#19 Revitalizing Fedora Women
Closed: Moved 6 years ago Opened 7 years ago by bee2502.

In the past, Fedora Women has acted as a supportive group to connect and assist women interested in using and and contributing to Fedora. Unfortunately, it is now defunct and we do not have any alternative in it's place.

Link to Fedora Women Page on Fedora wiki : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Women

I was hoping that Diversity team could help revitalize Fedora Women. I am willing to help lead the efforts. However, along with the IRC channel and mailing list, I propose that we should also have a Telegram channel (primary means of communication, if possible) - due to it's ease of communication, wide outreach amongst open source contributors and ease of tracking communications and discussing issues.

Along with following it's earlier mission statement, Fedora Women would also act as -

  • A channel to highlight contributions of women and underrepresented communities in Fedora.
  • Informal feedback channel about diversity and inclusion across different parts of Fedora Project.
  • Provide role models and mentors for newcomers to Fedora community from under represented areas.

I am open to any suggestions about how this channel can be further used to build diversity and inclusion in the community. Also, it would be great if we can have a Fedora Women FAS group, if there isn't one already. However, this is open to discussion.


Metadata Update from @bee2502:
- Issue priority set to: normal (3 -4 weeks)
- Issue tagged with: awareness, meeting, needs feedback, outreach

7 years ago

Metadata Update from @bee2502:
- Issue assigned to bee2502

7 years ago

Metadata Update from @bee2502:
- Assignee reset

7 years ago

Metadata Update from @bee2502:
- Issue assigned to bee2502

7 years ago

Just as an incomplete thought to this point:

I was hoping that Diversity team could help revitalize Fedora Women. I am willing to help lead the efforts. However, along with the IRC channel and mailing list, I propose that we should also have a Telegram channel (primary means of communication, if possible) - due to it's ease of communication, wide outreach amongst open source contributors and ease of tracking communications and discussing issues.

It would be possible to set up a bridge between IRC and a Telegram group, similar to what's being used by the Fedora, LibreOffice, Sugar Labs, and Fedora LATAM communities. See the GitHub repo for more info.

This is a good start and it will help bring in more women and participation for fedora women day.
Can we expand this effort to include more underrepresented group, not just women like LGBT

@jflory7 thanks for the info! We should def do that.

I am open to expanding the effort.
However, if so, do we need a different name then Fedora Women ? I feel that people are already know Fedora Women and it would be easier to spread awareness about it. On the other side, some community members who are non-binary might feel excluded. However, we also need to consider the percentage of such contributors and weigh the pros and cons of whatever we decide.

Based on some comments here and on telegram I'm starting to get worried that the primary objective has been lost. Let me ask this, are we creating 2nd Diversity group, or are we creating Fedora Women group? Women + LGBTQASDFASDFASDF is Diversity.

@rhea - We definitely need a detailed description of the project and the goals. I think @meskarune addresses exactly this issue in IRC channel. Diversity team is to create awarness and promote diversity and inclusion in Fedora community and devise strategies and work towards attaining these goals. FedoraWomen (which also supports non-binary people) acts more like a forum/ support community to provide people from underrepresented groups a safe space to collaborate and make friends.

Here are the insights from the discussion with @meskarune in IRC -

  • Having clear goals for Fedora Women visible to community and especially women is important.
  • Having strict and specific rules for the group and a feedback channel to contact moderators help foster building a safe space for everyone in the group. These resources should be available to all members of the group.
  • Having conflict resolution guidelines and a clear guidelines on what topics are not acceptable is necessary with strict rule enforcements in case of violations.
  • Having active moderators in group is necessary to sustainability - atleast one moderator should be active at all times.
  • Moderators should ensure fairness. For this, having a moderator guidelines document is important. Check out Fedora IRC group for guidelines.
  • Communication between moderators is important.
  • Bans and un-bans in the channels should be logged with nick, reason and date. Talk to Fedora IRC group about this.
  • Existing members engaging with newcomers when the join the group make newcomers feel welcome and included. A simple ‘Hi!’ goes a long way.
  • Outreach and awareness are important with gradual progress from small to big events for on boarding contributors.

[1] https://archwomen.org/wiki/aw-org:irc
[2] https://archwomen.org/wiki/aw-org:conflict_resolution
[3] Women who hack website

Here are the next steps we need to do -

[ ] Research on LinuxChix, WoMoz, Debian Women, Ubuntu Women on community guidelines and moderator guidelines.
[ ] Community Member Guidelines
[ ] Moderator Guidelines
[ ] Feedback channel to moderators ( fedora-women-private mailing list would be ideal here)
[ ] Tool to log violations, bans and un-bans in the channel
[ ] Proposal for Magazine article
[ ] Outreach articles on Community Blog and Magazine
[ ] Fedora Women page wiki gardening to add updated information regarding mission, how to join and who will join, community member guidelines, moderators and moderator guidelines.
[ ] Bridge between IRC channel and Telegram group.

