[Gendergap] Moderation?

[Sue Gardner]

Hey folks,

Erik Moeller, my deputy, created this group at my request, and so I'm
its owner. To recap for anyone who doesn't know: this list was
prompted by a January 31 New York Times story about Wikipedia's gender
gap. The NY Times story prompted a lot of discussion among experienced
Wikipedians, new editors, and external people such as researchers and
academics. We created this list so that the discussion had somewhere
to go -- because people wanted to help, and we wanted to give their
energy and momentum a place to grow.

Thus far, I haven't made any attempts to moderate or shape the
conversation here in any way. People who are used to Wikimedia lists
probably are finding the experience here pretty familiar -- the
conversation is unstructured, wide-ranging, and there's no real
quality control. People who are more used to non-Wikimedia lists might
find it TOO uncontrolled, too noisy, too wide-ranging: I don't know.

My hope when we started the list was that it would be a place where
people could come together to share experiences and information about
the causes of Wikipedia's gender gap, and kick around possible
solutions. I hoped that, at worst, it could become a sort of talkfest
and "centre of expertise" on the gender gap issue --- and at best, it
would be a place where real work would happen (e.g., the Women Edit
Wikipedia Month type stuff). I assumed it'd be a pretty loose
conversation, with plenty of noise to the signal, and it would end up
(like many of our lists) being supplemented by work on wiki pages.

And that, I think, is pretty much how it's playing out.

So I'm curious to know from the people here:

1) Is the conversation here pretty much what you expected? Is it
better or worse than you expected -- and if so, in what ways?

2) Are you comfortable with this discusson being mostly unmoderated,
or would you prefer that we had some simple behavioural
rules-of-engagement?

3) Would anyone care to offer to help me moderate? The moderation has
been pretty light so far: a few people with questions about how to do
something, and a half-dozen posts stuck in the approval queue --- it's
very easy stuff to handle. I am often in meetings though, or
travelling, so I've felt bad when someone's question or post is
pending for hours. If you want to help, let me know off-list :-)

4) Any other comments about what we're doing here -- including, ideas
about how we can be more effective.

Thanks,
Sue


--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation

415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate