This is the gobby related to the event: https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/25/ Debian Diversity Round Table Speaker: Rhonda D'Vine Type: BoF (45 mins) At the end of last year’s debconf I was approached if I wouldn’t like to start a group within Debian for LGBTIQ+ people, to hang out with and exchange ideas how to increase diversity and acceptance within the project. This session is meant as a get-together to discuss where we are, what we might want to gain out of the group and what we can do to make that happen. ---- (larjona will paste here comments or info that appear in the IRC room #debconf17-rex ) (somebody attending (non remote) please take notes! si * about 25 attendants (confirmed) \o/ pro's and cons of having private/backchannel forums Pro: builds community. "check your priviliges" / awareness of being priviliged I was at Isle of Wight Pride a couple of weeks back - never seen so many Trans flags before, but they were nearly all worn by young people. It has been noted that Debian is mostly an aging group of people. --- BoF - 2017-08-10 - 17:00 EDT Rhonda: Important point from Tuesday was raised by marga and should make the team less focussed on how to deal with bad things when they happen and more to focus on making it clear that we're welcoming and inclusive. Enrico: When we last met there was the idea of creating a contact point which I quite liked. Anti-harassment is for individual incidents, but a diversity contact could be to report structural issues confidentially. There could be a team which works with the reporter to be constructive and to assist. Because it's structural the reporter may want to remain anonymous and the report confidential to avoid outing people; but the content could be publishable, allowing the team to be an anonymising proxy which could digest and re-report to the project in general. Rhonda: To some degree that's still a focus on noticing when something bad happens; but I'd like to gather some ideas on how to make the project more welcoming and to make it clear that the Project is trying to increase its diversity. Jonathan: The diversity logo is nice Rhonda: It has been placed into the public domain to I will upload it to spreadshirt and print t-shirts with it. Marga: Back when debian women started; what helped getting the project going was simply to have something to do (in this case, creating the website). Having an activity which people can participate with and has a low barrier of entry makes it possible to get people into the community who might otherwise not come. People already in the community but not feeling included may not be invited quite in the same way. The low barrier of entry can help get more diversity. Rhonda: Okay, what kind of activities could that be? IRC training sessions, mentoring, things like that? When we were sitting at the women's table and speaking about what was going on with women in Debian, it turned around to how to make it "lightly"?? again. I'm not quite sure if perhaps we could join efforts in some of these areas. Clara: In the last few days I was at a lot of bofs and were looking for ways to get new people (more diverse groups) into the various Debian efforts. It's important to get new people in, open for coding/non-coding, women/men/non-binary, sexualities, cultures, it doesn't matter. This could be the main message we need to transmit. I am a newcomer and I had a lot of problems trying to find out what I could do, and how I could help. I would have liked to find my place in a way. Enrico: About how to make things more welcoming: I think diversity is 'broad' and I would find it difficult to make an initiative for 'diversity' generically. I would suggest reaching out to people in identified minorities and ask them what they would like. Lesley: If we can help initiatives which are already ongoing and see where they might be using language which might, for example, turn people off; and thus help in that background role rather than necessarily trying to be in a foreground role. If people are finding that they don't feel welcomed because the language is wrong then we can help at that level rather than having programs to reach out to people perhaps. Pearl: Could you clarify. Do I understand that you're thinking that Clara's suggestion might be putting the cart before the horse, or do you feel we should be explaining ourselves first? Lesley: No, more that there're already initiatives to get new people within Debian and thus we could be there as a resource in order to help people make those initiatives work and that everybody is welcomed by them. So that people don't find "Join Debian, it's a great group of men" is problematic where 'Join Debian, it's a great group of people' might be less so. Karen: There's a lot of language which signals different things. I've recently been surprised, there's a list of keywords which ??? maintains, and every time we publish materials we cross-check against that list and sometimes we've deliberately used words which read more 'masculine' to reach a particular audience, but