Re: [Gendergap] Wikiproject? ...Threads on various issues

[Marie Earley]

Thanks Ryan.

I don't think I know who you mean though, from memory there were quite a few 
who fell into the porn = feminism school of thought (sex-positive feminism or 
third-wave feminism). The one person I thought you might mean has posted edits 
within the last few weeks so it can't be them. 

It's hard to remember now but I think it was possibly the combination of 
comments from members and also some of the articles listed in the feminism 
portal with GA status that I found off-putting, particularly as it had been 
suggested to me as, "Oh, you should go there." 

Articles with GA status: 
> Batgirl (and also a second article on Barbara Gordon)
> Belle (Disney - complete with picture of Belle in ball gown and holding a 
> flower)
> Beyoncé
> "Can't Hold Us Down" (Christina Aguilera, raunch culture track)
> "The Dirty Picture" (read the plot and then tell me Silk is the film / poster 
> for the film is "portraying women as powerful" as described in the article's 
> opening paragraph)
> "Government Hooker" (a song by Lady Gaga about John F. Kennedy's affair with 
> Marilyn Monroe, lyrics include "I'm gonna drink my tears and cry / 'cos I 
> know you love me baby")
> Independent Women's Forum (quote from article "IWF-affiliated writers have 
> argued that the gender gap in income exists because of women's greater demand 
> for flexibility, fewer hours, and less travel in their careers, rather than 
> because of sexism")
> Lara Croft (male fantasy figure)
> "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" (play - the plot sounds like the opposite of 
> feminism)
> Madonna
> Tara Teng (Miss World 2012)
> Xue Susu (a Chinese courtesan).

Anyway, as a start I've divided the list of members on WikiProject Feminism 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Feminism/Members between 
those who - have / have not - contributed to Wikipedia since 1 January 2013 
(and updated the url link to take account of the change). That leaves the 
project with 147 active members.

The process gave me a glimpse of the interests / articles that members are 
editing, it was quite telling how many listed their interests / studies as: 
human development / human capabilities / African Diaspora / psychology / 
economics / poverty related (in particulary students on the Poverty, Justice, 
and Human Capabilities PJHC course at Rice University). I also found Wikipedian 
in Residence Sydney Poore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FloNight/FAQ_WiR 
), perhaps useful? (I counted eight of the 147 who might reasonably be 
described as sex-positive feminists or third-wave feminists, which isn't really 
all that many https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-positive_feminism ).

Marie

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 10:46:52 -0700
From: rkald...@wikimedia.org
To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Wikiproject? ...Threads on various issues

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 7:33 PM, Marie Earley  wrote:




A subpage in an existing project would be one idea but please not the Feminism 
project. I was invited to it very early on by well meaning editors as a place 
for such discussions but found sex-positive feminists who think female porn 
stars are the definition of female empowerment.


Hi Marie,
I believe you're referring to a particular editor who hasn't participated there 
since about a year ago. I totally understand if you felt put off by your 
interactions with them. You might want to consider checking out the project 
again though since we could always use more informed, thoughtful voices such as 
yours.


Cheers,
Ryan


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Re: [Gendergap] Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L

[Marie Earley]

Hi Kevin,

My apologies it was Carol Moore responding to Sarah Stierch earlier on, I 
mentioned it from memory, 
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2014-June/004397.html  

This was was the quote, which I ought to have looked it up first:
> I was once blocked for a week for asking an editor whether his overwhelming 
> history of editing in articles about bondage of females was related to his 
> obvious and annoying harassment of me on a noticeboard, after which I 
> mentioned the issue on the Wikia Feminism page which I thought was a part of 
> Wikipedia (duh).  The latter evidently was the bigger "no no".

As for the top-down thing, there's an old joke I know:
> A man's driving along and he pulls up near a field and asks the farmer for 
> directions, and the farmer says, "Well I wouldn't start from here if I were 
> you."

