Wikipedia & Gender Gap

Wikipedia & Gender Gap

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The only problem wikipedia has is that unknown users are allowed to update pages whenever they want. Most of the time, information is reliable through the website but there are other times where users will provide the wrong information on a page. Because of this, there is nothing anyone can do but rely on society to not feed viewers indecisive/false information. In the article “CRITICAL DIGITAL PRAXIS IN WIKIPEDIA: THE ART+FEMINISM EDIT-A-THON”, another issue with wikipedia is revealed;

“the editor base of the (English) encyclopedia was identified as 87% male and only 13% female” (http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com). Reading that statistic was shocking to me because that means there are about six times more man than women engaging through wikipedia. Again, we are only talking about wikipedia here and I’m sure/would hope that more women engage through sites similar to wikipedia. We’re picking on wikipedia today for a reason however, so it’s time to stick it to ‘em. Wikipedia is a very much used site but I have never been for or against the website personally because I too know about its casual use of misinformation. One way Wikipedia could fix this problem is by having users submit their edits through a dropbox and once that happens, there must be monitors examining each submission to make sure each piece of information is true before it is allowed on the page.

http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/wikipedia-art-feminism-edit-a-thon/