[Gendergap] Diana Harrelson: outreach recommendations from Fedora

[Sue Gardner]

Below is a comment made on my blog by a woman named Jenny:

..

February 1, 2011 at 6:26 PM

After reading your piece in the Times I came across the blog of “cyber
anthropologist” Diana Harrelson. She just completed a study of the
Fedora community, an open source project that seems very similar to
Wikipedia. Here are some (decidedly gender-neutral) recommendations
she makes based on her study of this community:

* Explicitly state the minimum required for people to be able to contribute
* Provide easily accessible step-by-step information on how to go
through the technical steps required; include these even if they are
optional.
* Provide easily accessible contact information for people who are
willing and able to mentor new contributors.
* Reaffirm to the established contributors the benefit of new talent
to the project and set up ways established contributors can easily
make new comers feel welcome.

A simple, clear set of guidelines that welcomes all-comers might avoid
the hot-button issue of gender altogether and help to attract other
underrepresented groups, not just women.

..

Here's a link to the study:
http://www.cyber-anthro.com/beta-an-exploration-of-fedora%E2%80%99s-online-open-source-development-community/

..

And here's a quote from it. Which does sound pretty familiar to me: I
hear similar things from Wikimedians.

"As an interviewee stated:

"So I think we are pretty bad at having resources where novices can
stumble across things on their own and "get into" the community all by
themselves. But we’re really good at – when an existing community
member meets a new person, they can usually help them get started very
well. And that’s the thing – I think that our materials, perhaps,
should be more geared towards "find a person to help you through this
stuff." I think they try to be, but they aren’t always clear enough.
Because being part of the community is about working with the people."

Beyond the process behind the idea of becoming a contributor, the idea
of just exactly how to contribute seems to be another barrier to
entering the community. Though users may be familiar with the idea of
open source from a users perspective, this does not mean they fully
understand what it means to be a contributor to an open source
project. This is especially true for those who come from traditional
leader base backgrounds where someone ‘in charge’ directs their
actions.

Survey respondents stated:

* The second barrier was figuring out that I had the authority to do
stuff. I kept waiting on people to tell me what to do, which doesn’t
work well.
* It’s difficult to find your entry point, no matter how welcoming
people can be.
* I’m new here, want to contribute more, but don’t know how.
* Very easy, the hardest part is getting started and helping out.
* Well, I’ve gone from user to contributor (as previously described),
and that feels great – I’ve wanted to do it for years, but never
figured out how (or was aware that I was "worthy" to do so) until
relatively recently."

Thanks,
Sue

--

Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation

415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell

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