I was really just musing that there have been so few women editors for such a 
long period of time on Wikipedia that the structure of administrators / senior 
administrators / foundations / boards etc. is quite striking. If Wikipedia had 
its time over with 50:50 male to female ratio I wonder if it would look quite 
like that.

Marie

Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 12:11:49 -0700
From: kgor...@gmail.com
To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L

Hi Marie -
Given the fact that you're talking about men's rights activists, by Sarah, I 
assume you mean Sarah Stierch?  Both Sarah and myself (we were some of the 
earlier Wikipedians to really infuriate MRA's) suffered a good bit of 
harassment at various points as a result of our engagement with them.  We're 
definitely far from the only people to have experienced harassment by MRA's or 
various other groups, and both myself, Sarah, and a large number of other 
contributors have experienced at least some harassment severe enough that I've 
thought for some time that the Wikimedia Foundation should attempt to create 
some sort of contributor support system (as was most recently brought up as an 
idea by Lane Raspberry of WP:MED.)  None of it was at all fun for me to handle, 
and some of it took significant labor to deal with - both emotional labor and 
labor as in actually having to explain to targeted associates of mine the back 
story behind the calls and emails they were getting - and I have significant 
systemic privilege that makes the same set of situations much easier and less 
threatening to deal with than many other people do. I agree that harassment of 
contributors, by fringe elements of the men's rights movement as well as other 
fringe groups is a serious problem and that both the Wikimedia movement and the 
Wikimedia Foundation need to come up with a better way of triaging and 
minimizing the harm that it causes our contributors.

That said, I do want to be clear in saying that Sarah, to the best of my 
knowledge, has never been suspended from a position of any sort for making 
off-wiki comments.  She was a moderator of this list for quite some time, but 
eventually stepped down because this can at times be a very very very very 
draining list to moderate - if she ever wanted to become a mod again here, I'd 
give her a mod bit back in a heart beat, but I really doubt she will ever want 
to again. She's still an active contributor (and administrator) on the English 
Wikipedia, and still hosts talks and editathons about our movement's 
demographic gaps pretty regularly.  She does no longer work for the WMF, but 
the fact that she no longer works there isn't a result of her political views 
or offsite comments, and a great number of current WMF staffers still have 
tremendous respect for her.

I was near the pre-scheduled end-date of an internship at the Wikimedia 
Foundation right around the time that Sarah and I riled up men's rights 
activists for the first time (it's been a number of years at this point) 
through making the article about their movement more in compliance with ENWP's 
encyclopedic content policies than it previously had been.  It was definitely 
an issue that came up with me in the office that week (partly because it had 
made Jezebel; partly because people were contacting the office,) and I will say 
that I don't think I can fault the behavior of a single WMF staff member 
regarding the situation.  They were tremendously more accomodating than I can 
imagine most other workplaces being in such circumstances - the rest of my time 
there included a large number of people repeatedly making sure that I was doing 
okay/checking if I needed anything/thanking me for publicly standing up for 
what I thought was right.

I don't want to dissect past situations in great detail, but I do think the mod 
team has made significant errors in how we've chosen to moderate the list in 
the past (and I accept a plurality if not an outright majority of blame for 
that,) that was significantly detrimental to fostering a free, open, and safe 
environment where conversations

Re: [Gendergap] WMF employee editing

[Keilana]

I think having some dedicated time for the women of the Foundation to edit
in a social environment is one potential solution. I know I seem to be like
a broken record - women need invitation and dedicated time and social
support! - but it's so true. I think the Foundation is an environment ripe
for that kind of collaboration because they are already committed to the
movement and just need a little push to edit more. I'm not sure how we as a
community can support them besides generally being welcoming and not being
adversarial just because they're from WMF.

-Emily


On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Pine W  wrote:

> Hi, this is a question I've been wondering about for awhile, and I am
> interested in hearing comments.
>
> My impression is that few of WMF's female employees are regular content
> editors or regular Commons media contributors, although they occasionally
> have office discussions about how to increase the number of female editors.
> What could be done to encourage WMF's female employees to edit or
> contribute media files on a regular basis, and would the necessary
> encouragement for these women also apply to other working women who would
> make good editors?
>
> Pine
>
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Re: [Gendergap] Leigh Honeywell is now a mod

[Leigh Honeywell]

Thanks for the warm welcome folks! Kevin pretty much covered my
background, but you can read more about me here:
http://hypatia.ca/about and my wiki username is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Leigh_Honeywell - though it looks
like the last few times I edited must have been while logged out, as
I'm a frequent typo-fixer :)

My main other wiki-editing hangout is the Geek Feminism wiki, for
anyone unfamiliar with it: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/ . I'm
Hypatia over there.

Looking forward to many productive and on-topic conversations in the future,

-Leigh

On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 1:45 PM, Sarah Stierch  wrote:
> Yay! Thank you Leigh!
>
> On Jun 29, 2014 1:28 PM, "Mallory Knodel"  wrote:
>>
>> On 06/29/2014 04:19 PM, Kevin Gorman wrote:
>>
>> Hi all -
>>
>> After the email I sent out to the list earlier, Leigh Honeywell offered to
>> be a mod.  She's a mod on the Ubuntu Women list as well as various IRC
>> channels, has started multiple physical hackerspaces and is involved in
>> DoubleUnion in SF as well as the Ada Iniatiative, and has a blog and twitter
>> account both quite worth reading.  I'll let her cover the rest of her
>> introduction, but welcome Leigh :)
>>
>> Yay, Leigh! It's great to have you mod'ing here.
>>
>> -Mallory
>>
>>
>> --
>> Mallory Knodel
>> Communications & Network Development Manager :: mall...@apc.org
>> Association for Progressive Communications :: apc.org
>> twitter. @malloryknodel :: xmpp. mallo...@im.mayfirst.org
>> gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780
>>
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-- 
Leigh Honeywell
http://hypatia.ca
@hypatiadotca

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[Gendergap] WMF employee editing

[Pine W]

Hi, this is a question I've been wondering about for awhile, and I am
interested in hearing comments.

My impression is that few of WMF's female employees are regular content
editors or regular Commons media contributors, although they occasionally
have office discussions about how to increase the number of female editors.
What could be done to encourage WMF's female employees to edit or
contribute media files on a regular basis, and would the necessary
encouragement for these women also apply to other working women who would
make good editors?

Pine
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Re: [Gendergap] Leigh Honeywell is now a mod

[Sarah Stierch]

Yay! Thank you Leigh!
On Jun 29, 2014 1:28 PM, "Mallory Knodel"  wrote:

>  On 06/29/2014 04:19 PM, Kevin Gorman wrote:
>
> Hi all -
>
>  After the email I sent out to the list earlier, Leigh Honeywell offered
> to be a mod.  She's a mod on the Ubuntu Women list as well as various IRC
> channels, has started multiple physical hackerspaces and is involved in
> DoubleUnion in SF as well as the Ada Iniatiative, and has a blog and
> twitter account both quite worth reading.  I'll let her cover the rest of
> her introduction, but welcome Leigh :)
>
>   Yay, Leigh! It's great to have you mod'ing here.
>
> -Mallory
>
>
> --
> Mallory Knodel
> Communications & Network Development Manager :: mall...@apc.org
> 
> Association for Progressive Communications :: apc.org
> twitter. @malloryknodel  :: xmpp.
> mallo...@im.mayfirst.org
> gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780
>
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Re: [Gendergap] Leigh Honeywell is now a mod

[Mallory Knodel]

On 06/29/2014 04:19 PM, Kevin Gorman wrote:
> Hi all -
>
> After the email I sent out to the list earlier, Leigh Honeywell
> offered to be a mod.  She's a mod on the Ubuntu Women list as well as
> various IRC channels, has started multiple physical hackerspaces and
> is involved in DoubleUnion in SF as well as the Ada Iniatiative, and
> has a blog and twitter account both quite worth reading.  I'll let her
> cover the rest of her introduction, but welcome Leigh :)
>
Yay, Leigh! It's great to have you mod'ing here.

