Gendergap June 2014

gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org

40 participants
19 discussions

men on lists
by Kathleen McCook 05 Jul '14

05 Jul '14

There is a tendency of men to disregard women's discussion of issues that affect them so, yes, men on a list like this can undermine its purpose. --Kathleen On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I'm sorry Derric, but I think the topic of this thread is the notion that > many men, including those in administrator roles (e.g. list moderators) > simply don't even recognize misogyny, and don't recognize the importance of > providing systems by which women (and others, for that matter) can easily > limit the ability of people who have caused them problems from continuing to > communicate with them. > > The focus on technology here is very important. Right now, there is no way > for Wikimedians to control from whom they receive "email this user" emails, > or pings through the notification system. We know that both have been, and > continue to be, vectors for harassment and trolling. There's never, to my > knowledge, been any consideration given to including these features. We > keep being told we're going to get this wonderful new communication system > called "Flow" to replace talk pages. Features that allow users to control > who posts to their "page", or even to let non-admin users remove individual > threads or posts from their "stream", aren't included - and I'm not sure > they're even under consideration. > > And I'm going to be honest - I've seen more people blocked for "homophobic" > comments than "misogynistic" ones. > > Nemo, your "Hm, we've discussed that author before... oh well." is really > unhelpful and dismissive - and is pretty much exactly the kind of statement > that Violet Blue is talking about in her article. It comes across as "She > wrote something I didn't agree with in the past, so there's no reason to > ever pay attention to her again". I am really hoping you didn't intend that. > > And Carol has a point. There are now more men posting to this thread than > there are women. And most of you have missed the point entirely. Heaven > help us from those who see themselves as our saviours. > > Risker > > > On 23 June 2014 09:57, Derric Atzrott <datzrott(a)alizeepathology.com> wrote: >> >> >> Carol Moore dc, 23/06/2014 06:34: >> >> A lot of women used to be outspoken about all this here when this email >> >> list started, but that stopped after a bunch of guys joined and started >> >> hassling them about it. >> >> SURPRISE!! >> > >> > By looking at this directory, I can tell that I mostly stopped reading >> > this list in January 2012, one week after a fight between two vocal >> > women. >> > >> > Nemo >> >> Nemo and Carol both, I really don't like the direction that this >> discussion is >> going. Can we please steer it back on topic and remember why we are all >> here? >> >> From the Mailing list signup page: >> "Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the participation >> of >> women within Wikimedia projects. >> >> Wikimedia Foundation surveys show that the participation of women in >> Wikipedia >> and related projects are between 9 and 13 percent. This mailing list is >> provided by the Wikimedia Foundation as a communication tool to >> collectively >> address the realities of the gender gap within our projects. We are >> focused >> on discussing solutions and exploring opportunities that may serve as a >> starting point to improve gender equity, increase the participation of >> women >> and trans women, and reduce the impact of the gender gap within Wikipedia, >> Wikimedia Commons, and the 'free knowledge movement'. We want to encourage >> you >> to engage with others in this effort. Your thoughts and opinions in this >> regard matter to us and to the community." >> >> Thank you, >> Derric Atzrott >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 >

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Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L
by Kevin Gorman 03 Jul '14

03 Jul '14

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…

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WMF employee editing
by Pine W 30 Jun '14

30 Jun '14

Hi, this is a question I've been wondering about for awhile, and I am interested in hearing comments. My impression is that few of WMF's female employees are regular content editors or regular Commons media contributors, although they occasionally have office discussions about how to increase the number of female editors. What could be done to encourage WMF's female employees to edit or contribute media files on a regular basis, and would the necessary encouragement for these women also apply to other working women who would make good editors? Pine

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A cautionary tale
by Delphine Ménard 29 Jun '14

29 Jun '14

Hello, I found this: http://www.zdnet.com/quoras-misogyny-problem-a-cautionary-tale-7000030762/ an interesting read. Cheers, Delphine

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Leigh Honeywell is now a mod
by Kevin Gorman 29 Jun '14

29 Jun '14

Hi all - After the email I sent out to the list earlier, Leigh Honeywell offered to be a mod. She's a mod on the Ubuntu Women list as well as various IRC channels, has started multiple physical hackerspaces and is involved in DoubleUnion in SF as well as the Ada Iniatiative, and has a blog and twitter account both quite worth reading. I'll let her cover the rest of her introduction, but welcome Leigh :) Best, Kevin Gorman

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Signpost interview with Lila
by Pine W 29 Jun '14

29 Jun '14

Hi all, The Signpost has published the first of our two planned audio interviews with Lila. In this first interview one of the topics was the gender gap, so I think members of this list may be interested in listening. Discussion about the gender gap starts around 8:50. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-06-25/Exclu… Pine

