[Foundation-l] [Gendergap] [Commons-l] Commons as an art gallery?

[Andreas Kolbe]

Pete Forsyth made what I think is an interesting point on the Gendergap list.

Reproduced below, with his permission.

> --- On Mon, 16/5/11, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> From: Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] [Commons-l] Fwd: Photo of the Day on Wikimedia Commons
>> To: "Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects" <gendergap at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Date: Monday, 16 May, 2011, 16:49

>> In my opinion there's a large and
>> pervasive problem behind today's controversy: in striking
>> contrast to our core value of openness, it is very difficult
>> to even *perceive* how important decisions like this are
>> made. Both the technical and the editorial processes are
>> pretty opaque to the average main page visitor.
>> 
>> I suspect there are ways the Commons pages relating to
>> Picture of the Day could be improved to make it clearer to
>> the reader how decisions are made, and how to meaningfully
>> participate in those processes.
>> 
>> For instance, main page content could have a link named
>> something like "how did this get here?" that would permit
>> the reader to view the discussion that led to its inclusion
>> on the main page. (This is just an off-the-cuff idea, to
>> illustrate the general kind of usability changes I would
>> like to explore.)
>> 
>> To put it another way, the issue behind today's controversy
>> that interests me most is access. Increasing the ability of
>> a large and diverse group to participate in important
>> decisions (like what gets featured on the main Commons page)
>> is something that would both honor the basic values of our
>> project, and (I believe) support better content decisions in
>> the future.
>> 
>> Anybody interested in tackling this issue?
>> -Pete
>>