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Dance community anti-harassment efforts

It was suggested to me that you might be interested that I've been doing work to adapt the Conference Anti-Harassment Policy to be suitable for social dance venues and weekend-long events. Here's the current draft. Still a long way to go, esp. in terms of getting people to adopt it. If you have any feedback, I'd certainly be interested in hearing it.

Melinath (talk) 19:55, March 31, 2013 (UTC)

Geek Feminine Wiki Revitalization

First, it can be helpful to have a resource like the Geek Feminism Wiki. It could be a place for women to go, to find links to projects, connections to those who might help them, resources for conferences, speaking opportunities, users groups, and so on. Originally, I thought that was the intent and vision of the site, but maybe that was my personal vision for it. ;-)

As with most websites, over time, a voice emerges, a presence. Right now, my sense is that this site is much more aligned with a political point of view than technology. It also seems that the aspect of feminism that is addressed is more focused on the challenges encountered than it is on the success women are having and how lessons might come from those experiences.

Combining those focuses, the site has an angry voice, and rightly so, given the topic focus, and with that comes vengeness. I think that is a fair word, and very possibly one that the organizers might not disagree with. The incidents pages, the name and shame approach, is not welcoming. I

I do believe this site in any represents a broad swath of women in technology, From my perspective, this site represents a very narrow point of view. Are you willing to involve others to help redefine the site so that it does represent more than the unfortunate and negative events but also the successes we can celebrate and emulate?

In the interest of clarity and openness, my hope would be that we can remove the incidents sections completely. Adopt more of a learning approach where we actually embrace those issues, explain other ways something might be done, reach out, use humor, put a huge focus on incidents that are intent on increasing involvement of women, and head that direction, leaving behind the more punative approach.

I believe this could be a real benefit to the geek community, as a whole. My perception is that everyone would like to see better involvement with women. There is fear of this group. When people are afraid, they cannot learn. I would hope we could address those perceptions and turn it around so that the community looks at this group as a support, not a judge, jury, and executioner, but rather those people who listen and care and help and take me as I am.

If those things sound good, I would like to help and find others to help as well.

Thank you for your consideration of this idea

AmyStephen (talk) 19:43, February 24, 2013 (UTC)

Hi there AmyStephen. I think that the Timeline of Incidents page is a positive force for change. When we put our history in a public forum, it is available to all of us. The idea of a judge, jury, and executioner is quite different from the idea of a public forum where people describe things that have happened and that have been reported on.

What your message sounds like to me is that you would like to reach out to be a teacher and educator. Some people do that work best by assimiliating into the culture they are trying to reach. For others, that assimiliation may not be possible, or may not be desired at all. And if you would like to take an approach that focuses around "success", there is plenty of that effort here as well -- but also in other organizations and public fora.

Isn't there room for more than one approach, here? There are so many efforts to support women and others in our field. I think it best for you to seek out the ones that exist that are more in alignment with the approach you want to take -- rather than trying to erase the work of so many of us -- work that we regularly are thanked for doing. --Liz Henry (talk) 20:08, February 24, 2013 (UTC)

Liz,

Thanks for your response, especially your friendly tone. Absolutely, there is room for more than one approach, in fact, that is my point, the point of view on this site is very narrow. Groups, over time, self-select, so tends to happen. But, in the end, the perspective on this site, IMO, does not represent a broader group of what "Geek Feminism" is about in our communities.

it's not a matter of erasing someone's hard work. The concern has to be fairness since this does impact negatively people's reputations. In many cases, I do not agree the act was in any way that an incident is sexist or displays sexism. Let me give a couple of examples.

Example one:

Dries mentioned that the (gender neutral) Druplicon (Drupal's mascot) would likely have a sex scandal by the year 2020.

So, how is that sexist? How is that even a concern? Does everyone understand this is a graphic that looks like a drop of water?

Example two:

Later, as Dries was discussing goals for the Drupal project, he used "stay at home moms with a tupperware business" as a user story for the people he would like to see using Drupal. This may have gone over fine had he not specifically sited them as being on the "low" end of the technical spectrum.

To me, it sounds like there is a lack of appreciation for women who stay at home and have tupperware businesses. If it's the "low end of the technical spectrum" aspect that then qualified this as misogyny, then I would ask why this is seen as anything other than "but of course, that is exactly how that persona should be defined."

