Jimbo comes to the rescue...., ...of another hot brunette... Options

[thekohser]

Once again, Jimbo comes riding down from out of the hills to rescue another youthful Asian damsel in distress.

Coincidence? You make the call.

[Alison]

Once again, Jimbo comes riding down from out of the hills to rescue another youthful Asian damsel in distress.

"Youthful" being almost 50. Okaaay .....

Coincidence? You make the call.

I'm inclined to call coincidence, Greg. Jimmy has a rep - we all know that. But he is in a lose/lose situation where he can't touch a BLP of a woman - that's 50% of the population, approx. - without getting called on it. So does he leave the unsourced nonsense to fester there or not?

[thekohser]

Once again, Jimbo comes riding down from out of the hills to rescue another youthful Asian damsel in distress.

"Youthful" being almost 50. Okaaay .....

Coincidence? You make the call.

I'm inclined to call coincidence, Greg. Jimmy has a rep - we all know that. But he is in a lose/lose situation where he can't touch a BLP of a woman - that's 50% of the population, approx. - without getting called on it. So does he leave the unsourced nonsense to fester there or not?

I said "youthful", not "young".

I'd like a systematic study of BLPs on Wikipedia -- namely, the ratio of male to female subjects.

At the same time, I'd like a systematic study of BLPs that Jimbo has edited directly, to determine the ratio of male to female intercessions.

I suspect that you'll find a ratio 4:1 on the first analysis, and a ratio of 3:1 on the second. Sampling size will have to determine if that's a coincidence or not.

To answer your final question, though... "Does he leave the unsourced nonsense to fester?"

Try this answer on for size: "Yes, if that leaves him more time to fix the damn system that allows an 'encyclopedia' to publish unsourced, festering nonsense."

This post has been edited by thekohser: Mon 10th January 2011, 7:40pm

[Alison]

I'd like a systematic study of BLPs on Wikipedia -- namely, the ratio of male to female subjects.

At the same time, I'd like a systematic study of BLPs that Jimbo has edited directly, to determine the ratio of male to female intercessions.

I suspect that you'll find a ratio 2:1 on the first analysis, and a ratio of 1:2 on the second.

That could be interesting indeed ...

To answer your final question, though... "Does he leave the unsourced nonsense to fester?"

Try this answer on for size: "Yes, if that leaves him more time to fix the damn system that allows an 'encyclopedia' to publish unsourced, festering nonsense."

And I certainly can't argue with that.

[thekohser]

Note, I've edited my statement above, based on a two-month history of Jimbo's edits to BLPs. I counted edits to 19 male subjects and to 8 female subjects.

[thekohser]

I'd like a systematic study of BLPs on Wikipedia -- namely, the ratio of male to female subjects.

Well, the major media has answered my call. Based on a systematic study, we have an answer for the incidence of male subjects in Wikipedia biographies of living people.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Based on a systematic study, we have an answer for the incidence of male subjects in Wikipedia biographies of living people.

Does that include porn stars? I doubt that ... but then I guess history is overwhelmed with male soldiers and politicians for most of its existence.

How does the script work, by checking names against known male-known female names?

[Somey]

How does the script work, by checking names against known male-known female names?

Perhaps Mr. McBride would tell us himself, but as he seems to be a fairly clever and conscientious sort of fellow, I can't imagine he'd rely on something like first names as a gender determinant - more likely he's got his program checking infoboxes, and if there's no infobox, then maybe categories or other common lexical markers in the articles themselves as a fall-back.

If someone had asked me to guess the ratio of male-to-female BLPs in Wikipedia prior to this, I don't think I would have guessed 4:1 - I would have been willing to go as high as 3:1, but my best guessed would have been more like 2:1, or around 65 percent. (This is bearing in mind that these are living people; if he was counting dead people too, going back to the Dawn of Time, then I think I would have guessed something more like 6:1 or even higher.)

And if it had, in fact, turned out to be 2:1 or even 3:1, I would have said WP could be forgiven for that, since Western culture is still too male-dominated - particularly in areas like politics and business. But when you get up to 4:1, that clearly suggests that the gender disparity among the users themselves (more than 6:1 male, when we last heard) is translating directly into fewer articles written about women, and/or "notability rules" being more stringently applied to them.

[Gruntled]

It would be interesting to look at the ratio by type of person. People like footballers and boxers would presumably be virtually all male, as there are few notable females in these categories. However, in areas like acting, modeling and especially porn stars the results would be very different. I'd be surprised if the sex-starved nerds who form such a high proportion of WP editors don't create articles on every sexy actress however obscure, while not affording the same attention to male actors.

[thekohser]

A note on the methodology of the BLP gender research...

MZMcBride merely pulled a randomized selection of 500 BLPs for me, at my request.

I then took the first 200 names from the list and slapped them into a spreadsheet.

I then marked with an "M" or an "F" all of the unambiguous names that easily identify to a gender -- e.g., "Mike" and "Mohamed" are male, "Carolyn" and "Edith" are female. I left blank all of those that could have any reasonable level of ambiguity... and I was conservative -- I left blank names like "Sandy" and "Casey". Many non-Western names, I had no idea and thus left blank ("Suriya" and "Nyjer", for example).

Then, I manually looked up on Wikipedia each of the blank entries. All but one were fairly easy to identify their gender -- I believe the majority (or the near majority) either played rugby or soccer, or were an Olympic athlete.

The only one that Wikipedia didn't clearly help in identifying their gender was Masako Jō, so I went to the web to find an answer. I think Wikipedia spells the name wrong, and a photo I found appeared to be a female.

I hope that helps everyone understand how this study was designed and executed. Stuff the Wikimedia Foundation should be turning out on a daily basis, but that I do for free. Just to help them out.



If anyone wishes to proof my work, here is the list of 200 names:

