Grants talk:IdeaLab/Face new editors with the possibility of specifying their gender

Already done

See Research:Gender micro-survey. --Nemo 21:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see two major differences:

1. Gender micro-survey ran from June to July 2013. This would be done continuously, from now on.
2. The micro-survey purpose was to analyze those users during registration, and their first steps. My idea is to make new users modify their Gender setting buried at Special:Preferences right from the start, at registration. This setting gets saved and allows for statistics, tracking, coaching, finding patterns to better understand/fix the gap, corroborate and measure the gap, and whatever you can think of in the future.

What do you think? --Langus-TxT (talk) 02:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

That's an incorrect usage of the preference, which is about grammatical gender only and is not meant for statistics. --Nemo 10:36, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

@Langus-TxT: If you use preference for statistics that means you out'd all those user who want to remain anonymous about their gender preference (you just made them unknowingly become part of research and get part of their personal information for statistics, which is unacceptable). If you want to find out their gender preference you need their consent, and asking consent on preference might shun away new editor that want to register because they want to own an account and hide their IP. So it's a problem whether you have to ask them one by one and get their consent, or convince everybody to add this on preference (which is very unlikely to be done, so... Impossible.).--AldNonymous^Bicara? 01:04, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

There seems to be a misunderstanding of the current preference setting. It is public information (this is stated on the Preferences page where you set it) and (following a recent discussion on the research mailing list) it has been confirmed can be used via any template or API. So I don't see the need for any consent for information already collected on the basis it is public. I have (separately) suggested that it be possible to ask to user to provide gender *privately* only for the WMF's anonymous statistical purposes in the belief that more people may be willing to provide information on that basis than they are as public data, but if that went ahead, again the user would have known of the intended statistical purpose. Realistically some people would not disclose their gender in any circumstances, but clearly the more people who can be persuaded to disclose at least privately, the easier it is to measure what the situation is, how it is changing and whether goals have been achieved or not. Kerry Raymond (talk) 01:53, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

First, people should never be asked such question from the first time they register, you will made them uncomfortable with "creepy" attitude asking for gender and such on project that support being anonymous while editing (hiding real name and such). Second, it's stick on preference, not built out such survey etc, which is improper use of preference, if you want to start a survey, start like what Nemo-bis said, it must be built out and not stick with preference, so people may skip answering such question that asking your gender. Third (the most important) it's impossible to enforce even if you want it (see here translatewiki:gender), gender are non binary, yet there are language that exclude non-binary gender (see here translatewiki:Thread:Support/New option in sign up form and also see the following Phab phab:T32442) , so if you have suggestion for all of this problem, I will welcome it and may work on it on translate wikis, so @Kerry Raymond: you are free to suggest something, but don't be so nonchalant about it, it's us translator who are in the end up being troubled with it.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 02:17, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

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"Incorrect usage of the preference", "improper use of preference", I'm not following you here guys/gals. Why, exactly? Would it yield erroneous data? Would it be morally wrong? Would it create a technical burden? The study conducted by Lam et al used this Preference option, as well as infoboxes, to determine if an editor was male of female. --Langus-TxT (talk) 02:57, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Here's an API call that will reveal my gender as set in my Preferences. Substitute other user names into the API in place of mine and see their gender too. It really is public information. Kerry Raymond (talk) 03:07, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict.) Please don't talk semantics here, nemo is en-3 and I'm en-4 so I don't know the difference between improper and incorrect, but yes, using Infoboxes may be a good start, but not so sure if there will be exist infoboxes for Genderqueer on aceh wikipedia and other arab wikipedia (take note if you openly admit that you are genderqueer in Aceh you will either get jailed with maximum 6 months or you will get whipped by local authorities and rehabilitated for 3 months : [1]), so the question is, do we really need to openly says "I am male or female"?, what about genderqueer people? Do we must discriminate them? What if option for their gender exist on preference and local authorities may track it back and get them to jail?.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 03:10, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kerry Raymond: You are taking it from API, not that those user openly said it on their userpages, also read my previous comment.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 03:11, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Example : A user identify himself as Female, but IRL government already issued his Identity card as males, he's living in Aceh, now Wiki decide to openly give out his information, on preference he made it Female, his superior (on the place he works) read his user profile and know that he's "supposed" to be male. Do you know what will happen to this user?--AldNonymous^Bicara? 03:14, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

The proposal is to add this to registration page, but not for it to be required - like email. Lightbreather (talk) 03:23, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Like I said, do not suggest it to these to new user (implicated), many new user may "unknowingly" give out "something" that may endanger their real live safety.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 03:27, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Langus-TxT, yes, all of that: erroneous, immoral and a technical burden. --Nemo 18:10, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Haha ok then. Cheers. --Langus-TxT (talk) 18:16, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Binary gender

Please note that gender in Special:Preferences is binary because it is a grammar gender and is used to display correct messages to the user. This option must be kept binary to let the user see the appropriate pronouns (e.g. he/she in English), nouns (e.g. utilisateur/utilisatrice = different forms of the noun "user" depending of the gender in French) or verbs (e.g. подякував/подякувала= different forms of the verb "thanked" depending of the gender in Ukrainian). None of these languages have grammar forms for "other" gender which is neither male nor female. Any "other" option should be classified either as male or female (to let the user see the appropriate pronoun) or redirected to default (which makes that Other equals Prefer not to say), which effectively brings us to the case of binary gender — NickK (talk) 04:02, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Yup, this is what I'm trying to say. And thus, because there are no option for males who identify themselves as genderqueer they pick females and generate consequences in real life.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 04:07, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

That's something we cannot avoid, our languages are binary, and in many languages a user must use either male or female gender when speaking about themselves. If a user may face consequences in real life, the best option is definitely "Prefer not to say" (or changing a username to something genderless) — NickK (talk) 04:31, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

As I noted below, every Wiki project by default leaves this option unspecified. If they have already figured it out how to handle this case (which is the default case) then it wouldn't change a thing if you add one more option "Other", because all you have to do is keep on using the default text.

