Hi all -
Currently, Gendergap-l only has two active moderators - in the past, we've usually had at least three. After talking with Liz, we'd both like to bring on at least one additional active moderator. Please drop us a note if you'd be interested in taking on such a role. It's worth knowing ahead of time that at times moderating the list can involve significant emotional labor; that said, moderating the list also allows you the chance to more actively help make positive change in the environment of the list.
In the past, many productive discussions have occurred on this list, but over time the number of such discussions has fallen greatly, and a lot of valuable contributors now either contribute far less frequently than they used to, or have just outright unsubscribed. We think that a lot of this is related to how the list has been (or rather, mostly how it has barely been) moderated in the past. Historically, there's been a lot of reluctance among mods, both past and present, to take aggressive mod actions - this is a Wikimedia list, and the background that comes with that generally stigmatizes the idea of significant moderation.
We feel like the reluctance on the part of Gendergap mods to strongly actively moderate in a way that tries to ensure that the list is a safe space for contributors has been a significant error - a balance has to be maintained between liberty and hospitality (to borrow some terminology from Sumana's keynote at WikiConference USA [1],) and we don't feel like we've gotten that balance right in the past. To be clear, since I'm the longest standing gendergap mod (besides for Sue, who generally doesn't take part in moderation discussions,) a lot of what I mean in the former sentence is that I have personally made significant errors that have contributed substantially to the general feeling that this list is not a safe space for contributors.
Moving forward, we'd like to change how we moderate the list in order to try to make it a list where contributors consistently feel safe in contributing. Over the next few days, the mods will be having an internal discussion about how we think we can best go about doing this, and we'd also like to start a discussion on the broader list about how we can best go about ensuring that this is a safe and productive list while staying in line with the general values of the Wikimedia movement.
This email is intentionally sparse on details - mostly because we haven't talked amongst ourselves enough to have a solid grasp of what the details will look like, and also because we don't feel we can fully form a new moderation policy without feedback from list members. There are a couple things we're already more or less sure of. The moderation won't be draconian; we understand that everyone makes mistakes and think that most mistakes represent learning opportunities - we aren't looking for reasons to kick people off the list. At the same time, members whose behavior consistently (or in some circumstances, presence) on the list makes other members feel unsafe or we feel are inhibitory to open, safe, productive discussion occurring will not remain on the list. As list mods, we haven't followed the list as closely as we should have in the past; we will be in the future.
And, as a major change, we will also be adopting an explicit set of community guidelines, which we haven't had in the past. Within the pretty immediate future, we'll be posting a starting set of guidelines on an appropriate wiki that will incorporate our thoughts, the thoughts of list members, and best practices adopted from other groups (likely including significant content from Geek Feminism's example statement of purpose for communities including men - [2].) Once we have draft guidelines up, we'll be inviting all list members to contribute to them, although the mod team (including any new mods we recruit) will have the final say over their contents. They'll also only be guidelines - we won't take action over everything that violates their letter, and equally, we may take action on some things that aren't included in the guidelines as they come up - we just intend them to serve as a basic template for moving forward.
Best,
Kevin Gorman
For the moderators