Sebastian,

While I bristle at the words "misguided", "dubious", and especially the implication (and indeed it's only that) that I'm in support of discrimination based on X (sex, etc.), which I hope by now others can see isn't so, at least I've gotten an actual counter-argument from someone that pulls together premises and leads to conclusions that at least follow from the premises.

Well of course I think my case is stronger ;), but I at least can acknowledge when someone else actually made a counter-argument.

Matt-------- Original message -------- From: wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org Date:01/08/2015 6:28 AM (GMT-05:00) To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Subject: Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 130, Issue 25

Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2015 11:19:46 +0100 From: Sebastian Moleski sebastian.moleski@wikimedia.de To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why WMF should reconsider the 3-month gender gap project-related decision Message-ID: CAA4pTmB9dg7KY_5y-nMSTt6opKMsRrHJZ+WzTmw3Xu5XjnWtqw@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Hi Matt,

as thorough as your characterization of the issue at hand is, as misguided it is as well. The main point of the gender debate isn't the physical differences between men and women and some purported difference in authorship flowing from that. That would rightfully be considered absurd and thus isn't really seriously promoted by anyone.

The gender gap debate is rather an acknowledgment that only a surprisingly small subset of half the population contribute to Wikipedia - and the systemic bias that stems from that. In fact, it seems rather obvious that an encyclopedia that aspires to represent all of human knowledge must necessarily be written by a representative subset of humanity - or at least a representative subset of the scientific community. We, so far, spectactularly fail at that with respect to gender but also geography, language, and professional backgrounds and expertise. As a result, it's more than sensible to try to address that with the gender gap as the most prominent failure.

I also find your argument that focusing on increasing female participation is devaluing the contribution of the prevalent majority highly dubious. It's unfortunately a rather unoriginal argument as it has been used many many times before in the political arean to combat initiatives aimed at increasing diversity and decreasing discrimination. The incessant fault of the argument is the premise that the value of a particular contribution is dependent on the value of all other contributions rather than viewing it in its own right. To give an example: when someone writes an outstanding article on the Great Wall of China and someone else writes an outstanding article on Jacques Chirac, the value of each of these contributions is completely separate from one another as well as from the fact whether one of the authors was "recruited" through a drive to increase female participation. They've both made excellent additions to Wikipedia and should be lauded for that. Making moves to increase female participation does not in any way devalue male participation.

While I have no knowledge whether this focused approach to grant-making will indeed lead to increased female participation, I find it sensible to at least try it out. We'll see in the end whether it was succesful.

Best regards,

Sebastian Moleski Schatzmeister / Treasurer ------------------------------------- Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 10963 Berlin