Gendergap May 2013

gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org

57 participants
46 discussions

WisCon?
by Michael J. Lowrey 20 May '13

20 May '13

Anybody else going to be at WisCon next weekend? It's where I learned of Wikipedia (it's Laura Quilter's fault), and certainly one of the best places on the planet to discuss Gendergap-related issues. -- Michael J. "Orange Mike" Lowrey "When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes." -- Desiderius Erasmus

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Re: [Gendergap] Women on the list: what have you been editing lately?
by Audrey Cormier 19 May '13

19 May '13

I've been creating articles about "Feminism in..." different countries, so far Germany and the Netherlands, and expanding Feminism in Italy. My ambition is to get through a few of these over the Summer. I'm enjoying the research, the history is always so different from country to country. Audrey (aka OttawaAC)

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Re: [Gendergap] start Porno related list?? can the Commons images thread move?
by puppy＠killerchihuahua.com 19 May '13

19 May '13

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Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] Hiring Community Liaisons (Contract)
by Sarah Stierch 18 May '13

18 May '13

Please see a bit below. A bit lengthy, but, in the end, WMF is looking to hire more community liaisons, preferably bi/multi-lingual. -Sarah ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Howie Fung <hfung(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Fri, May 17, 2013 at 10:58 PM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Hiring Community Liaisons (Contract) To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> * Hey all, For the last 18 months, the Engineering & Product Development department has been experimenting with the role of “Community Liaison, Product Development” - a staff member embedded in the Product team and tasked with factoring community concerns into our software development process, keeping editors informed about what we’re doing, and maintaining a dialogue between those who write code and those who write articles. While there is always room for improvement, I think this role has shown a lot of promise. We have a number of large projects coming down the pipeline (e.g., visual editor, discussion systems) and we need more help reaching out to our contributor communities, especially our non-English speaking projects, as our outreach there has traditionally been challenged. We’d like to recruit a small number of English-speaking or multilingual editors to do the Community Liaison job with different development teams and focuses. In particular we’re looking for people with a strong history of contributions to our projects who can provide sound and reasoned judgment and are trusted to do so by their community. Speaking other languages in addition to English is a major plus, as one of the objectives here is to ensure we can properly interact with and support non-English projects. I’ve included the full job description below. Our immediate need is for help with the Visual Editor. We’d like to hire a few community liaisons to help inform different Wikipedia language communities of the upcoming launch, create spaces for feedback and discussion, synthesize feedback for the Visual Editor team, and other activities required to support the Visual Editor launch later this year. If this is a role that would interest you, please e-mail Philippe Beaudette at pbeaudette(a)wikimedia.org< https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=pbeaudette@wikimedia.org >. And if you know someone else who might fit the role, let them know about it :-). We’re provisionally interested in hiring 2-3 liaisons, at an hourly rate commensurate with experience. This can be a part-time role, but we’ll need at least 15 hours/week for the length of the engagement (minimum 3 months). Please do apply if you think it’s a role that suits you, and if you find places we haven’t notified, spread the word! Thanks. Howie * _________________________ Howie Fung Director of Product Development Wikimedia Foundation * Community Liaison Job Description Background Information and Statement of Purpose The Wikimedia Foundation’s Engineering & Product Development Department is looking at ways to more effectively incorporate broad community perspectives in decisions and hold dialogues with our editors about the scope, pace and features of upcoming changes to Wikimedia projects. As part of this, it is hiring additional Community Liaisons from our volunteer community. Scope of Work Support and improve our ongoing software development projects, in particular: - Building up a network of volunteers from both English language and non-English language wikis, increasing the number of projects we can interact with; - Engaging the community in the software development process, by acting as a conduit for community questions, bugs and and feature requests, talking to editors about our work and how they can participate in it effectively, and recruiting them for workgroups and studies; - Being available from time to time to provide expertise and knowledge about our projects, including but not limited to training externally-sourced staff in the way our projects work, answering their questions, and providing expert advice on an ad-hoc basis; - Ensuring that our community is represented in the decision-making process and that our planned software adequately reflects user needs; - Monitoring Wikimedia projects, with the assistance of a network of volunteers, for emerging issues that have an impact on Engineering programmes; and - Other duties as needed. Requirements Effective Community Liaisons will be: - Experienced users of Wikimedia projects, capable of representing our community within the Foundation and vice-versa. - Strong communicators (both verbally and with the written word), able to explain our products to different groups of users with different levels of technical understanding. - Able to focus on the larger picture, understanding which concerns and views are widespread and which are marginal or individual. - Approachable, as both users and product developers must be able to trust these people for the relationship to function. - Self-motivated - they will be given important projects and expected to execute with little to no supervision. - Strongly empathetic - they excel at understanding the perspectives of others and bridging the gap between different approaches to the world. - Willing and able to remain resilient in the face of frustration from our users, in order to get the job done. Pluses Other positive attributes or areas of knowledge include: - Diverse language skills. While the Wikimedia Foundation communicates internally in English, we aim to be able to talk to our different communities natively. - Experience with the software development process. You will be thrown into teams that are actively working on new features; having a background that reduces the slope of your learning curve is a plus. - Familiarity with multiple Wikimedia projects is a major plus; we are about more than just Wikipedia. * _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- -- *Sarah Stierch* *Museumist, open culture advocate, and Wikimedian* *www.sarahstierch.com*

