Opportunity: Diversity audit for the open-source FedeProxy project

[aschrijver]

I want to point to an opportunity that exists in the community-driven open-source project FedeProxy, which aims to federate Code Forges (such as Github, Gitlab and Gitea) to allow people to collaboratively develop software across different forges. FedeProxy is a Fediverse application, and will be instrumental in breaking the walled gardens, network effects and FOMO that lead to the all-too-dominant position of Github and other forges (owned by Microsoft).

The Opportunity

Request for proposals: diversity audit of the fedeproxy project

An initial 5k Euro grant is available for this audit, sliced off the NGI DAPSI grant that is available to the project.

Note that FedeProxy is both a software project and a community. They want to specifically address the low diversity that exists in the free software (FOSS) community, and they operate with best humane tech principles at heart and with full transparency of all activity.

See also: Diversity in Free Software requires work

[aschrijver]

I will be tagging various people to gauge their interest for this initiative. I have already approached some on the Fediverse and notified @Sarigama and @PaulaFairphone.

This topic greatly interests me, especially because I feel that Diversity / Inclusion should go much deeper than what most organizations consider to be ‘diverse’ (Diversity is a hot & trendy topic these days, and you see a lot of “diversity-washing” where having a mixed team of males and females is already enough, and mostly for marketing purposes).

Quoting from an earlier discussion between @Birdie and @ibaldo highlights yet another much underappreciated diversity aspect:

@Birdie

To build in real inclusion from the ground up involves genuine and early stakeholder engagement so that the product design doesn’t just respond to a preconceived idea of ‘average user’ but instead considers most unlikely user with a view to making the product accessible for everyone who would like to use it.

In a broader sense we are talking ‘social model of disability’.
In the same way that people in wheelchairs fought to have councils recognise the need to retrofit kerbs with ramps at road crossings, so do neuronormative people design systems built on assumptions about behaviour and values.

Neurodiverse people think and respond differently in a range of ways which can mean that what is a logical and serviceable UX for the majority can actively cause harm to those trying to participate.
I believe it is lived experience of that harm which contributes to neurodiverse people being able to see unexpected outcomes more easily than others by becoming attuned to potential ‘collateral damage’ pain points.

As with visual, auditory and cognitive impairment, contrast is used to provide clear visual cues which assist the user to work comfortably through a decision tree or process flow. Additionally neurodiverse people can experience pain points as emotional triggers which affect executive function.

I am still looking for qualitative studies on this topic to either confirm or refute my suspicion that most often cost assessments fail to take into account downstream costs of dissatisfied customers and their impact on staffing retention. I would love to have more than personal observation to back up that claim.

I’d also like to know if the ratio of neurodiverse/neuronormative people affected by this type of pain point is proportionally representative.

And there are many more…

For anyone interested to broaden their horizon and expertise on Diversity I can provide an easy tip: Join the Fediverse!

(PS. Here’s a fediverse call for attention to this opportunity by the FedeProxy initiator)

[dachary]

@aschrijver it’s great that you relay this request for proposal, it will help a lot

@aschrijver

An initial 5k Euro grant is available for this audit, sliced off the NGI DAPSI grant that is available to the project.

The origin of this grant is different but it is a detail

@aschrijver

Note that FedeProxy is both a software project and a community. They want to specifically address the low diversity that exists in the free software (FOSS) community, and they operate with best humane tech principles at heart and with full transparency of all activity.

It is very encouraging to read that you appreciate how the fedeproxy community is setup. It keeps me motivated and I hope it has a similar effect on the other members of the community

[aschrijver]

You’re welcome Loïc, and nice to see you at the Humane Tech Community too

[Birdie]

Thanks so much for tagging me in this @aschrijver. Apologies that it took me a week to notice. The last month has been distressing due to community transmission in my country (we had achieved effective zero cases but the combination of delta + businesses only giving lip service to public health + decision making based on short term single bottom line means considerable pain added on to the inevitable pain).

Moving on so this doesn’t get too political I’d say it loosely touches on how important this inclusivity is as much of the disinformation undermining public health uses attention and perception tools.

Likewise I’m trying to deal with learning an online game so that I can better understand the vulnerabilities kids face in this interconnected gaming world… again the attention tools are really problematic for those of us who are hyper aware of attention tools and thus get much more stressed out.

I’m just about to join a class but will come back. I think what is crucial at this point is that anyone in this conversation has at least a broad understanding of what neuroscience tells us regarding sensory information and perception. It isn’t a one to one match. How we we perceive things is complex and at the root of this is having an understanding that we are all vulnerable to perceptual biases and that is what can bog things down in us/them arguments. The only inoculation we have against that is playing by established rules of debate ie providing evidence and sources when possible. I’ll have a better go at explaining what I mean later tonight.

Cheers,
B