June 1st, 2007
by
Liz Henry
I came across Sarah Toton’s paper on wikis, gender, and fandom from acafangirl’s post on MiT5. It’s also blogged and available as a podcast here from cyborganize.
As a reaction to this paper — which you can download and read in PDF form — here’s some discussion about gender and the expectations of what a wiki should be on the Battlestar Galactica Wiki Blog. In this thread, commenters suggest that women would particpate more in the BSG wiki if it did not focus around the cataloguing of facts. I particularly liked what Jason Mittell had to say,
. . . the community defines this site in particularly narrow terms (encyclopedic), but there is nothing “natural” about that form or goal, and nothing in the design of wikis that makes them default to collecting & cataloguing factual information. Obviously the world’s most popular wiki does that, but it’s the –pedia that defines Wikipedia’s fact-finding mission, not the wiki- .
If women aren’t playing your game, no amount of nicey nice is going to persuade them to come over. Maybe you have to change the game. I was amazed at the thought that the BSG wiki has hardly any women. It did not make me conclude that women don’t like wikis, or BSG, or that they don’t participate in online culture, since obviously they do in huge numbers. Instead it made me wonder what the BSG guys had done to act jerky when women contributed. Toton frames the discussion as one of community and culture.
In short, in order to contribute to the wiki, one at least must have knowledge of not only Battlestar Galactica the series but also wiki operation and wiki edit culture.
“Wiki edit culture” is what we decide it is as the users of a wiki. Toton closes her paper,
So to close, I’d like to
launch my own reimagination of Battlestar Galactica and call for those of you here to check out the Battlestar Wiki, and if motivated consider the space as a site for building creative interpretations stemming from your personal BSG observations. The platform and the community are there, waiting for new entries and new stories to be added.
It might be effective if a bunch of you BSG fans get on that wiki and make a proposal to make a specific namespace for whatever it is that’s getting left out, which I gather is personal reactions, fic, fanon, theory, and anything that is not factual and encyclopediac. Come up with a cool plan, do it in a group, and see what response you get as a group.
But first, gird your loins and grit your teeth, and read the Wiki talk page, Think Tank/Female Involvement. I thought it was kind of funny because in this thread ostensibly about how to get girls to come and play, there is plenty of speculation and discussion about things like brothels in BSG and who is a rape victim and who is a prostitute. “Homosexual pairings” might be the heart of the controversy here: women seeing sexual tension between some characters, and men responding “That’s not factual”.
We can see in this discussion that “what wikis are” is under dispute. In this case, the wiki is “really there” for facts, and if there is speculation or discussion or theory or meta-talk, it is put outside of a demarcated line, whether that is talk pages, or blogging, or some other way of keeping the factual, canonical information safe and central. The wiki is in this sense created as a collaboration on the creation of something static, something that refers to an external idealized and verifiable reality, while conversation must happen in the baroque corners of talk pages. A fact-collaboration has that outside reality as its source. A collaboration treated as conversation might instead have editors who keep strong identity and subjectivity. In that case is it more like blogging? Or are there other ways of seeing a wiki? What is collaboration? How can it be that (allowable? legitimate?) collaboration itself is gendered male – that seems a bit outrageous.
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- More blogging by
Liz Henry at
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Filed under Online, TV & Film | Comments (8)
A brief scan through that talk page suggests that the guys who run the thing are fixated on trying to establish a “one true meaning” for the stories. My guess is that if people come along with different interpretations of stories to the ones they have, rather than saying “that’s an interesting and different take,” they’ll say “that’s subjective and wrong.” If that is the case, they probably need an injection of lit crit theory.
In response to Cheryl’s comments, I’d like to point out that Battlestar Wiki strives to be an encyclopedic reference to the series, and not literary interpretations of the work. Basically, we strive to “report the facts”, and not perform literary critique of the work . It’s basically something we call a “Neutral Point of View”, as you can see here:
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/BW:NPOV
By no means are the contributors against people having different takes on any of the series, but Battlestar Wiki isn’t the place for interpretations. We aim to be a reference to the series and help people fill in the blanks (with facts) on a show they love to watch, that’s it.
