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

[Derick Rethans]

On Sat, 27 Sep 2014, Simon Poole 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.

<snip>
> 
> 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.

Actually, this is not what I started the discussion with. I started it 
to see whether we could do something to increase diversity.

However, both your point 1 and 2 here, point towards one thing: 
hositility. It is certainly not aimed to one group, but you would 
probably agree with me that most mailinglists are not happy friendly 
communities. Not only women leave because of this, but men as well. 
There are plenty of well known people that unsubscribed from the 
mailinglist because of their continuing twaddle.

> 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.

Yes, but it shouldn't stop there. We should *encourage* other people 
here as well, and being able to call them out on bad behaviour - sexist 
or something else - as well. And I would be perfectly happy putting in 
effort to set-up a way where this can be done anonmously. Say f.e. in 
another WG.

cheers,
Derick