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Lila Tretikov named to Forbes 100 most powerful women list
by Risker 28 Jun '14

28 Jun '14

This is a pretty impressive showing for someone just 4 weeks into the job: being named to the Forbes list of the 100 most powerful women: http://www.forbes.com/profile/lila-tretikov/ Note that increasing diversity is, according to the brief article, a top priority. Risker/Anne

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A reason to celebrate
by Risker 26 Jun '14

26 Jun '14

Looking at the Signpost today, I was really pleased and pleasantly surprised to discover that the top two most-viewed articles this past week were biographical articles about women. Not only that, they were both featured articles, so our reading public got a really good, informative article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-06-04/Traff… A thank you to Christine for the Maya Angelou article, and to Sage Ross (with support from Awadewit) for the Rachel Carson article. Risker/Anne

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Fwd: [GLAM-US] The Wikipedia Library: New Free Accounts Available
by Sarah Stierch 19 Jun '14

19 Jun '14

Great opportunity! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jake Orlowitz <jorlowitz(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 2:00 PM Subject: [GLAM-US] The Wikipedia Library: New Free Accounts Available To: Wikimedia & Libraries <Libraries(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, North American Cultural Partnerships <glam-us(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, cultural-partners(a)wikimedia.ch, wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org The Wikipedia Library has new, free research account signups available: New * British Newspaper Archive <http://enwp.org/WP:BNA> (50 accounts) * Keesing's World News Archive <http://enwp.org/WP:Keesings> (25 accounts) Expanded * Credo Reference <http://enwp.org/WP:CREDO> (200 new accounts) * JSTOR!! <http://enwp.org/WP:JSTOR> (400 new accounts). Medical * BMJ <http://enwp.org/WP:BMJ> (25 accounts) * Cochrane Library <http://enwp.org/WP:Cochrane> (100 accounts) Other *Questia Online Library <http://enwp.org/WP:Questia (500 accounts) *HighBeam Research <http://enwp.org/WP:HighBeam (500 accounts) Sign up! Accounts are available to ALL global editors with a 1 year old account and 1000 edits. Please notify your local community about the signups. You can signup today on English Wikipedia. But! If you have started a local Wikipedia Library branch you can host signups on your local Wiki (Arabic, Chinese...). To set up a Wikipedia Library branch email Ocaasi at jorlowitz(a)gmail.com. Thanks! Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi) The Wikipedia Library <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library> _______________________________________________ GLAM-US mailing list GLAM-US(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/glam-us -- Sarah Stierch ----- Diverse and engaging consulting for your organization. www.sarahstierch.com

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Oh man, I feel like a woman ...
by Daniel and Elizabeth Case 19 Jun '14

19 Jun '14

It’s one thing to read about the sort of harsh reactions women get while editing that discourages them from continuing. It’s a second thing to experience it yourself. Late last week I was browsing Slate when I read their reprint (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/11/lolly_wolly_doodle_brandi_te…) of this month’s Inc. magazine cover story, about a company called Lolly Wolly Doodle, a children’s clothing company started by Brandi Temple a woman in North Carolina with no real prior business experience, who had by her own admission never wanted to be anything more than a trophy wife when she was younger. She apparently figured out how to sell on Facebook, something major retailers have failed to do, and she’s now the CEO of a rapidly-growing company that’s gotten some serious venture-capital funding, doing over half of its $10 million+ annual business on FB and by their own lights the largest retailer on that site. I checked to see if we had an article on this company. We didn’t, so I started one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolly_Wolly_Doodle, complete with an infobox with the company logo and a free image of one of its dresses I found on Flickr. I reflected as I did so that the reason that this company had gotten all the media coverage it had in the tech and business press yet remained off our radar said entirely too much about our gender gap ... if we had just a few more probably regular editors who also are avid Pinterest users, I bet, we’d have had at least a stub a long time ago. But, that was all water under the bridge. Or so I thought. I nominated it for DYK on Friday. Late today, I get these responses: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Did_you_know_nomination… https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Did_you_know_nomination… They were enough to ruin the good mood I was in following the USA’s World Cup win over Ghana and our neighbor coming over to invite my wife and I to her daughter’s graduation party. I have real trouble believing that Eppstein even read it (“whole paragraphs” are sourced to the company’s own history on its webpage? Huh? That it’s not neutral and too promotional? Everything it is sourced and attributed. And that dismissive conclusion about “story-telling mode about the struggles of the founders to find their way in the world” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think a similarly-written story about a business set up by men would get this level of criticism. Sorry if anyone was bothered by this, but I had to vent. I will be going into greater detail about why this review was so off base when I request that someone else review it instead (something I have very rarely done with all the DYKs I’ve nominated). Daniel Case

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Gendergap June 2014