"I would rather not say" is a common and valid response in these scenarios.

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Sean Corfield <s...@corfield.org> wrote:

> Asking questions about race and/or gender can be a very sensitive issue and a 
> lot of people would refuse to complete those sections, or may even refuse to 
> complete the survey at all if such questions were included - for a variety of 
> very valid reasons.
> Sean
> On Oct 14, 2014, at 9:23 PM, Zack Maril <thewitzb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> ClojureBridge and conj grants are excellent ways to encourage all types of 
>> folks to join Clojure and I'm stoked that these programs have emerged from 
>> the community. These are Good Things and should be continued and improved 
>> upon wherever possible. I'd personally like to know how much good these 
>> efforts do and tracking demographics of the Clojure community, whether it is 
>> through the State of Clojure survey or other means, would allow us to 
>> measure the distance between our ideals and reality. I'm proud of the 
>> attempts and efforts undertaken to increase diversity within the community 
>> and, beyond the specifics of this current conversation, I'm confident that 
>> Clojure will make strides towards a more diverse user base. 
>> 
>> For the issue at hand, I believe that by including demographics within the 
>> State of the Clojure survey the Clojure leadership would be making a strong 
>> statement indicating their desire for a more desire community. The survey 
>> measures that which has been deemed important to know and understand in 
>> terms of the stewardship and development of Clojure. Including demographic 
>> questions in the survey, along with the context of why they were included, 
>> would indicate that there is a strong desire to understand and improve the 
>> diversity of the community by those who lead the community. Inclusion of 
>> such questions on the survey would be another opportunity for Clojure to be 
>> more than just not unwelcoming to atypical folks and allow us to 
>> purposefully invite more people to this relative paradise we inhabit. For a 
>> relatively small effort* it would show atypical folks that we care to know 
>> that they exist in the context of Clojure usage and that we are interested 
>> in understanding and improving their situation. 
>> -Zack
>> 
>> *If I've misgauged the difficultly of adding such questions to the survey, 
>> please say so. My impression is that this would be straightforward 
>> technologically and, by perhaps copying questions from similar surveys, 
>> straightforward in terms of survey design. I don't mean to ask you to drop 
>> everything and try to solve all the problems of sexism all at once but only 
>> to do something which seems, from an outside perspective, fairly economical 
>> with low costs and high benefits. 

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