[Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

[Romaine Wiki]

Hi all,

On Wikipedia and in our movement we are aware of the gendergap that exists
and all kinds of activities are organised to make the gap smaller. I think
this is great as no single gap should exist in collecting all the knowledge
in the world, as well as our movement should be diverse as the world's
population is diverse.

The statistics are clear on this matter, this is something to take care of.
However, a part of the approach is causing problems, because general
statistics should not be applied on individuals as that reduces humans to
numbers only.

The reason why I bring this up is because I recently received an e-mail
from a user in the Wikimedia movement who has (temporarily?) stopped
contributing as she is not happy with a specific aspect of the atmosphere
in Wikimedia.

She does not speak out at loud, but I think we must be aware as movement of
the silent cry, therefore this e-mail to bring awareness (but with respect
for the privacy of this individual).


What has happened?

She was invited to participate in a Wikimedia activity, because:
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)

and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).

At the same time she has the impression that the work she does on the
Wikimedia wiki('s) is not valued, nor taken into account.

She does not want to be invited because she is a woman, nor because she is
from a minority, nor ....... etc. This is offensive.
She only wants to be invited because of the work she contributes on
Wikipedia/etc.



Besides the many good initiatives and intentions, this kind of approaches
to our contributors is demotivating them, please be aware of this. I
believe demotivation/frustration is the largest problem we face as movement.


I heard from people that the problem described is called tokenism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism>.


I believe the only way to close the gaps related to gender, minorities,
etc, is to create an atmosphere in what everyone is appreciated for what
she/he is doing, completely unrelated to the gender someone appears to
have, the ethnicity, race, area of the world, etc etc etc etc.

Thank you!

Romaine

[Amir E. Aharoni]

This is a sensitive topic, and I'm a white man myself, so please slap me if
I say something dumb.

Post by Romaine Wiki
What has happened?
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)
and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).
At the same time she has the impression that the work she does on the
Wikimedia wiki('s) is not valued, nor taken into account.

By whom?

By the people who invited her?

By other participants in the event?

By other editors in the same wiki site?

By the readers?

Post by Romaine Wiki
She does not want to be invited because she is a woman, nor because she is
from a minority, nor ....... etc. This is offensive.
She only wants to be invited because of the work she contributes on
Wikipedia/etc.

This makes a lot of sense to me, but that's just me and attitudes are
different for each person.

Post by Romaine Wiki
Besides the many good initiatives and intentions, this kind of approaches
to our contributors is demotivating them, please be aware of this.

Again, it's probably demotivating to some. Maybe to 98%, maybe to 30%,
maybe to 5%. I honestly don't know.

I believe demotivation/frustration is the largest problem we face as

Post by Romaine Wiki
movement.

I don't know if its the biggest problem. On this mailing list we are a
small group of meta-active Wikimedians, and we are the minority among
editors. We don't actually represent all the editors. And of course the
editors are a tiny minority compared to the readers.

I'd argue that the hard time that some editors are giving newcomers is a
bigger problem. Gender is certainly a part of that, and there are many
other parts.

We meta-wikimedians can find a better way to invite people to events, and
we can change ourselves. That doesn't sound too hard. Changing the wider
editor culture is harder.

I heard from people that the problem described is called tokenism

Post by Romaine Wiki
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism>.

Yes, that's when representation is given to a weakened group, but that
representation is too weak to be meaningful, and may do more harm than good.

Post by Romaine Wiki
I believe the only way to close the gaps related to gender, minorities,
etc, is to create an atmosphere in what everyone is appreciated for what
she/he is doing, completely unrelated to the gender someone appears to
have, the ethnicity, race, area of the world, etc etc etc etc.

So that's where it gets really complicated, because it's always related, in
ways that are sometimes visible and sometimes invisible.

Let's take school education as a hopefully easy example. People from
different areas of the world will have very different things to write about
it. In some areas of the world everybody gets school education—boys and
girls, rich and poor, rural and urban. In other areas it may be only boys;
or only people in cities; or only people who know a certain language; or
only people who belong to a certain religion; or only people who have a
certain amount of money; or only people who have a certain skin color. I
want articles about education to have contributions from as many people as
possible, from different genders, from different skin colors, and from
different areas, and so on.

An American white woman has different things to say about education from an
American black man. These differences are important and frequently
discussed in American media. But the American white woman and the American
black man *don't even imagine* what people from The Philippines have to say
about education. What people from the Philippines have to say about
education probably has little to do with the internal American debates on
this topic. And of course it breaks down further, because a person who
lives in the capital of Philippines and knows English has different things
to say about education from a person who lives in a village in Philippines
and doesn't know English.

