Mr. Rivera, Tear Down This Wall!

The aftershocks of BlogHer rumble through the blogosphere…the confidence, the insights, the diversity, (and even the vitriol and invective), 700++ voices from the individuals who were there, as well as the multitudes who followed the conference online. It would be easy to say that last year’s question…”Where Are The Women Bloggers?”…had been conclusively and definitively answered.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

On a lark, I took a peek over at TechMeme this morning. This is what I found:

Techmeme2blogher

That’s right. Five of the seven connected posts (71.4%, if my math is right) were by guys…yet, as Christine notes, 88.9% of the attendees at the conference were women.

I know (or at least I hope) that this kind of bias (def’n 3: “statistical sampling or testing error caused by systematically favoring some outcomes over others”) isn’t something that Gabe Rivera has intentionally built into TechMeme. Yet, it appears Mena’s point was spot-on.

How to fix this? Unfortunately, I think as a result of power law dynamics, there may always be the opportunity for these kinds of biases to become systemic in the tools. As a result, yes, we need to make better tools. But, more importantly, we need to make an individual effort not to just rely on the “Top 10” or “Top 100” lists, and instead get outside of our comfort zones and intentionally discover new voices and listen. (This echoes what I wrote about after the 2005 BlogHer conference. It’s still true.)

Now, I’m going to game the system, link to Dave’s post (yes, reinforcing the problem in the short term), yet hopefully drawing some notice to the issue so that future iterations of tools address this more effectively.

4 Replies to “Mr. Rivera, Tear Down This Wall!”

  1. Actually, Techmeme is totally biased. It’s biased toward tech news, for one thing.

    Achieving the ideal you’re suggesting, even if worthy, is IMO very hard. It depends in part on surfacing timely, on-topic content, of sufficiently general interest in the absense of link citations. That’s a huge problem that nobody’s solved. I’ve just sidestepped it at the moment with my current link-dependent approach.

  2. One option, however, is to find other on-topic stories, and serendipitously surface them, to allow others to trip across them and have a chance to link them.

    As long as “the link” is the surrogate for quality, always looking under the same streetlights (even if you know the keys aren’t there) will not generate much novelty.

  3. Thanks so much for the link! The TechMeme information, to me, was completely unbeknownst to me. How can we have ensured that the other women knew about leaving the messages? How can we ensure more participation?

    You raise excellent issues for us to consider. We’ve begun, but have a ways to go.

    p.s. I have an excellent picture of you and Lisa and Jenn on my flickr site, but I hadn’t put your name to it. Sorry!

  4. hey mocha…was great to meet you over the weekend! to address your question — “How can we have ensured that the other women knew about leaving the messages? How can we ensure more participation?” — i think the challenge is a fundamental one. it’s not limited to gender, or orientation, or any other sort of “identity,” rather, a lot of the current tools “gives to those who gots.” IOW, as long as “the link” is used as a surrogate for quality, those blogs with the most historical links are the ones that bubble up to the greatest notice. the only way around that i can see is to make individual efforts to get out of our comfort zones and our comfortable ruts, meet new people, hear new voices, and give them exposure.

    again…was great to meet you!

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