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

Sat Sep 27 18:00:55 UTC 2014

Hello Simon,

First of all, I want to thank you for your post because I believed it is
well balanced.
I think at least in the case of females, there are two different
problematic on the low numbers:

   - Image perception (as a geeky, nerdy male topic)
   - Some very small but still non negligible sexist "act" once you are in

Again, as I pointed out before, I have no idea on how best solve the two
issues but we can work on correcting the image little by little. Also I
really want to reiterate that OSM tends to be fairly inclusive overall and
I never had much problems except for some really stupid behavior mostly
limited by a very very limited set of individuals,

Also, as Frederik pointed out in a separate thread, I don't believe in
affirmative actions like enforcing parity at the board etc... I think this
is counter productive and pretty much counter democratic in many ways. On
the other hand, communication like outreach to a specific "minority" is
eminently more acceptable in my eyes.

Also I again want to recenter the thread on "actual" "minorities" rather
than just the topic of sexism. By "actual", I mean we have a limited amount
of people of a certain specific category while their representation in the
world is much higher (i.e. 3% female as opposed to half of human
population).

On 27 September 2014 04:34, Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch> wrote:

>
> 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
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > osmf-talk mailing list
> > osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> osmf-talk mailing list
> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/attachments/20140927/fe9e96fe/attachment.html>