14 DAY TRIAL // A study conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation and the United Nations University program, MERIT, has shown that, from 175,000 users with valid survey responses, 53,884 have acknowledged contributing to Wikipedia, 87% of them being male responders. Also from the total users that only read Wikipedia articles, 31% of them are women, this leading us to our conclusion: men absolutely love Wikipedia more than women.
The survey took place in November 2008 and was presented at a recent Wikimedia Foundation event in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The results are quite contradicting to other studies that have placed women ahead of men in creational talents and attention to details, forcing Wikipedia admins to ponder about the site's gender-content balance.
It seems that men get a lot more satisfaction in sharing their knowledge on the web, being more inclined towards creating new articles or just editing someone's grammar. The study does not go deeper inside gender-related questions, even if it would have been a good idea, but concentrates on the background and motives the users have when creating or editing a Wikipedia article.
The main reason given by responders is that they enjoy editing Wikipedia because they “knew there were specific topic areas that needed [their] help” (41%) and, “It was clear (to them) that other people would benefit from my (his) efforts” (36%).
Not surprisingly, the people who edit Wikipedia have a rich educational background, 19% holding a Masters degree and 4.4% even having a Ph.D.
This latest result should make Wikipedia admins happier, since they recently tightened the editing policy to avoid content poisoning or errors. Anyway, the study has proven that educated users or self-declared experts are regularly creating and editing scientific articles, while users with a more “slim” education are just “messing” around with common-knowledge and place-related pages.
A more detailed, survey-result analysis will be released by the Wikimedia Foundation in November 2009.