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

[Charles Matthews]

On 31/01/2011 19:07, Stephanie Daugherty wrote:
> 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.

Some assumptions there, surely. But it is probably true that if the 
community fails long-term to deal with a specific issue, it becomes an 
item on the WMF agenda.
> 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.
Certainly. The issue of the "vested" editors has been aired in the past. 
Basically the vested (some of them) have their posses, and therefore 
consider themselves immune from RfCs. Mediation can be turned aside by 
being awkward enough. And so we get back to the ArbCom saying they 
cannot deal with the issues. Actually it is not precisely their fault, 
but the community's. We actually prefer editing to drama, but the nettle 
hasn't been grasped in the past, and so things are not in as good a 
state as they might be (in an ideal world).

Anyway, at the top of the thread I had some suggestions that aren't of 
the form "radical change required but won't happen".
> 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.
The WMF is in a position to hire staff to "guide" the communities. Which 
of course won't happen any time soon.

Charles