On articles about education I want to hear from all of them. And about
every other topic. (And yes, I want contributions from people who don't
know English in the English Wikipedia. By definition they cannot contribute
directly, but we must do everything we can to make at least an indirect
contribution possible.)

How do we do it right?

How do we get more different people to even try to contribute to articles?
How do we get everybody's contributions to be accepted? (Guess whose
contributions are more likely to be challenged as "non-notable",
"unencyclopedic", or "unreferenced".)

I don't know. Am I even asking the right questions?

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

[Peter Southwood]

I think you ask good questions, but some answers are not easy to find.
Cheers,
Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-***@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Amir E. Aharoni
Sent: Monday, May 7, 2018 8:03 AM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

This is a sensitive topic, and I'm a white man myself, so please slap me if
I say something dumb.

Post by Romaine Wiki
What has happened?
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)
and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).
At the same time she has the impression that the work she does on the
Wikimedia wiki('s) is not valued, nor taken into account.

By whom?

By the people who invited her?

By other participants in the event?

By other editors in the same wiki site?

By the readers?

Post by Romaine Wiki
She does not want to be invited because she is a woman, nor because she is
from a minority, nor ....... etc. This is offensive.
She only wants to be invited because of the work she contributes on
Wikipedia/etc.

This makes a lot of sense to me, but that's just me and attitudes are
different for each person.

Post by Romaine Wiki
Besides the many good initiatives and intentions, this kind of approaches
to our contributors is demotivating them, please be aware of this.

Again, it's probably demotivating to some. Maybe to 98%, maybe to 30%,
maybe to 5%. I honestly don't know.

I believe demotivation/frustration is the largest problem we face as

Post by Romaine Wiki
movement.

I don't know if its the biggest problem. On this mailing list we are a
small group of meta-active Wikimedians, and we are the minority among
editors. We don't actually represent all the editors. And of course the
editors are a tiny minority compared to the readers.

I'd argue that the hard time that some editors are giving newcomers is a
bigger problem. Gender is certainly a part of that, and there are many
other parts.

We meta-wikimedians can find a better way to invite people to events, and
we can change ourselves. That doesn't sound too hard. Changing the wider
editor culture is harder.

I heard from people that the problem described is called tokenism

Post by Romaine Wiki
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism>.

Yes, that's when representation is given to a weakened group, but that
representation is too weak to be meaningful, and may do more harm than good.

Post by Romaine Wiki
I believe the only way to close the gaps related to gender, minorities,
etc, is to create an atmosphere in what everyone is appreciated for what
she/he is doing, completely unrelated to the gender someone appears to
have, the ethnicity, race, area of the world, etc etc etc etc.

So that's where it gets really complicated, because it's always related, in
ways that are sometimes visible and sometimes invisible.

Let's take school education as a hopefully easy example. People from
different areas of the world will have very different things to write about
it. In some areas of the world everybody gets school education—boys and
girls, rich and poor, rural and urban. In other areas it may be only boys;
or only people in cities; or only people who know a certain language; or
only people who belong to a certain religion; or only people who have a
certain amount of money; or only people who have a certain skin color. I
want articles about education to have contributions from as many people as
possible, from different genders, from different skin colors, and from
different areas, and so on.

An American white woman has different things to say about education from an
American black man. These differences are important and frequently
discussed in American media. But the American white woman and the American
black man *don't even imagine* what people from The Philippines have to say
about education. What people from the Philippines have to say about
education probably has little to do with the internal American debates on
this topic. And of course it breaks down further, because a person who
lives in the capital of Philippines and knows English has different things
to say about education from a person who lives in a village in Philippines
and doesn't know English.

On articles about education I want to hear from all of them. And about
every other topic. (And yes, I want contributions from people who don't
know English in the English Wikipedia. By definition they cannot contribute
directly, but we must do everything we can to make at least an indirect
contribution possible.)

How do we do it right?

How do we get more different people to even try to contribute to articles?
How do we get everybody's contributions to be accepted? (Guess whose
contributions are more likely to be challenged as "non-notable",
"unencyclopedic", or "unreferenced".)

I don't know. Am I even asking the right questions?

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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[Jane Darnell]

Amir,
It's funny - after reading your mail I wondered if I had read Romaine's
mail correctly. Rereading both it seems that is exactly what you were
trying to say - we all carry our own little bundle of biases with us
whereever we go and whatever we read. When I read Romaine's mail I stopped
cold at "tokenism" - for me tokenism is when you count the paintings by
women in any museum and you find none of the women have more than one
painting in the collection, though they have lots and lots of male artists
with more than 20 works in the collection.