-Mallory


-- 
Mallory Knodel
Communications & Network Development Manager :: mall...@apc.org

Association for Progressive Communications :: apc.org 
twitter. @malloryknodel  :: xmpp.
mallo...@im.mayfirst.org
gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780


signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
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Re: [Gendergap] Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L

[Tarc .]

In the ballpark of what is going on in an En.Wikipedia category discussion at 
the moment;
Category:Massacres of 
menhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_June_24#Category:Massacres_of_men
and
Category:Violence against 
menhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_June_24#Category:Violence_against_men

From: eir...@hotmail.com
To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 18:06:46 +
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L




Wikipedia and society as a whole need to recognise the shift in sand and what a 
growing threat groups like these are.

Marie

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[Gendergap] Leigh Honeywell is now a mod

[Kevin Gorman]

Hi all -

After the email I sent out to the list earlier, Leigh Honeywell offered to
be a mod.  She's a mod on the Ubuntu Women list as well as various IRC
channels, has started multiple physical hackerspaces and is involved in
DoubleUnion in SF as well as the Ada Iniatiative, and has a blog and
twitter account both quite worth reading.  I'll let her cover the rest of
her introduction, but welcome Leigh :)

Best,
Kevin Gorman
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[Gendergap] Signpost interview with Lila

[Pine W]

Hi all,

The Signpost has published the first of our two planned audio interviews
with Lila. In this first interview one of the topics was the gender gap, so
I think members of this list may be interested in listening. Discussion
about the gender gap starts around 8:50.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-06-25/Exclusive

Pine
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Re: [Gendergap] men on lists

[Kevin Gorman]

Hi Marie -

After his last set of interactions with the mailing list, Derric has
decided to leave it for the time being - so he won't receive your message
unless you specifically send it to him.  I honestly hope he chooses to
return to the list in the future; after having some private conversations
with him, I believe that his heart is very much in the right place, that he
has a genuine desire to help improve the gendergap, and that his
participation would likely benefit the list - and Wikimedia as a whole -
more than the participation of many other men who have been on gendergap-l
at one point or another (including quite recently.)

I don't know if you meant that you felt that my recent posts about changes
in moderation seemed too topdown, or if you were referring to other things.
 If you were referring to my posts about moderation - the reason why the
last few messages may seem top heavy is because in the past when we
primarily tried to use an almost completely hands off approach, it led to a
lot of women feeling unsafe participating in the list.  We eventually
transitioned to a more hands on approach than most other Wikimedia lists
use, but one that was still significantly less hands-on than that used by
many communities focusing on gender problems in tech and similar groups -
and it lowered our the amount that the list felt unsafe to some
participants to a degree, but still led to a lot of problems.

After talking with Liz (the other currently active list moderator) and a
number of list members in private about how to try to create a safer space,
there was fairly broad agreement that more active moderation could help.
 It's definitely more of a top-down approach than has been taken here
previously, but the approaches that have been taken here previously have
failed significantly at letting the list fulfill its purpose - mostly
because of situations that Carol and various other people have described in
various places, where a bottoms-up approach to organization has resulted in
large numbers of women either leaving the list, feeling uncomfortable
contributing openly to it, or just tuning it out and not reading it.
 Strong moderation goes against my gut feeling in many cases, but if it has
a chance of minimizing the number of times that potentially valuable
contributors are forced off the list because of the unregulated behavior of
other contributors, I think it's something worth trying.

At the same time, we're not intending to set up an arbitrary set of
community standards alone, but are intending to draft a basic version and
then post it somewhere publicly for comment, discussion, and collaborative
editing until we reach something that seems like it will be a useful
document for the listserv.  I guess it's also worth clarifying that
although I sometimes voice my private opinions on an individual basis to
the list, in the time that I have been a moderator there has never been a
mod decision made that didn't have discussion between all active mods and
their agreement that it was a worthwhile action to take.  Decisions are
usually announced by whichever mod feels like writing up a public message,
but most mod decisions have represented the consensus of at least three
mods (and we'll be announcing a new addition to the mod team shortly who I
am incredibly glad volunteered to join us.)

Best,
Kevin Gorman


On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 12:11 PM, Marie Earley  wrote:

> Since you've asked Derric...
>
> When you posted your message, "Can we please steer it back on topic and
> remember why we are all here?"
> - I was ready to steam in as I misinterpreted it.
>
> I thought that - as a response to Carol's comment that women get hassled
> here and quit the list - you were saying, "We're not supposed to be talking
> about women getting hassled, we're supposed to be talking about why women
> leave." (I was going to say, "but they left precisely BECAUSE they were
> being hassled".)
>
> Fortunately I read your next message in time not to steam in.
>
> Perhaps instead of:
>
> > "Nemo and Carol both, I really don't like the direction that this
> discussion is going.  Can we please steer it back on topic and remember why
> we are all here?"
>
> ...something along the lines of,
> > "I'm sure there are lots of examples people could give of poor behaviour
> on this list. Since the purpose of this list is "...discussing solutions
> and exploring opportunities that may serve as a starting point to improve
> gender equity, increase the participation of women and trans women, and
> reduce the impact of the gender gap within Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons,
> and the 'free knowledge movement'." then perhaps we should discuss measures
> that would tackle such poor behaviour."
>
> Also if you ask a white artist to paint a picture of a man they will most
> likely paint a picture of a white man. If you ask a black artist to paint a
> picture of a man they will most likely paint a picture of a black man.
> Neither are being racist. It's wor

Re: [Gendergap] men on lists

[Marielle Volz]

>If you ask a black artist to paint a picture of a man they will most
likely paint a picture of a black man.

A tangent- but this is not strictly true! See:
http://mediadiversified.org/2013/12/07/you-cant-do-that-stories-have-to-be-about-white-people/


On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 8:11 PM, Marie Earley  wrote:

> Since you've asked Derric...
>
> When you posted your message, "Can we please steer it back on topic and
> remember why we are all here?"
> - I was ready to steam in as I misinterpreted it.
>
> I thought that - as a response to Carol's comment that women get hassled
> here and quit the list - you were saying, "We're not supposed to be talking
> about women getting hassled, we're supposed to be talking about why women
> leave." (I was going to say, "but they left precisely BECAUSE they were
> being hassled".)
>
> Fortunately I read your next message in time not to steam in.
>
> Perhaps instead of:
>
> > "Nemo and Carol both, I really don't like the direction that this
> discussion is going.  Can we please steer it back on topic and remember why
> we are all here?"
>
> ...something along the lines of,
> > "I'm sure there are lots of examples people could give of poor behaviour
> on this list. Since the purpose of this list is "...discussing solutions
> and exploring opportunities that may serve as a starting point to improve
> gender equity, increase the participation of women and trans women, and
> reduce the impact of the gender gap within Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons,
> and the 'free knowledge movement'." then perhaps we should discuss measures
> that would tackle such poor behaviour."
>
> Also if you ask a white artist to paint a picture of a man they will most
> likely paint a picture of a white man. If you ask a black artist to paint a
> picture of a man they will most likely paint a picture of a black man.
> Neither are being racist. It's worth remembering that men - no matter how
> progressive or forward thinking - experience the world as men and women
> experience the world as women.
>
> There's a well known workplace experiment where a group of men are put in
> one room and given a task and a group of women are put in another room and
> given the same task. The women invariably put everything on the coffee
> table in front of them, lean forward, and work collaboratively. Meanwhile
> in the men are choosing someone who will lead them, Mr Alpha Male then goes
> and stands by the white board taking ideas from the room. Neither room is
> being sexist, it is just how the respective genders like to work.
>
> I also can't help but notice that solutions being put forward seem to be
> of the latter, male orientated 'from-the-top-down' variety.
>
> Marie
>
> > From: datzr...@alizeepathology.com
> > To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 13:05:00 -0400
> > Subject: Re: [Gendergap] men on lists
>
> >
> > Would anybody object to me hijacking this thread to use as a sort of
> meta thread for what just happened? I have further questions and things to
> explain and get feedback on. I can start another thread if wanted.
> >
> > This whole situation sort of reminds me of when I tried suggesting on
> Wikitech-l that people make use of NVC and people were really offended.
> Like there my intention was never to come off as condescending, but
> apparently I am just really awful at not coming off that way via email. I'd
> like to work on that and also find out what sort of things men on this list
> can do to make the environment better are and in specific myself. I think a
> polite discussion of what just happened would help advance all of those
> goals.
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Derric Atzrott
> >
> >
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Re: [Gendergap] men on lists

