On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous (and offensive). Regardless of our genetic predispositions, there are very real cultural issues that frequently drive female contributors away from Wikimedia projects.
[snip]
Ryan,
I believe your post was unnecessarily confrontational. I would expect you to call me out on that kind of thing, so I'm going to call you out on it.
I generally succeed at being thick skinned— but this characterization of my words is hurtful and the witch hunts that sometimes accompany responses like yours are outright frightening. I'm also concerned for other contributors who aren't as online-tough as I am... I know people who wouldn't touch a gender-issues thread with a 10ft poll because they are sure that they'll be misunderstood and burned alive.
We can't improve diversity if we create the impression that anyone who disagrees with the group or shares a contrary view is "the enemy" and fair game for an attack. We should welcome contrary views, even wrong ones, and treat all speakers with patience, respect, and a healthy-helping of assume-good-faith— even when, and especially when, our first impression of their positions is that they are ones which might be harmful to some group or another.
After all, by ferreting out a wrong position and building a good counter argument in a respectful discussion between colleges we build knowledge and skills that help us see and correct the same wrongness everywhere. But that can't happen if we use language to address wrong positions that reflect negatively on the character of the speaker.
... and to get real change on these kinds of pervasive issues we need the broadest input and the broadest buy in. This can't be achieved if the topic is one which people feel is open only to people who know the right things to say and the right ways to say them.
The characterization of my mainstreaming suggestion as "dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women" is exceptionally uncharitable and contributed significantly to my impression that you were trying to make a target out of me. Just so there is no lack of clarity on this point, I'm opposed to "dumbing down" in general and the idea that anything would need to be made _dumb_ to attract Women is completely unsupported by any information that I've seen. Making things more attractive to typical people doesn't mean making them dumber.
... In this case I wasn't even disagreeing with anyone. I'd take your complaint, if not the tone, as a deserved response if I'd dismissed any examples similar to the ones you provided in your post... but I simply didn't. I fully agree that there are "real cultural issues", and that they should be addressed. (Though I would point out, the author of that first horrifying diff-link has long since left the project, so I'm at a loss as to what action I could take now to deal with that particular case).
Any time you can point to clear articulatable problems, I'm all for taking action. Once you've taken care of them, however, it's also important the you keep in mind that some of the imbalances are caused by external factors or indirect non-discriminatory internal ones. By keeping all possible causes in mind, and by maintaining a friendly and positive environment for collaboration, we have the greatest opportunity to get the most benefit in the shortest amount of time.
I apologise for giving you— or anyone else— the impression that my post was intended to reflect negatively on Women. That was certainly not my intention. In fact, what I was saying arguably the converse (and I used a fairly derogatory language to characterize what Wikipedia selection bias that I'd like to see us temper somewhat, "uber-obsessive techobibilo walking-fact-machines", something which sounds more like a side show exhibit than a human being). I believe Wikipedia's form and practices select for weirdos in many different ways, — some weird in 'good ways', many of then negative weirdnesses, (and, I'm sure many more neutral ones).
Some of those selections conspired against including Women (and people of many other backgrounds), ... fewer conspire against selecting our existing majority population, because our existing population has done a good job of removing the things that irritate them.
...and it's worth bringing up because it can lead to interesting suggestions, like the idea that making Wikipedia less appealing to weirdos can improve diversity in areas which are not obviously strongly connected to the specific weirdness since selecting for extremes magnifies even small differences between groups.
There are plenty of ways that Wikipedia participation rewards being weird— such as having the patience to write a novel defending yourself when someone tries to paint a target on your back... or just having the interest in dealing with an obscure series of commands required to make a wikitext table. By making Wikipedia more mainstream in any area which are not essential to our mission (for example, I wouldn't suggest trying to 'mainstream' our attention to facts) we can expect improvements in diversity (gender or otherwise).
This doesn't mean that we shouldn't worry about fixing the existence of bigoted jerkwads on the projects, nor does the existence of jerkwads justify ignoring all other contributing factors.
Cheers,