sometimes we disover we have inadvertently used non-inclusive langauge. Lesley: Yes, it's very easy to use language which doesn't include some people. Enrico: Attention to language has been brought into Debian already, so these suggestions would be decently received. Lesley: The more we can do this as a rolling process, the more easy this is for people to accept. Uppity people complaining about nothing from their positions of privilege... Pearl: How do you get the language information out to the public? You're working toward helping Debian be more inclusive and diverse. I've been addressed as 'Monsieur' before now. What is it about me that makes people use that language? is there some other word to use to address someone without making someone feel misgendered? Enrico: Clara, your point about working with the welcome team was interesting. There's the idea that the welcome team will point people to others they can work or get along with. The diversity team could provide contact information to the welcome team to pass that on to new people. Clara: I think that'd be good. If you have a contact when you're a women coming to a team of mostly men then it's a step you have to take. Having someone addressing you personally is really good. A welcome page for "who can I contact" would be very welcome. Of course people won't always fit into the categories we provide so we do need a general contact point. We don't want to exclude people we've simply not thought of or just don't know. The place where people can contact if they have problems should also be part of the welcoming process. Lesley: Contacts are also good because it immediately shows that the group you are joining is at least somewhat diverse which helps to reduce the "only person there" effect; but a general contact is useful. An acronym for diversity just with gender and sexual diversity becomes enormous. Enrico: Does anyone in the room know of the diversity statement? FX: Room raises hands. That should set the expectations for diversity with respect to the project and this could very much be advertised more. And a group of people dealing with diversity could also deal with the diversity statement; either showing the statement more, or perhaps making it clear when it's not being upheld. Lesley: It's not very visible right now. People new to the project can't necessarily find it. It should be mentioned early on in the welcoming process. Daniel: Perhaps as one of the links you see at the bottom of the webpage. Enrico: Pushing the statement in the page footers, the NM process, etc. good idea. There was the idea that we could ask people to sign it like we do the DMUP etc, perhaps pushing that might be interesting but we lack drivers for that right now. Marga: So we're not asking people to sign the statement? Enrico/Jonathan: Not yet. Lesley: It seems like an obvious thing to at least make people read it and say "yes I read this" Enrico: There's some discussion needed because "what do we do with developers who haven't signed it?" So what do we do for developers who didn't vote for it, or who joined since. Lots of little details, but it's not clear what to do. joostvb: So there's consensus that we want it? ?????Stuff happened, Daniel's fingers fell off Clare: We could also include it on the 'what is debian' wiki pages. Rhonda: it's linked from the code of conduct. lesley: I did have to dig for it a little. Enrico/Rhonda: had a website discussion. Lesley: Getting the CoC and DS linked from every page seems like a not unreasonable thing to do. Daniel: Yes in smaller projects it's often front-and-centre like 'about us' etc. Lesley: This can be pushed as a positive. This is how we expect people to behave, this is how the group is. Alongside we can then have the 'how to deal if someone doesn't behave this way' Enrico: OKCupid started requiring people to abide by a small CoC. They quoted research saying that 90% of people would not do bad things if they've said they won't do bad things. I'm interested in seeing how this goes. Blogged by OKCupid two days ago or so. https://theblog.okcupid.com/because-youre-better-than-a-dick-pic-3b9e5b63ae6 Clara: We're talking in part about too many wiki pages, and too many pages in general. What is the difference between the social contract at the CoC? Jonathan: The CoC is for people who interact with and form part of Debian, but the social contract is about how Debian then interacts with the rest of the world. Enrico: Who would be on the diversity team? What would be the resources needed? Jonathan: I thought there was already such a team, isn't there? Rhonda: There is‽ Jonathan: I assumed those in the #debian-diversity channel was the team. Rhonda: A fair amount of people hanging out there wouldn't object to being called the 'diversity team' but they should still be asked first if they're prepared to be officially called that. marga: It all depends on what the team is doing. If it's talking on IRC it's one thing, but if we have a proper goal then it's another entirely. Enrico: I have found it useful, several times, at