[Marie Earley]

Since you've asked Derric... 

When you posted your message, "Can we please steer it back on topic and 
remember why we are all here?" 
- I was ready to steam in as I misinterpreted it.

I thought that - as a response to Carol's comment that women get hassled here 
and quit the list - you were saying, "We're not supposed to be talking about 
women getting hassled, we're supposed to be talking about why women leave." (I 
was going to say, "but they left precisely BECAUSE they were being hassled".)

Fortunately I read your next message in time not to steam in. 

Perhaps instead of:
> "Nemo and Carol both, I really don't like the direction that this discussion 
> is going.  Can we please steer it back on topic and remember why we are all 
> here?"

...something along the lines of,
> "I'm sure there are lots of examples people could give of poor behaviour on 
> this list. Since the purpose of this list is "...discussing solutions and 
> exploring opportunities that may serve as a starting point to improve gender 
> equity, increase the participation of women and trans women, and reduce the 
> impact of the gender gap within Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and the 'free 
> knowledge movement'." then perhaps we should discuss measures that would 
> tackle such poor behaviour."

Also if you ask a white artist to paint a picture of a man they will most 
likely paint a picture of a white man. If you ask a black artist to paint a 
picture of a man they will most likely paint a picture of a black man. Neither 
are being racist. It's worth remembering that men - no matter how progressive 
or forward thinking - experience the world as men and women experience the 
world as women. 

There's a well known workplace experiment where a group of men are put in one 
room and given a task and a group of women are put in another room and given 
the same task. The women invariably put everything on the coffee table in front 
of them, lean forward, and work collaboratively. Meanwhile in the men are 
choosing someone who will lead them, Mr Alpha Male then goes and stands by the 
white board taking ideas from the room. Neither room is being sexist, it is 
just how the respective genders like to work. 

I also can't help but notice that solutions being put forward seem to be of the 
latter, male orientated 'from-the-top-down' variety. 

Marie

> From: datzr...@alizeepathology.com
> To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
> Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 13:05:00 -0400
> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] men on lists
> 
> Would anybody object to me hijacking this thread to use as a sort of meta 
> thread for what just happened?  I have further questions and things to 
> explain and get feedback on.  I can start another thread if wanted.
> 
> This whole situation sort of reminds me of when I tried suggesting on 
> Wikitech-l that people make use of NVC and people were really offended.  Like 
> there my intention was never to come off as condescending, but apparently I 
> am just really awful at not coming off that way via email.  I'd like to work 
> on that and also find out what sort of things men on this list can do to make 
> the environment better are and in specific myself.  I think a polite 
> discussion of what just happened would help advance all of those goals.
> 
> Thank you,
> Derric Atzrott
> 
> 
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Re: [Gendergap] Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L

[Kevin Gorman]

