Thank you, Pete, for the reminder about this message. There's a lot going on this week.

The response to the op-ed has given us a lot to think about. We expected a strong response and some objections, but we did not anticipate anything like this. We do want a response, and sometimes we deliberately try to provoke a negative response if we think the issue is important, as we did in this case. We do want to take into account the responses and consider the reasonable ones respectfully, even if we disagree with them, while reserving the right to respond appropriately to the responses that are ridiculous or offensive. Many of the responses rest on premises with which I fundamentally disagree (which I'll get to in a bit), so I doubt I will be able to find common ground with those particular editors, unfortunately.

The biggest impression that was made on me by these responses was realizing how others see The Signpost. One commenter called Emily's column “an alternative weekly-style piece”. While I take our mission and specifically the news coverage quite seriously, I often see The Signpost as a cheeky alternative weekly whose mission is to be edgy and provocative. Until now, I did not realize how many people saw The Signpost not as an edgy outsider but as a Wikimedia institution and our newspaper of record, and feel that it has a responsibility to act more in the manner of The New York Times than The Village Voice. I don't want The Signpost to become stodgy or staid, but I wonder if I shouldn't take into account the views of those editors more often. It is heartening to see how important The Signpost is to so many editors, and I'd like to continue to be intellectually provocative while not needlessly offending those editors.

My main issue with the objections is that want The Signpost to be or perceive it as only one thing. I want The Signpost to reflect the vast diversity of people and viewpoints in Wikimedia. I want it to be able to be more than one thing. Risker complained that we “would rather be sensationalistic than informative”. I want it to be both. I want it to be serious and funny, professional and irreverent, a cheerleader for Wikimedia and a gadfly that points out its flaws. We publish anywhere from four to twelve sections each week, from a variety of authors and viewpoints. News is different from Traffic which is different from the Arbitration Report which is different from whatever person is presenting their opinion in the Op-Ed section that week. Different authors present different viewpoints and different tones, in different ways in different pieces in different weeks. I want to experiment with new viewpoints and new formats to supplement what we're already doing. Perhaps this column was a failed experiment, but I don't regret trying it because if we don't risk failure we won't be able to improve The Signpost.

This diversity of views and tones also applies to the issue of systemic bias and the author herself. This was one expression, it was never intended to be the final word on the issue of systemic bias, and there should be room in The Signpost and in the minds of its readers for multiple ways of dealing with that topic. This particular expression should not be expected to reflect the entire issue or all of its advocates, and the idea that an irreverent online column would prevent someone from attending an in person event related to this issue or reflects on all the people participating in the event is, frankly, baffling.

Likewise, the author of that piece should not be limited in expressing herself in one particular way about Wikimedia issues. There are many ways we should be able to express how we feel about this thing that we love and that is so important to our lives. She can be professional with her professional dealings and also express herself in a bawdy, irreverent way in a different context. The idea that she cannot or should not be a multifaceted person and be able to express that is a limitation of the imaginations of some readers, but those limitations should not be imposed on the author herself.

One objection we did not anticipate is the idea that this particular expression would be seen as offensive towards the scientists discussed in the piece. We thought it was fairly clear that this was a celebration of the lives and work of female scientists by a feminist author. While perhaps in some contexts “badass” might be intended as a pejorative, in the column it is obviously used in the more widely used positive sense of that word and no offense was intended. This is a fairly common and accepted usage. For example, a forthcoming book from the major publisher Simon and Schuster is called “The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu”, about saving ancient manuscripts from Al Qaeda. As a librarian, I am not offended by this description and I recognize it as celebratory. However, I do realize now that some people many not wish to be described in a certain manner, and we will discuss this internally when considering future columns describing living individuals.