On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 1:21 PM, SlimVirgin <slimvir...@gmail.com> wrote: >> From: Laura Hale <la...@fanhistory.com> >> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Proposal: Forking gendergap: Main list for >> women and transgender, sublist for male supporters >> Am I supposed to interpret this as you claiming that this list has a mission >> that will never succeed because it acknowledges there are gender differences >> and different approaches are needed to get different audiences? As a woman, >> a representative of a minority group on Wikipedia, how am I supposed to >> respond to you? I can tell you that this post of yours makes me feel >> distinctly uncomfortable posting to this list. It seems to put men in the >> position of power above women, demanding that women participate only in male >> modes of communication, that women on the list can't talk about genuine >> concerns they have as women because they are going to get blown off, and >> that feelings of men on the list are more important then women. >> > Laura, the problem is that we're online, so we can't tell for sure > who's a man or woman anyway. I agree that women act differently around > men, but I think that will continue even when we only suspect we're > around men. So setting up a women-only list wouldn't work unless we're > willing to abandon anonymity and really get to know each other. That > would be wonderful if we could ever trust each other that much, but I > don't think this is the list to try it with.
Beyond Slim's practical issues question... I think that it's reasonable to assert that "the problem" includes not just "motivate more women to want to start participating in Wikipedia" but also "deal with latent mostly-male community behavior that discourages women from continuing to participate". Exactly which behaviors and how to deal with them are left as exercises for the future. If you view the problem narrowly as the first definition, as I think Laura is asserting, a women-only list makes excellent sense. If you view it more widely including the second one, which is more of what I think that I've heard here from women who I know are active english language wikipedia participants, then men and the community writ large are going to of necessity be active parts of the solution (whatever that is) and I think reasonably should be involved in the discussion, both listening and commenting (but not dominating). I think there's more problem to solve in the second than in the first, but Laura's got a point. Though I think that both questions are aspects of what all of us should talk about, if a women-only posting list for the motivation problem would help advance that cause, then perhaps another list makes sense for that discussion. The consulting company I work for's CEO is a woman who organizes and leads Women in IT group activities, to which I think Men aren't invited. The other issue is that while men and community are necessary parts of fixing the male-dominated current community, men dominating here may be (and on reflection seem to be) interfering with defining a clear women's consensus of your perspective on the problem statement, relative to the existing community. That again seems like an argument for another list, or at least much better self control. With these three topics - Empowering and encouraging women, Defining the community problem, and Solving the community problem, what approach to lists makes the most sense from an effectiveness and participation standpoint? -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