When it comes to Wiki meetups, everyone has their own reasons for wanting
to come or not. I have a feeling at edit-a-thons open to the general public
that it's a bit like being in a cage or aquarium where you yourself are the
attraction. Instead of meeting people who want to contribute I tend to get
questioned about my own motivations. I agree that as a member of this list
I am already a hard-core insider of this movement and can no longer think
about these things in a "normal" way (i.e. as a reader). What I do know
from talking to lots of family and friends is that most people have
absolutely no clue about our gaps in knowledge or have even heard of the
gendergap at all. When I say gendergap, they think gender pay gap and I
have to start explaining that no one is paid for their edits (which always
leads the conversation into a whole new tangent).

When it comes to the women, thankfully the word "nonbinary" is relatively
new and we can easily measure the binary gender with Wikidata queries to
see how we are doing. This is still sketchy and problematic, because lots
of historical women and men still do not have their gender assigned at all
on Wikidata - binary or not. We still can't measure gendergap per
occupation, language, or citizenship however, because those statements are
also still mostly lacking for most historical people. Citizenship is
actually quite comical when you start drilling into the data on Wikidata.
Some people want to be extremely specific about borders, which makes some
towns flip all around in terms of citizenship for people who don't have
precise birthdates - did I mention that women don't like to disclose their
birthdates? I would LOVE to be able to count brown and black women, but
this is of course completely off limits to us due to ethical concerns.

Here in the Netherlands we are going to hold a hackathon for women. I will
talk about Wikidata and hope to recruit a few women to help out with the
maintenance lists on women, such as this one:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Women/Wiki_monitor/lawiki

My hopes based on previous events, are not high.
Best,
Jane

On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 8:03 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
This is a sensitive topic, and I'm a white man myself, so please slap me if
I say something dumb.

Post by Romaine Wiki
What has happened?
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)
and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).
At the same time she has the impression that the work she does on the
Wikimedia wiki('s) is not valued, nor taken into account.

By whom?
By the people who invited her?
By other participants in the event?
By other editors in the same wiki site?
By the readers?

Post by Romaine Wiki
She does not want to be invited because she is a woman, nor because she

is

Post by Romaine Wiki
from a minority, nor ....... etc. This is offensive.
She only wants to be invited because of the work she contributes on
Wikipedia/etc.

This makes a lot of sense to me, but that's just me and attitudes are
different for each person.

Post by Romaine Wiki
Besides the many good initiatives and intentions, this kind of approaches
to our contributors is demotivating them, please be aware of this.

Again, it's probably demotivating to some. Maybe to 98%, maybe to 30%,
maybe to 5%. I honestly don't know.
I believe demotivation/frustration is the largest problem we face as

Post by Romaine Wiki
movement.

I don't know if its the biggest problem. On this mailing list we are a
small group of meta-active Wikimedians, and we are the minority among
editors. We don't actually represent all the editors. And of course the
editors are a tiny minority compared to the readers.
I'd argue that the hard time that some editors are giving newcomers is a
bigger problem. Gender is certainly a part of that, and there are many
other parts.
We meta-wikimedians can find a better way to invite people to events, and
we can change ourselves. That doesn't sound too hard. Changing the wider
editor culture is harder.
I heard from people that the problem described is called tokenism

Post by Romaine Wiki
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism>.

Yes, that's when representation is given to a weakened group, but that
representation is too weak to be meaningful, and may do more harm than good.

Post by Romaine Wiki
I believe the only way to close the gaps related to gender, minorities,
etc, is to create an atmosphere in what everyone is appreciated for what
she/he is doing, completely unrelated to the gender someone appears to
have, the ethnicity, race, area of the world, etc etc etc etc.

So that's where it gets really complicated, because it's always related, in
ways that are sometimes visible and sometimes invisible.
Let's take school education as a hopefully easy example. People from
different areas of the world will have very different things to write about
it. In some areas of the world everybody gets school education—boys and
girls, rich and poor, rural and urban. In other areas it may be only boys;
or only people in cities; or only people who know a certain language; or
only people who belong to a certain religion; or only people who have a
certain amount of money; or only people who have a certain skin color. I
want articles about education to have contributions from as many people as
possible, from different genders, from different skin colors, and from
different areas, and so on.
An American white woman has different things to say about education from an
American black man. These differences are important and frequently
discussed in American media. But the American white woman and the American
black man *don't even imagine* what people from The Philippines have to say
about education. What people from the Philippines have to say about
education probably has little to do with the internal American debates on
this topic. And of course it breaks down further, because a person who
lives in the capital of Philippines and knows English has different things
to say about education from a person who lives in a village in Philippines
and doesn't know English.
On articles about education I want to hear from all of them. And about
every other topic. (And yes, I want contributions from people who don't
know English in the English Wikipedia. By definition they cannot contribute
directly, but we must do everything we can to make at least an indirect
contribution possible.)
How do we do it right?
How do we get more different people to even try to contribute to articles?
How do we get everybody's contributions to be accepted? (Guess whose
contributions are more likely to be challenged as "non-notable",
"unencyclopedic", or "unreferenced".)
I don't know. Am I even asking the right questions?
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Wikimedia-l
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Post by Jane Darnell
Amir,
It's funny - after reading your mail I wondered if I had read Romaine's
mail correctly.

