Wikimedia LGBT+/Wikimedia Conference 2017

Wikimedia Conference 2017, WMLGBT+ representative report from Fæ

Thursday late afternoon, 30 March 2017

Set up logistics of having a Commons session to feed into strategy workshops, which seemed a gap in the strategy track of conference planning.
Informal discussions over dinner with various representatives, Serbia, Norway, WMF research, Mexico. Interesting informal discussion of the issue of 'forgotten histories' and whether oral histories, such as exist for LGBT+ history, should be encouraged as part of Wikimedia's mission to collect the sum of human knowledge.

Friday Fæ (Walking Dead teeshirt) and others in a strategy break-out.

Reached out to the Commons Village pump for more materials for a session and updated the conference email list. The session proved popular, and covered a range of strategic issues for Commons with a view of a future Commons in 15 years, see Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Sources/Commons_in-person_discussion_at_the_Wikimedia_Conference.
Arranged LGBT+ user group meetup. Due to conflicts with many thematic meetings in the same window, this ended up being very late, 9.30 pm, so did not work out.
Lots of smaller discussions where the LGBT+ user group was part of the background, such as discussion with WM Norway chair.

Saturday Diversity and Inclusion - "Everybody feels welcome and safe", part of the strategic stream discussions on Sunday.

Ran two LGBT related workshop sessions - "Lost History" and "Supporting Illegal or Persecuted Minorities". These were later emailed in to the strategic process.The basis of these sessions were the absence of reliable sources for LGBT+ related events in countries before decriminalization, and the difficulties in supporting contributions on LGBT+ topics within countries with no 'progressive' policies, remain unresolved for Wikipedia projects.
Discussion with Jane Darnell on relationship between trans and GenderGap. Jane suggested exploring a SPARQL wikidata query for Women in Red sub list for trans people based on WikiData. Among ideas for better management of wiki-cultures, the importance of the word, and concept, of 'respectful' treatment of living people. Approached the Women in Red project on-wiki for more information. This later worked out, and is a nice outcome on the English Wikipedia for lists of trans, intersex and genderqueer missing biographies.
Informal review with Ting Chen about the WMF harassment strategy and the separate issue peculiar to German Wikipedia culture, being a reason for LGBT+ related policies being stale.
Discussion with the new user group for Sri Lanka, they have had few events so far and are very small. They were unaware of the legal issues for LGBT+ people in their country, homosexuality remaining a criminal act, but were very aware of the LGBT+ attacks in Bangladesh. Later in the weekend I suggested that approaching the Colombo Pride organizers might be a good source of interesting photographs.
Discussion with the Nepal user group representative revealed that they had attempted to have an LGBT+ editathon but there was a lack of interest from the Blue Diamond Society. Unsure what lessons to learn, though it may help if past case studies of member's editathons or photography releases have helped LGBT+ related organizations improve the quality of their presence on Wikipedia or elsewhere.
At the party, discussion with AfroCrowd http://www.afrocrowd.org, interesting to consider possible parallels between running editathons by black people for black people, and other minorities groups, where knowing everyone in the room is one of us, may make a real difference to the safe space.
Discussed the benefits of a LGBT+ user group with no bureaucracy with board members of two long term European chapters.

Sunday Finally a chance to see more of Berlin after the conference, on Martin Rulsch's quirky walking tour.

Informal but intense discussion with the two reps from Wikimedia Taiwan, creating interest in the possibility of doing more to document the transition of the country to legalizing same-sex marriage, using cases of photography drives to capture the lobbying and first marriages. This was followed up after the conference (using Telegram), with interest on how good quality trans and genderqueer free education materials may be better supported by Wiki Education.
Creating the statement on Diversity and Inclusion resulted in a top level strategic goal of 'Everybody feels welcome and safe'. This avoids complexity of lists in a diversity statement and makes a warm approach for 2030. The example of safety and feeling welcome for LGBT+ users was a well used case example during the discussions.
Arranged an interesting LGBT+ related interview, which is currently planned for the WMF blog, this is under informal press embargo, pending agreeing format and a final release.
Inspired by several lengthy discussions in person with Freddy2001, gave me a new insight into the perception of issues with the systems and cultures on different language Wikipedias. As a result a nice outcome has been a proposal for gender-neutral language for policies on Wikimedia Commons, and an on-going RfC for the same on the English Wikipedia. Other languages are highly likely to be more technically problematic where there are no non-gendered alternative terms or pronouns, and no potentially widely acceptable solutions.
An unexpected late outcome has been the result of seeing how so many users took advantage of a Telegram group during the conference. We have now set up a Telegram LGBT+ group, and added this to the LGBT+ communications panel navigation bar on Meta. Please join in by clicking the link and downloading the free and non commercial mobile phone app.

--Fæ (talk) 22:04, 10 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Conference 2017, WMLGBT+ representative report from Freddy2001

Thursday afternoon, 30 March 2017

After my arrival in Berlin, I attended one of the latest sessions of the Leaning Days, which was about making decisions together. In this session, I learned when which tool fits best for finding a solution together in a specific situation.
Discussions and got to know with other participants of the conference at dinner.

Friday, 31 March 2017

Start together of the WMCON.
Attended a track about requesting grants at Wikimedia Foundation.
Some conversations about our user group, one question which was asked very often was how we can accomplish the difficulties of a non-local user group: The language and cultural barriers between the members as well as the time difference which makes only asynchronous communication possible.
Discussion about a photo project of WMSE where they worked only with LGBT models. One outcome of the project was for example the image in article ‘Arm’ on the english wikipedia, but also in LGBT related articles like ‘Breast binding’. They could imagine to engage in more projects like this.
Some discussions at lunch about small communities, which do have LGBT editors, but no project for working on articles.
Attended a track about how to Create and manage Projects. Outcomes of this track: The most important points are to assign the roles in the project, to have a time plan and a to-do list.
Attended a track about the Wikimedia blog and social media accounts. (Who is actually responsible for our facebook page?) Outcomes of this track: Post ¼ stuff that you need for your projects and ¾ stuff that makes your page interesting and draws attention to your projects.

Saturday, 1 April 2017

Arranged a Wikimedia LGBT+ meetup with User:Fae, but it was latish in the schedule, hence it was a very small meetup within the representatives of Wikimedia LGBT+.
Chat with a person, who works in a programmers group, in which they work on LGBT issues.
Chats about how to engage new editors for the Wikimedia Projects and how we can become more welcoming.
Hanging out with other (young) participants.

Sunday, 2 April 2017

Attended ‘How to grow a user group’
Some discussions about dealing with gender neutral pronouns in other languages. English has a big benefit with having the ‘singular they’, a lot of other languages have no comparable pronouns or use gendered nouns.
While some chats about the gender gap, I recognized again, that it covers only women and is not about “non-male persons”.
End of the WMCON

Monday, 3 April 2017

Joined a city tour through berlin.
Departure back home from Berlin

-- Freddy2001 ^talk 21:34, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]