Hi Marie -
Given the fact that you're talking about men's rights activists, by Sarah,
I assume you mean Sarah Stierch? Both Sarah and myself (we were some of
the earlier Wikipedians to really infuriate MRA's) suffered a good bit of
harassment at various points as a result of our engagement with them.
We're definitely far from the only people to have experienced harassment
by MRA's or various other groups, and both myself, Sarah, and a large
number of other contributors have experienced at least some harassment
severe enough that I've thought for some time that the Wikimedia Foundation
should attempt to create some sort of contributor support system (as was
most recently brought up as an idea by Lane Raspberry of WP:MED.) None of
it was at all fun for me to handle, and some of it took significant labor
to deal with - both emotional labor and labor as in actually having to
explain to targeted associates of mine the back story behind the calls and
emails they were getting - and I have significant systemic privilege that
makes the same set of situations much easier and less threatening to deal
with than many other people do. I agree that harassment of contributors, by
fringe elements of the men's rights movement as well as other fringe groups
is a serious problem and that both the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia
Foundation need to come up with a better way of triaging and minimizing the
harm that it causes our contributors.
That said, I do want to be clear in saying that Sarah, to the best of my
knowledge, has never been suspended from a position of any sort for making
off-wiki comments. She was a moderator of this list for quite some time,
but eventually stepped down because this can at times be a very very very
very draining list to moderate - if she ever wanted to become a mod again
here, I'd give her a mod bit back in a heart beat, but I really doubt she
will ever want to again. She's still an active contributor (and
administrator) on the English Wikipedia, and still hosts talks and
editathons about our movement's demographic gaps pretty regularly. She
does no longer work for the WMF, but the fact that she no longer works
there isn't a result of her political views or offsite comments, and a
great number of current WMF staffers still have tremendous respect for her.
I was near the pre-scheduled end-date of an internship at the Wikimedia
Foundation right around the time that Sarah and I riled up men's rights
activists for the first time (it's been a number of years at this point)
through making the article about their movement more in compliance with
ENWP's encyclopedic content policies than it previously had been. It was
definitely an issue that came up with me in the office that week (partly
because it had made Jezebel; partly because people were contacting the
office,) and I will say that I don't think I can fault the behavior of a
single WMF staff member regarding the situation. They were tremendously
more accomodating than I can imagine most other workplaces being in such
circumstances - the rest of my time there included a large number of people
repeatedly making sure that I was doing okay/checking if I needed
anything/thanking me for publicly standing up for what I thought was right.
I don't want to dissect past situations in great detail, but I do think the
mod team has made significant errors in how we've chosen to moderate the
list in the past (and I accept a plurality if not an outright majority of
blame for that,) that was significantly detrimental to fostering a free,
open, and safe environment where conversations related to the purpose of
the list could occur. We can't change the past, but hopefully we'll be
able to help guide the list in a more beneficial direction in the future.
Best,
Kevin Gorman
On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 11:06 AM, Marie Earley <eiryel(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
I'm not sure if I would agree with the word
'error', Wikipedia happens in
a context, which is where all these discussions began, with the cautionary
tale article about Quora
http://www.zdnet.com/quoras-misogyny-problem-a-cautionary-tale-7000030762/
Away from Wikipedia I'm a member of the No More Page 3 campaign trying to
get rid of the topless glamour model photo which is published in Murdoch's
UK Sun newspaper. The petition reads:
"We are asking David Dinsmore to drop the bare boobs from The Sun
newspaper. We are asking very nicely. Please, David. No More Page 3. etc."
The petition is approaching 200,000 signatures and there are NMP3
t-shirts, media attention but our Facebook page gets hit by trolls.
Blocking is a last resort by admins but it becomes inevitable. The MRA has
set up a Laughing at No More Page 3 Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Laughing-at-No-more-page-3/262437737259691
page and take pictures / posts from NMP3's page and re-post them with
personally insulting comments. When you click on the names of those posting
comments their other "liked" groups invariably include various humanist
societies and Dawkins Foundation.
I entered "Wikipedia" and "male rights activists" and got this
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/fighting-wikipedia-corruption-censorsh…
which has a comments section at the bottom with current Wikipedia members
mentioning other Wikipedia editors by name and talk of a great conspiracy
at work against them, if Sarah was suspended for her off-site comments then
how is this permissible?
