filchyboy: G Quotient

November 12, 2003

G Quotient

Shelley Powers asks, "What is your G quotient?" There has been much discussion for a while now around the blogosphere concerning the ranks or counts of male and female bloggers. To be honest I don't pay any attention to any of this. I am an equal opportunity linker and do not pay much attention to the gender of who I link to when I write in this space. When I was younger I would no doubt have paid much more attention but as I've gotten older my time has become more valuable and my understanding the complexities of these issues have increased.

So in an attempt to show that I have plenty of time, lol, I have taken up Shelley's question and run my last 100 posts through my handy link counter app. I'm going to follow this up (I hope) with a similar count of my blogroll as well as my remaindered list. But for now heres the results of my past 100 links.

Since I actually link to collectives which include both male & female writers I broke those out of the strict male/female structure which Shelley uses. I also tried to stick to her categor breakdown but it really doesn't meet my needs so other may quibble with how I applied her categories (In other words I don't see any use to it.)

Of the total 100 past posts a full 63% do not link to any blogger whatsoever.

Of the 47% which do post to bloggers (these numbers do not add up to 100% because of posts which contain multiple links from different categories) 49% link to male writers, 17% link to female writers, & 15% link to collectives.

Following this I have the full list broken down.

One of the most interesting points to me is that going into this I have been thinking for a couple of weeks now of posting links to who I consider the three best writers in the blogosphere are and all three are female. Yet my post history (useful exercise Ms. Powers) shows that I do not post that often to women as compared to men. I'm going to have to do some hard thought on this and I have some further thoughts about this but it's going to have to wait until I get a handle on my blogrolls and bookmark lists to do a similar breakdown.

Link - Male - Cultural
No blogger (nb)
Link - Male - Cultural
Link - Male - Cultural
nb
nb
nb
Link - Female - Cultural
Link - Female - Cultural
nb
Link - Male - Politics
Link - Collective - Cultural
Link - Male - Cultural
nb
nb
nb
nb
Link - Collective - Political
nb
Link - Male - Poltics
nb
nb
Link (s) - 2 Males - Politics
nb
Link - Collective - Metablogging
Link - Male - Art
nb
nb
nb
nb
Link - Male - Politics
nb
nb
Link - Male - Politics
nb
nb
nb
Link - Collective - Cultural
nb
nb
nb
Link - Male - Politics
nb
nb
nb
nb
Link (s) - 2 Males - Technology
Link - Female - Issue of Self
nb
Link - Collective - Lit
nb
nb
Link - Male - Political
Link - Female - Cultural
Link - Male - Politics
nb
Link - Female - Metablogging
nb
nb
Link - Male - Cultural
nb
Link - Male - Cultural
nb
Link (s ) - 3 Males, 1 Collective - Politics
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
Link - Female - Cultural
Link - Male - Politics
nb
nb
Link - Male - Politics
Link - Female - Politics
Link - Female - Cultural
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
nb
Link - Male - Cultural
nb
nb
nb
nb
Link (s) - 3 Males - Metablogging
Link - Male - Metablogging
Link - Collective - Cultural
nb
Link (s) - 2 Males - Literature
nb

Posted by filchyboy on November 12, 2003 at 03:58 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink

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Comments

Hmm, interesting data. Before you go too far, maybe it's function that's not clear in the Perseus study. Only 1.0% of blogs were created by people in my age bracket, and I have to wonder of that 1.0% how many are men/women? I tend to drift towards people who are within a decade of my age. Is it possible that age impacts you as well -- without your being aware of it? And do your links reflect a proportionality on this basis?

Posted by: Rayne | November 13, 2003 at 11:01 AM

I think that's a very good point. I have no way of knowing outside of, I guess, asking to know this. But I suspect there is definitely some valid data to be derived from age. I also tend to drift towards folks within a decade of my age. Younger than their late 20's and my interest in what they have to say falls off. Older then me not so much. As many of those much older than I, more than their late 40's, tend to be authorities in their field their age is irrelevent to me.

I have been thinking a lot about this based on the Political Compass stuff. I'll perhaps post some more about this at RFB in the next few days.

Posted by: filchyboy | November 13, 2003 at 11:25 AM

After thinking about this, I realized I don't personally know many women (outside the blogosphers, in real life) in my age group who even understand what a blog is, let alone one that would keep one. They wouldn't dream of developing and launching their own website, either. I know many more in the age groups below my own that are much more literate -- makes me think there's a greater percentage of women bloggers who are younger rather than older. Have to believe this is a function you're seeing reflected in your links; you strike me as least likely to select a link by gender.

Posted by: Rayne | November 13, 2003 at 02:47 PM

Damn it, not only can I not type today (making all kinds of typos and errors) -- but I've just made myself out to be older than dirt!!!!

Posted by: Rayne | November 13, 2003 at 02:50 PM

That's okay. I'm older than calcium.

Posted by: filchyboy | November 13, 2003 at 03:32 PM

Well, I guess Dave (http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/) has his bases covered, here.

Posted by: Marijo Cook | November 13, 2003 at 05:01 PM

My partner, B (female), thinks that inherently the blogosphere is competition-driven and that women are statistically less likely to respond to those kinds of incentives. As we discussed this, we wondered whether any quantitative/ranking type metric inherently selects for the dynamics that men gravitate toward.

Posted by: xian | November 15, 2003 at 11:40 AM

Just to complicate the picture a little... In blogs with comments, how many are posted with gender identifiable signatures? Of those posted with gender-identifiable signatures, how many provide URLs that access other comments or entries, on the same blog, on another blog? How many of those connections are M to M, M to F, F to M and F to F? And if the study is done over time and over clusters of blogs a vey dynamic and evolutionary picture emerges. In any case this entry and this comment have led me less to attempt to try and discover the big big picture and more to ponder the gender politics of my own blog interventions. I do think that the frequency questio (number of blog inventions in per site per time period) indicates a record of "writing to" which may not reflect a "reading of" or even the "accessing of" [a hit is not a read]. Would be nice to have the time-based data to project the curves that correlate number of hits, number of repeat visits and amount of writing activity (entries and comments) and
at what point do connections start to appear (linking to other blogs, to other WWW resources, to blog archived entries/comments). Then some interesting comparaison could be done on sociological markers such as age, gender, sexual orientation. And then some sociologist could attempt to verify results in a decade, in a generation...

Posted by: Francois Lachance | November 16, 2003 at 04:57 AM

And what if, just on the outside chance, said personal enemies were going to carry out an attack BIGGER than 9/11?
Search Google http://www.google.com/

Posted by: Google | November 16, 2004 at 04:19 PM

Posted by: EATING SHIT FREE LESBIANAS GIRLS NUDE | February 13, 2005 at 02:04 PM

i want to to see some animalsex,but not able to open it as it is blocked.

Posted by: GEORGE | August 07, 2005 at 11:47 PM

http://comcar.org/wwwboard/messages/95800.html mattordealskirt

Posted by: spending | September 06, 2005 at 05:06 AM

http://www.kreweofaquarius.com/wwwboard/messages/5824.html backfearsoftening

Posted by: articles | September 19, 2005 at 11:17 AM

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