On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 10:56 AM, Carol Moore dc carolmooredc@verizon.net wrote:
On 7/3/2014 1:40 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:
The problem on en.wiki at least is that a vocal minority effectively prevent any enforcement of the civility policy.
The other problem is double standard enforcement. A bunch of guys may complain about mild incivility by a female and she'll get warned by an admin at an ANI. A guy can get away with a lot of bullying, insults and harassment before complaints are taken seriously and there is even an admin comment on an ANI.
I agree, policies against harassment can be co-opted to further harass marginalized people and there is a long history of this in other areas (see SLAPP and anti-SLAPP in U.S. law for example).
People on this list might be interested in some experiments in other open tech/culture communities where people are extending any policy about harassment to take into account the surrounding power structure of society. That is, they explicitly say that they will take into account the power imbalance between parties before deciding whether something is harassment.
"In order to protect volunteers from abuse and burnout, we reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. The Geek Feminism Anti-Abuse Team is not here to explain power differentials or other basic social justice concepts to you. Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be deleted without response."
http://geekfeminism.org/about/code-of-conduct/
"A supplemental goal of this Code of Conduct is to increase open source citizenship by encouraging participants to recognize and strengthen the relationships between our actions and their effects on our community. Communities mirror the societies in which they exist and positive action is essential to counteract the many forms of inequality and abuses of power that exist in society."
http://opensourcebridge.org/about/code-of-conduct/
-VAL
That's why it's important to have the talk page of the gender gap task force page open to a listing of various ANIs and enforcement actions involving editors known to be women. A couple women going to each one and pointing out when these gender gap double standards obviously exist, over and over again would be a big help. That way there's some hope editors and admins especially will understand that double standards exist and are "bad"! Same with Harassment, incivility, etc. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Going to Admins talk pages directly after the rule "wrong" can be helpful. I've seen some obnoxious individuals get away with stuff because they'd chummy up to the Admin on their talk page and explain the righteousness of their behavior ad nauseam, as if to brainwash the admin. More squeaky wheel stuff.
CM
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