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Comment by samfoo | Hacker News Reader

Leaving aside the sexist subtext that women appreciate beauty more than men...

While Wikifashion is pretty and, that beauty certainly (I'm sure) helps contribute to it's success: Don't you think your high female contributor ratio has more to do with your subject matter being more interesting to women?

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Absolutely. Though the blog post really wasn't trying to attribute Wikifashion's high female contributor ratio solely to its good looks. It was more about showing that females and wiki's do mix, despite recent debate otherwise.

http://mashable.com/2009/09/01/women-wikipedia/

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/02/where-are-th...

I wasn't intending for my article to come across as sexist. I merely wanted to point out that certain elements of our design may appeal more to women than wikipedia's.

Ah, re-reading your article, I think I misunderstood your use of "pretty". Where I was reading it to mean "well designed and aesthetically pleasing", retrospectively it seems like you're using it as a catch-all term for "a-look-of-some-kind-that-appeals-to-women"? In which case, I apologize for crying sexist-wolf.

Incidentally; Wikifashion is genius. I'm totally going to score points by showing it to my fashion-obsessed-and-wikipedia-contributing girlfriend tonight.

Apology accepted :) Glad your girlfriend will like it.

Maybe, but there are lots of men in the fashion industry. For example, take a look at the sidebar on this site and see how many of the top fashion designers they list are men.

http://www.top-fashion-designers.info/

So it seems reasonable to assume that her site could pull in more than a few guys, making the mere 7% a bit surprising. I have no explanation to offer for that though, not even a guess.

This is fallacious. There are many reasons why the ratio of men to women in the upper echelons of the fashion industry might not be reflected at the lower levels (men going into the fashion industry need to have more drive, men tend to cluster at the top and bottom of any field while women trend towards the middle, etc.), and in fact it's pretty well known that that is in fact the case.

She does mention it, and it's probably the most relevant reason, but I think the form factor of the page is also a hughe one.

"Leaving aside the sexist subtext that women appreciate beauty more than men..."

It's not about appreciating beauty, it is about having good taste.

Also, to contrast with wikipedia, certain kinds of anti-social behaviour, arguing and power-seeking are not just encouraged, but practically enshrined at wikipedia. Frankly the only surprise is that it isn't even more of a sausage-fest.

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