Sarah, welcome to the discussion and thank you for the work that you are already doing.
I'm very interested in hearing more about your organizations and your ideas.
I agree that we need to think big!
The situation is ripe to form an international organization that brings together existing
organizations and active Wikimedia editors in a coalition that coordinates a big campaign.
The user group is an easy first step to gain affiliation with the WMF because it
doesn't require formal legal registration.
Once we get the ball rolling, a WMF affiliated thematic organization might better serve
the needs the group. But for the initial organizing stage, the user group should work
fine.
Regards,
Sydney Poore
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 21, 2013, at 2:41, Sarah Granger <sarah(a)sarahgranger.com> wrote:
I've been largely lurking on this list due to lack
of time to contribute to the discussion and the fact I'm not really a very experienced
Wikipedia contributor, but the reason I joined this list is because I very much want to
help solve the Wikipedia gender gap problem. I think it's incredibly important and
that most people working in digital media have no clue how significant this is. The focus
of my work is how digital media affects our lives and our world, and with more people
online every day and Wikipedia as the world's online encyclopedia, I think the gender
imbalance can only affect digital culture long-term in a negative way.
What I envision is a coalition of like-minded organizations working together on a
campaign to build awareness, educate people on the roots of the problem, recruit &
train new contributors. I work with a lot of digital media campaigners for women's
organizations, with women in tech organizations, and with organizations supporting women
in media - and digital media. I also have connections at more traditional feminist
organizations. I strongly believe these organizations will help if they can first become
aware themselves. Most are just not thinking about how digital media and wikipedia affects
gender bias online and in general. But there are literally a few hundred online activists
/ digital strategists at various organizations who I know would care about this if they
are just approached the right way to help.
So I encourage everyone here to think big and outside the box. I founded the Center for
Technology, Media & Society with the purpose of taking on issues that have slipped
under the radar of other organizations because they're interdisciplinary. This is one
of the core areas I want to work on. We don't have c3 status yet, we haven't
fundraised. I had to take a break to write a book and just finished the writing part of
the process, but I had a pilot project set up with a list of worthy women who should have
sites but don't, and I signed up some women willing to try contributing, but we got
stuck at the training part because of time and general learning curve. Also, I didn't
want to reinvent the wheel on anything the Wikimedia Foundation was doing.
I really want to be a part of this conversation long-term because I think if we do this
right, we could make a huge difference. I have a background in national digital campaigns,
so my ideas come from that world. A few ideas I had: launching an international wikipedia
training week for women &/or having a wikipedia editing week, a regular monthly
wikiwomen day where we blast social networks & engage women to add & edit pages,
putting together some clever online memes to build awareness, Tweetups, FB buttons, a blog
carnival, building a campaign specific website to explain the problem, solutions, recruit
participants, etc... especially reaching out to young women in tech. I spoke at a
conference of young women in computing in the midwest yesterday and that kind of audience
I think would be perfect for recruiting new Wikipedia women contributors.
The one other reason I've been treading cautiously is because I believe that anything
done to improve Wikipedia's content should ideally be done with some buy-in from the
community, rather than criticizing it. I could see some women's organizations getting
really angry once they understand the problem, and blaming men for sexism, when the
problem, as all of us on this list know, is much more complex and not an outright issue
like that. I want to make sure they are invited in as partners and that they are being
constructive and proactive. There are always ways to use humor to bridge the gap when
working on messaging around the issue, but we really need everyone on board.
I didn't mean to write this much... it's late where I am. I hope this provides
some helpful additional thoughts and ideas. I really want to help with this. I think
ideally it would be run from within the Wikimedia organization, partnering with all the
others I mentioned, so I think the user group sounds like a good plan if that's the
right operational entity (not being fully versed in the Wikimedia org structure, I'm
deferring to others here), but if that can't be done, for whatever reason, I'd be
happy to find the an organization that would be a good fit for that role, or we could take
it on in our organization if we have enough support from others (since we're scrappy
with zero resources at the moment).
