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Building_Diversity_Wikimania2014
Gender and Beyond: Building Diversity in the Digital Space
Session page on Wikimania site: https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Gender_and_Beyond:_Building_Diversity_in_the_Digital_Space
Customised link to (this) etherpad: http://bit.ly/building-diversity
This etherpad has been created to help you to get the most of this session; to document the workshop during Wikimania and to spread the word about the outcomes after the event. We've provided a template which we hope will help you to get started, but please feel free to change it to better suit your needs.
## Facilitators Contact Details
- Beatrice Martini @BeatriceMartini beatricemartini@gmail.com
- Katelyn Rogers
- Michelle Brook @MLBrook michelle@michellebrook.org
AT THE WORKSHOP
## Participants - name, contact (if you want to leave it)
## Notes from the session
Each group should discuss 3 key points, to be documented during the workshop on the sessions etherpad and presented to the whole group at the end of the session.
Discussion Topics:
- What’s the challenge, how this topic appears in our digital open community. Flesh it out
- What has been done so far to address it in the communities you know/ are part of?
- What can be done better and how? Your call to action for the community, also to be shared with others online, via etherpad.
Groups:
- Global Community Processes (e.g. when an org has a central core team and many regional groups)
- What’s the challenge, how this topic appears in our digital open community. Flesh it out
- how not to exploit volunteers, how to have a conversation about the volunteers' needs
- how to engage with people who are very grassroots and talk about a minimum of helpful processes
- challenge of common hierarchical processes
- don't go for the easiest way, which risks to create monoculture
- how to improve community leadership going beyond top-down
- What has been done so far to address it in the communities you know/ are part of?
- some example links, please feel welcome to add/edit/hack!
- Wikimedia: good that there is a strategy to talk about diversity
- codes of conduct, addressing it
- What can be done better and how? Your call to action for the community, also to be shared with others online, via etherpad.
- disconnection between what organisational strategies are and what the needs of the community are
- Disconnect between what is spoken about (eg. strategies) and what actually happens on the ground
- better transparency about decisions for a conference programme for example
- Develop more examples of case studies (currently lots of statistics, much less qualitative research)
- Deliberately reach out beyond the noisy zone: don't seek contribution only from the noisiest ppl
- "Diversity Help Button" on Wikipedia: when I don't want to deal
- Cultural diversity (language, religion, society structures, communications policy)
- What’s the challenge, how this topic appears in our digital open community. Flesh it out
- Dominant culture: male, white, middle class, US/EU
- Language
- What has been done so far to address it in the communities you know/ are part of?
- research: trying to identify the problem
- Wikimedia Zero: to make Wikipedia more available in the Global South
- some example links, please feel welcome to add/edit/hack!
- What can be done better and how? Your call to action for the community, also to be shared with others online, via etherpad.
- improve resources, e.g. when people do not have access to computers
- Certain people can be a bridge between those who have certain knowledge and technology and common language.
- thinking beyond the technology we use now. We should go beyond, to meet the needs of people who want to contribute the projects
- Make WIkipedia in a "neutral language" in Latin America/Spain
- Gender diversity
- What’s the challenge, how this topic appears in our digital open community. Flesh it out
- go outside of the binary
- internal problems in community + external problems to enter the community
- stereotype threat not only a responsibility for who experiences harassment, but of the whole community
- What has been done so far to address it in the communities you know/ are part of?
- What can be done better and how? Your call to action for the community, also to be shared with others online, via etherpad.
- Age diversity
- What’s the challenge, how this topic appears in our digital open community. Flesh it out
- Life cycle, different stages.
- Board of directors often homogenous - no recognition that people at different ages may make different decisions.
- Often have older people doing the managing and younger people the 'doing'
- What has been done so far to address it in the communities you know/ are part of?
- Silver Surfers
- Code Clubs
- Wiki in Schools
- One Laptop per Child
- Quite a lot being done about skills; not so much about dialogue and acceptance.
- What can be done better and how? Your call to action for the community, also to be shared with others online, via etherpad.
- dialogue
- acceptance
- welcoming space
- Wikimedia Board of Directors: not too homogeneous in age
- diversity of age also when it comes to code (often coders are the younger ones and older ppl don't code and only manage)
- Accessibility and Disabilities
- What’s the challenge, how this topic appears in our digital open community. Flesh it out
- Need to get people to care about accessibility - only 2 ppl joined group initially
- Underlying assumption that everyone is able bodied/no mental illness
- Elitism in terms of language used and technical skills
- discrimination in language (hostile, derogatory.. mentioned that see discriminatory language like 'wiki for retards' on talk pages)
- What has been done so far to address it in the communities you know/ are part of?
- some example links, please feel welcome to add/edit/hack!
- Wikiread project (attached audio)
- Systemic Bias toolkit
- changing fonts: size
- Better educational tools to guide people through how to use technologies
- What can be done better and how? Your call to action for the community, also to be shared with others online, via etherpad.
- Make Events more wheel chair accessible
- Encourage ppl not to use unnecessarily tecnnical language
- Font type and size in other online spaces
AFTER THE WORKSHOP
After the session, we will collect all the ideas that have been shared in the etherpad, invite others to contribute their ideas and being the process of collaboratively developing a toolkit and best practice guide to building inclusive and diverse open communities.
## What did you learn and/or make?
## How/what could you teach others?
Notes for Blog Post and Follow Up:
Notes and Qoutes:
- "We need to think outside our own technologies'
Blog:
"We need to think outside our own technologies" said one participant in our Building Diversity Beyond Gender Session that we organised at Wikimania 2014 in London. In only 45 minutes we challenged Wikimania attendees to identify the challenge, gather available resrouces and lay out some suggestions for building diversity categories. Here is a recap of the session, our plans for the future and some ways that you can get involved to help us build diverse and inclusive online communities.
- Cultural Diversity:
- Gender Diversity
- Cultural Diversity
- Processes for Global Communities
45 minutes was far from enough time to really begin solving the issues at hand. Diversity in communities is