On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 10:56 PM, Leigh Honeywell <leigh@hypatia.ca> wrote:

On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 5:12 PM, Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Val,
>
> The discussion at that point was about Internet commenters. As you may know, that's not quite how Wikimedia projects work, and certainly the discussion wasn't referring to commenters on a Wikimedia project. Emily can't be blamed for the discussion going off the gendergap topic.
>
> When you ask someone not to comment, or not to make comments that in no way violate any behavioral norms, you make the list a less welcoming place for that person and others to express themselves. Discussion on this list (and any Wikimedia list) should be open, and civil participants should be engaged and not shushed. If you want to make the argument that anonymous comments disproportionately affect and hurt women, and contribute to gender gaps in many areas of the Internet, please feel free. You'd be right to do so, in my opinion, and you can do that without discouraging Emily from posting her thoughts.
>
> Nathan

Donning my mod hat here for a moment.

Asking people to prioritize the topic of the list (addressing the
gender gap) is not "shushing", and it is rude of you to dismiss the
substance of Val's criticism as that. I will be placing you on
moderation if I see anything like that again.

There is always a balance to be struck between tangents and focused
discussion. I am happy that we've had this thread to remind us all of
what our purpose is here - to discuss solutions to the gender gap.

-Leigh

You're entitled to your opinion, Leigh, but I stand by my assessment that by being the 4th person in a row to post about Internet commenters on a non-Wikimedia site, Emily was not responsible for moving the topic away from the gendergap and Val was incorrect to admonish her for doing so.

But perhaps it's the intention that participation on this list be severely constrained, where posters should worry after each post that they'll be "corrected" condescendingly and / or threatened with moderation for disagreeing with another participant. If that's the case, I for one am happy to predict that the gendergap list will never achieve a sliver of its goal (not that it has up til now, of course).