Speaking personally, whenever I am asked what my gender is, I say "do not want to answer"; if that isn't an option, I have refused to join sites before.  As often as not, that information is used to categorize and ghetto-ize people.  I'm gobsmacked that you've found most people post their gender on their userpages; I've never found that to be the  case, and looking at 25 or so userpages on my personal watchlist revealed only one editor who included herself in a "gender" category; the rest (mostly male) editors didn't come close.  Are you sure that you're not perceiving that information to be there because you know the gender of the editor? 
 
I know what it's like to have my inbox flooded with requests for assistance in relation to dispute resolution - just for oversight requests I get an average of 8 emails a day, when I was on arbcom it was over 100/day to various lists for various purposes.  (Yes, it's one of the reasons that people burn out.) 
 
I also have a real problem with the idea of anonymous reporting and even more so anonymous "assessment" of disputes.  As an administrator, I'd have really grave concerns about people gaming the system - it happens constantly - and with only about 10% of administrators (that is, around 80-100) routinely having anything to do with dispute resolution, it would take nothing to overwhelm them and burn them out. 
 
It seems to me that there's this very mistaken impression amongst many on this list that administrators on Wikipedia are somehow equivalent to moderators on other webistes. In reality, very very few administrators become admins in relation to dispute resolution. Most are looking at "mop work" - deletions, vandal blocking, page protections and the like. Most admins who are involved in dispute resolution were involved in it before they became administrators.   That's because Wikipedia is not primarily a social site, it is an encyclopedia. 
 
I will speak personally for a minute here.  I have seen almost no correlation at all between blocking people and changing behaviour; unless someone's kicked out entirely and permanently, blocking tends to actually escalate behaviour.  A borderline first block without significant attempts at discussion beforehand almost always leads to either (a) the person leaving and never returning or (b) a disinhibition effect - since the "incentive"of being a user in good standing has been removed by the existence of the block log.  Many of our most seriously problematic sockpuppeting accounts are people who've been blocked for behavioural reasons - and we waste a huge amount of time trying to keep them off the site. 
 
Risker/Anne
 
 
 
 
 


On 7 July 2014 03:20, Marie Earley <eiryel@hotmail.com> wrote:
Hi Risker / Anne,

In response to the points you raise:

* A panel suggests a group of people who discuss and decide things, it wouldn't be that, it would be a pool of adjudicators.
* The home page shows 130,858 active editors, if 15% of those are female then it means there must be 19,628 female editors to draw the 50% from.
* I don't participate in "dispute management", but then I have never been asked to.
* More people might agree to take part in dispute management if they know that their input will be kept anonymous.
* Administrators would do what they have always done.

Example of a possible way to approach potential adjudicators:
Those eligible (maybe they've been editing for more than a year and they have an edit history of 1,000+ edits) are sent a private e-mail, this would be a circular to all eligible editors. It would say something like:

> "According to our records you have been with us for more than [length of time] and have contributed over [number of edits]. We would therefore like to invite you join our pool of adjudicators which we are currently in the process of establishing. The purpose of adjudication would to consider editors requests to block other editors ('cases'). We envisage adjudication to be the first stage in managing cases with the second stage being handled by administrators.

> Your anonymity as an adjudicator would be protected by us at all times, in fact one of the conditions of being an adjudicator would be that you have no direct contact  with those involved any of the cases which you are asked to consider (although you may inform the Wikipedia community that you are an adjudicator). If you wish to become an adjudicator please click on the link and fill out the form. (The form would include equal opportunities monitoring questions http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/private-and-public-sector-guidance/employing-people/recruitment/monitoring-forms )."

Example case:
* Editor 'X' wants a block against editor 'Y'.
* Editor X submits a case for adjudication.
* Adjudicator 'A' requests a case, the case is randomly selected from those pending by computer.
* Adjudicator A reads the details and decides whether X has a point, or whether Y appears to have behaved reasonably (even if X didn't like it).
* Adjudicator A marks a one of two check boxes, "Pass to next stage? Yes [box] No [box]" (perhaps other boxes like "I lack the technical knowledge to adjudicate on this.") and a small comments form, maybe 1,000 characters.
* The same case goes to a few more adjudicators, 50% of whom are female.
* If enough rule that the case has merit then it goes forward and administrators deal with it as they currently do (the idea is to weed out groundless requests and save administrators and above time).
* Their would be a maximum number of cases that any single adjudicator could rule on in a 24 or 48 hour period.
* From time to time there would be a general call, "we currently have a backlog of cases".

I must confess, I had to logout of Wikipedia and remind myself about what questions are asked when joining. I'm so used to filling in Equal Opportunities Monitoring Forms for statistical purposes that I didn't really think about not being able to just run the query. Having said that, most user pages of active users that I've seen do appear to volunteer which gender they are. It is probably possible to go back.

Marie

Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2014 13:45:34 -0400
From: risker.wp@gmail.com

To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Addressing incivility (was: men on lists)

A few points here:

  • If less than 15% of editors identify as female, and the vast majority of those do not regularly participate in "dispute management", how are you going to establish a panel that is 50% women?  This isn't a small point - there are so few individuals generally speaking who regularly participate in dispute management at all (I'd put the number on enwiki at less than 150 total), and many of them are there because of the perceived power gradient, not because they have a genuine interest in managing disputes.  
  • What disputes, exactly, would the panel be analysing?  I'm having a hard time visualizing this.  "User:XXXX made a sexist comment here (link)"?
  • What would you expect administrators to do, exactly?  They're directly accountable for the use of their tools and have to be able to personally justify any actions they take - and surprisingly, a huge percentage of administrators (almost) never use the block button. (There's a subset of admins who only use their tools to read deleted versions, and another subset that only shows up once a year, makes a couple of edits so they keep their tools, and disappears again.)
  • How would you develop any statistics based on gender of editor, when the overwhelming majority of editors do not identify their gender at all in any consistent fashion?  I've personally never added any gender categories to my userpage, for example, and I have no intention of doing so now. 