If it is believed that this market segment has higher skill in technology, and that Dries was incorrect in his assessment of where these skills are truly at, then let me ask do you honestly believe a large percentage of people with strong technology skill are going to sell tupperware?

Not only is his point correct and factual and valid but it is GOOD that he is looking at these women and trying to ensure Drupal works for them, too. Not all women are professionals, like we are, in fact most are not. Reaching those women with low technical skills means OPPORTUNITY.

If you are suggesting he is sexist if he only focuses on women with skills, then you are, maybe without realizing it, encouraging an approach that further disenfranchises women who do not have strong skills from ever acquiring them. Drupal is a gateway to skill.

In this case, what would be sexist would be IF Dries drew a big red X on the group and said "This group is just women without skill, they are not worth our time. Ignore them." But he said the opposite. He said, "This segment is female, low in technical skill. How do we reach them?." That's AWESOME.

That is not sexist, at all. In fact, it's cause for celebration. It should be lifted up and shared as the kind of thinking other projects should have. Reach out, even to those who are disenfrachised or close to it.

In my opinion, these two must to be removed, they are not sexist in the least. There are more like this.

How do incidents get included?

It might help to understand, to publish criteria since it is harmful to people. You would never want to have it seem like a personal vindetta or not liking someone be a reason or an accusation externally as to why events are listed.

What are the criteria:

- What criteria is used to evaluate an event to validate it is sexist or sexism?

- Who makes the decision? What can we make certain the POV in this group represents the community?

- What interaction, if any, is made with the accused, prior to publishing the information?

- What can they do to recify the problem and therefore avoid the shaming?

- What is the protest process if others disagree with the event inclusion or the manner in which it is described?

I don't mind working through this slowly and nailing down the criteria and processes. I have more questions, examples, but that's probably enough for now. I'll let you guys kind of think about it, see if my comments shed a different light that seems logical.

Again, your friendly response is so appreciated. Thank you.

AmyStephen (talk) 21:20, February 24, 2013 (UTC)

Hi folks - any feedback? Thanks.

67.63.104.124 00:47, February 27, 2013 (UTC)

I'm not finding your comments to be constructive, Amy, and agree with Liz that you might prefer to seek out a space that's better suited to where you're at. As a general rule, the wiki editors have all dealt with a lot of the sort of undermining of the existence of sexism that your comments exhibit, and I'm personally quite tired of explaining introductory feminism when there are already plenty of educational resources for that online. I had initially blocked you because of your edits to Sexualized environment that were effectively calling us "sexist" for pointing out that sexism exists. I unblocked you because (at least) Liz engaged with your comments, but I'm still not seeing much here but the same ol' arguments I've heard over and over from the broader, kyriarchal culture. Monadic (talk) 01:15, February 27, 2013 (UTC)

When is documentation perpetrating harassment?

Discussion moved from a private mailing list thread. You will need to take my word for it that these people aren't concern trolls or in general opposed to either this wiki or Timeline of incidents.

Private mailing list thread had the following problems with some detailed reporting of incidents:

quoting abusive comments extensively or showing abusive images (eg photoshopped ones, etc) actually gives a louder voice to the abuser
our wiki may rank quite high in Google or Google Image searches for a victim's name, making their vulnerability and pain apparent to casual searchers for their name

Any further thoughts on where the line between documenting harassment for the various reasons we do document it, and perpetrating it, is? Thayvian (talk) 22:47, March 20, 2013 (UTC)

I think these are both serious concerns. (2) seems a little easier to address: we could use pseudonyms or descriptions of the victim rather than their name. Of course, this may undermine the purpose of documenting (trolls could question that we're really talking about a real incident if a real name isn't used). I'm not sure how to balance those concerns.

(1) seems harder because it can be hard to convey the seriousnessness of a particular incident without direct quotes or images. I have also wondered whether criticisms of an incident (not on this wiki, though) that used images that were abusive -- in order to point and say "this is bad" -- were inadvertently repeating the harm done by those images. I don't have a good answer. Monadic (talk) 23:01, March 20, 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if we should use initials for victims and survivors. This is probably easier than coming up with a pseudonym for them (which they may not like, and which might be difficult for us to remember) but is largely search engine-proof. Thayvian (talk) 01:49, July 10, 2013 (UTC)

April 2013 hellos!