You had probably read it correctly.

Generally, I'm wondering whether direct invitations to women or people of
color (or women of color, etc.) work as they should. Many people say that
they work. They may be right, at least in part. If I understand correctly,
Romaine says that he has doubts about it, and he's probably right, too, at
least for some people.

I'm just trying to say that diversity is important. How do we reach it? I
don't have very good answers. Probably not "one size fits all".

I mean, I want that woman about whom Romaine was speaking to contribute her
knowledge. I want everybody to contribute their knowledge. Unless I missed
it, Romaine didn't write what is her expertise, but just for the sake of
the example, let's make something up and say that it's Astronomy.

Do I want her to contribute her knowledge about Astronomy? Of course I do.
Should I tell her that I hope that she contributes her knowledge about
Astronomy? I probably should. (Do correct me if I'm wrong.)

Do I think that she has something to say about Astronomy that men don't?
Yes, it's quite possible. Should I tell her that? Hmm, I don't know. Maybe,
maybe not. I think that this is the question that Romaine is trying to
raise. And again, please correct me if I'm wrong.

[FRED BAUDER]

Women editors might have something to add about nursing and the history of nursing that adds gender-specific value, increasing our coverage of the subject. So a workshop at a nursing convention might be valuable.

Fred

----- Original Message -----
From: Amir E. Aharoni <***@mail.huji.ac.il>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-***@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Mon, 07 May 2018 04:52:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

Post by Jane Darnell
Amir,
It's funny - after reading your mail I wondered if I had read Romaine's
mail correctly.

You had probably read it correctly.

Generally, I'm wondering whether direct invitations to women or people of
color (or women of color, etc.) work as they should. Many people say that
they work. They may be right, at least in part. If I understand correctly,
Romaine says that he has doubts about it, and he's probably right, too, at
least for some people.

I'm just trying to say that diversity is important. How do we reach it? I
don't have very good answers. Probably not "one size fits all".

I mean, I want that woman about whom Romaine was speaking to contribute her
knowledge. I want everybody to contribute their knowledge. Unless I missed
it, Romaine didn't write what is her expertise, but just for the sake of
the example, let's make something up and say that it's Astronomy.

Do I want her to contribute her knowledge about Astronomy? Of course I do.
Should I tell her that I hope that she contributes her knowledge about
Astronomy? I probably should. (Do correct me if I'm wrong.)

Do I think that she has something to say about Astronomy that men don't?
Yes, it's quite possible. Should I tell her that? Hmm, I don't know. Maybe,
maybe not. I think that this is the question that Romaine is trying to
raise. And again, please correct me if I'm wrong.
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[Gnangarra]

I think the problems not in trying to fix the imbalance in knowledge,
something for which history has big role in what and how information was
even still is recorded. I think the presumption that when we ask women to
edit about women we predispose the assumption that women are only
interested in women and only women can or want to write about them. We
have had a lot of concepts that have improved content about women and they
have focused on getting women to do the contributions.

sorry Fred to quote as an example

​ Women editors might have something to add about nursing and the history

Post by FRED BAUDER
of nursing that adds gender-specific value, increasing our coverage of the
subject. So a workshop at a nursing convention might be valuable. ​

What we need to do is shift our train of thought from women can contribute
to subjects about women to providing environments that let and encourage
women to contribute to topics that interest them​ not us. The same applies
to other "minorities" where the subject being written is less important
than enabling participation. For that we need to consider in broader terms
what is notable, what defines notability, how do we draw in those
intangible knowledge sources to broaden the base for both contributors and
contributions.

We have the ridiculous case of Indigenous people in Australia being
considered as fauna until the 1960's, so that when an Indigenous person was
written about historically(even now its still applies) that in itself is
significant but we measure the notability of a person based not on the
uniqueness of such but on whether there is sufficient volume of other
works about the person. We have created an inherently bias system that
favours those of colonial heritage with colonial records over those who
dont have that historical privilege, we encourage this as Romaine put its
with a tokenism of participation and expectation of contributions
conforming to maintain that bias. While we do that we dont actually value
the contributor or the contributions nor what else can be brought to the
community.

Post by FRED BAUDER

Post by FRED BAUDER
Women editors might have something to add about nursing and the history

of nursing that adds gender-specific value, increasing our coverage of the
subject. So a workshop at a nursing convention might be valuable.

Post by FRED BAUDER
Fred
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Mon, 07 May 2018 04:52:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

Post by Jane Darnell
Amir,
It's funny - after reading your mail I wondered if I had read Romaine's
mail correctly.

You had probably read it correctly.
Generally, I'm wondering whether direct invitations to women or people of
color (or women of color, etc.) work as they should. Many people say that
they work. They may be right, at least in part. If I understand

correctly,

Post by FRED BAUDER
Romaine says that he has doubts about it, and he's probably right, too,

at

Post by FRED BAUDER
least for some people.
I'm just trying to say that diversity is important. How do we reach it? I
don't have very good answers. Probably not "one size fits all".
I mean, I want that woman about whom Romaine was speaking to contribute

her

Post by FRED BAUDER
knowledge. I want everybody to contribute their knowledge. Unless I

missed

Post by FRED BAUDER
it, Romaine didn't write what is her expertise, but just for the sake of
the example, let's make something up and say that it's Astronomy.
Do I want her to contribute her knowledge about Astronomy? Of course I

do.

Post by FRED BAUDER
Should I tell her that I hope that she contributes her knowledge about
Astronomy? I probably should. (Do correct me if I'm wrong.)
Do I think that she has something to say about Astronomy that men don't?
Yes, it's quite possible. Should I tell her that? Hmm, I don't know.

Maybe,

Post by FRED BAUDER
maybe not. I think that this is the question that Romaine is trying to
raise. And again, please correct me if I'm wrong.
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Post by FRED BAUDER
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Post by FRED BAUDER
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Thanks for reminding everyone that we live in the 21st Century, where
there are plenty of women role models at the top of previously male
dominated professions, not just nursing.
The Wikipedia community has the most success at correcting gender bias
by encouraging interested volunteers of any gender to create articles
which help correct that bias, in all subjects.
Fae
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--
GN.
Noongarpedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nys/Main_Page
WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
Out now: A.Gaynor, P. Newman and P. Jennings (eds.), *Never Again:
Reflections on Environmental Responsibility after Roe 8*, UWAP, 2017. Order
here
<https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/never-again-reflections-on-environmental-responsibility-after-roe-8>
.

[Jane Darnell]

This post might be inappropriate. Click to display it.

[Romaine Wiki]

Was it the first time I noticed this subject in the Wikimedia movement, no.
It happens too many times that people get frustrated because the gender,
color of their skin or native background is the key reason to ask someone,
instead of the qualities that this person has.

There are two main reasons why I do not go into further detail:
1. the privacy of this individual is something I can't ignore
2. My previous email gives an example in a generic topic, and the topic is
not about an individual case.

Also is zooming in on an individual case not a solution, as we need to be
aware as movement how we are perceived by others.

I disagree that it is related to the attitude of an individual. The way how
someone will respond to it is depending on the attitude yes. But I think
that being asked for something just because of the colour of your face is
degrading you from being a person with various qualities and/or the work
you do. The possible demotivation is the result, but the core is in the
approach itself.

But yes, it is a difficult topic. But in this case it is much harder for
that individual who (temporarily?) gave up on editing/contributing.


I think it comes to inclusiveness, being able to include anyone independent
from how a face looks like. being inclusive to anyone, so that all the
knowledge of the world can be collected.
What we should not do is trying to be inclusive by being exclusive. We
should be making it possible for anyone to have a safe and pleasant space
and in that way bridge the gaps, instead of just trying to ask specific
people to come for the colour of their skin, etc. As said, that last thing
is creating gaps instead of closing them.

Romaine

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
This is a sensitive topic, and I'm a white man myself, so please slap me if
I say something dumb.

Post by Romaine Wiki
What has happened?
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)
and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).
At the same time she has the impression that the work she does on the
Wikimedia wiki('s) is not valued, nor taken into account.

By whom?
By the people who invited her?
By other participants in the event?
By other editors in the same wiki site?
By the readers?

Post by Romaine Wiki
She does not want to be invited because she is a woman, nor because she

is

Post by Romaine Wiki
from a minority, nor ....... etc. This is offensive.
She only wants to be invited because of the work she contributes on
Wikipedia/etc.

This makes a lot of sense to me, but that's just me and attitudes are
different for each person.

