[diversity-talk] NYC local disagreement

[Steve Singer]

On Fri, 28 Jun 2013, alyssa wright wrote:

> Further, it's not clear to me how we can have theoretical conversations about anti-harassment policies for conferences with any integrity if we're not going to support best practices at the local level.
>
> Alyssa.

You have need to keep a few things in mind

1. Building a diverse community means trying to find ways to be inclusive of 
people from all types of social and cultural backgrounds. 
An acceptable and normal way for two people of a particular 
background in new-york city to discuss something might be considered very 
culturally inappropriate in some parts of Asia, or even other local parts of 
the US.  I am very nervous about trying to enforce any particular 
external cultural values on a local community.  I realize that some 
behaviours are unacceptable anywhere but I have much more faith in local 
groups who meet in person being able to deal with these behaviours than 
I do in some stranger from 'the internet'  policing stuff.

2. The issue of local group sovereignty came up recently in a different 
context on a different list. Different groups related to OSM stuff form for 
different purposes. If I want to form group with 2 neighbors to walk around 
my town , while doing jumping jacks and mapping bike racks, then we are free 
to do this.  OSMF doesn't have any right to tell us how we should organize our 
group.

I'd like to see this list come up with recommendations and best practices 
that local groups can choose to implement to increase their diversity and 
inclusiveness but I get very uncomfortable with trying to enforce policies on 
local groups.

To be clear, my comments above are addressing issues related to local groups 
not to OSMF sanctioned working groups or conferences.


Steve







>
> On Jun 28, 2013, at 9:03 AM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
>
>> For the record, the local meetup in NYC has no connection to
>> OpenStreetMap Foundation.  I'm not aware of any local meeting with
>> official standing, be it a Meetup, a Mappy Hour, Mapping Party, etc.
>>
>> I think we're all better off, and more welcoming as an international
>> community, If local, personal disagreements can be kept local.  And
>> settled there.
>>
>> Emailing personal grievances to a wider list while writing from an
>> "angry, hurt, and upset space" seems likely to extend the cooling off
>> time required and delay any potential discussion.
>
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