[Osmf-talk] Reaching out and diversity (Was: Re: AGM and board elections)

[Simon Poole]

IMHO we have two intertwined subjects and some are making unwarranted
conclusions, if not to say large leaps of faith in the arguments.

1) harassment of minorities and other groups, in particular females, and
specifically female OSM participants that are publicly known.

It would be naive to assume that this doesn't happen, participating in
OSM doesn't automatically make us better human beings and given that we
have reports by victims, we can safely assume that this is an issue. And
while an overwhelming part of the OSM community chooses to remain
anonymous, we have all the interest in the world for it to be safe for
contributors that choose to come forward publicly.

We need to make clear that such behaviour is not acceptable and stop it
when it happens and I believe at least in current times we have done a
reasonably good job of that. What is potentially missing is an OSM wide
place to report such incidents and get help, and maybe providing
something like that should be taken up by the board.

2) low participation of females in OSM. This is what the discussion
started out with. At some point it was implied that (1) was the main
reason for this, aka: larger numbers of females join OSM, are harassed,
and then leave.

However this isn't supported by any of the available studies, statistics
nor by logic. Only a very very very small number of contributors
regardless of gender ever interact with other mappers, mailing lists
etc, nearly all remain essentially completely anonymous both in name and
gender, the opportunity for large scale misbehaviour simply isn't there.

In a way it would be far simpler if the statement was true, because it
would be relatively easy to address. Everything we currently know
however points to that we simply have a very low influx of female new
contributors to start with (this is naturally true for other minorities
too, and the similar arguments likely apply).

As I said right at the beginning of the discussion: I'm convinced that
this is due to that OSM is perceived as a typical male hobby with a
slightly nerdy angle to it, to the point of implying that other genders
might not be welcome and that (1) might be a problem.

Or to put it differently: fixing the issue is mainly an image marketing
activity, unluckily a very difficult one and likely slow to show
success. And undoing the damage (I'm not blaming anybody for this,
getting an article to come out right is an art, it is just a wonderful
example of the image we convey to the outside) an in principle harmless
article like:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/18/uk-foundation-ebola-maps-idUKKBN0HD0ER20140918

does is extremely difficult.

All good things start off with our personal behaviour and I believe we
should start off by reviewing which image of OSM we are personally
conveying to the outside.


Simon

Am 27.09.2014 11:35, schrieb Jaak Laineste (Nutiteq):
> 
> On 27 Sep 2014, at 02:16, Steve Doerr <doerr.stephen at gmail.com
> <mailto:doerr.stephen at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>> On 26/09/2014 23:33, Emilie Laffray wrote:
>>
>>> First of all, I want to say I agree with you and I could probably
>>> cite a few occasions where some comments or behaviors have been
>>> inappropriate. I am going to refrain from naming and shaming because
>>> it won't help and it will only stir more conversations.
>>
>> It *will* help, and stirring more conversations is precisely what we
>> need, if there is indeed a problem. You don't actually need to 'name
>> and shame': at least in the first instance you can present anonymized
>> anecdotes.
> 
> I honestly have the same problem. I try to read this thread and I still
> have little idea what it is talking about. Probably I’m naive, stupid,
> having different cultural background from the soviet chauvinist
> education, do not read posts carefully enough, blind to something. I’m
> afraid that I can be even accidental sexist, with nobody mentioning.
> There might be others like me. I tried to skim through some articles
> pointed before, but could not really link them to OSM as I know it. I
> understand that some of us are too tired of it, are afraid of it etc,
> but maybe some others who also do know well the issue would please add a
> few specific examples of diversity issues in OSM? These could be be even
> made up, just realistic enough in OSM context.
> 
> Jaak
> 
> 
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