Hi Marie -

Given the fact that you're talking about men's rights activists, by Sarah,
I assume you mean Sarah Stierch?  Both Sarah and myself (we were some of
the earlier Wikipedians to really infuriate MRA's) suffered a good bit of
harassment at various points as a result of our engagement with them.
 We're definitely far from the only people to have experienced harassment
by MRA's or various other groups, and both myself, Sarah, and a large
number of other contributors have experienced at least some harassment
severe enough that I've thought for some time that the Wikimedia Foundation
should attempt to create some sort of contributor support system (as was
most recently brought up as an idea by Lane Raspberry of WP:MED.)  None of
it was at all fun for me to handle, and some of it took significant labor
to deal with - both emotional labor and labor as in actually having to
explain to targeted associates of mine the back story behind the calls and
emails they were getting - and I have significant systemic privilege that
makes the same set of situations much easier and less threatening to deal
with than many other people do. I agree that harassment of contributors, by
fringe elements of the men's rights movement as well as other fringe groups
is a serious problem and that both the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia
Foundation need to come up with a better way of triaging and minimizing the
harm that it causes our contributors.

That said, I do want to be clear in saying that Sarah, to the best of my
knowledge, has never been suspended from a position of any sort for making
off-wiki comments.  She was a moderator of this list for quite some time,
but eventually stepped down because this can at times be a very very very
very draining list to moderate - if she ever wanted to become a mod again
here, I'd give her a mod bit back in a heart beat, but I really doubt she
will ever want to again. She's still an active contributor (and
administrator) on the English Wikipedia, and still hosts talks and
editathons about our movement's demographic gaps pretty regularly.  She
does no longer work for the WMF, but the fact that she no longer works
there isn't a result of her political views or offsite comments, and a
great number of current WMF staffers still have tremendous respect for her.

I was near the pre-scheduled end-date of an internship at the Wikimedia
Foundation right around the time that Sarah and I riled up men's rights
activists for the first time (it's been a number of years at this point)
through making the article about their movement more in compliance with
ENWP's encyclopedic content policies than it previously had been.  It was
definitely an issue that came up with me in the office that week (partly
because it had made Jezebel; partly because people were contacting the
office,) and I will say that I don't think I can fault the behavior of a
single WMF staff member regarding the situation.  They were tremendously
more accomodating than I can imagine most other workplaces being in such
circumstances - the rest of my time there included a large number of people
repeatedly making sure that I was doing okay/checking if I needed
anything/thanking me for publicly standing up for what I thought was right.

I don't want to dissect past situations in great detail, but I do think the
mod team has made significant errors in how we've chosen to moderate the
list in the past (and I accept a plurality if not an outright majority of
blame for that,) that was significantly detrimental to fostering a free,
open, and safe environment where conversations related to the purpose of
the list could occur.  We can't change the past, but hopefully we'll be
able to help guide the list in a more beneficial direction in the future.

Best,
Kevin Gorman


On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 11:06 AM, Marie Earley  wrote:

> I'm not sure if I would agree with the word 'error', Wikipedia happens in
> a context, which is where all these discussions began, with the cautionary
> tale article about Quora
> http://www.zdnet.com/quoras-misogyny-problem-a-cautionary-tale-730762/
>
> Away from Wikipedia I'm a member of the No More Page 3 campaign trying to
> get rid of the topless glamour model photo which is published in Murdoch's
> UK Sun newspaper. The petition reads:
> "We are asking David Dinsmore to drop the bare boobs from The Sun
> newspaper. We are asking very nicely. Please, David. No More Page 3. etc."
> The petition is approaching 200,000 signatures and there are NMP3
> t-shirts, media attention but our Facebook page gets hit by trolls.
> Blocking is a last resort by admins but it becomes inevitable. The MRA has
> set up a Laughing at No More Page 3 Facebook
> https://www.facebook.com/pages/Laughing-at-No-more-page-3/262437737259691
> page and take pictures / posts from NMP3's page and re-post them with
> personally insulting comments. When you click on the names of those posting
> comments their other "liked" groups invariably include

Re: [Gendergap] Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L

[Marie Earley]

I'm not sure if I would agree with the word 'error', Wikipedia happens in a 
context, which is where all these discussions began, with the cautionary tale 
article about Quora 
http://www.zdnet.com/quoras-misogyny-problem-a-cautionary-tale-730762/

