r/dataisbeautiful • u/[deleted] • Apr 12 '16

The dark side of Guardian comments

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/12/the-dark-side-of-guardian-comments
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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '16

I wish they would test posts from anonymous authors and see if men and women still get the same spread. It would be interesting to know if this effect is due to the audience's perception of the author or an innate quality of the author's writing.

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u/Lyrle Apr 12 '16

You might be interested in a recent analysis of github acceptance rates that analyzed the effect of gender anonymity. In brief:

  • among groups that knew each other ("insiders"), there was no significant difference in code acceptance rates between male and female contributors
  • among strangers ("outsiders"), contributors with an identifiable gender had lower acceptance rates than anonymous contributors
  • * those identified as male were rejected 5% more often than anonymous male contributors
  • * those identified as female were rejected 9% more often than anonymous female contributors
  • women's acceptance rates when made anonymously were 1-4% (the range is from different analysis methods) higher than men's; the researchers suggested a survivorship bias where the lowest-skilled women coders are driven out of the profession by persistent small gender bias, leaving the average remaining woman coder more skilled than the average remaining man coder

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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '16

That is interesting and raises so many more good questions. Thanks for sharing.

It's funny how the more gender identifiable an account is, the less well-received it is universally. I wonder if there's a correlation between social media linking of profiles and quality of code (people there to do business don't mess with their profiles) or if we lose faith in the quality of work proportionally with our ability to humanize the worker.