Please keep me in the loop and let me know how I can help best, but count me in for
whatever group, organization or coalition.
- Sarah Granger
On Oct 20, 2013, at 11:48 PM, Cobi <cobi(a)aippnet.org> wrote:
Hey,
this is the first time I've actually added anything to discussion on this list :)
I agree that trying to address the issue by hiring one or two activists taking on
responsiblity for talking about it/acting on it wouldn't address what I consider to be
the big problem of "environmental challenges" or systemic bias, as having people
focused specifically on the issue can mean that people who don't care or inadvertently
contribute to the problem can continue to dismiss it as a niche issue. In my experience I
find it more effective to say, for example, that I think open access is really important
and I will contribute to open access projects, but if people behave in ways that
contribute to systemic bias, I will not contribute further as I prefer to focus my
energies elsewhere.
As research about women in engineering shows, benefits-focused recruitment drives
won't work if women (or other underrepresented peoples in Wikipedia) get lost along a
leaky pipeline, when after acquiring the technical skills to contribute, they come to feel
that their contributions aren't valued and they are better off focusing energies
elsewhere. I'm working in international development - part of that often involves
disaggregating data to see which projects are involving people of diverse genders and ages
and ethnicities for example, and which aren't, and refocusing funding to value groups
that demonstrate the ability to be inclusive, or that specifically engage people who are
often left out in genuine decision-making and empowerment - rather than pushing them to
work for little return. Perhaps one strategy is to look at the composition of existing
WMF-affiliated user groups, to see what gaps exist in what WMF is endorsing (and giving
grants for. I think it would useful to have an activist involved in every single user
group, contributing there and raising awareness of issues among other editors, but
that's a burden on each of those activists to lead change in those groups. I
wouldn't be comfortable joining a group just focused on this issue, for fear of
harassment or people being more subtly difficult, knowing I'm focusing energies in
this area that they might be opposed to - I'd be more comfortable being part of a
project in which women editors contribute to other projects and that WMF works to ensure
their contributions are valued and supported, recognizing that systemic bias means value
and support is less likely to happen naturally within the system.
Perhaps they're not mutually exclusive though. I'm sharing this hoping it helps
to explain why some people, who are activists in this area, aren't necessarily active
in the way proposed right now :)
Cheers, Cobi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alixos
On Oct 18, 2556 BE, at 6:29 AM, Sydney Poore wrote:
Hi ,
Today I began the discussion about establishing a Wikimedia Foundation affiliated user
group around the topic of addressing the gender gap in Wikimedia Foundation projects. I
see this as being an international organization where people from all over the world can
work together on this common cause.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gender_gap_strategy_2013#Establishing_…
The threshold for being recognized is pretty low., only 3 people, but I would not want to
go for affiliation with less than 10 interested people. And I hope we can attract many
many more.
I plan to discuss this in Berlin at the Diversity Conference but want to make it clear
that the organization is open to every one interested in actively working on the topic. So
please spread the word.
I put a sign up space in the thread so we can capture the initial interest that came out
of this thread.
One of the key discussion will be the name of the group. So everyone put their thinking
caps on so we can make this decision within the next month of so.
Sydney Poore
On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 4:29 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Sydney
<sydney.poore(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, with the narrowing focus last year the community will need to take the
> lead. But from the meeting earlier this year it is clear that there
> definitely is talented people on staff at WMF who are more than willing to
> assist as their time permits.
That's unfortunate. I understood the narrowing focus to mean not
placing WMF offices and contractors around the world, or doing sort of
boots on the ground face to face outreach. Since usability initiatives
and some other programs are still ongoing, it seems like the gender
gap should've stayed on the table for direct involvement even if not
through the vehicle of the fellowship program. Too bad.
That said, there are chapters who receive hundreds of thousands of
dollars in funding from the FDC despite having objectively achieved
very little to date; certainly that means there is an opportunity
there for people with an interest in dedicating themselves full time
to this work to be compensated fairly through a funded WMF affiliate.
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