Wikipedia Announces Only 10% Of Their Top Editors Are Female

One of the lesser known problems that have recently come to light is that of Wikipedia, one of the largest websites in the world. If you’re just an average user in that you simply uses Wikipedia to research something for a school project, win a bar bet or any other trivial bit of knowledge then you don’t really think about the people behind each article, those that spend their time voluntarily editing pages for accuracy, up-to-date information and so forth.

Wikipedia have recently announced that their key issue with the website isn’t that of high server loads, increased costs or under-staffing, but they’re currently struggling with the fact that their articles are being edited by a team that compromises of 90% male editors. Not only that, but the top editors that are all male are mostly from western countries, which makes it almost appear that Wikipedia are limiting their demographic in which they allow their editors to come from.

If this was the case then Wikipedia wouldn’t release the information, but it’s more of an appeal to aspiring female editors looking to help out their content collection become more accurate.

A study conducted in 2011 shows that the articles that were edited by females, more than likely because they were of key interest to women, were significantly shorter than those written and edited by both men and women equally. Another study showed that 84% of articles that showed their location of origin were from either EU countries or North America.

Thanks to TheAtlantic for the information and Kristina Alexander for the image!