Post by Romaine Wiki
Besides the many good initiatives and intentions, this kind of approaches
to our contributors is demotivating them, please be aware of this.

Again, it's probably demotivating to some. Maybe to 98%, maybe to 30%,
maybe to 5%. I honestly don't know.
I believe demotivation/frustration is the largest problem we face as

Post by Romaine Wiki
movement.

I don't know if its the biggest problem. On this mailing list we are a
small group of meta-active Wikimedians, and we are the minority among
editors. We don't actually represent all the editors. And of course the
editors are a tiny minority compared to the readers.
I'd argue that the hard time that some editors are giving newcomers is a
bigger problem. Gender is certainly a part of that, and there are many
other parts.
We meta-wikimedians can find a better way to invite people to events, and
we can change ourselves. That doesn't sound too hard. Changing the wider
editor culture is harder.
I heard from people that the problem described is called tokenism

Post by Romaine Wiki
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism>.

Yes, that's when representation is given to a weakened group, but that
representation is too weak to be meaningful, and may do more harm than good.

Post by Romaine Wiki
I believe the only way to close the gaps related to gender, minorities,
etc, is to create an atmosphere in what everyone is appreciated for what
she/he is doing, completely unrelated to the gender someone appears to
have, the ethnicity, race, area of the world, etc etc etc etc.

So that's where it gets really complicated, because it's always related, in
ways that are sometimes visible and sometimes invisible.
Let's take school education as a hopefully easy example. People from
different areas of the world will have very different things to write about
it. In some areas of the world everybody gets school education—boys and
girls, rich and poor, rural and urban. In other areas it may be only boys;
or only people in cities; or only people who know a certain language; or
only people who belong to a certain religion; or only people who have a
certain amount of money; or only people who have a certain skin color. I
want articles about education to have contributions from as many people as
possible, from different genders, from different skin colors, and from
different areas, and so on.
An American white woman has different things to say about education from an
American black man. These differences are important and frequently
discussed in American media. But the American white woman and the American
black man *don't even imagine* what people from The Philippines have to say
about education. What people from the Philippines have to say about
education probably has little to do with the internal American debates on
this topic. And of course it breaks down further, because a person who
lives in the capital of Philippines and knows English has different things
to say about education from a person who lives in a village in Philippines
and doesn't know English.
On articles about education I want to hear from all of them. And about
every other topic. (And yes, I want contributions from people who don't
know English in the English Wikipedia. By definition they cannot contribute
directly, but we must do everything we can to make at least an indirect
contribution possible.)
How do we do it right?
How do we get more different people to even try to contribute to articles?
How do we get everybody's contributions to be accepted? (Guess whose
contributions are more likely to be challenged as "non-notable",
"unencyclopedic", or "unreferenced".)
I don't know. Am I even asking the right questions?
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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[FRED BAUDER]

Very good. If any willing editor runs into trouble or is made to feel unwelcome or subjected to unfair criticism, that is the time to intervene. We are however not in a position to discourage women or minority editors from "recruiting" or encouraging other minority editors or women to edit. Any difficulties with that they will have to learn for themselves though experience with those they have recruited and feedback from them.

I think we can point out areas of knowledge that are poorly covered, as well as those that are overdone.

Fred

----- Original Message -----
From: Romaine Wiki <***@gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-***@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Mon, 14 May 2018 23:39:09 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

Was it the first time I noticed this subject in the Wikimedia movement, no.
It happens too many times that people get frustrated because the gender,
color of their skin or native background is the key reason to ask someone,
instead of the qualities that this person has.

There are two main reasons why I do not go into further detail:
1. the privacy of this individual is something I can't ignore
2. My previous email gives an example in a generic topic, and the topic is
not about an individual case.

Also is zooming in on an individual case not a solution, as we need to be
aware as movement how we are perceived by others.

I disagree that it is related to the attitude of an individual. The way how
someone will respond to it is depending on the attitude yes. But I think
that being asked for something just because of the colour of your face is
degrading you from being a person with various qualities and/or the work
you do. The possible demotivation is the result, but the core is in the
approach itself.

But yes, it is a difficult topic. But in this case it is much harder for
that individual who (temporarily?) gave up on editing/contributing.


I think it comes to inclusiveness, being able to include anyone independent
from how a face looks like. being inclusive to anyone, so that all the
knowledge of the world can be collected.
What we should not do is trying to be inclusive by being exclusive. We
should be making it possible for anyone to have a safe and pleasant space
and in that way bridge the gaps, instead of just trying to ask specific
people to come for the colour of their skin, etc. As said, that last thing
is creating gaps instead of closing them.

Romaine

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
This is a sensitive topic, and I'm a white man myself, so please slap me if
I say something dumb.