In that regard, we’re very much like the “Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5“.
Now, as to why “females don’t contribute to Battlestar Wiki”… That’s a bit of a fallacy, actually. We do have female contributors to the wiki. We do have a female administrator helping develop the German-language version of the BSWiki. We do have visitors to the site who are, indeed, female, and who use us as a reference.
As like everyone here, we would love to see more contributors to the wiki, regardless of gender.
However, seeing as I’m only one voice out of many, my view may not count for much, so I’m going to link to the comments raised on the blog:
http://blog.battlestarwiki.org/2007/05/01/mit5-on-bsg/#comments
The comments are interesting, and from the responses I’ve seen, they don’t really support Toton’s remarks, which was a bit surprising for me on a few levels.
The comments there are much more interesting, to me at least, than any spoken of on the Think Tank proposal talk page that is linked in the blog entry. (Some of the stuff that was mentioned was what people would consider “off topic”, so it spawned related discussions elsewhere.)
In any event, I find the whole thing interesting and, at the very least, a learning experience.
Looking forward to the feedback!
I find the idea that “because it’s about facts” women are turned off to be troublesome in itself. What about all the women scientists out there?
BSG is a show with a large percentage of female fans. I too can’t help wondering what might subconsciously be going on that the guys aren’t aware of but that turns women off from participating. Clearly women participate in the fandom on a large scale. I don’t pretend to know a ton about Wiki culture and the Wiki editing community, but I’ve gotten poor impressions from some female bloggers. I’m thinking of… I can’t remember what particular Wiki it was, but Angry Black Woman wrote about some ridiculousness with Wiki earlier this year I believe. They didn’t like her handle, and then the other Wiki-ers blew it out of proportion and it spun off into this irrelevant sexist mess if you followed the whole thread.
“I find the idea that “because it’s about facts” women are turned off to be troublesome in itself. What about all the women scientists out there?”
Sarah, I’m with you… there are many people (both male and female) who are scientists and who pursue, collect and organize facts.
There’s a greater issue here than that, which is why I find this whole thing interesting. Toton’s paper insinuates that it’s because of “collecting facts” that women are scared away. And I don’t believe that to be the case.
I also haven’t (yet) bought that the solution to achieving a more diverse editing base would be to allow speculation and “lit crit”
What I do believe is that people just might not be interested or might not have the time, or may not to chronicle the series like it’s history. And that’s fine.
In my usage of the internet, and in meeting fans both online and offline, the recurring fact I encounter is that about roughly 90% of fans from any of the series actually don’t participate in the online community. It’s really the other 10% or less that do the heavy contributing, whether it’s by writing fan fiction, conversing on forums, contributing to wikis, producing fan art, or joining fan clubs.
So maybe the issue here isn’t only related to gender, but also to whether or not people have the time, energy, or will to join the fan community.
As for the Wiki, perhaps the major reason why females don’t contribute is because they’ve prejudged it as a boys club?
But I can’t answer that question honestly either, since I honestly don’t know… But I wanted to throw that out there for discussion and debate.
Be seeing you.
“As for the Wiki, perhaps the major reason why females don’t contribute is because they’ve prejudged it as a boys club?”
That’s your typical vicious circle right there. As long as no women join, BSWiki will be a boys’ club. As long as it’s a boys’ club, no women will join, so it’ll stay a boys’ club, etc.
What we need are a couple of women who have the time and energy to contribute to our wiki and get accommodated to “wiki culture” (as it’s been called in this topic). The latter shouldn’t be hard, since we encourage our users to point out newcomers’ (or regulars’, for that matter) mistakes in a friendly way. Hell, we even have an official policy for that at http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Battlestar_Wiki:Battlestar_Wiki:Please_do_not_bite_the_newcomers Also, newcomers are encouraged not to be too scared of messing up, as it’s extremely easy for us to correct mess-ups. The only big hurdle that really remains IMO is the aforementioned prejudice, which some women will need to step over in order to break the vicious circle.
I’d be very honored if one of those women were someone from the cast or crew, but any woman who comes to BSWiki with an open mind makes me happy already.