The same website has an article suggesting the compulsory sterilizing of
women before they reach child-bearing age so they are unable to take the
escape hatch 'soft-option' of exiting the workplace to raise them
http://www.avoiceformen.com/women/workplace-inequality-when-one-side-has-an…
They group are becoming increasingly well organized and have just finished
their first conference in Detroit
http://www.avoiceformen.com/international-conference-on-mens-issues-detroit…
Wikipedia and society as a whole need to recognise the shift in sand and
what a growing threat groups like these are.
Marie
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:28:49 -0700
From: kgorman(a)gmail.com
To: gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Gendergap] Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L
Hi all -
Currently, Gendergap-l only has two active moderators - in the past, we've
usually had at least three. After talking with Liz, we'd both like to bring
on at least one additional active moderator. Please drop us a note if you'd
be interested in taking on such a role. It's worth knowing ahead of time
that at times moderating the list can involve significant emotional labor;
that said, moderating the list also allows you the chance to more actively
help make positive change in the environment of the list.
In the past, many productive discussions have occurred on this list, but
over time the number of such discussions has fallen greatly, and a lot of
valuable contributors now either contribute far less frequently than they
used to, or have just outright unsubscribed. We think that a lot of this
is related to how the list has been (or rather, mostly how it has barely
been) moderated in the past. Historically, there's been a lot of reluctance
among mods, both past and present, to take aggressive mod actions - this is
a Wikimedia list, and the background that comes with that generally
stigmatizes the idea of significant moderation.
We feel like the reluctance on the part of Gendergap mods to strongly
actively moderate in a way that tries to ensure that the list is a safe
space for contributors has been a significant error - a balance has to be
maintained between liberty and hospitality (to borrow some terminology from
Sumana's keynote at WikiConference USA [1],) and we don't feel like we've
gotten that balance right in the past. To be clear, since I'm the longest
standing gendergap mod (besides for Sue, who generally doesn't take part in
moderation discussions,) a lot of what I mean in the former sentence is
that I have personally made significant errors that have contributed
substantially to the general feeling that this list is not a safe space for
contributors.
Moving forward, we'd like to change how we moderate the list in order to
try to make it a list where contributors consistently feel safe in
contributing. Over the next few days, the mods will be having an internal
discussion about how we think we can best go about doing this, and we'd
also like to start a discussion on the broader list about how we can best
go about ensuring that this is a safe and productive list while staying in
line with the general values of the Wikimedia movement.
This email is intentionally sparse on details - mostly because we haven't
talked amongst ourselves enough to have a solid grasp of what the details
will look like, and also because we don't feel we can fully form a new
moderation policy without feedback from list members. There are a couple
things we're already more or less sure of. The moderation won't be
draconian; we understand that everyone makes mistakes and think that most
mistakes represent learning opportunities - we aren't looking for reasons
to kick people off the list. At the same time, members whose behavior
consistently (or in some circumstances, presence) on the list makes other
members feel unsafe or we feel are inhibitory to open, safe, productive
discussion occurring will not remain on the list. As list mods, we haven't
followed the list as closely as we should have in the past; we will be in
the future.
And, as a major change, we will also be adopting an explicit set of
community guidelines, which we haven't had in the past. Within the pretty
immediate future, we'll be posting a starting set of guidelines on an
appropriate wiki that will incorporate our thoughts, the thoughts of list
members, and best practices adopted from other groups (likely including
significant content from Geek Feminism's example statement of purpose for
communities including men - [2].) Once we have draft guidelines up, we'll
be inviting all list members to contribute to them, although the mod team
(including any new mods we recruit) will have the final say over their
contents. They'll also only be guidelines - we won't take action over
everything that violates their letter, and equally, we may take action on
some things that aren't included in the guidelines as they come up - we
just intend them to serve as a basic template for moving forward.
Best,
Kevin Gorman
For the moderators
[1]
http://wikiconferenceusa.org/wiki/Sumana_Harihareswara_keynote
[2]
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Statement_of_purpose/Communities_includi…
_______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap