On 12/21/11 6:41 AM, Michael J. Lowrey wrote:
This guy is notorious. This person shouldn't even be in the community
for their behavior. It's painful to read and makes *me* not want to
participate in Wikipedia, for godsake. I'm sorry you got thrown under
the bus, as well. It's people like this that scare the crap out of me in
regards to me retaliating or saying anything. I feel like they'll be
placing an Arbcom request against ME, instead of someone against THEM.
Yeah, thus far I'm the only woman who chimed in on it. Someone brought
it to my attention last night just as I was preparing to go to bed.
Suffice to say I had to distract myself with other things to get it off
my mind. Obviously just a troll being, well, a troll, and a bunch of
dude-ness. I do think it's interesting that one guy mentions "third
gender," as I'm wondering if he's referring to [[third sex]] or if he's
just creating the concept of those who do not identify their gender in
their preferences are the new Wikipedia third gender.
I understand not everyone sits around and reads statistical data about
women, Wikimedia, open source communities, etc, but, it's really weird
that in a community that /relies/ on citations and statistical data,
that they repeatedly deny/dimiss the concept of the gender gap, throw it
to the wayside and think its either not a problem or not worth
mentioning. How many times do I have to have this conversation? I also
acknowledge that everyone has their own individual experience. While
I've had remarkable and terrible experiences in the community, I realize
some women have had nothing but awesome experiences, some men have had
sexist experiences, and that everyone has could end up on both sides of
the victim/non-victim spectrum. But, I also know that if we have 100
examples of painful, terrible, frightening experiences, we have a
problem. We have one of these stories, we have a problem, but,
unfortunately communities like this need 100 of them to make anyone take
notice or make change. And change is comin', baby.
Someone does state that everyone is just sitting around and whining and
not taking action. Perhaps they need to become a bit more aware about
the actions that some of us within the community are taking. Whether
it's WMF's decision to explore options to close the gap, or the UK and
Girl Geeks, the planning conference, the Ada Initiative, etc. Perhaps I
should invite them to this list. :P
And I keep saying "If you want to talk about this, I look forward to
talking about it with you at Wikimania," and then they all get scared
and run into the corner. Perhaps they fear the wrath, but hey, if you're
going to say it on Wikipedia...say it to my face! Hell, attend Wikimania
and I think you'll notice..helloooooo gender gappppppp....
Sarah
[[User:SarahStierch]]
en.wp