Ubuntu Women conducted a community survey to learn what people expected from the Ubuntu Women project in 2013. Learning from the insights they generated could be useful for us in long term.

Links to the survey results are here -

http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2013/09/ubuntu-women-survey-2013-results-part-1/
http://blog.ubuntu-women.org/2013/10/ubuntu-women-survey-2013-results-part-2/

Findings -

  • Learning about how women can join Ubuntu and about contributions of women to Ubuntu seemed the top interests amongst community.
  • Helping newcomers and women get involved in Ubuntu was something Ubuntu community wished Ubuntu project was doing more of. (more active involvement, than passive outreach)

More concrete suggestions extracted from survey which could be relevant to us in future -

  • Get some of the interviews published in a more widely read Linux magazine or popular website so a wider audience could read them
  • Find more stories about kids and specifically girls and their projects. It is easier to engage kids
  • More marketing in localized regions and work to bring up a program for potential female leaders
  • Making sure images of women were included (and not excluded) in any relevant media.

Sorry for the closed source choice, etherpad is crashing a lot here. Here is a link to updated information about Fedora Women, it's mission, information on who can join and participation guidelines in Fedora women community -

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RafBOxPW0VTJbSm6A1GmucKwxOFpvFD_dcWiFg0m5kQ/edit?usp=sharing

This information will also be updated on Fedora wiki. Please comment and leave your feedback soon as we are publishing Magazine and Community Blog articles about this in next week.

Moderation Guidelines

But you can't have moderators of the only active channels #fedora & #fedora-devel working for Fedora Women. She is not driving only that effort, she is driving the community as whole. Major difference here. We can merely nudge the irc-sig and point out some things we would like, but we can not own that group.

I'll be more than happy to write the moderation guidelines for Fedora Women and communicate it with the irc-sig to spread it to the more public channels. You can throw that and any other moderation stuff at me.
I've seen the doc, and I am strongly against half of it. It misses the main purpose of moderation as community management tool - to grow the community. You don't want to just selectively remove people you don't like, you want to teach them how to behave. Not all of it applies here because it's aimed towards different kind of community, but you can read about that ideology in my article.

Etherpad

Try etherpad.persephone.cloud - it is my server, the data will be safe, and it's in Amsterdam and not NA as everything. Just try it if it works, I'm curious if it is the geographical problem or something else.

@rhea It would be great if you can help us with Moderation Guidelines. However, please open a new etherpad - so that we do not lose the original info from google doc. It would be great if this can be done by Monday as we have outreach articles coming out soon.

re: etherpad I am working with your suggestion now and if all goes well, will port it to etherpad soon.

Feel free to do whatever you want with it, this is the idea: http://rhea-ayase.eu/articles/2017-04/Moderation-guidelines

You don't want to just selectively remove people you don't like, you want to teach them how to behave.

I disagree. This is not fedora women's job. Fedora women is a safe space which wouldn't be a safe space if women are having to hand hold ignorant people to teach them to stop being hurtful to others. I really feel that this job should fall to the rest of fedora community and perhaps fedora diversity.

I do agree that moderator transparency is important, and also having tools to track warnings and bans, as well as an appeals process that is fair to everyone. You can't have a healthy community without over sight and understanding.

It's a safe place, yes, and explaining someone that they should not be an ass before banning them doesn't hurt anyone and helps the community grow the right way. Not women's (members') job, the moderators'.

And this is aimed towards community as whole, not just a single closed off channel for special snowflakes.

@bee2502 I would like more time to check the information about Fedora Women.

After doing some brainstorming and improve the information that is on Fedora Wiki, I think it's really important to discuss about this during our next meeting together with other members. After having their approval/opinions we can publish Magazine and Community Blog articles. I don't think that we should post articles or update the wiki earlier.
Let's give more time to all of us, in order to have a good "product" in the end.

@rhea Etherpad works. Are you done with moderator guidelines ?

I have ported the info on Fedora women here: https://etherpad.persephone.cloud/p/Fedora_Women

Moderator guidelines are still in google doc because it has comments -
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sL2xH7CH1eJmhd1LRDZlLqJhiTh2rvACBFnP9wg0RqE/edit?usp=sharing

@meskarune I agree it should not be the job of community to teach people to behave but an initial warning also might be helpful like @rhea said if it wasn't intentional. Let us decide the exact details in the meeting.

