[WikiEN-l] Introducing a new mailing list

[Oldak Quill]

On 04/12/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> This view, and several others like it, are discussed in depth in the
> FLOSSPOLS gender report:
>
> http://flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D16-Gender_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.pdf
>
> On page 20:
>
> "Some people - both men and women - interpret the mere mention of gender as
> somehow 'reiterating' the 'artificial' differences between the sexes [...] "
>
> "However, our study also found that the attitude of some of the male F/LOSS
> participants towards women creates an atmosphere which can be described at
> least as not women-friendly.
> "Whereas most hackers see themselves as neither sexist nor hostile towards
> women there is a clear distinction on how women and men perceive and
> experience interaction within the F/LOSS community."
>
> They present survey results showing that women perceive a bias in open
> source communities whereas men do not. They go on to discuss why this is.
> Most of their findings are framed in a way specific to open source software,
> but they could easily be extended to this forum. The primary issue of
> relevance to mailing lists and communication is flaming. Men are much more
> tolerant of it than women. Says Susan Herring in "Gender and Power in Online
> Communication":
>
> http://rkcsi.indiana.edu/archive/CSI/WP/WP01-05B.html
>
> "Politeness is one common means through which gender is cued in asynchronous
> CMC. Women are more likely to thank, appreciate and apologize, and to be
> upset by violations of politeness: they more often challenge offenders who
> violate online rules of conduct (Smith et al., 1997), and predominantly
> female groups may have more, and more strictly enforced, posting rules
> designed to ensure the maintenance of a civil environment (Hall, 1996;
> Herring, 1996a). In contrast, men generally appear to be less concerned with
> politeness; they issue bald face-threatening acts such as unmitigated
> criticisms and insults, violate online rules of conduct, tolerate or even
> enjoy 'flaming', and tend to be more concerned about threats to freedom of
> expression than with attending to others' social "face" (Herring, 1994,
> 1996a, 1999)."
>
> CMC is computer-mediated communication, "asynchronous" CMC refers to
> newsgroups, mailing lists, etc. as opposed to instant messaging.
>
> Knowing all this, an optimistic man may try to change everyone's mind on the
> importance of good behaviour and civility, and to create a forum where both
> men and women can participate comfortably. Wikipedia itself was started with
> such ideals in mind (e.g. "WikiLove"). But my experience has led me to be
> more jaded.
>
> I support Wikichix, in the hopes that it may become a platform for women to
> discuss the implicit bias against them in male-dominated wikis, in a forum
> where they won't be subjected to instant incredulity and attack, as they
> have been in this thread. I hope that they will be able to formulate and
> promote guidelines for non-discrimination, for application at mixed wikis
> such as Wikipedia. In the meantime, while they're waiting for these
> guidelines to be accepted by the community at large, Wikichix may be able to
> expound the problem and discuss coping strategies, so that they can more
> confidently participate in the present-day wiki culture.
>

I'm just curious as to why we're making a seperate list based on
gender on an essentially genderless medium. The quote states that
women are averagely "more likely to thank, appreciate and apologize,
and to be upset by violations of politeness", could one not say the
same about certain nations, cultures and ages? Should we therefore
also create new groups based upon national and cultural identities?

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)