Wikipedia’s Gender Gap

Noam Cohen of the New York Times

Even the most famous fashion designers — Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo — get but a handful of paragraphs. And consider the disparity between two popular series on HBO: The entry on “Sex and the City” includes only a brief summary of every episode, sometimes two or three sentences; the one on “The Sopranos” includes lengthy, detailed articles on each episode.

Is a category with five Mexican feminist writers impressive, or embarrassing when compared with the 45 articles on characters in “The Simpsons”?

I think the quote above shows why user driven content needs a diverse set of users. I think also this example shows why diversity benefits any learning environment.

The New York Times also published a roundtable on the topic.

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