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can the Commons images thread move?
by Sumana Harihareswara 18 May '13

18 May '13

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2013-May/thread.html shows me that "Topless image retention -don't give up" has stretched on pretty long, and it seems to me like it might be better suited to onwiki discussion instead. Maybe the posters who are very interested in engaging in that conversation could hash this out on Commons or Meta and send this list an update when you have a solid proposal or conclusion? A few things I'd love to see more of on the gendergap list: sharing useful or inspiring blog posts and best practice documentation, promoting the School of Open's Wikipedia-editing course https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/10/school-of-open-offers-free-wikipedia-… and similar courses to women, and learning from case studies of Wikimedia projects (or other free culture/free software communities) that have improved gender equity. -Sumana

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Category:Nude portrayals of computer technology
by Alison Cassidy 18 May '13

18 May '13

Hi all, Can someone please explain to me why Category:Nude portrayals of computer technology (NSFW) even exists? How is a category like this, whatever about the image, remotely encyclopedic or useful to the project? It is populated entirely with sexualized images of women - almost all naked or semi-naked - with only tangential references to computer technology. I'm a computer engineer myself, and a paid-up member of SWE. Given the drive to get more women involved in STEM fields, I see stuff like this as being really damaging. And this is just one single example. -- Allie

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Breast cancer related information
by Theo10011 18 May '13

18 May '13

Hi This news story is doing the rounds in the news but I don't know if everyone has seen the original NY times op-ed by Angelina Jolie[1]. She talks about her preemptive and precautionary double-mastectomy because she found out she was at a higher risk for breast cancer after genetic screening. I saw the news about this earlier but didn't read her op-ed until now, it's helpful to see her perspective on this. This might be a bit personal, but a relative passed away last year who had breast cancer and the cancer had metastasized after a mastectomy and several rounds of chemo. She was a mother of 3 and a fiercely strong woman who faced it head-on, and even made preparation for her own death when the doctors said there wasn't a lot to do near the end. Anyway, It occurred to me, what her reaction or choice would have been in this case. I've also seen this issue brought up again a few times among my friends and family, it's a scary thought and a decision most women said they wouldn't want to think about until they have to - but they all would have wanted more information to make the most informed choice possible. It is safe to say that most people today use Wikipedia as the front line of information and resource for issues like these. Now, In Ms. Jolie's case I'm sure this was a very personal decision but she prob. also had access to the best medical resources and information about the risk and the tests. I suppose with all the charities and promotion breast cancer awareness already has - with marathons, television ads, and benefits - the true value of a resource like Wikipedia might be under-utilized. Once someone hears they are at risk or they should get tested, they most likely go to Wikipedia before a doctor to read up about it. Anyway, I wanted to do something in this regard. I suppose it's needless to say that this is a bit personal for me. I have lurked on this list since it was founded, and besides occasional interrupts, just observed. This seems like a worthy issue to devote time to if anyone wants to join me. I still can't think of a proper way to organize this - a wikiproject doesn't seem right or if something like this already exists, but I'm not sure. I saw the related articles about the subject, some of them need cleaning up and revising the hard medical facts in to a coherent voice - generally simplifying the language. I also wanted to see if I can organize things better and put all the resources on a single page, with pictures and templates on the articles to guide people directly to a centralized resource point. I thought maybe more veteran editors here like Risker, SlimVirgin or PeteF can give some advice on how to go about organizing the information and making a start. Kind regards Theo [1]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/opinion/my-medical-choice.html<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/opinion/my-medical-choice.html?hp&_r=0&_r…>

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Re: [Gendergap] Topless image retention -don't give up
by Andreas Kolbe 17 May '13

17 May '13

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Mary Mark Ockerbloom < celebration.women(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Regarding the question of "what can you do", > I had the experience last week of starting a new job. > I had to read through the guidelines for the organization, > which included a section on Equal Opportunity and Freedom from Harassment. > Prominent on the first page: > > "Harassment Defined > 1. Hostile Environment > Harassment prohibited under this policy includes verbal, visual, or > physical conduct relating to matters of race, national origin, sex, sexual > preference, religion, age or disability which is unwelcome to the > reasonable person, and > a. has the purpose or effect of interfering with a person's work > performance > b. has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile > or offensive working environment. " > > Item 2 goes on to deal with more direct incidents such as "unwelcome > sexual attention, sexual advances," etc. > > I also looked at the relevant page on Wikipedia, to see what Wikipedia's > policy is. > (Sorry I don't have the link to hand to include.) It covered item 2. > But "Hostile environment", item 1 on my workplace's guidelines, > is not included. > > Note too that item 1 is not limited to sexual materials; > this is not identified as a "feminist problem" but as a type of behavior > potentially relevant and unacceptable to anyone. > > I would suggest that one reason that it's hard to get people to address > this sort of situation is that it's not clearly identified at a high level > as unacceptable > behavior which creates a "hostile environment" A very interesting point, which reminded me of "The Benevolent Dictator Incident": http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_incident Wikimedia has a "friendly space" policy for physical meetings, but apparently no exact equivalent for its online environment. To give an example, Commons has a "hot sex barnstar", present on a number of user talk pages, which does not appear to have violated any Wikimedia policy, judging by its existence for more than a year now. The imagery is grossly pornographic, and would be unacceptable in almost any workplace outside of the adult entertainment industry: NSFW: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hot_sex_barnstar.png Similar imagery is sometimes found on user pages. It is widely accepted that the open display of pornographic photographs or drawings is a key contributor to a sexually hostile workplace. This is something that could have been addressed as part of the Foundation's terms of use: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use#4._Refraining_from_Certai… However, the present terms of use appear to permit anything that is not outright illegal. If the Wikimedia Foundation is serious about addressing the gender gap, why does it not apply customary workplace standards to its online environment?

