Sebastian,
While I bristle at the words "misguided", "dubious", and especially the
implication (and indeed it's only that) that I'm in support of discrimination
based on X (sex, etc.), which I hope by now others can see isn't so, at least
I've gotten an actual counter-argument from someone that pulls together
premises and leads to conclusions that at least follow from the premises.
Well of course I think my case is stronger ;), but I at least can acknowledge
when someone else actually made a counter-argument.
Matt-------- Original message --------
From: wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org
Date:01/08/2015 6:28 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Cc:
Subject: Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 130, Issue 25
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2015 11:19:46 +0100
From: Sebastian Moleski <sebastian.mole...@wikimedia.de>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why WMF should reconsider the 3-month
gender gap project-related decision
Message-ID:
<caa4ptmb9dg7ky_5y-nmstt6opkmsrrhjz+wztmw3xu5xjnw...@mail.gmail.com>
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Hi Matt,
as thorough as your characterization of the issue at hand is, as
misguided it is as well. The main point of the gender debate isn't the
physical differences between men and women and some purported
difference in authorship flowing from that. That would rightfully be
considered absurd and thus isn't really seriously promoted by anyone.
The gender gap debate is rather an acknowledgment that only a
surprisingly small subset of half the population contribute to
Wikipedia - and the systemic bias that stems from that. In fact, it
seems rather obvious that an encyclopedia that aspires to represent
all of human knowledge must necessarily be written by a representative
subset of humanity - or at least a representative subset of the
scientific community. We, so far, spectactularly fail at that with
respect to gender but also geography, language, and professional
backgrounds and expertise. As a result, it's more than sensible to try
to address that with the gender gap as the most prominent failure.
I also find your argument that focusing on increasing female
participation is devaluing the contribution of the prevalent majority
highly dubious. It's unfortunately a rather unoriginal argument as it
has been used many many times before in the political arean to combat
initiatives aimed at increasing diversity and decreasing
discrimination. The incessant fault of the argument is the premise
that the value of a particular contribution is dependent on the value
of all other contributions rather than viewing it in its own right. To
give an example: when someone writes an outstanding article on the
Great Wall of China and someone else writes an outstanding article on
Jacques Chirac, the value of each of these contributions is completely
separate from one another as well as from the fact whether one of the
authors was "recruited" through a drive to increase female
participation. They've both made excellent additions to Wikipedia and
should be lauded for that. Making moves to increase female
participation does not in any way devalue male participation.
While I have no knowledge whether this focused approach to
grant-making will indeed lead to increased female participation, I
find it sensible to at least try it out. We'll see in the end whether
it was succesful.
Best regards,
Sebastian Moleski
Schatzmeister / Treasurer
-------------------------------------
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
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