Talent, Skill, Popularity, and Misogyny: A Feminist Critique

[trythil]

But I'm far more concerned with how to implement the challenge I articulated and make people feel safe to speak up about incidents they've experienced. And so far, no one has done that.

I built you a tool that could be used to directly implement one of your goals (at least in a prototypical fashion), and to the best of my knowledge, it has neither been tried nor criticized.

[Kionon]

I built you a tool that could be used to directly implement one of your goals (at least in a prototypical fashion), and to the best of my knowledge, it has neither been tried nor criticized.

Oh wow! I'm so sorry, I totally missed this post.

I read your statement of intent, but I'm not clear on how this works, exactly. Can you please explain?

[trythil]

I built you a tool that could be used to directly implement one of your goals (at least in a prototypical fashion), and to the best of my knowledge, it has neither been tried nor criticized.

Oh wow! I'm so sorry, I totally missed this post.

I read your statement of intent, but I'm not clear on how this works, exactly. Can you please explain?

Two principles

1. Archiving incidents makes it possible to review and associate those incidents with the offender and the offended.
2. Archiving aggregation and other statistics, which means that we can start applying game mechanics for social engineering.

Practically speaking

Someone who wishes to report an incident logs into the application. No personally identifying information beyond the email address is recorded; pseudonymity is of course possible when necessary (just sign up for a different email account at any provider). The reporter logs an identification of the offending party (e.g. a username) and a description of the offense. In the case of forum posts or text chats, this could just be a log of that chat or a URL.

The incident is logged, assigned a unique ID, and made public. The leaderboards on the front page show the top 10 reporters and the top 10 reportees; this is intended to (1) spur vigilance (which, yes, can become vigilantism) and (2) give people some idea of who they're affecting.

Details and ruminations

This is just one in a long line of technical assists for solving social issues, and like all those other tools, it has limited usefulness.

1. The tool is utterly dependent on a network effect: it must be widely acknowledged and used before it can really have any impact.

2. There are currently no spam checks on this, but it is possible to review submissions and delete what is clearly spam. Further revisions could include automated spam filtering, though that gets tricky for a multiuser system like this. (Personal email spam filters derive much of their effectiveness from the fact that they are trained on what is spam and not-spam to you.)

3. Preventing fradulent submissions is much, much harder: how do you algorithmically determine what's offensive to someone? Therefore, I've chosen to not even try.

These are significant shortcomings that could severely limit the tool's usefulness and distort the experiment. (1) and (3) actually clash with each other quite badly: you'll need some sort of monitoring once you get popular!

But hey, it's out there.

[Fall_Child42]

Can I break your tool by being both the most misogynistic poster and then reporting all of my own posts?

[Fall_Child42]

Can I break your tool by being both the most misogynistic poster and then reporting all of my own posts?

Nobody can offend me like I can offend me.

[Fall_Child42]

Can I break your tool by being both the most misogynistic poster and then reporting all of my own posts?

Nobody can offend me like I can offend me.

ohhh at the same time can we use this tool to call out communists?

Because it sound's like it would be a very effective McCarthy-ish tool for that as well.

[trythil]

Can I break your tool by being both the most misogynistic poster and then reporting all of my own posts?

There's tons of ways to break it (though the sign-in requirement is actually a pretty good deterrent against spamming). I'm more interested in the effectiveness of archiving, public display, and gamification (that word is like cruise control for sounding like a prick) to this problem.

Spoiler :

(On a very related note, I saw the White Bear episode of Black Mirror yesterday.)

[AMVGuide]

@Kionon: I only brought up TL;DR because unfortunately, most people are going to dismiss the text and only look at the pictures.
Which is likely the opposite of what you want; especially since the images are rather vague (as Fall_Child42 seemed to point out).
To avoid loss of focus, I suggest keeping a running list of all the things we can do to lessen misogyny:

1. If safe, politely speak up when you notice misogyny. (Or any unfair treatment for that matter.)
2. Try not to assume the gender of another editor or fan. (Use names where possible.)
3. Avoid Objectifying women in AMVs. (There are probably more interesting topics to cover.)
4. ...
5. ..
6. .


I encourage members to come up with more points like this. But I'm going to stop at that last one, and just see how far that comment gets.
@trythil: I wouldn't get my hopes too high with that. Generally, people only use what they know: In this case, a message board.

[Fall_Child42]

The big problem with the Gameification of something like this is it encourages people to

A: be more misogynist to get on that leader board, or
B: go around looking for excuses to be offended so they can get on THAT leaderboard.

The whole thing reeks of an effective censorship program, but one I would not want to see utilized by anybody.
People get too offended as it is, and the fear of offending someone should not stop someone from speaking their mind. (or making a joke)

[trythil]

@trythil: I wouldn't get my hopes too high with that. Generally, people only use what they know: In this case, a message board.

Then propose solutions to this problem:

1. The tool is utterly dependent on a network effect: it must be widely acknowledged and used before it can really have any impact.

Here's one:

A transition to Mozilla Persona for login on the .org (and, for that matter, on more websites) plus a "report" button would lower friction. But those are all changes that must be done on-site, and as such are not entirely feasible just yet.

Instead of waiting for those to occur, I built something quick and will add integration points as needed.