Away from Wikipedia I'm a member of the No More Page 3 campaign trying to get 
rid of the topless glamour model photo which is published in Murdoch's UK Sun 
newspaper. The petition reads: 
"We are asking David Dinsmore to drop the bare boobs from The Sun newspaper. We 
are asking very nicely. Please, David. No More Page 3. etc." 
The petition is approaching 200,000 signatures and there are NMP3 t-shirts, 
media attention but our Facebook page gets hit by trolls. Blocking is a last 
resort by admins but it becomes inevitable. The MRA has set up a Laughing at No 
More Page 3 Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Laughing-at-No-more-page-3/262437737259691 page 
and take pictures / posts from NMP3's page and re-post them with personally 
insulting comments. When you click on the names of those posting comments their 
other "liked" groups invariably include various humanist societies and Dawkins 
Foundation.

I entered "Wikipedia" and "male rights activists" and got this 
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/fighting-wikipedia-corruption-censorship/ 
which has a comments section at the bottom with current Wikipedia members 
mentioning other Wikipedia editors by name and talk of a great conspiracy at 
work against them, if Sarah was suspended for her off-site comments then how is 
this permissible? 

The same website has an article suggesting the compulsory sterilizing of women 
before they reach child-bearing age so they are unable to take the escape hatch 
'soft-option' of exiting the workplace to raise them 
http://www.avoiceformen.com/women/workplace-inequality-when-one-side-has-an-escape-hatch/

They group are becoming increasingly well organized and have just finished 
their first conference in Detroit 
http://www.avoiceformen.com/international-conference-on-mens-issues-detroit-june-26-28-2014/
 

Wikipedia and society as a whole need to recognise the shift in sand and what a 
growing threat groups like these are.

Marie

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:28:49 -0700
From: kgor...@gmail.com
To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Gendergap] Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L

Hi all -
Currently, Gendergap-l only has two active moderators - in the past, we've 
usually had at least three. After talking with Liz, we'd both like to bring on 
at least one additional active moderator. Please drop us a note if you'd be 
interested in taking on such a role.  It's worth knowing ahead of time that at 
times moderating the list can involve significant emotional labor; that said, 
moderating the list also allows you the chance to more actively help make 
positive change in the environment of the list.

In the past, many productive discussions have occurred on this list, but over 
time the number of such discussions has fallen greatly, and a lot of valuable 
contributors now either contribute far less frequently than they used to, or 
have just outright unsubscribed.  We think that a lot of this is related to how 
the list has been (or rather, mostly how it has barely been) moderated in the 
past. Historically, there's been a lot of reluctance among mods, both past and 
present, to take aggressive mod actions - this is a Wikimedia list, and the 
background that comes with that generally stigmatizes the idea of significant 
moderation.

We feel like the reluctance on the part of Gendergap mods to strongly actively 
moderate in a way that tries to ensure that the list is a safe space for 
contributors has been a significant error - a balance has to be maintained 
between liberty and hospitality (to borrow some terminology from Sumana's 
keynote at WikiConference USA [1],) and we don't feel like we've gotten that 
balance right in the past.  To be clear, since I'm the longest standing 
gendergap mod (besides for Sue, who generally doesn't take part in moderation 
discussions,) a lot of what I mean in the former sentence is that I have 
personally made significant errors that have contributed substantially to the 
general feeling that this list is not a safe space for contributors.

Moving forward, we'd like to change how we moderate the list in order to try to 
make it a list where contributors consistently feel safe in contributing.  Over 
the next few days, the mods will be having an internal discussion about how we 
think we can best go about doing this, and we'd also like to start a discussion 
on the broader list about how we can best go about ensuring that this is a safe 
and productive list while staying in line with the general values of the 
Wikimedia movement.

This email is intentionally sparse on details - mostly because we haven't 
talked amongst ourselves enough to have a solid grasp of what the details will 
look like, and also because we don't feel we