Some thoughts.


Risker/Anne



On 6 July 2014 04:51, Marie Earley <eiryel@hotmail.com> wrote:
I previously described my experience of being a member of Kevin Spacey's Trigger Street Labs website http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2014-June/004388.html

I think part of my shock was based on being British, and how the sink-or-swim attitude prevailed by those running and moderating. At least at Wikipedia there is some notion of "We have a problem here, let's discuss how best to fix it." The name of one forum at TS was "Free for all - enter at your own risk" followed by a note that more members had been suspended from that message board than from any of the others, and this is all they have in the way of rules http://labs.triggerstreet.com/labs/Help?faqCat=Message%20Board

Having said that, the one thing that I thought worked well was their Hall of Justice. Members earn credits for their reviews (which are randomly assigned by the 'assignment generator') they then spend them on the website. An obvious way of earning a lot of credits is to make up a load of generic comments like, "the characters in this screenplay are very interesting", request another assignment, copy and paste, earn credit, and repeat.

The HOJ exists for members who think the review that they received was unfair. There is a criteria for the reviews including: not cutting and pasting from other reviews, (if you think it has happened then you include the ref. no. from the other review as evidence), reviews should be constructive and non-abusive, a decent word length (I think the minimum was 100 words), there should also be evidence in the review which shows that the reviewer definitely read / watched the submission.

If a member thinks they have been unfairly treated then they send a review to the HOJ. Other members - let's call them arbitrators - with a high enough participation level (like having 'enough' edits in your edit history) can request a - randomly generated - docket, read the review, read the details of the complaint e.g. ("I think this review is a cut & past of ref. # 'x' ...."). The arbitrator who received the docket for review then has a choice of Y/N check-boxes relating to the review critieria and a comment form, for anything else that they might like to add.

The same docket goes to a number of different arbitrators in the same way. (Note: there is a limit to how many dockets a member can request in 24 hrs.) If the majority think it should go further, it is passed on to the jury.

Details about the jury from the website:
> "The jury is a group of your peers made up of seasoned members picked by site staff. Although we cannot say what the criteria is used to pick the jury, logic dictates that they are active, positive, and objective members of the community. They are asked not to reveal themselves or discuss their status with anyone so they can vote without retribution."

(FAQs about the HOJ: http://labs.triggerstreet.com/labs/Help?faqCat=Hall%20of%20Justice )

A Wikipedia variation on it might include:
* editors would need a certain number of edits before they are eligible to become an arbitrator
* there would be a time-limit from the end of being blocked before being eligible for 'arbitration duty'
* administrators / senior figures would be ineligible to be arbitrators
* 'cases' for arbitrators to consider would be assigned randomly by computer
* it would be prohibited for an arbitrator to tell those involved in the case that they have been allocated it
* 50% of those asked to consider a case would have to be female (other quotas might be relevant for other demographics)
* there would be a limit to how many cases an arbitrator could ask for in a certain time period (I actually envisage it being more like a cross between jury service and those user talk page notices that there is a discussion taking place somewhere

These might be more technically difficult:
* cases would only go to arbitrators whose edit history is generally in a different subject area - so someone complaining about a dispute about a particular scientific point would have their complaint go to an arbitrator whose edit history is in, say, historical BLPs
* a limit to the number of times you could go through the arbitration process with the same case

Cases would only go forward for administrators to get involved with if enough arbitrators agreed that it merited being put forward.


> On a slightly different note:
Everyone seems to be mentioning the different ways in which the rules are applied to male vs. female editors. Is it possible to run a query or get hold of statistics for the average length of time female editors get blocked for, versus how long male editors are blocked for? Perhaps a table that takes account of the editors' participation levels prior to the block?

Marie


> Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2014 21:23:18 -0400
> From: carolmooredc@verizon.net
> To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Addressing incivility (was: men on lists)

>
> When I was a little girl in the 1950s and 60s we were told to be passive
> and pray for what we wanted. Thank heavens self-actualization and womens
> liberation came along and we discovered "well-behaved women seldom make
> history." (Nicely covered at
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Thatcher_Ulrich )
>
> If we want the guys to change we gotta keep busting their chops about
> being civil, within the limits of civility of course. On a one on one
> basis, day after day after day. And even though no matter how civil we
> are, SOME of them still will think it is we who are being uncivil.
>
> It's a dirty job, but it's gotta be done.
>
> And the more guys who help promote civility and are willing to counter
> the good-old-boy mentality, the better... :-)
>
> On 7/3/2014 3:18 PM, Sydney Poore wrote:
> > There was an attempt to address the civility problem on Wikipedia
> > English with a top down approach at the very start of Sue Gardner's
> > time at WMF. Sue, Jimmy Wales, myself, and a group of half dozen other
> > people talked about it in a closed group. It failed because a top down
> > approach is not effective on Wikipedia because policies can not be
> > enforced from the top. Policies need to be made that a large part of
> > the community agrees at proper and enforceable.
> >
> > I would be willing to assist a group that wants to take another run at
> > it. But there are significant challenges with enforcing a civility
> > policy on a global community where cultural norms differ at great
> > deal. So, we need to be careful that an attempt to assist one group of
> > users does not make it harder for other groups of people who are also
> > under represented on Wikipedia English.
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gendergap mailing list
> Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap



_______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

_______________________________________________
Gendergap mailing list
Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap