On Wikipedia there's a list of people with CheckUser. You get CheckUser by being on ArbCom. However, you have to be a man (or a boy with a fake ID that says he's over 18).

The two females who had CheckUser turned out to be born men. Also, Mindspillage, who was an actual womyn/chyck and was on ArbCom at one point, doesn't have checkuser. It's just men that get CheckUser.

Pretty sexist.

Welcome to the internet, where the men are real men, the women are real men, and the 12-year-old girls are FBI agents.

Checkuser assumes that all WP editors are lonely young males who either live alone or with computer-illiterate parents. After all, any two accounts on the same IP address must be the same person. They don't think that their target might have a wife, roommates, children or houseguests.

No, I run into real women online all the time.

That depends on your definition of "woman."

They are actual women, just like Angela Beesley.

Indeed. I've met Angela Beesley.

Wikipedia's upper levels are full of women who act like men and vice versa.

Statistically, the internet is now close to 50/50 in terms of male/female, but what men do differs greatly from what women do. Online games (esp muds) are frequented by men about 80-90%, while online roleplaying games (e.g. Everquest, Ultima Online etc) are mainly women. Games that are a mix of the two (e.g. Guild Wars, Orcs & Humans) are a mix of about 50/50. Chat sites, including ICQ, tend to be about 60-70% female. You would think, of course, that a place like Wikipedia would if anything be more female dominated, or else split 50/50. Women like writing and talking. Men like playing games. If its male dominated, then perhaps that hints that its more of a game, less of writing and talking.

But let's remember Mindspillage and Angela forming that females-only mailing list due to the chauvinistic tendencies of the WikiEn-list.

Snowspinner and Mindspillage had a rather heated conversation about it in which Mindspillage totally pwned the guy.

Come to think of it, not a lot of female Wikipedians post on WikiEn-list do they? I think Thatcher131, Florence, and Slim Virgin are the only ones I've seen. The rest are usually men.

Mindspillage and Angela should get CheckUser.

Well, is there a male dominance of editors on Wikipedia? As far as I could tell it was about 50/50. If there is a male dominance, why is there?

And if its 50/50, then why aren't more female admins getting CheckUser? Is it just random bad luck, or is it sexism?

I believe I heard years ago that someone once asked an African-American comedian why aren't there any black hockey players?

The black comedian's response: "Because we're not crazy."

I don't this explains it though.

Not to sound sexist or risk incurring female WR members wrath, but studies I've read show that females tend to less aggressive than males. Having Check User and other powers would require being confrontational, something that males tend to like: The power! The glory! The sound and the fury!

I'm not sure its that either, but it makes more sense than my first suggestion.

Are you serious? Nearly everything about wikipedia is suited to a certain type of young man. And the ratio of male/female contributors is about 95/5.

Users Kelly Martin and Rebecca have been pretty aggressive.

But they were once men! (Please correct me if I'm wrong )

Well, for an explanation, the WP article on Patriarchy is as good a place to start as any.

However, research tends to show that women who get into positions of power in male-dominated hierarchies tend to give up their feminine qualities in order to become "one of the guys". How the male establishment sees this may be summed up by Steven Goldberg in Why Men Rule, (pg 229 Chicago: Open Court, 1993)



The point being is that the deck is stacked from the beginning. It doesn't matter that Floflo is now chairperson when Jimbo has already been set up as a God-king. Having female checkusers is not a bad idea, but only if they're allowed to express their positions of power as women, not as "one of the guys" or someone with "better things to do", such as having children, cooking and cleaning......

My understanding is that readership is 50/50, but editorship is more like 60/40 men. Adminship, I don't know. One might try and guess from list of admins, but I'd wager it's a little more lopsided - 70/30 or 80/20?

If its anything other than 50/50 on a broader scale, then that needs addressing. I mean women are just as knowledgeable about such a broad range of issues that exists on Wikipedia as men would be. They might tend to be knowledgeable about different things (although of course gender bias only accounts for so much) but there's absolutely no reason why a male would make a better (or worse) editor than a female.

I mean its one thing to say that CheckUser, with only perhaps a half dozen people, has 0 women, but to say it on a broader scale it is quite a problem.

Do most encyclopedias get written primarily by men? Just as a comparison, can anyone check this? Authors should be listed on most of them, although I suppose they don't usually give first names hence you don't rightly know. I would have thought it'd be 50/50 on most actual encyclopedias.

How many editors and even admins are of definitely known sex? Would anyone know that Londoneye was female if she hadn't posted a picture?

Off List of Admins' first 50 users: 29 Men 5 Women 16 Uncertain (not an exhaustive list, just userpages and usernames + common sense

That's pretty bad - I'd guess "doesn't say" overrepresents women compared to "does say", so call it 20%. I'll see if I can't think up a few nice ladies to nominate for admin.

CheckUser is about trust. Many of the male checkusers who identify as male and the other male checkusers who identify as female cannot be trusted.

Mindspillage and Angela Beesley are both women liked by the cabal yet they get no checkuser. I also think those two are trustworthy.