Moderation and the future of Gendergap-L - Gendergap

27 Jun 2014

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

[1] http://wikiconferenceusa.org/wiki/Sumana_Harihareswara_keynote
[2]
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Statement_of_purpose/Communities_includi…