From a UK perspective, I have been to and helped to run
a couple of
women-based editathons, they were mainly attended by women but were
never intended to be exclusive. There have also been a couple of black
history editathons in London, again they were not exclusive to any
particular group. I ran the first LGBT editathon in the UK, again it
was open to everyone and all attendees were happy with the idea of it
being run under the safe space policy.
As far as I know, there has never been an exclusive editathon but
themed events are a good idea and will attract those most interested
in the subject. There have, however, been exclusive or invitation-only
workshops. I would like to see exclusivity of any kind kept to a
minimum when Wikimedia funding is being used. If an organization is
funding their own event, such as an in-house editathon, then clearly
it's up to them.
When I recently raised my concern about an invitation only Wikimedia
funded event with no published criteria for selection nor even a clear
explanation of who was doing the selection, I was conveniently called
a bully, so any future worry I have along these lines will be quietly
handled as a complaint to the FDC, or whoever is most directly
spending donors money in ways that may be seen as partisan or based on
personal networks.
Fae
On 23 March 2015 at 15:25, Neotarf <neotarf(a)gmail.com> wrote:
That's interesting:
"The workshops are open to all Afrodescendants including but not limited to
individuals who self-identify as African, African-American, Afro-Latino,
Biracial, Black, Black-American, Caribbean, Garifuna, Haitian or West
Indian."
I've never seen editithons that exclude people before. I've been to a
couple of black history events, and all were welcomed, although of course
there was a very high proportion of African descent. Likewise, the women's
editing events I have attended have been very welcoming to men, although as
you would expect, there is a very high attendance level for women.