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Sexuality-related userboxen: give me your thoughts!
by Katherine Casey 17 May '13

17 May '13

I've noticed that enwp has a *lot* of sexuality-related userboxen. Some of these are innocuous or positive (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/LGBTsupport), some seem to be a bit over-share-y (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence_reluctant), and some seem downright creepy to me ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/girlfriendwish). When you put them together (for example, as found on the - real but anonymized - userpage excerpt here <http://gyazo.com/fa31a70c0b5bf29600a3058ae6dc4d6e>), you can very easily end up with what feels like a very, very sexualized userpage, which means a very, very sexualized user experience for anyone who visits that page. Reading the userpage that screenshot came from, for example, gave me the feeling that anyone female who speaks to that user is going to be evaluated for their sexual usefulness to the user. Userboxen can be a sensitive issue, historically speaking, and everyone seems to draw the line differently between appropriate ones and inappropriate ones. I'm interested in getting some thoughts on where the line is, and on whether the ones that cross the line inappropriately sexualize the atmosphere on the project. My personal feeling is something along the lines of "Speaking out about your sexual identity is good, but I don't want to hear about what specific sexual characteristics you have or want your sexual partners to have". I'd welcome the lists's thoughts on whether any, some, or none of the following userboxen (not an exhaustive list of sexuality-related ones, just some I've pulled out as good examples of the question) are appropriate to have hosted and used on our projects: - Abstinence: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence ("This user practices abstinence but still has a healthy sex drive thank you very much.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence_sex_drive ("This user practices abstinence but still has a healthy sex drive thank you very much.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence_not_SRT ("This user practices abstinence for religious reasons, but disagrees with the Silver Ring Thing.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/abstinence_unsure ("This user practices abstinence but is not sure whether through shyness or through moral choice.") - Fetishes/philias/sexual identity: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/aquaphile ("This user is an aquaphile.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dark_Tichondrias/Userboxes/User_Cross-dre…"This user enjoys cross-dressing.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ISD/Userboxes/Dominant ("This user is a dominant." - also available in sub) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Oxguy3/myboxes/Straight_not_narrow("This user is straight, but not narrow.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cadwaladr/Userboxes/Pornography("This user enjoys pornography.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/slut ("This user is a slut.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/swinger ("This user enjoys a varied sex life.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/yiff ("This user loves yiff, and is probably a furry.") - Preferences for sexual partners: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bluedenim/Blondes ("This user considers blond hair to be attractive." - also available for brunnettes, redheads) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/girlfriendwish ("This user wishes [they] had a girlfriend") - Miscellaneous sexuality-related: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/safesex ("This user supports and encourages the practice of safe sex.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UBX/sex ("This user enjoys sex.") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TBM10/Uncircumcised ("This user is proudly uncircumcised") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sugar_Bear/Userboxes/User_varied_sex("This user enjoys a varied sex life. (Alternating between hands constitutes varied, right?)") - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:User_Single ("This user is single")

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Two days left to apply: Program Evaluation & Design Workshop in Budapest, June 22-23
by Sarah Stierch 15 May '13

15 May '13

[pardon the cross-post] Hello everyone, *This is a reminder that there are 2 days left to apply to attend the first Program Evaluation & Design Workshop, which will take place in Budapest, June 22-23. Applications close at 12 AM PST May 17.* Please review this recent blog announcing the event: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/05/09/program-evaluation-workshop-budapest/ *Wikimedia community members, chapter staff/volunteers, solitary volunteers - anyone who is a program leader is encouraged to apply. Please note, we have only 20 slots available and limited funding to support attendees. If you do apply, you must email me at sarah(a)wikimedia.org if you are requesting funding before/after you apply. * We will be filming our workshop, so don't fret if you cannot attend this first one, or aren't accepted to attend this time. *You can get a better taste for the event through our evolving Meta Event page: * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Design/June_2013_Work… Thank you Wikimedia Magyarország for your support and assistance. -Sarah -- -- *Sarah Stierch* *Museumist, open culture advocate, and Wikimedian* *www.sarahstierch.com*

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Gendergap May 2013