Mark wrote:
Perhaps it shows my political leanings, but I
don't really like that
approach. Certainly we should have all opinions represented, and if
certain opinions are only represented by women, then we should have
women represented. But we should represent all opinions, not based on
simple categorizations like gender, race, etc.---you can't assume that
someone has certain personality or characteristics because they're
female, or male, or hispanic, or whatnot (certainly most people I know
offline don't follow the stereotypes, and many fit 'opposite' roles
better). As far as wikipedia goes, things like inclusionist vs.
deletionist, pro- vs. anti-banning, etc., are all more relevant
distinctions by at least an order of magnitude.
So if there's a woman on the arbitration committee (or multiple women),
it should be because of who they are, not just because we wanted to
throw a token woman on there. Which, fortunately, is how Wikipedia
normally works---I often can't tell if someone is male or female until
it gets mentioned long after I've interacted with them for a while, and
there's some surprises (for whatever reason, I thought that evercat was
female, and that anthere was male).
Generally I agree. I don't want to see a token woman either (or a token
anyone else). But I think Wikipedia has suffered in the past from an
invisibility of women, it's only recently that I've noticed more women
around, and I think the (possible) lack of female input in the arbitration
committee is a shame. But that said, it's not something I'm going to bang
on about.
And, FWIW, we allowed *everyone* on a committee who
wanted to be on
one. So at the moment the reason there are no women is because no women
volunteered. If someone wants to volunteer, male or female, we could
use an extra member to keep the numbers at the right level, so talk to
Mr. Wales asap. =]
At least two women, Angela and I, /were/ available for the arbitration
committee. Both of us expressed a preference for mediation but an
availability for arbitration. Jimbo went with our preference and that's
fine, but since Alex pointed out the apparently all male arbitration
committee I've thought that this is an issue that should be addressed if
possible. If UC is firm on leaving the committee this seems a good
opportunity. Any woman out there want a job? No pay, lots of hassle, but
the potential for an occasional warm fuzzy feeling inside.
--sannse