[Gendergap] possible resolution... article differentials/unnecessary drama

[Kevin Gorman]

I'm not sure what thread these comments would thread best in to, but I'm
just going to put them here since it's the most recent one.  I'm not
intending this as a direct reply to anyone, just some thoughts about this
series of threads.

Content-wise... I think the appropriate scope of this list is anything
related to the gender gap on Wikimedia projects, broadly construed.  I
think this can and should include such things as discussion of outreach
methods, discussion of high level ideas about how to help address the gap,
discussion of research (like Joseph Reagle's recent study) about what the
gap actually is and what problems it causes, discussion of people's
experiences on the projects, offering support to people who have had
negative experiences, and discussion of particular problems on any project
that are related to/caused by/exacerbated by the gender gap.  I don't see
any particular reason to constrain the scope beyond that, and I don't think
anyone has offered one.  If someone does have a good reason to constraint
the scope of the list beyond that, please share it.

Regarding language-specific content: I can understand why it would be
frustrating for people from non-EN communities to repeatedly see people
discuss EN project contents, but I think the solution to this is not to
avoid talking about EN contents, but to encourage people who speak other
languages to start talking about content from other language
communities. The discussion of EN specific contents has generated tangible,
important results.  I do not understand why limiting the discussion of
anything that has directly generated results that has/will positively
impact the gendergap could possibly be a good thing. I would discuss non-EN
things myself, but I don't speak any other language well enough to
understand their communities enough to do so.  I will be ecstatic if people
from other communities start sharing their observations here.  I mean I
will literally be ecstatic.  If anyone is in the SF bay area, we can meet
up and I will buy you a beer and dance a jig to show exactly how ecstatic I
mean.  In physical outreach settings I am frequently asked about the gap's
effects on non-EN projects, and never know enough to answer questions well.


Traffic-wise since it's been brought up a bit:  I don't think that this is
a high enough traffic list to be worth worrying about the small amount of
added load that messages like Sarah's cause.  In November, this list had
~84 messages.  That's really pretty low.  In comparison, F-L had 427,
India-L had 512, and WLM had 105.  If anyone honestly has trouble with the
amount of email on this list, I would suggest either using rules in your
mail client to shunt all gendergap messages off to a subfolder that you can
read at your leisure, or changing to a daily digest (which would cap list
traffic at ~30 messages a month.)  If anyone needs a hand with either of
these, shoot me a message off-list and I'll help you through it.

Behavior-wise... this has not been Foundation-L in the past, and I've been
very glad of that.  Some of the comments in this thread have been a lot
closer to things you would see on F-L than to things you've traditionally
seen here. I would hope that other subscribers agree with me that this list
should not become F-L like. I think that it is important that this list
serve as a safe space for discussion, and think that if someone repeatedly
makes other people feel like it's not  they should be moderated*, even if
their behavior doesn't stoop to the level that would normally be considered
blockworthy on any of the projects.

*For those unfamiliar, this would mean that any messages they send to the
list would be held for approval by a moderator before being delivered to
the general list, so that any inappropriate ones could be discarded.

----
Kevin Gorman
User:Kgorman-ucb
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