While I am waiting for the email confirmation disenrolling me from this email list, I think this is only going to work if:
1) Someone establishes some metric for determining if the training is helping
2) If there is some teeth to failure to adhere to the training once its been taken. If the WMF has no intention of dealing with admins who continue to violate policy, then there is no reason to force them to take the training.
3) The training is also taken by editors. The majority of the problems come from the editors so they should also have some need to take the training

On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 2:32 PM, Siko Bouterse <sbouterse@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Along similar lines, this pilot training has been suggested for admins:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Gender-gap_admin_training

And The Ada Initiative said they were interested in providing training for such a pilot. WMF grantmakers like myself would be pleased to see something like this develop into a proposal, if folks felt it was worth trying.

It might make sense to pilot at the admin level before focusing on functionaries like stewards, because admins have more day-to-day interactions with individual editors (and thus more opportunities to facilitate an on-wiki environment that supports diversity).




On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Reguyla <reguyla@gmail.com> wrote:
I think this might be a good idea but it would be pretty hard to implement and I think, unnecessary. Most of the functionaries got to where they are because they have a calm demeanor and generally are fair in how they treat others. Additionally, its not usually the functionaries who are the problem. So without requiring the editors to perform the diversity training, I'm not sure how much it would help.

On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 1:48 PM, Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com> wrote:

Don't know if this has been floated before - apologies if so - but:

Part of the problem we have is the sheer depth of ignorance among otherwise well-intentioned community members.

This depth of ignorance is naturally shared by the people who play leadership roles in the community. So we end up with stewards, arbitrators and bureaucrats who potentially end up reinforcing the gender gap problem because they just have no clue how the structure they maintain can sometimes be a tool to exclude people.

How about offering some form of diversity training to functionaries to help broaden perspectives and raise understanding? Obviously, from the point of view of supporting them to do their difficult and fairly thankless roles better, rather than beating them with diversity sticks.

It could happen (indeed, WMF could make it happen with some volunteer input); could it help?

Chris


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Siko Bouterse
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sbouterse@wikimedia.org

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