In reading the Battlestar Wiki Blog and the talk pages, I’m getting a defensive vibe from some users who seem to feel that women “should” be contributing more and that it’s the women’s duty to make the extra effort to join in. At the same time most of the existing users do not think there is anything wrong with the Wiki as is, and that they themselves do not need to make any effort to change. Which seems like a perfect recipe for keeping anyone new away.
If you like the project the way it is, that’s fine, but understand that it *is* very narrowly defined and that you have chosen to limit it yourselves. Speculating that your lack of diversity is due to some flaw in women (e.g. they lack the technical skills, they’re “scared away” from collecting data, the dismissive attitude toward “lit crit”) is not going to encourage anyone to join! Recognizing that you have a diversity problem and admitting that you should probably look outside your own circle is a great start. If you can do so without getting defensive about critiques, all the more admirable.
It looks like your situation is a result of like associating with like. That is, your early adopters were mostly male, hung out in male-dominated areas of fandom and/or with each other, and are not active in female-run areas of fandom. So now that you’re looking to add fresh blood, you’re facing the problem of not personally knowing very many female BSG fans or being active in the right communities. Advertising – discreetly! – “where the women are” is probably your best and easiest bet – just don’t do it like FanLib! *grin* Get a feel for the female-dominated communities you’re approaching, be understated, quick and to the point, express that you’re looking to expand the diversity of your Wiki *and* your members, but without making it sound like it’s women’s fault that they don’t like you. Like others have pointed out, fans have only got so much time and collecting cold, static facts for an encylopedia may not be as appealing as other, more creative endeavours. Listen to the criticisms on this site and others – they’re born out of past experience with male-dominated fan communities and masculine modes of communication. They can see the things you’re missing.
At least you know now what the problems aren’t!
(This response is directed at towards certain Battlestar Wiki users more than Joe.)
Michelle,
A few replies, as probably anticipated:
“Recognizing that you have a diversity problem and admitting that you should probably look outside your own circle is a great start.”
Well, we have an abnormality… something doesn’t add up, that’s for certain. I’m not entirely sure that “problem” is the correct word to use in this instance, considering the definition of the word. Regardless of the terminology however, there is an imbalance.
“If you like the project the way it is, that’s fine, but understand that it *is* very narrowly defined and that you have chosen to limit it yourselves.”
Let’s say for the sake of argument that you were going to create a wiki for Battlestar Galactica, what would that look like, to you? For instance… How would it operate? Would it aim to be encyclopedic? What of the tone? Would it permit canon material only? Would it include fan fiction, and if so, why? Would it permit various interpretations on the source material? How would it deal with various interpretations that are mutually exclusive? (And keep in mind that this question isn’t solely for Michelle, but can be for anyone who wishes to opine.)
“It looks like your situation is a result of like associating with like. That is, your early adopters were mostly male, hung out in male-dominated areas of fandom and/or with each other, and are not active in female-run areas of fandom.”
You’ve hit it right on the head. Most of the wiki contributors don’t actually use message boards at all (which are associated with the female-dominated communities), or if they do, they aren’t really into them.
It very much is born out of like associating with like. Most of the wiki’s growth has been, in fact, via word of mouth; we’ve hardly done any “official’ advertising for it via message boards and the like.
“Advertising – discreetly! – “where the women are” is probably your best and easiest bet – just don’t do it like FanLib! *grin* Get a feel for the female-dominated communities you’re approaching, be understated, quick and to the point, express that you’re looking to expand the diversity of your Wiki *and* your members, but without making it sound like it’s women’s fault that they don’t like you.”
An interesting solution… but it’s a solution, which no one has really come up with yet. It’s also a start.
We’ve definitely started to venture into creating “external portals” for the wiki via social networks (example, MySpace) to promote the wiki, which is interesting so far.
“Listen to the criticisms on this site and others – they’re born out of past experience with male-dominated fan communities and masculine modes of communication.”
Do you have any particular instances that you can think of?
“(This response is directed at towards certain Battlestar Wiki users more than Joe.)”
Out of curiosity, and without veering off topic, which points are directed at me? :-)
This site’s been almost constantly down since the 10th, so this reply is late…
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that you were going to create a wiki for Battlestar Galactica, what would that look like, to you? For instance… How would it operate? Would it aim to be encyclopedic?…Would it include fan fiction, and if so, why?”
