On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 1:21 PM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
From: Laura
Hale <laura(a)fanhistory.com>
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Proposal: Forking gendergap: Main list for
women and transgender, sublist for male supporters
Am I supposed to interpret this as you claiming that this list has a mission
that will never succeed because it acknowledges there are gender differences
and different approaches are needed to get different audiences? As a woman,
a representative of a minority group on Wikipedia, how am I supposed to
respond to you? I can tell you that this post of yours makes me feel
distinctly uncomfortable posting to this list. It seems to put men in the
position of power above women, demanding that women participate only in male
modes of communication, that women on the list can't talk about genuine
concerns they have as women because they are going to get blown off, and
that feelings of men on the list are more important then women.
Laura, the problem is that we're online, so we can't tell for sure
who's a man or woman anyway. I agree that women act differently around
men, but I think that will continue even when we only suspect we're
around men. So setting up a women-only list wouldn't work unless we're
willing to abandon anonymity and really get to know each other. That
would be wonderful if we could ever trust each other that much, but I
don't think this is the list to try it with.
Beyond Slim's practical issues question...
I think that it's reasonable to assert that "the problem" includes not
just "motivate more women to want to start participating in Wikipedia"
but also "deal with latent mostly-male community behavior that
discourages women from continuing to participate". Exactly which
behaviors and how to deal with them are left as exercises for the
future.
If you view the problem narrowly as the first definition, as I think
Laura is asserting, a women-only list makes excellent sense.
If you view it more widely including the second one, which is more of
what I think that I've heard here from women who I know are active
english language wikipedia participants, then men and the community
writ large are going to of necessity be active parts of the solution
(whatever that is) and I think reasonably should be involved in the
discussion, both listening and commenting (but not dominating).
I think there's more problem to solve in the second than in the first,
but Laura's got a point. Though I think that both questions are
aspects of what all of us should talk about, if a women-only posting
list for the motivation problem would help advance that cause, then
perhaps another list makes sense for that discussion.
The consulting company I work for's CEO is a woman who organizes and
leads Women in IT group activities, to which I think Men aren't
invited.
The other issue is that while men and community are necessary parts of
fixing the male-dominated current community, men dominating here may
be (and on reflection seem to be) interfering with defining a clear
women's consensus of your perspective on the problem statement,
relative to the existing community. That again seems like an argument
for another list, or at least much better self control.
With these three topics - Empowering and encouraging women, Defining
the community problem, and Solving the community problem, what
approach to lists makes the most sense from an effectiveness and
participation standpoint?
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com