If you're new to the wiki or re-joining the wiki following this month's Geek Feminism roundup, say hi and introduce yourself here! Thayvian (talk) 23:35, April 7, 2013 (UTC)

Photo Gallery Question

Hello, I have been considering adding a photo gallery to the list of women characters in video games. I have realized that that page has become exeedingly big as is but I believe that a photo gallery of all of the characters listed would be useful, because it would help to provide a big picture, to put things into purspective, rather than foucusing on and analyzing each character individually and in defined categories. However, to do this I would need to upload aproximately 76 pictures to the wiki gallery, just to cover the characters added thus far. Would anybody mind this. I don't think I should upload that many photos without permission, especially since when I am done it would make up a third of our general gallery, and there are still many characters missing from the list. I personally have only been adding characters that I know very well.

MarinaTheJolteonMaster (talk) 00:31, December 12, 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, and I think there's also a copyright issue here that I can't speak to. Thayvian (talk) 00:42, February 25, 2014 (UTC)

Change to CC-BY-SA license?

So when the GF wiki was started, we used the GFDL which was Wikia's default and the same as Wikipedia. You can see that this was set up by default in the history here: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Geek_Feminism_Wiki:Copyrights?action=history

In 2009, Wikipedia and Wikia both transitioned to using CC-BY-SA as their standard. This is documented at http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Community_Central:Licensing_update

However, our wiki still uses the GFDL, as seen at http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Geek_Feminism_Wiki:Copyrights -- I think we either didn't notice the change when it happened, or saw it and dismissed the idea of changing as too hard at the time (anyone know?)

Now, though, for greater compatibility with other wikis and free culture efforts in general, I think it would be good if we switched to CC-BY-SA. I'm not sure of the best way to go about this. I think we probably need to get the consent of wiki contributors, or at least a reasonable number of them. We could look at what Wikipedia did, as I think they had a process around this. Obviously for us it would be smaller/easier, and we could to some extent do it via opt-out, eg. contact editors saying "we are going to make this change; if you object you have until X date to say so or to remove your content from the wiki".

Thoughts?

--Skud (talk) 05:19, July 9, 2014 (UTC)

Yikes. We have a footer reading CC BY-SA and the sidebar of the editor has said "Contributions licensed as CC-BY-SA" for a long long time. So… we probably can't blanket assume that people were releasing CC BY-SA, but most people probably thought they were. I've always thought I was! (I don't recall any discussion around relicencing in 2009.) Thayvian (talk) 05:23, July 9, 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, weird huh? I thought it was CC-BY-SA too. On the GF bloggers mailing list, Leigh points out "So our GFDL includes the "any later version" language which means we can just roll forwards to vnext GFDL then CC-BY-SA like Wikipedia did. We don't need to canvass all contributors." This is a good thing. It looks like we could just quietly change it without much fuss. --Skud (talk) 08:02, July 9, 2014 (UTC)

Unless I am misunderstanding GFDL 1.3, that's not actually true :(

Relicencing applied only to content that was written before November 1 2008 and had to be complete before August 1 2009. (see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html Section 11)

For extra confusion: http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Community_Central:Licensing_update reads like Wikia actually transitioned us (and almost every other wiki they host) in 2009 (it has opt-out text, eg "Any wiki that wants to continue using the GFDL should contact Wikia")

Honestly, given this and the footer/sidebar, I'd be tempted to go with the idea that Wikia transitioned us and replace http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Geek_Feminism_Wiki:Copyrights with a short history and a statement that points to http://www.wikia.com/Licensing Thayvian (talk) 08:22, July 9, 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd be ok with that. I think we should just say, "it was always our intent to be CC-BY-SA, but this GFDL page was created by Wikia and we didn't realise it was there and we're pretty sure Wikia meant to transition us. Therefore we're bringing this page into line with what everyone thought was going on anyway."

(Incidentally, Thayvian, it looks like you were aware we were under GFDL back in 2008 at least, as per this history -- which is how I actually wound up on the GFDL page going "bzuh?" earlier today :))

--Skud (talk) 09:21, July 9, 2014 (UTC)

Good work, past Thayvian :P Thayvian (talk) 09:49, July 9, 2014 (UTC)

Wikia definitely intended to re-licence us. It was their bot that made this edit: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Geek_Feminism_Wiki%3ACopyrights&diff=5307&oldid=2922 So I think we're good to go. I will update http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Geek_Feminism_Wiki:Copyrights Thayvian (talk) 00:20, July 10, 2014 (UTC)

Made this edit in light of this discussion: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Geek_Feminism_Wiki%3ACopyrights&diff=24812&oldid=5307 Thayvian (talk) 00:28, July 10, 2014 (UTC)

Another wiki

Hi there, I was wondering (since we seem to have high overlap) if our two communities would benefit from cross-pollination? We're a new wiki that focuses on social justice issues (i.e., incorporating feminism, of course) and we'd love to have people from here on board (and vice versa).

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this. Cheers! SJWiki (talk) 08:10, July 20, 2014 (UTC)

Non English editions of Geek Feminism Wiki

Is the Geek Feminism Wiki only in English, or is it in other languages as well?

I've written about an incident in a conference held in Japan, and I wanted to know if there's material in a Japanese edition of Geek Feminism Wiki I could read to improve the article.

I don't know enough Japanese to contribute to a Japanese edition Geek Feminism Wiki, by the way! Andrewjgrimm (talk) 05:15, September 28, 2014 (UTC)

skfive

Hi, sorry if this is in the wrong place -- I'm kind of new here. I am the owner of the User:Skfive account. I consider myself a feminist and I've found this wiki to be a great resource and an interesting read, so I hoped to make at least some small improvements to it. Most of what I have done is spelling corrections and formatting fixes (such as [1]), but I would have liked to make more substantial contributions in the future.

However, after making this comment I was blocked indefinitely with the reason "troll". I understand that this wiki -- and especially that article, it seems -- is often attacked by trolls seeking to discredit feminism (I even reverted a troll edit to the article) and I can see why my comment seemed like trolling, but I really do hold that opinion and I was trying to help, not provoke an angry reaction; I am sorry for appearing to be a troll. I was merely objecting to a page that tries very hard to avoid denigrating humans but ignores everyone else (and if you insist on only being concerned with humans, the animal words could also be offensive to humans who identify as animals, such as myself). Avoiding using derogatory terms is all well and good, but if we're going to go as far as not using them in contexts where the derogation is unconscious and the affected groups may not even be present (which is also good), we might as well extend the same courtesy to those who can't speak up for themselves at all. If you disagree with my opinion, that is fine, but please just say so rather than removing my comments and blocking me. (And while I'm on the subject of the "guide to foul-mouthed feminists" page, it's interesting that "douche" is considered acceptable but has been criticised by other feminists [2] for precisely the same reason it's listed here as an acceptable insult.) I've also read the "concern troll" article and I'm not one of those either because I agree with everything about feminism and my objection is to a minor tangential point. Finally, I've read the wiki policies, code of conduct and whatnot and I do not see anything in there that I violated.

I hope I am unblocked so that I can continue to make small corrections and possibly even add new material. In any case, keep up the good work and don't let the (real) trolls win. 99.240.156.249 22:31, April 30, 2015 (UTC)

And now the IP I used is blocked because I tried to post an innocuous comment to its talk page ("sigh, I already had an account and I want it back" or something). Kind of a pointless comment, but not sure why it tripped the abuse filter. Just wanted you to know that I wasn't trying to do something horrible :) 98.110.223.114 23:17, April 30, 2015 (UTC)

FWIW I think that skfive appears to be a good-faith editor, and would support an unblock. --Skud (talk) 02:07, May 1, 2015 (UTC)

Clarification on "TERF" ideological stance

I would like to inquire as to the Geek Feminism Wiki's ideological stance regarding transgender-exclusionary radical feminism ("TERF"). I have previously regarded the wiki distastefully given its apparent association with the TERF ideology because edits containing the acronym "TERF" were flagged in the edit history as "slurs." Upon reading the Geek Feminism proper's moderation policy and Geek Feminism Wiki's editing guide, however, it would seem that the wiki officially stands opposed to TERF ideology. What exactly is going on here? Is it the case that the wiki believes transgender women (coersively assigned as male at birth) should be excluded from the feminist movement? Is it that the owner of the wiki believes that but she is absent and a trans-inclusive community has taken over, but she may return and change the wiki back over? Is it a remnant from a previous institution that has no power? --Dragonclaws^(talk) 00:37, July 27, 2015 (UTC)

The earliest comment I can find about TERFs is on Talk:Meta:Editorial_guidelines - which is back in November 2013. I also can't see TERF in the history of the slurs filter, although it could be in a filter that was later deleted. The wiki has an article which is anti-TERF, which was updated regularly by then-admin Monadic - so I'd argue that TERFs aren't welcome here. -- RansomTime 10:17, July 28, 2015 (UTC)

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