[Diversity-talk] Notes posted on DISC, thoughts on research

[Mikel Maron]

Hey all

Finally got around to posting information about the DISC and our recent meeting to the OSMF wiki: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Diversity_and_Inclusion_Special_Committee

I also was chatting with Martin Dittus, who has done a lot of research on HOT http://martindittus.info/, for his insight on how to approach the survey work. Thought I'd share his thoughts.

> I don’t have quite the right specialisation for this, but can offer some general reflections based on the above. Regarding filling in gaps, a) Surveys. Might be worth to simply review what old & recent surveys are available, and (if you want to run your own) how they phrased these kinds of questions. I imagine Yu-wei might have good perspectives on survey design if needed - her approach might actually already be described in the paper. b) there is of course survivorship bias there in any such survey - it won’t tell us why people dropped out. For that I’d recommend more ethnographic approaches, people who’ve accompanied the community and have seen/heard stories.  C) generally I suspect that a lot of the work that is being asked for has already been done, and it’s simply not been collated and given visibility. It might be worthwhile to eg review all the documents linked in that Diversity wiki page above and see what kind of recommendations the authors make. Broadly speaking I suspect the committee’s time might be well spent not trying to reproduce the most recent stats, but instead simply finding succinct articulations of known specific issues; ie a kind of visibility & strategy-setting agenda 

This echoes a lot of the thoughts during our first meetings of the DISC -- there's a lot existing to draw on, and what's the most we can make with it.

-Mikel

* Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron