Thanks for your comments.

A few things:

1. I’m concerned about your assertion that I’m name-calling. I’m not name-calling. What names did I call the supporters of Citizendium? Did I call you misogynists or chauvinists or racists? Re-reading my post, I don’t see any instances of specific names or name-calling, nor even the implications of such. I’m raising issues, not calling names. (If you read the post at the recently upgraded BlogHer site, you may be missing what words are mine and what are others’. The blockquote feature is not working well at the BlogHer site. To see the proper attributions, visit the same post on my personal blog.)

2. I didn’t intend for my blog post to be snarky. When I want to do snark, I do it big. Instead, I’m seriously concerned about the lack of women and apparent disregard for women’s concerns on Citizendium. If you want to attract academic women to the project (and I hope you do!), then you need to, as you point out in point #2 above, meet them halfway. And since (in my observation) women tend to be more interdisciplinary than men (for a number of reasons, one of which is they haven’t been welcomed within traditional disciplinary boundaries), Citizendium may need to be reframed to reflect interdisciplinary concerns.

3. The fact that you call me “Leslie Brooks” highlights the misunderstanding of women’s issues on Citizendium. You’re using patriarchal custom by omitting my birth name (Madsen) which is part of my legal name (Leslie Madsen-Brooks)–from your post.

4. I don’t think the issue of the lack of women on Citizendium is merely a “philosophical” one–it’s a real, embodied issue. That was the intent of my post: to raise the issue so that those involved with the Citizendium project might think through it. I’m not involved with the project, and at this point I don’t have sufficient time to get involved with it–while I see the value of wikis, I’m much more of a blog person myself, in part because they allow for more women’s voices to emerge.

5. How am I “hijacking” your deliberation process by asking questions about the participation of women in Citizendium? I’d be hijacking your process if I applied to be an author and then didn’t play by your rules–which I understand have lots of history and dialogue behind them. But I hardly see how raising the issue elsewhere is hijacking.

6. I do think that Citizendium’s major problems stem from the academy itself, and not from the individuals volunteering for Citizendium. More specifically, Citizendium replicates the categories of the traditional academy, and the academy currently does not recognize wiki contributions as publications when considering faculty for tenure or merit promotions. I believe very strongly that faculty should serve as public intellectuals in the public interest. However, I’m not convinced Citizendium is the place where faculty who have limited time and energy for such projects should be participating.

Thanks for opening a dialogue!

Best,

Leslie

Thanks for the comment. Communication via the written word is always a bit imperfect, so bear with me as we sort things out.

Points 1 & 5: I didn’t interpret your post as trying to hijack our deliberation process, nor did I think you were engaged in any name-calling. I included that section in response to the Kali Tal quotes you brought in (I do feel Kali Tal engaged in name-calling and attempted to hijack our deliberation process).

2: That’s interesting to hear– reframing Citizendium’s structure under various models is something we’ve considered, but in the end our most important constraint is what organizational model of knowledge serves readers best. I’m not qualified to give the full rationale for why we chose the organizational model we did, but I believe it was on those grounds. Our editor-in-chief would have a better idea of the main rationale behind that choice.

3: My apologies, Leslie. Chalk it up to me personally being young and ignorant.

4: I agree engaging women and making sure Citizendium is a welcoming place for everyone is very real and very important. My background is in Philosophy, so in my calling the problem ‘philosophical’ it’s not shorthand for ‘interesting but irrelevant’.

6: Thanks for that distinction. I’m glad you don’t think that the individuals volunteering at Citizendium are a source of such bias.

I’m not ready to say that Citizendium is a complete microcosm of the traditional academy, complete with all its institutional biases… but we are committed to taking such concerns about bias seriously. Really, I don’t think we view making Citizendium more female-contributor friendly as making “concessions”– we want more female contributors probably more than you want us to have more female contributors.

Since we’re just getting going, we may be in a good position to benefit from research about whether/how much/why Wikipedia’s structure is off-putting to female contributors. If you find any such research you feel lends itself to a suggestion, send it over.

One more thought, which is not aimed toward you, but covers the general issue of people wanting to suggest changes to Citizendium: like most groups of volunteers and sovereign communities, we respond much better to carrots than sticks.

Thanks for the quality dialog-

Best,
Mike

Well, nobody cares enough about CZ, yet, to do anything deserving the name “research” about it. What we could use is reasonable speculation, coupled with practical recommendations.

I do think the issue of lack of women participating in Citizendium (and probably Wikipedia) has a lot to do with structures of the academy and its bias against women. The authors at CZ are volunteers. Women are already under a lot of scrutiny for their work in the academy. Several studies have shown, for example, that women in the sciences have to be 1.5-2 times as productive as men in order to be seen as equal to them. If women are working two times as much — and probably juggling a family as well — they’re probably not going to have time to contribute. I said this at the beginning in an email I sent to Larry Sanger (which he was probably too busy to read) that the structures of the academy don’t reward participation in efforts such as CZ. It is not in any academics interest to participate. It doesn’t “count” toward tenure or promotion. That’s not to say that there won’t be people who will do it anyway. Obviously there are. But it may skew participants in a certain direction. Many academics have contributed to print encyclopedias of various kinds, but usually for pay, and for grad students, it often looks pretty good on the CV.