@jonatoni Nothing will go ahead without feedback in meeting and outreach articles will only be published after that. However, this is an agenda item for today's meeting, after I have feedback - I will work on it and post the article.

Discussed in 2017-05-03 meeting.

Where we are now

As a quick refresh, @bee2502 updated the Fedora Women wiki page based on what we had discussed prior in IRC. You can see notes on the proposed changes in the Etherpad. Our next steps are start figuring out what active participation in this community looks like and how we want to bring more organization to Fedora Women.

Some discussed goals

Some ideas, goals, and visions we discussed during the meeting:

  • Ordered steps: Start with common mission for Fedora Women, create community guidelines / organization hierarchy, recruit members, then look into bigger ideas like a mentoring * Collaboration: Work with with other groups / communities like Arch Women or Ubuntu Women
  • Fedora Women Day: Have a way to on-board people at events like Fedora Women Day into Fedora community (to demonstrate an impact)
  • How to get there: We have a mission statement, need to find steps on how to reach it
  • Volunteering opportunity: Newcomers can help assist with Fedora Women day planning (either creating or filing tickets for flyers, creating a badge for attendees, writing blog posts to help promote, etc.)
  • Purpose: Fedora Women should help women get involved, help when they have questions and can ask without feeling embarrassed

Next step

In the meeting, @meskarune was going to put together a short list of ideas for activities or ways people can participate in Fedora Women. These ideas would focus on how people can feel involved with the community. She was going to add her ideas / suggestions to this ticket by the next meeting, and we would discuss it further then.

Tentative due date of 2017 May 17th

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue untagged with: meeting
- Issue set to the milestone: Future releases

7 years ago

@bee2502 @all can we have a dedicated meeting about this so we can discuss further how to revitalize Fedora Women and to follow up with the discussion that happened during the last meeting? Now that FWD is very close I think that this topic it's really important to be discussed.

@jonatoni Do we want to side-table this discussion for either our Flock session or after Flock? I think it's relevant, but it might be hard to get this into a "ready" state before the FWD events (I think we have a lot of things we're trying to do all at once). We should probably start mapping out a rough agenda for the Flock session in #27.

Yep @jflory7 I agree with you, our priority for now is Flock session and FWD, after September we can get back to this ticket.

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue untagged with: needs feedback
- Issue priority set to: by next release (was: normal (3-4 weeks))

7 years ago

+1 for a discussion on this at FLOCK.

Was there any discussion at FLOCK about this?

Discussed in 2017-05-03 meeting.
Where we are now
As a quick refresh, @bee2502 updated the Fedora Women wiki page based on what we had discussed prior in IRC. You can see notes on the proposed changes in the Etherpad. Our next steps are start figuring out what active participation in this community looks like and how we want to bring more organization to Fedora Women.
Some discussed goals
Some ideas, goals, and visions we discussed during the meeting:

Ordered steps: Start with common mission for Fedora Women, create community guidelines / organization hierarchy, recruit members, then look into bigger ideas like a mentoring * Collaboration: Work with with other groups / communities like Arch Women or Ubuntu Women
Fedora Women Day: Have a way to on-board people at events like Fedora Women Day into Fedora community (to demonstrate an impact)
How to get there: We have a mission statement, need to find steps on how to reach it
Volunteering opportunity: Newcomers can help assist with Fedora Women day planning (either creating or filing tickets for flyers, creating a badge for attendees, writing blog posts to help promote, etc.)
Purpose: Fedora Women should help women get involved, help when they have questions and can ask without feeling embarrassed

Next step
In the meeting, @meskarune was going to put together a short list of ideas for activities or ways people can participate in Fedora Women. These ideas would focus on how people can feel involved with the community. She was going to add her ideas / suggestions to this ticket by the next meeting, and we would discuss it further then.
Tentative due date of 2017 May 17th

It will be great if we can have a virtual hack session about this soon. We need to start planning for FWD 2018. Before that, it would be great to fix some goals for Fedora Women and plan the Fedora Women's Day events and other related activities to support those goals.

Metadata Update from @bee2502:
- Issue tagged with: Hacksession

6 years ago

Issue #66 tracks the discussion for Fedora Womens Day 2018. I am closing this ticket for now. We can reopen it if there are new inputs later on.

Metadata Update from @bee2502:
- Issue untagged with: Hacksession

6 years ago

Metadata Update from @bee2502:
- Issue close_status updated to: Moved
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

6 years ago

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue set to the milestone: Fedora 29 (to Oct. 2018) (was: Future releases)

6 years ago

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