Renee_Sands F
Otis_Hudson M
Mamuka_Gorgodze M
Fikre_Selassie_Wogderess M
Douglas_Rae_(businessman) M
Erik_Ellington M
Martin_Bryant M
Edgar_J._Malepeai M
Robert_Gavron,_Baron_Gavron M
Shirley_D._Bowler F
Steve_Bryles M
Mike_Garcia_(NL_pitcher) M
Kyle_Freadrich M
Venod_Sharma M
Steven_Hill_(model) M
Dagmara_Dominczyk F
Thomas_Gill_(footballer) M
George_Phang M
József_Tabaka M
Clara_Morgane F
Warren_Spannaus M
General_Khodaidad M
Hans-Jürgen_Ripp M
Pete_Smith_(announcer) M
Brett_Hauer M
Albertino_Essers M
Kerry_Brothers,_Jr. M
Georgi_Petrov_(footballer_born_1974) M
António_Soares_Carneiro M
Jonílson_Clovis_Nascimento_Breves M
Nikola_Đuričko M
Rasmus_Fleischer M
Larry_Playfair M
Crispian_Mills M
Guy_Mariano M
Teruhisa_Moriyama M
Jihad_Azour M
Claire_Gibault F
Martha_Wash F
Fay_Kleinman F
Greg_Gall M
Francesco_Lorenzon M
Christopher_Hall_(sculptor) M
Juan_Toya M
Wilfried_Van_Moer M
Michael_Saward M
Yahiya_Doumbia M
William_B._Rudman M
George_Wuerch M
Brian_Orser M
Wellington_Sandoval M
George_Moose M
Ana_Kokkinos F
Christian_Fortune M
Travis_Smith_(artist) M
Dax_Riggs M
Julian_Burnside M
Boss_Bailey M
Aharon_Megged M
John_Sinisa M
Irvine_Arditti M
Jim_Kacian M
Mona-Jeanette_Berntsen F
Adrian_Falub M
Martín_Lasarte M
Casey_Fossum M
Struther_Arnott M
Finn_Jebsen M
Edith_Hunkeler F
Clive_Baker M
Ed_Annunziata M
John_McLaughlin_(musician) M
Pervin_Shroff F
Masako_Jō F
Calvin_Jones_(baseball) M
Mike_Saenz M
Sarah_Jaffe F
Alexander_Bachmanov M
Guy_Allison M
Ababu_Namwamba M
Luke_Arscott M
Konstantinos_Thanos M
Monica_Mæland F
Dave_Faulkner_(musician) M
Khalil_Ibrahim_Al-Zayani M
David_Ackert M
František_Dřížďal M
Ronald_L._Ellis M
Janet-Laine_Green F
Megumi_Sato_(athlete) F
Gakuya_Horii M
Camilla_Henemark F
Kyle_Snyder M
Arsen_Fadzayev M
Carolyn_Waldo F
Joan_Lippincott F
Mohamed_Refaie M
Sultan_Hashim_Ahmad_al-Tai M
Lucía_Etxebarría F
Luke_Williams_(wrestler) M
Patricia_Gaffney F
Abdul_Rahman_Al-Athel M
Kwon_Tae-Man M
Mark_Trombino M
Kiyomi_Niwata F
Slavko_Lukić M
Azar_Karadas M
Amanda_Schull F
Adele_Scheele F
Christian_Giantomassi M
Evangelista_Santos M
Bobby_Hutcherson M
Sandy_Collins_(tennis) F
Steve_Witiuk M
Janusz_Waluś M
Lati_Grobman F
Bob_Atha M
Fredrik_Larsson M
Mike_McCall M
Eugenio_Colombo M
Renos_Doweiya M
Conor_Gill M
Stefan_Uteß M
Theodore_Long M
Tony_Howorth M
Abel_Masuero M
Anísio_Abraão_David M
Cedric_Payne M
Pierre_Aubé M
Johnny_Chester M
Martijn_van_der_Laan M
Dick_Dreissigacker M
Sudsy_Monchik M
Pran M
Sandra_A._Gregory F
Enkel_Dauti M
Jerry_Kenneth_"Ken"_Swilling M
David_Southwick M
Suriya_Bala_Kerisnan_Thevar M
Norman_N._Li M
Bryan_Wenzel M
Danny_Manning M
Kay_Tse F
Brad_Fraser M
Peter_Tomasi M
Laurie_Levenson F
Joe_Labero M
Alexander_Korolyuk M
Drew_Anderson_(outfielder) M
Robert_"Mack"_McCormick M
Junie_Donlavey M
Silvan_Zurbriggen M
François_Cluzet M
Joe_Henderson_(runner) M
Mike_Symon M
Tomás_Teresen M
Patrick_Côté_(fighter) M
Plumb_(singer) F
Monica_Roşu F
Sam_Daly M
Mark_L._Polansky M
Frederick_Sumaye M
Steve_Rizzono M
Roy_Frumkes M
Charles_M._Blow M
Margaret_Rudin F
Matthieu_Bochu M
Peter_Iwei M
Adam_Greenberg_(baseball) M
Marvin_Frederick M
Natalie_Spilger F
Maurice_Dalé M
Sachiko_Chijimatsu F
Ko_Gi-Hyun F
Peter_Howitt M
Ivan_Stojmenovic M
Mark_Shulman M
Karloff_Lagarde,_Jr. M
Vasilie_Simiocenco M
Jill_Colucci F
Glen_Osborne M
Ingrid_Hadler F
Andrei_Khodykin M
Danilo_Tomić M
Kevin_James_(actor) M
Domingo_Liotta M
Jesús_Pérez_(boxer) M
Craig_Krampf M
José_Varacka M
Gregg_Bingham M
Nyjer_Morgan M
Jérémy_Denquin M
Alan_Milburn M
Farhad_Reza M
Cameron_Donald M
Paddy_Carr M
Bud_Day M
Richard_Aylard M
Tara_Buck F
Eric_Mackenzie_(Australian_rules_footballer) M

McBride's script, for you propeller-heads was:

SELECT
page_title
FROM page
JOIN categorylinks
ON cl_from = page_id
WHERE cl_to = 'Living_people'
AND page_is_redirect = 0
AND page_namespace = 0
AND page_random > RAND()
ORDER BY page_random
LIMIT 500;

[thekohser]

The story in The Examiner has been picked up by the Google News service, so at least 200 people will likely be reading this story today.

[EricBarbour]

Once again, Jimbo comes riding down from out of the hills to rescue another youthful Asian damsel in distress.

Heh....why Amy Chua? Because of this stuff, perhaps?