Financial Times bot warns if articles quote too many men

theguardian.com

31 points·kawera··7 comments

Define "too many." Is a work not valid if there isn't enough diversity in it's sources?

Are they assuming gender in the name of the person?

From the article: "a bot that uses pronouns and analysis of first names to determine whether a source is male or a female". Probably not perfect, but good enough for a suggestion/reminder engine.

I think that would be discriminatory and if anything shaming people who don't want to come out

>The media organisation found that only 21% of people quoted in the FT were women, prompting the development of a bot that uses pronouns and analysis of first names to determine whether a source is male or a female.

Sounds like substantial underrepresentation for an industry in which management and professional workers are 47% women [0]...

>The paper, which covers many male-dominated industries, is keen to attract more women readers, with its research suggesting they are put off by articles that rely heavily on quotes from men.

...and a strong business case for the FT to address it. Aside from the fact that this is HN, I'm not sure why all of the top-level comments so far are so critical.

[0] https://hbr.org/2016/10/why-women-arent-making-it-to-the-top...

Eye roll

I guess that's one way of approaching this problem of parochial viewpoints. Hope this doesn't have any unintended consequences.

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