This is a topic of much interest to me. Thank you for bringing it up!

First, though, I want to tease apart two of the points you make here, Pine: increasing technical contributions/participation by non-majority demographics, and increasing the number of people from non-majority demographics who get technical degrees or take technical jobs. The two are related, but not the same, and I would encourage us to think about both when we think about how to increase our movement's diversity. For instance, I do not have a STEM degree, and I will almost certainly never be the person who applies for or wins technical/programming jobs. But I am a person who is interested in making some technical contributions where I think they could be useful. What you could do to get me to step into that space is not necessarily what you should do to get another young woman to take a Computer Science degree.

The rest of this email will focus on my thoughts as someone in the first group - someone who is not a vocational technical contributor, but has very tentatively been easing a toe into the waters of technical contributions in the past year in my spare time. 

On an individual level, what I have found extremely helpful on the part of other people/communities has been to for them to let me know that there is a particular person or venue I can approach for help with my probably-stupid questions when I get stuck, who not only won't judge me harshly, but will enjoy the experience of helping me learn. And it's not enough for that person/venue to exist in a conceptual way - a lot of the time I need to be explicitly invited to approach them (and maybe even later  reassured that "no, really, approach them! they like helping!"), because otherwise I will assume what is true of many other technical spaces/people: they do not welcome those who are not already up to speed.[1]

In the case of the contributions I've been working on thus far, I was lucky enough to already be acquainted with a community-oriented technical contributor who enjoys helping people who want to solve technical problems but who need a little support in figuring out the implementation. I can't overstate how much further I have gotten in building my scripts, etc simply because I know I can reach out to this particular person when I get stuck, and they will not only help me figure out how to get un-stuck, but they will give me a digestible explanation for how the un-sticking works, so that I am one more step forward for the next time I try. Knowing that the support is there gives me the guts to try new things without worrying too much about it being "wasted time" when I hit the limits of my own knowledge. In my case, my helper happens to be male and someone I already knew, but I can easily imagine that for many non-majority people coming into technical contributions who don't already have connections to anyone, it would be even better if they knew there was someone of a particular gender, etc that they felt at ease with who was basically wearing a sign that said "Ask me your stupid questions! I want to help!"

Similarly, I haven't yet attended any technical events like hackathons, but I'm very curious about them. I like the idea of going in with an idea and coming out with a thing I built. However, I have the (possibly incorrect?) impression right now that hackathons are for people who are already capable of building their thing, not for people who are working on learning to build their thing, and so I feel that if I were to attend one, I would either be a bother to everyone else who feels forced to help me when I ask question after question, or I would simply spend the weekend watching everyone else capably build things while I sat on the sidelines. What would get me over that hill of anxiety and into a hackathon? Basically being told ahead of time and explicitly that help would not only be available, but also easily found and enthusiastically given. Perhaps something like a program that says "Room C will be staffed all weekend by experienced technical contributors who are available to help beginners or those who need another opinion", or a system of "people wearing the orange lanyards are happy to answer beginner questions; approach them whenever you need", or a separate track that was a "so you want to build something? Let's get you started!" introductory workshop. Maybe those things already exist at hackathons - but if they do, they're not being advertised loudly enough, because I don't know about them (and I'm pretty well-versed in movement stuff, so if I don't know about them, it's even less likely that a, say, random WOC who's interested in joining the movement would be).

Anyway, I'm really glad this issue has been brought up, and I'm looking forward to reading other people's takes on it!

[1] I want to clarify here that when I say people/spaces "do not welcome" beginners, I don't necessarily mean that they go around wearing signs that say "no beginners allowed"; more often it is a matter of a person being easily frustrated by people who don't "get it", or a space being run in a way that a certain baseline of knowledge is expected in order for one to be able to participate meaningfully

-Karen/Fluffernutter

On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:31 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

I read the unofficial Google internal memo that has been the subject of some controversy, and upon reading it my Wikipedian-trained instincts were to wonder where the citations were that should, if they were available, have supported numerous assertions that were made in that memo. I'm not an expert in diversity -- and I suspect that the author of that memo isn't, either. In the absence of verifiable and reliable sources, I'm skeptical of numerous assertions that were made in that document.

This leads me a question that I've had in mind for awhile. How can we increase the diversity of Wikimedia technical contributors and staff? I'm referring both to gender diversity and racial diversity (people of African descent appear to be significantly under-represented).

My unscientific hunch is that what would help is increasing people at young ages to consider a career in a science, technology, engineering, or math ("STEM") field, and then continuing to support their interest from elementary school through college.

(Personal story: I was a poor performer at math in middle school and at one point I emotionally gave up on the subject, yet I did significantly better when I reached college and (a) had instructors whose styles were more compatible with how I learn and (b) had classroom environments that were more supportive of learning.)

I don't know to what extent Wikimedia should be involved in encouraging people at early ages to become interested and stay involved with STEM, and I think that we should ask ourselves if perhaps this is an area in which we should make some financial and time investments, with the goal of facilitating development of diverse candidates into engineering and technical roles for the community as well as organizations like WMDE and WMF. We probably shouldn't be steering people at young ages to make long-term commitments to STEM or the Wikimedia ecosystem, but perhaps we could take some actions that would at least encourage them if they seem to be interested in STEM to continue their academic growth in those domains. I don't know if there is data that explains how gender and racial disparities develop and how to address them, but my hunch is that the earlier that the issues are addressed, the better.

I don't know what other options to suggest; perhaps people here will have some ideas. I'd particularly like to invite Victoria to the conversation; perhaps she can comment sometime in the next several days (probably not for several hours, since this is still Sunday evening on the US west coast).

Hoping to hear some thoughtful discussion,

Pine

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Karen Brown

user:Fluffernutter

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