When I visit a fan wiki, I hope to find as much information concerning the show as possible: storylines, episode details and synopses, character background, production, cast and crew content, merchandise, fan community, etc.
Why on earth would it include downloads of fanfic (or fanart or fanvids)? I don’t know where this suggestion is coming from. Do anyone actually suggest it? Talking about fan creativity, sure, that’s part of community. But downloads? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s a red herring.
“Would it permit canon material only?…Would it permit various interpretations on the source material? How would it deal with various interpretations that are mutually exclusive?”
That depends on who gets to decide what the canon says. What I mean is, everyone experiences a show differently depending on who they are and how they’ve been taught to read a text. There is no “one true meaning”. I think this is the crux of the divide. To generalize for a moment, straight white male fandom seems to be *very* reluctant to see on screen anything but the dominant cultural paradigm (which matches their own) and therefore shies away from feminist/queer/race/class readings. This fandom prizes authorial intent over any other readings, and treats the word of the official authors as gospel truth. Not coincidentally, these official (legitimized) authors usually (though not always) support that dominant cultural reading.
This is pretty much the opposite of the female fandom approach (generalizing again), which values multiple readings, and not just those of the powerful (culturally dominant). I suspect this approach sounds like anarchy to folks who are used to thinking there is only one accurate (“factual”) reading of any given episode or scene – the officially authorized one. Hence the handwringing over fanfic or anything but heteronormative readings. No one’s suggesting that every wiki page be filled with 20 different viewpoints that bear no apparent relation to the source material. I believe there’s room in a fan wiki for both facts and concrete details and for conversation (“speculation or discussion or theory or meta-talk”. I much prefer fan sites that find some place for meta-talk rather than just being a collection of static facts, because anybody can do that. The truth is, there’s already conversation going on in the Wiki. It’s just a one-sided conversation. The subjective viewpoints of wiki authors are all over on the site, whether in the Talk pages or the articles themselves. But since they tend to conform to the dominant cultural viewpoint, the site is perceived as being “neutral”.
“An interesting solution… but it’s a solution, which no one has really come up with yet. It’s also a start.”
I thought that’d be the first thing you’d do: advertise in BSG communities with a strong female contingent. Since you’re an outsider and unfamiliar with the culture in some of those communities, I wanted to help you avoid coming on too strong and alienating your audience. Things are a little tense after the FanLib debacle and you might not be welcomed as an outsider – especially not if you insinuate that it’s women who are at fault.
“Listen to the criticisms on this site and others – they’re born out of past experience with male-dominated fan communities and masculine modes of communication.”
“Do you have any particular instances that you can think of?”
I was referring to discussion of authorial intent, one true meaning, the male valuing of (perceived) objectivity over (messy, emotional, so-called feminine) subjectivity. Reading Yonmei’s recent posts So, why do fanboys hate fanfic, especially slash?, Slash fandom and male privilege/hetero privilege and This is our garden. We like it. will give you a crash course in the ongoing discussion about female fandom and fanboys’ perception of it.
“Out of curiosity, and without veering off topic, which points are directed at me? :-)”
I finished writing this post when tired and that sentence was probably unnecessary. How about: anything that isn’t telling you what you already know *is* directed at you =) I didn’t want to lump you in unfairly with the poster after you, whose attitude appears to be shared by many of the Battlestar Blog/Wiki users who responded to your original post. He comes across as angry at women for perceiving the BSG Wiki as a boys-only-club and places the obligation of changing that perception squarely at the feet of women (“The only big hurdle that really remains IMO is the aforementioned prejudice, which some women will need to step over in order to break the vicious circle.”) But that’s not our job. It’s not our duty to “get over” anything, assuming that it’s unfriendly to us. It’s not a prejudice if we are made to feel unwelcome. Expecting us to change to fit your requirements is futile and just a wee bit entitled. Neither is it our duty to seek out the Wiki – ya gotta advertise where we’ll see it! I don’t think that’s what you’re suggesting, but that’s the overall message that’s coming from many of the users.