[WikiEN-l] NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors

[Stephanie Daugherty]

I think Risker hit the nail on the head. ArbCom is organized purely as a
"court of last resort", but in the absence of other effective and
streamlined governance, or a vast political change within en.wp's community,
the only likely way any reform could happen is for it to be imposed by the
WMF.

Many of the same people who contribute to the problem are well-invested in
keeping the status quo, because real reforms are threatening to them. Our
current implementation of consensus is too far from the ideals of consensus
- open participation where all views are heard and where decisions are made
through collaboration and compromise has given way to fillibustering,
contention, and in some cases personal attacks.

I honestly don't know what the fix would entail, but I do know that it
starts with fixing how en.wp, and probably any other large WMF projects are
governed to make sure that a handful of us can't undermine our ideals.

-Stephanie

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 1:23 PM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:

> In what way, David? I'm sorry, but the Arbitration Committee isn't
> Wikipedia
> Governance Central.  I share the same frustration as the WMF staff and
> techies, and indeed many new and even experienced users, but you know as
> well as I do what the response of the community is when Arbcom tries to
> "make policy", let alone starts swooping down from on high on matters that
> the community has not brought to it.  Meanwhile, over at RFA, this is the
> first time in donkey's years that we have four candidates all doing well,
> at
> least two of whom would have been getting a rough haul only a month ago; we
> seem to be going through a "nice" period there because more and more people
> are realising that we aren't getting the kind of admins we need for the
> project to succeed.  There are still dozens of highly qualified editors who
> would make excellent admins, but refuse to participate in the nastiness
> that
> RFA has been for most of the last two years. I can only hope that this
> week's new trend continues for long enough to break the pattern of
> behaviour
> that had become endemic, so that other good candidates will be more willing
> to take the leap.
>
> I have no idea what the board members are saying on the internal-L mailing
> list; however, if they're expressing concerns about behaviour there,
> they might want to actually mention it onwiki on the projects  where there
> are concerns.  Themselves. Wearing their Board hat, rather than their "I'm
> just an editor" hat. They're actually selected to be leaders of the WMF,
> and
> it would make it a darn sight easier to change community practices if the
> Trustees would be much more public in their pronouncements and sharing
> their
> experiences and observations.  Internal-L is the last place where that will
> be helpful, with its extremely restrictive distribution and chapter-heavy
> membership.
>
> Risker/Anne
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>



-- 
Faith is about what you really truly believe in, not about what you are
taught to believe.