Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

[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 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
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



2018-05-07 8:03 GMT+02:00 Amir E. Aharoni :

> This is a sensitive topic, and I'm a white man myself, so please slap me if
> I say something dumb.
>
> 2018-05-07 7:10 GMT+03:00 Romaine Wiki :
>
> >
> > 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.
> >
>
> 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?
>
>
>
> > 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.
>
>
> > 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
> > 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
> > .
> >
>
> 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.
>
>
> > I believe the only 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

[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



2018-05-07 8:03 GMT+02:00 Amir E. Aharoni :

> This is a sensitive topic, and I'm a white man myself, so please slap me if
> I say something dumb.
>
> 2018-05-07 7:10 GMT+03:00 Romaine Wiki :
>
> >
> > 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.
> >
>
> 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?
>
>
>
> > 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.
>
>
> > 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
> > 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
> > .
> >
>
> 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.
>
>
> > 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

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Nini kinakufanya uwe na furaha wiki hii? / What's making you happy this week? (Week of 13 May 2018)

[geni]

On 13 May 2018 at 01:31, Pine W  wrote:
> What's making you happy this week?

The Gaia data release 2 data is out. Gaia being an ESA spacecraft that
is measuring the the position of about a billion stars:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(spacecraft)

The most straightforward application is you can chuck pretty much any
star in the milky way that we have an article on into the search
function at:

http://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/

And get an accurate distance to it. For example wikipedia says WR 25
is about 7500 lightyears away. Once you've converted through from
milli arcseconds (mas) Gaia says 68500 (divide by a 1000 then divide 1
by that number to get the parsecs distance then multiply by 3.26 to
get lightyears).

Beyond stars the improved Cepheid variable measurements will allow us
to update the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_galaxies
article with better data and hopefully get a new study on what is an
isn't in the local group (most of the sources I'm finding for that are
from around 2000 and things have moved on).






-- 
geni

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Board Recruitment: Updates

[James Salsman]

On the original topic of technology advocacy representation on the Board,
an we please get someone from the open source hardware community and Legal
to tell us how much we could save in subpoena, hardware, and overhead costs
by avoiding backdoors? Has anyone on the Board ever championed open source
hardware, since, Sam maybe?

Please see:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5xvn4i/update_corebootlibreboot_on_amd_has_ceo_level/

https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/8aovfb/china_has_started_ranking_citizens_with_a_creepy/

https://teachprivacy.com/why-i-love-the-gdpr/

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Technology%2FAnnual_Plans%2FFY2019%2FCDP3%3A_Knowledge_Integrity=revision=2762601=2762351

Best regards,
Jim

On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 12:44 AM, Philippe Beaudette 
wrote:

> And even if such laws do not exist (and I'm no expert), as an employee I
> would be gravely concerned about taking a role with any employer where I
> knew that they would be publishing the reason for my departure.
>
> Now, employees may /choose/ to publish a reason (as I did) but to presume
> that it would be mandatory (and to be willing to stake your career on it in
> advance) would likely seriously inhibit some candidates from applying.
> When you pair that with the WMF's (relatively) transparent organization, I
> think the two together would be a significant inhibitor to recruiting.
>
> Philippe
>
> On Sun, May 13, 2018 at 2:10 PM, Joseph Seddon 
> wrote:
>
> > "I am unaware of any laws which would prohibit WMF from publishing the
> > entirety of executives' compensation
> > details including their employment contracts, severance agreements,
> > and the circumstances
> > in which their departures happen."
> >
> > Pine, I often appreciate your view and input on a range of topics but to
> be
> > blunt if this is your genuine opinion I'm personally rather glad my
> > employer does not base its HR policies and practices on your personal
> > interpretation of employment law.
> >
> > Seddon
> >
> > On Sun, May 13, 2018 at 8:59 PM, Pine W  wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Given Jaime's previous statement on this matter, and my general
> > > dissatisfaction with WMF's level of financial transparency, I am
> > > uncomfortable with his involvement with selecting a new WMF Board
> member
> > > based on his or her finance expertise. I would encourage the Board to
> > > reconsider Jaime's role in the selection process, and to place a strong
> > > emphasis on identifying a new board member who has experience with
> > > significantly increasing the financial transparency of organizations.
> > >
> > > Pine
> > > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> > >
> >
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [GLAM] Rapid Grants Closure May 14 - June 30, 2018

[Laurentius]

On mar, 2018-05-01 at 15:51 -0700, Woubzena Jifar wrote:
> 2. Regarding having a minimum of $500 for the rapid grants program,
> this is something we’re experimenting with while we’re aligning to
> the new strategic direction. Our preliminary data is showing that
> this change will improve our ability to support communities, allowing
> for more impactful grants with less overhead for a more effective use
> of our shared resources.
> We also need to make reductions in the time spent processing grants
> this year in order to make space for the considerable research and
> discussions needed to implement the new strategy, and we need to
> consider whether the impact of very small grants warrants their
> administrative expense.

I'm interested in better understanding this decision and its impact.

1. How many grants are actually impacted by this decision? In
particular, in the last year:
 * How many grants below 500 $ have been approved?
 * Of the total 265.000 $ of rapid grants, how much went into grants
   below 500 $?

My rough estimate, by looking at the list on Meta, is that
approximately 20% of rapid grants are below 500 $ (but I don't know the
total), which I expect is around 10.000-20.000 $ per year.

2. From your experience, how do you value the quality of the requests
for grants below 500 $? Do they have proportionally the same impact of
the larger (rapid) grants, less, or more?
In other words: this decision is led by the thought that impact is
roughly proportial with the size of the grant, but the administrative
cost for the WMF is more or less the same, so it's better to prioritize
for larger grants? or that the small grants are actually comparatively
worse (less impactful, or less likely to be approved anyway)? or what
else?

3. Roughly, how much is the administrative overhead for each grant?

4. You mentioned preliminary data about this change. Is there any
additional data that you can share?

Lorenzo


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