographies of living persons are subject of a much stricter policy than any other kind of articles.

All that saying, I fully support her statements that content coverage and civility are tasks that we are all accountable for. --Langus-TxT (talk) 15:46, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

The study's results indicate that women are more likely to face consequences for actions perceived as furthering conflict, not that they are more conflict-prone. One could interpret the former as meaning the latter, as Adrienne did, but the conclusion in the study seems to be rather that the editing environment is unconducive to women. I'm inclined to support this conclusion, as I am one of those who has anecdotal evidence for it -- that is, I find female editors to be "nicer" than males, and even when they're arguing they tend to be more polite rather than throwing around insults. There are many always-nice men and a few rude women, but those seem to be the exceptions. A specific example: on wikipedia:WT:GGTF, while everyone is at least superficially civil, the exchanges between women are always collaborative and agreeable, while those involving men are more likely to be argumentative. Finally, I've experienced several highly gender-skewed environments:

• On one wiki, all the active editors were male (except me), and the culture was very much a "boys' locker room". I eventually had to leave because of the misogynist and ableist "jokes" directed at me, or rather because I considered them inappropriate and was met with extremely hostile responses.
• On another wiki, the vast majority of active editors are male, but they're all fairly civilised, which might have something to do with the (male) admin who ensures that the slightest hint of troublemaking is swiftly suppressed. This almost always improves matters, but it can be rather intimidating and "bitey".
• On a forum (whose topic is stereotypically female), the vast majority of users are female, and I found the environment to be mostly pleasant but there have been a number of arguments that got rather heated, sometimes centring on controversial topics such as circumcision.

Ekips39 (talk) 19:30, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Let's do it

I posted the top 50 editors who've selected "She edits wiki pages" a few weeks ago on a similar proposal. So before we start the mandates lets just ask some of these women if they'd like to be admins. Dispenser (talk) 18:26, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Seems to be just me and Dispenser who are interested in this. Ekips39 (talk) 20:14, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

If your good at something, never do it for free. Come'on grant money!  :-) Dispenser (talk) 17:45, 9 April 2015 (UTC)