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Posted to dev@diversity.apache.org by Myrle Krantz <my...@apache.org> on 2019/06/19 04:25:36 UTC

Re: Results of the 2016 diversity survey at Apache

[moving to dev@diversity]

I spent some time thinking about this overnight.  (I had trouble sleeping.
Which is quite rare for me.)

It's going to be more subtle than "people who were excluded" of course.
People self-select out of places where they don't feel welcome.  But
finding people who *didn't* join a community is difficult.  Even if you
solve that problem determining whether someone really didn't join because
they felt unwelcome or because they weren't going to join anyways and
needed a reason to explain their inaction will be difficult.

What might be easier is to look at duration of involvement.  Volunteers
generally have a finite time-period of active involvement before they
withdraw their efforts (best case they have more than one such stretch of
active involvement : o).  People who feel like they are welcome and belong
will have a longer duration of involvement than those who don't.  So we
could look at it both from a high-level/numbers point of view and a
low-level/anecdotal point of view.  Do women/minority groups have a shorter
average period of active involvement than others?  Pick a woman/minority
group member who stopped activity after a short involvement and ask them
about their experiences.  Maybe they started a new job and just didn't have
time anymore.  Or maybe the tone of discussion on the list left them
feeling unsafe.  Or maybe their life priorities changed.  Or maybe they
didn't feel like they could contribute at the level required for the
project. (and so on.)

Wdyt?

Best,
Myrle

On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 9:03 PM Daniel Shahaf <d....@daniel.shahaf.name>
wrote:

> Myrle Krantz wrote on Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:30 +00:00:
> > The survey provides an incomplete picture and the data is imperfect. In
> > addition, we need to find ways to think about diversity that do justice
> > to the international nature of our foundation and our projects.
>
> I've mentioned it on private lists but I'll repeat it here: being an
> email-centered culture, our social bugs are probably different than
> those of traditional corporations.  For example, it would be practically
> impossible for us to discriminate against bearded people even if we
> _wanted_ to, while a PMC could easily be exclusive towards people who
> don't have GitHub accounts.
>
> > But this survey is at least an excellent argument for seeking more
> > data and a deeper understanding.
>
> I would suggest to seek case studies: accounts by specific people who
> were/are excluded.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Daniel
> [please Cc]
>

Re: Results of the 2016 diversity survey at Apache

Posted by Alex Harui <ah...@adobe.com.INVALID>.
Apologies if I’m off-topic here, but have folks considered trying to put together essentially a customer satisfaction survey to be given out at non-ASF conferences?  I don't go to any conferences these days, but I think some of you do.  I wonder if there could be some prize you could win for returning the survey.

SurveyMonkey has some templates: https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/customer-satisfaction-survey-template/?ut_source=mp&ut_source2=customer-satisfaction-survey-templates&ut_source3=inline&ut_ctatext=Preview%2520template

The survey maybe should start with Brand Awareness questions 
https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/measure-brand-awareness-build-brand-power/

which would be more like:

1) Have you heard of the Apache Software Foundation?
2) If so, rate the ASF
3) Write down first impressions
4) Have you contributed to the ASF?
5) Do you still contribute to the ASF?
6) If not, why not?

Just a thought,
-Alex

On 6/18/19, 9:26 PM, "Myrle Krantz" <my...@apache.org> wrote:

    [moving to dev@diversity]
    
    I spent some time thinking about this overnight.  (I had trouble sleeping.
    Which is quite rare for me.)
    
    It's going to be more subtle than "people who were excluded" of course.
    People self-select out of places where they don't feel welcome.  But
    finding people who *didn't* join a community is difficult.  Even if you
    solve that problem determining whether someone really didn't join because
    they felt unwelcome or because they weren't going to join anyways and
    needed a reason to explain their inaction will be difficult.
    
    What might be easier is to look at duration of involvement.  Volunteers
    generally have a finite time-period of active involvement before they
    withdraw their efforts (best case they have more than one such stretch of
    active involvement : o).  People who feel like they are welcome and belong
    will have a longer duration of involvement than those who don't.  So we
    could look at it both from a high-level/numbers point of view and a
    low-level/anecdotal point of view.  Do women/minority groups have a shorter
    average period of active involvement than others?  Pick a woman/minority
    group member who stopped activity after a short involvement and ask them
    about their experiences.  Maybe they started a new job and just didn't have
    time anymore.  Or maybe the tone of discussion on the list left them
    feeling unsafe.  Or maybe their life priorities changed.  Or maybe they
    didn't feel like they could contribute at the level required for the
    project. (and so on.)
    
    Wdyt?
    
    Best,
    Myrle
    
    On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 9:03 PM Daniel Shahaf <d....@daniel.shahaf.name>
    wrote:
    
    > Myrle Krantz wrote on Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:30 +00:00:
    > > The survey provides an incomplete picture and the data is imperfect. In
    > > addition, we need to find ways to think about diversity that do justice
    > > to the international nature of our foundation and our projects.
    >
    > I've mentioned it on private lists but I'll repeat it here: being an
    > email-centered culture, our social bugs are probably different than
    > those of traditional corporations.  For example, it would be practically
    > impossible for us to discriminate against bearded people even if we
    > _wanted_ to, while a PMC could easily be exclusive towards people who
    > don't have GitHub accounts.
    >
    > > But this survey is at least an excellent argument for seeking more
    > > data and a deeper understanding.
    >
    > I would suggest to seek case studies: accounts by specific people who
    > were/are excluded.
    >
    > Cheers,
    >
    > Daniel
    > [please Cc]
    >
    


Re: Results of the 2016 diversity survey at Apache

Posted by Naomi S <no...@tumbolia.org>.
On Thu, 20 Jun 2019 at 10:38, Daniel Shahaf <d....@daniel.shahaf.name> wrote:

>
> Likewise, I assume that
> some of us may be aware of people who didn't become contributors to ASF,
> or of contributors who went inactive because of bad experiences at ASF.
>

I'll go further: I am someone who was driven away from contributing to the
ASF because of my bad experiences here. (my contribution to the D&I
conversation is my first time contributing since that time.) I assume that
I'm not the only one on this list who has experienced something similar,
either here, at the ASF, or at other open source projects/organizations

Re: Results of the 2016 diversity survey at Apache

Posted by Daniel Shahaf <d....@daniel.shahaf.name>.
Myrle Krantz wrote on Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 06:25:36 +0200:
> It's going to be more subtle than "people who were excluded" of course.
> People self-select out of places where they don't feel welcome.  But
> finding people who *didn't* join a community is difficult.

True.

I assumed we'd be able to find case studies using personal connections.
For example, I'm personally aware of a community that considered joining
ASF but elected not to.  There is no trace on ASF lists of that
community; the Incubator never heard from them.  Likewise, I assume that
some of us may be aware of people who didn't become contributors to ASF,
or of contributors who went inactive because of bad experiences at ASF.

Cheers,

Daniel