I guess what I'm trying to point out it's that currently this isn't binary at all, because there are actually 3 possible states: Male, Female, or Null/unspecified. --Langus-TxT (talk) 17:40, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, currently all gender-affected messages have three states: male (he), female (she) and default (either (s)he or they, depending on the language). Adding fourth state will create a redundancy AND will mean that all gender-affected messages have to be updated (there are thousands of them). The only possible option is to map in your survey male -> he, female -> she, other & prefer not to say -> Null/unspecified — NickK (talk) 23:41, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Exactly, that'd be the most convenient way. --Langus-TxT (talk) 03:03, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Purpose of the gender option

Adding gender option in a more prominent way is an interesting option, but it should be appropriately explained to user:

• If this is an anonymous survey, it must be on a separate page with a possibility to skip the entire survey
• If this is a separate option (different from the Special:Preferences one), it should have a clear explanation how this data will be stored and who will have access to it
• If this is just a reminder to fill in the Special:Preferences option, it should be done in a more friendly way (e.g. a suggestion for a user to fill in their preferences upon registration).

Please also bear in mind the following effects:

• Registration form must be easy and short — otherwise people will not fill it in.
• There should be a clear difference between what is public and what is not. Adding an anonymous "I am a newbie and I am woman" for statistical purposes or publicly stating "My username isX and I am a woman" may be differently perceived depending on the culture
• In some languages (e.g. Estonian) grammatical gender is completely absent (i.e there is one single word for "he" and "she"), thus it does not make sense to ask a user to specify their gender to let them see the appropriate messages. This actually mean that they can fill in this option only for the sake of disclosing their gender.
• Adding a country and age can be evil — things like "20-year old American man" and "60-year old Saudi Arabian woman" will clearly bear a different meaning: the latter will almost clearly identify the person, as we will most likely have a single user with such identity.

To sum up, I think that the more appropriate page for this is the page displayed after successful registration with a clear explanation how this data will be used — NickK (talk) 04:23, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

It's not a survey and it's not a separate option, or at least that's how I imagined it. A separate option could be a valid alternative, but not a survey, because that decouples the editor from the answer and it wouldn't be useful to, say, find every female editor with more than X edits on Wikipedia.

Grammatical gender is immaterial to this proposal. As you note, Estonian is gender-neutral yet if you go to the Estonian Preferences page you'll find that you can select the Female or Male option. It's just (presumably) never used for practical purposes. The same way, if someones would select in English WP options like "Other", "Bigender", "Agender", etc., all the software needs to do is exactly the same thing that today does when someone doesn't select an option at all. I don't know how en.WP handles it, but someone has already figured it out.

A few more points:

• Adding just one new field wouldn't be enough to deter new editors from registering because of excessive difficulty. Neither would 2 more options, IMO. This is pretty standard information on most registration forms.
• Using your reasoning, it could be argued that the email option is "evil", as we certainly can identify an individual from it.

Finally, I agree that it should be made clear that the option you're filling would be public, if that's the case. I think that a brief note like the one at Special:Preferences would suffice. Asking for the information on a secondary page upon successful registration could be a great option, but only if there aren't too many things to fill in, as it will increase the chances that the new editor chooses to skip them. For example, redirecting to the Preferences pages upon registration wouldn't have the same impact that asking for the information on the registration page. --Langus-TxT (talk) 17:32, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Ok, so you basically want to invite more users to publicly disclose their gender. Makes sense, but this should be clearly stated.

I spoke about Estonian Wikipedia (and other genderless languages) because the default message in Special:Preferences is Setting this preference is optional. The software uses its value to address you and to mention you to others using the appropriate grammatical gender. This information will be public. (which is not a valid reason for genderless languages).

Email option in registration form is a norm for registration forms on different websites (and it is a norm that it is never displayed publicly). Gender, however, is a norm only for websites that require personal information (it usually goes with together with a question about real name). As Wikipedia does not require any personal information, it will be unclear for a newbie why on the earth Wikipedia wants to know their gender.

I perfectly understand that knowing gender of more users would be helpful for us, but in registration forms we need to think what will be useful for users. Unfortunately I do not think that publicly displaying their gender will be useful for all (or even most of) users — NickK (talk) 00:37, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

It will be, if they get a better encyclopedia out of it, or even a better experience ;)

Of course, this is debatable and not a certainty. But it's worth the try, IMHO. And after all, it will be up to them to disclose it or not. --Langus-TxT (talk) 03:12, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

I guess this heavily varies from one culture to another. Disclosing gender in Icelandic Wikipedia will definitely bring a better experience, as language has gender and women's rights are a part of the society. Disclosing gender in Persian Wikipedia is unlikely to bring any better experience as language is genderless and gender gap is a part of the society — NickK (talk) 21:31, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Phab:T32442

Please read this to everybody who visit this page before made further discussion or suggestion. Thank you.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 00:55, 28 March 2015 (UTC)