Post by Romaine Wiki
What has happened?
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)
and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).
At the same time she has the impression that the work she does on the
Wikimedia wiki('s) is not valued, nor taken into account.

By whom?
By the people who invited her?
By other participants in the event?
By other editors in the same wiki site?
By the readers?

Post by Romaine Wiki
She does not want to be invited because she is a woman, nor because she

is

Post by Romaine Wiki
from a minority, nor ....... etc. This is offensive.
She only wants to be invited because of the work she contributes on
Wikipedia/etc.

This makes a lot of sense to me, but that's just me and attitudes are
different for each person.

Post by Romaine Wiki
Besides the many good initiatives and intentions, this kind of approaches
to our contributors is demotivating them, please be aware of this.

Again, it's probably demotivating to some. Maybe to 98%, maybe to 30%,
maybe to 5%. I honestly don't know.
I believe demotivation/frustration is the largest problem we face as

Post by Romaine Wiki
movement.

I don't know if its the biggest problem. On this mailing list we are a
small group of meta-active Wikimedians, and we are the minority among
editors. We don't actually represent all the editors. And of course the
editors are a tiny minority compared to the readers.
I'd argue that the hard time that some editors are giving newcomers is a
bigger problem. Gender is certainly a part of that, and there are many
other parts.
We meta-wikimedians can find a better way to invite people to events, and
we can change ourselves. That doesn't sound too hard. Changing the wider
editor culture is harder.
I heard from people that the problem described is called tokenism

Post by Romaine Wiki
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism>.

Yes, that's when representation is given to a weakened group, but that
representation is too weak to be meaningful, and may do more harm than good.

Post by Romaine Wiki
I believe the only way to close the gaps related to gender, minorities,
etc, is to create an atmosphere in what everyone is appreciated for what
she/he is doing, completely unrelated to the gender someone appears to
have, the ethnicity, race, area of the world, etc etc etc etc.

So that's where it gets really complicated, because it's always related, in
ways that are sometimes visible and sometimes invisible.
Let's take school education as a hopefully easy example. People from
different areas of the world will have very different things to write about
it. In some areas of the world everybody gets school education—boys and
girls, rich and poor, rural and urban. In other areas it may be only boys;
or only people in cities; or only people who know a certain language; or
only people who belong to a certain religion; or only people who have a
certain amount of money; or only people who have a certain skin color. I
want articles about education to have contributions from as many people as
possible, from different genders, from different skin colors, and from
different areas, and so on.
An American white woman has different things to say about education from an
American black man. These differences are important and frequently
discussed in American media. But the American white woman and the American
black man *don't even imagine* what people from The Philippines have to say
about education. What people from the Philippines have to say about
education probably has little to do with the internal American debates on
this topic. And of course it breaks down further, because a person who
lives in the capital of Philippines and knows English has different things
to say about education from a person who lives in a village in Philippines
and doesn't know English.
On articles about education I want to hear from all of them. And about
every other topic. (And yes, I want contributions from people who don't
know English in the English Wikipedia. By definition they cannot contribute
directly, but we must do everything we can to make at least an indirect
contribution possible.)
How do we do it right?
How do we get more different people to even try to contribute to articles?
How do we get everybody's contributions to be accepted? (Guess whose
contributions are more likely to be challenged as "non-notable",
"unencyclopedic", or "unreferenced".)
I don't know. Am I even asking the right questions?
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
_______________________________________________
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wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Wikimedia-l
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

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[FRED BAUDER]

Women and other unrepresented people are invited to edit, to become skilled in editing (lots of practice and experience needed), and get well-deserved credit for excellence, but it is a process. Everyone stumbles at first, the point is not run anyone off or blame the difficulties associated with getting up to speed on gender or whatever.

Fred Bauder

----- Original Message -----
From: Romaine Wiki <***@gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia <wikimedia-***@lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: Wikimedia Gendergap mailing list <***@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Mon, 07 May 2018 00:10:25 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

Hi all,

On Wikipedia and in our movement we are aware of the gendergap that exists
and all kinds of activities are organised to make the gap smaller. I think
this is great as no single gap should exist in collecting all the knowledge
in the world, as well as our movement should be diverse as the world's
population is diverse.

The statistics are clear on this matter, this is something to take care of.
However, a part of the approach is causing problems, because general
statistics should not be applied on individuals as that reduces humans to
numbers only.

The reason why I bring this up is because I recently received an e-mail
from a user in the Wikimedia movement who has (temporarily?) stopped
contributing as she is not happy with a specific aspect of the atmosphere
in Wikimedia.

