The_Technomancer said:
No-one has any obligation to contribute to topics that don't interest them because the fundamental idea is that everyone is supposed to add to their areas of interest.
The issue is specifically that since (as you point out) no one should have to contribute to topics they aren't interested and knowledgeable in, the encyclopedia will be a
much better encyclopedia if its editors have as diverse a set of interests as possible. If women and men tend to have some degree of non-overlapping interests, Wikipedia will be a better reference if both men and women are contributing to articles about their areas of interest.
The issue shouldn't be understood as "Wikipedia is sexist," but rather as "Wikipedia should find ways to incentivize more diverse contributors, because then it'll be a better encyclopedia."
richiek said:
Independent of what is being said in the post in question and whether the topic of discussion is heated and controversial or laid-back and easygoing, please don't do this.
Fugu said:
Having a gender bias means that certain articles will not receive as much attention as they could (simply because editors tend to edit articles about things that they know things about).
But women afraid of debate? What?
This is a problem with these kinds of issues in general, certainly.
I think the starting point is pretty clear. It's obviously a problem for Wikipedia, not one of sexism but rather simply of
doing the best job possible, if certain subsets of people aren't represented in the site's content. It's supposed to be a broad, sweeping reference about, essentially,
everything, which means any missing demographic might make it a less useful encyclopedia. As stump points out, many businesses would react the same way if their offering was nominally gender-neutral but their customer base was this strongly bent in one direction. Everyone ought to be able to agree this far.
From that point, though, it gets hairier. I think it's clear that there are systemic reasons that the gender measure breaks down this way, but attributing it to issues like "women don't like confrontation" easily steps past reasonable advocacy and into gender essentialism. (Same issue comes up in threads about "female gamers" -- almost any easy explanation about why there are fewer women playing games, or why a given game is popular with women, has a tendency to be far too reductionist, sometimes to the point of being insulting.)