I would love to see some research on the contribution of Wikipedia and/or their treatment of women’s issues. I wrote this on my blog, but even if academics shun both projects as illegitimate sources, many people will look to such projects as authoritative and so, whatever slant they take will be taken as “the truth.” That’s why it’s such a big deal, to me, that sources such as these try not to be biased. Any time you have an editorial board, there exists that chance. And any time that board is skewed by race or gender, that chance increases. Whether Wikipedia skews that way, I don’t know. I suspect it does one way or another, but CZ, at least, could control that skew if it wanted to.

I would rather leave talk of ‘you said that because you’re a man and she’s a woman’ out of the discussion. I see the point you’re aiming at, but I think better discourse will happen without that looming over the discussion.

As I have said, our desire for more female contributers at Citizendium is at least as strong as your desire for the same. Which is to say, I think we’re on the same side. My primary interest here is in actionable suggestions on how to help make that happen. But thinking about why there’s a difference in numbers between male and female contributors is probably a necessary first step in getting there, and I think your point about free time and contributing to CZ is interesting (if you’ve got more, please post them).

I realize your intent is good, but you might want to *actually go out on the net and look for answers to your own questions*. Why might women be put off by your wiki? If you actually care, maybe you will try to figure it out, and educate yourself a little about gender and online spaces. Step up and take responsibility for your own knowledge rather than expecting women to come and personally explain to you about what sexism is, etc.

Also don’t shoot the messenger for not talking nice enough to you.

Best,

Liz

As for my comment about snarkiness and the way women’s voices are sometimes perceived, I think it’s important for all of us to understand our biases. On the flip side of men often “hearing” women’s complaints as whiny or snarky, women often “hear” aggression when there is none. I agree it doesn’t pertain to our general discussion here, but I’m an educator, so I try to educate where I can.

Point taken about the tone. (Leslie, I was probably too harsh in my original post– I was frustrated by a certain past event and gave you more flak than I should have. I apologize. Thanks for sticking around and helping clear things up).

I think directly seeking out women contributors is a really good idea. Which I think we should do. I guess one huge question is, do wikis not attract as many women to edit in the first place, or do women tend to leave wikis at a greater rate than men (or a combination of these)?

If it’s the first, seeking out more women contributors would be the way to go (I wonder how we could change our sales pitch to better ’sell’ them on editing wikis?). If it’s the second, presumably women sometimes get turned off by tone of wiki debate (it can sometimes get too aggressive for *me*). We’re trying to figure out very “low friction” ways to enable users to ask uninvolved moderators to help tone down discussions, which should be something.

Thanks for your thoughts,
Mike

Glad to be helpful. Good luck in your endeavors.

P.S. Would you perhaps be interested in participating in a podcast about Citizendium in a few weeks? Email me if you’re interested.

Encyclopedia writing is necessarily a more “conservative” writing activity than most other scholarly outputs. With the former, one is attempting to transmit in succinct form what is known about topics. With others, one often uses their pen to expand the frontiers of what is known, oft times according to some agenda they have, some often deeply felt goal of bringing change to societal attitudes, policies, and so forth. Irrespective of gender, archivist-scholars will naturally find a quite comfortable home in encyclopedia writing, while activist-scholars will naturally find it less appealing.

Madsen-Brooks asks, “Where the hell are the women in the Citizendium project?” (and yes, that language is snarky in tone, very much so, irrespective of who it is coming from). But her question is fundamentally off. Most women in the arts and social sciences of the academy are activist-scholars, and they in turn reproduce the same among their female students. The better question, therefore, is where are the female archivist-scholars in academia? For the arts and social sciences, I’d answer that they are just not being produced in any great number, because the female activist-scholars there are instead reproducing more activist scholars like themselves.

Of course, this is not to make a judgment on the practice but to make an observation that, I think, explicates a main cause for the gender imbalance at CZ. The problem is exceedingly more an academia problem than it is a Citizendium problem. By its very nature as an encyclopedia project, with its delimitation as such, Citizendium will only naturally reflect the academy.

“…they in turn reproduce the same among their female students.”

“…the female activist-scholars there are instead reproducing more…”

When you say Citizendium will naturally reflect the academy, that may turn out to be case. Time will tell. Wikipedia, however, has for a long time been like a magnet for activists who want to push an agenda. In some articles the bias is quite obvious, regardless of the official NPOV policy. On Citizendium, it should be possible for female “activist-scholars” in the arts & social sciences to write neutral articles which acknowledge that campaigners exist who wish to change societal attitudes relating to the topic. After all, who will be coming to read CZ articles about topics that involve an element of controversy? I suspect many of them may be looking for more information specifically about the controversies. On Wikipedia, registered ‘beligerents’ can often persuade NPOV defenders to make concessions to the partisan viewpoint through a process of attrition. Hopefully, on Citizendium, subject editors will prevent that from happening.