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
>
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…
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
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
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
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
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
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
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* JSTOR!! <http://enwp.org/WP:JSTOR> (400 new accounts).
Medical
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* Cochrane Library <http://enwp.org/WP:Cochrane> (100 accounts)
Other
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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!
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The Wikipedia Library
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Library>
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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