least as DAM, to have official contact emails that I can use to reach teams. So whenever there's a team there's a contact email address. Rhonda: Does it have to be email? Enrico: Yes because I want to send encrypted GPG mail, and it should possibly be confidential because as a DAM I may need to say "X happened, I need your opinion". There could perhaps even be a DPL delegation. Daniel: we need to set some ACTIONs. Jonathan: "Anyone who considers themselves any kind of minority can join in, share stories, whatever" Otherwise general sharing of experiences etc would be good. Things that are working, things which need to be improved, etc. Video, audio, easy, realtime. Enrico: That seems to overlap with the welcome team very nicely. Rhonda: I don't want to appoint people who are not here and won't be able to speak up for themselves. Code of condact and diversity statement more visible Ways in which we can support other groups within the project (welcoming team and others) Who can work with the web team to make the statements more visible - Clara: the welcome team could help Contact confidential that dam can be confident they can send queries to (dam or people in uncomfortable positions) Who can set up diversity@debian.org or some other contact and driving getting it set up? - Ronda can try to speak with a few people who might want to sit behind that address larjona: I had in mind to try to gather a group of people to review the *content* of the most visited pages in the website (particularly, the homepage) in order to include some links or info that projects a more inclusive, welcoming image of Debian (the community). There is a bug about the main sentence in the homepage, but got no proposals.... And since I consider myself mostly an ally, not in an underrepresented group, I'd like some more people from underrepresented group to review the language and the ideas and propose some improvements. Maybe this can be one task for the diversity group, if you agree. #862980 [n|⎈| ] [www.debian.org] Update the homepage, to show the social face of the project, and be more attractive for newcomers -- Contact dsilvers@digital-scurf.org (Daniel Silverstone // Kinnison) and he'll try his best to find people to assist with that. For example, Lesley is prepared to 'back up' this activity. larjona: also, there is the question about if making Debian-women evolve into diversity or maintain both groups separate. I have no clear opinion on that. -- So far discussions have suggested that they will remain separate to some extent, thought the diversity team can provide support to Debian-Women if it's desired (and vice-versa). thanks! daniel: Steve McIntyre is part of the web team and is agitating to make big structural changes on how the web is constructed and this may be a good opportunity to get him to make footer changes etc as part of a single large change. larjona is in the web team, too, but we need specific proposals. -- Clara will notice this later when she reviews the Gobby, thanks. Lesley and Clara note that language changes, and that different languages write in different ways. Particularly non-english can be problematic for the project, even though we speak lots of languages, our project is, in general, in English. Clara gave examples about German language being "odd" and evolving over time. Enrico: What about a 'Bits from the diversity team' ? These kinds of things are read a lot. Perhaps we could write one about what's going on, how people could get involved, etc. Rhonda: Yes, after the email address is created; this could be a way to announce things and get the ball rolling. Clara: Also once there's an official team the team should be put on the wiki page for teams. This is a good resource for people looking for something to do. Enrico: In the welcome team meeting when Clara pointed out the difference between the goal of the team and the tasks for the team. E.g. the goal is to make sure that Debian can represent all diversities. And this is not actionable. But the tasks of the team are things which people reading the page can already start doing (E.g. check for discriminating language in web pages) There should be both the mission/vision; and things that anyone can start doing as they read the team page. Clara: Some teams put easy tasks, medium tasks etc. Easier to get involved. Enrico: Glossaries -- from an educational point of view. Marga: What would it contain? Enrico: To explain for people who don't have experience what the subcommunities are. To explain what, for example, the common jargon used to talk about issues. The difference between gender assigned at birth and gender that one feels, presents as, identifies with, etc. Difference between gender and sex. Lesley: Lots of this can be links to other places. Jonathan: This is a good point, we need links out otherwise our information will be stale. Lesley: To encourage people to be involved in their own education rather than resting it all on people who are already part of minorities. ACTION; Everyone to get on the IRC channel, and to follow up there.