On 5/30/18 12:01 PM, Emma Humphries wrote:
Let's add a fourth item to Henri's list on the role of authority/leadership/maintainership in OSS to elevate and sponsor the next generation of authority/leadership/maintainership, and to emphasize that the next generation of OSS leadership should come from underrepresented groups since they carry knowledge of the blind spots and owches that the projects we work on have.
I strongly agree with the last clause, but I have to admit to some qualms about coupling that to the specific term "underrepresented groups", because I think a lot of people have preconceived notions (not always identical) of what it means.
As a concrete example, I don't think "people over 50 with somewhat failing eyesight" is commonly considered an "underrepresented group", and yet: (1) it is, in the context of web browser development and (2) members of this group definitely carry the sort of knowledge you mention: young people with good eyesight tend to make all the text too small.
To be clear, I agree that we want a lot more participation from groups that are not participating right now. I suspect (but please correct me if I'm wrong) that we also agree that this applies to more than just the typical set of groups involved in US identity politics. Examples could include the elderly, people in countries with oppressive regimes, people who are poor, people in rural areas. I'm sure there are others I can't think of right now, which is a problem in itself. Anyway, I worry that the term "underrepresented groups" is irrevocably coupled in the minds of many to the specific context of identity politics in the US and that will affect both perception of our stance on the matter and actual implementation of the policy in detrimental ways.
-Boris _______________________________________________ governance mailing list governance@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