She does not speak out at loud, but I think we must be aware as movement of
the silent cry, therefore this e-mail to bring awareness (but with respect
for the privacy of this individual).


What has happened?

She was invited to participate in a Wikimedia activity, because:
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)

and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).

At the same time she has the impression that the work she does on the
Wikimedia wiki('s) is not valued, nor taken into account.

She does not want to be invited because she is a woman, nor because she is
from a minority, nor ....... etc. This is offensive.
She only wants to be invited because of the work she contributes on
Wikipedia/etc.



Besides the many good initiatives and intentions, this kind of approaches
to our contributors is demotivating them, please be aware of this. I
believe demotivation/frustration is the largest problem we face as movement.


I heard from people that the problem described is called tokenism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism>.


I believe the only way to close the gaps related to gender, minorities,
etc, is to create an atmosphere in what everyone is appreciated for what
she/he is doing, completely unrelated to the gender someone appears to
have, the ethnicity, race, area of the world, etc etc etc etc.

Thank you!

Romaine
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[Andy Mabbett]

Post by Romaine Wiki
I recently received an e-mail
from a user in the Wikimedia movement who has (temporarily?) stopped
contributing as she is not happy with a specific aspect of the atmosphere
in Wikimedia.
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)
and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).

I'm sorry to hear that a contributor feels unable to continue because of this.

In order to examine what improvements we can make, can you tell us -
without breeching confidentiality - how this approach was made, and
what exactly was said?

[Robert Fernandez]

The whole framing of this question is misguided. There are lots of
people whose work is undervalued on Wikipedia for a lot of reasons.
If there is an effort to reach out to a particular group of volunteers
that is underrepresented then that should be celebrated as a positive
contribution to our projects and movement. What we should not do is
say "how can I make this about my own personal situation?" This is
about the movement and the mission, but too many volunteers think it
should be about catering to their own personal whims and needs. If
there are legitimate grievances then we should address those problems
and not try to tear down efforts to address different problems.

On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 10:08 AM, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Hi,
I usually push diversity in any situation but only after I got a core quality group of volunteer. the first degree of diversity is the diversity based on wiki activity, IMHO.. I care about the rest and I try to be honest if I go in that direction and why I do that. If anyone is offended for something, that happens even if you do your best, in my experience being clear helps on the long term.
This a real documented example, if you want to read: http://www.wikisciencecompetition.org/people/ . For WSC2017 it was mostly my job to find these profiles, 90% of them. I did my best to find motivated jury members and, as a first step, I searched for expert wikimedians based on their CV on the profiles and their activities. My goal was to be balanced per topic, than per geographical area (language mostly, some description in English are poor), than maybe per gender, in that order. The evaluation of scientific images require expertise, that's the core business. I shared my experience here: http://www.wikisciencecompetition.org/2017/11/16/how-was-the-jury-for-wiki-science-competition-2017-formed/
In any case, I couldn't know who these people really were sometimes, I didn't care at the first step. You know where they work, but they could be foreigners. You know their enwikipedia activity (I need people with some decent English fluency, so I started there and in any case I found what I needed) but sometimes that does not reveal a lot, and English descriptions are gender-neutral. So even if it wasn't planned I got some unbalance, and I only discovered during the set up of the page that a certain nickname was a blond guy and not a Arab or Chinese girl. I did my best to "fix it" at that point but mostly because when you miss some positions and you look for additional 3-4 names it's no big difference to look here or there. But still, the first search was based on their expertise. And they all kew that.
I think it was quite balanced in the end, taking care of the issue but not ranking it more critical than the scientific quality of the profiles. Plus. I told some of the female jurors that they could be "promoted" to the main jury for next edition but that's because they deserve it.
So, in the end I look also for "girls" and "exotic profiles", I admit that, but this was not my main goal, and it was never more important that the quality. So at least these people knew that they were part of a team, that they were there to share their expertise, not being displayed as a "token".
I think it's more easy and relaxed if you always stick to the content and the quality as a first step, IMHO. if you want the movement to grow roots you need real people, motivated people, and real sharing. I really hope they will set up real national challenges next time, thanks to the expertise we shared.
Alessandro

Post by Romaine Wiki
I recently received an e-mail
from a user in the Wikimedia movement who has (temporarily?) stopped
contributing as she is not happy with a specific aspect of the atmosphere
in Wikimedia.
1. she is a woman
2. she is from a minority
3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
Europe/US)
and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
mine (Caucasian).

I'm sorry to hear that a contributor feels unable to continue because of this.
In order to examine what improvements we can make, can you tell us -
without breeching confidentiality - how this approach was made, and
what exactly was said?
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
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