[Gendergap] Hello and a (small!) manifesto

[Daniel and Elizabeth Case]

> Let's focus on solving problems, not creating them. I don't think this
> thread is a productive use of this mailing list's time and energy.

I generally would agree, and had you left it at that I would have let the 
thread die as the discussion has really moved to where it should be.

But, declaring "enough already" and then taking some parting shots, however 
reasonable they might otherwise be, in a public forum is also emblematic of 
the behavior you go on to criticize. You *could* have just saved those 
comments for some private emails to myself and the others. I wouldn't have 
minded.

> Actually, I think the roughness Tim just got at the hands of some of the
> experienced people (all men, funnily enough) from this list is part of
> the problem.

I'm certainly aware of the irony there.

> If Tim is rude, taking him down a peg to even the score
> won't do much to make the wider community a much nicer place. I don't
> think any of us likes having one of those days where the dreaded new
> messages bar pops up every few minutes, especially when it's all these
> people you don't know turning up out of the blue to complain about your
> past actions they had no involvement in. Yes, his reaction was
> predictable; it was predictable insofar as you instigated it.

So, one should simply not do anything then? I feel that assuming good faith 
means you hold out some hope that the Tims of Wikipedia can respond 
positively to the right approach. Leaving them alone because you don't want 
to start a ruckus is assuming bad faith, and leads to festering 
organizational problems anywhere, not just Wikipedia.

> Really, this mailing list has an unfortunate signal-to-noise ratio
> already, considering how new it is and how few subscribers there are. We
> can be better, for example, about focusing on the actual causes of the
> problem, rather than personal gripes.

It seems to actually have quite a few subscribers, and I would say that any 
new mailing list has a high noise ratio as the boundaries of its discourse 
seek to establish themselves.

Daniel Case