On second thoughts, my post above displays insensitivity and is exclusionary. I’m sorry and
I take it back.
I think the proper way of getting feedback is through an anonymous
survey. Asking for a posting here (under more or less identifiable handles) would
exclude people who are not comfortable providing these disclosures.
Perhaps @joaoui1 would like to manage this survey and post the results here?
There once was a similar topic:
https://discourse.julialang.org/t/creating-a-world-of-programming-language-to-be-inclusive-as-possible
it wasn’t started by me but splitted like this one.
After it was closed I asked myself what I did wrong and why it was closed. I am still not sure about the close.
This topic is already a problem again it seems to me:
The problem I see here is that we want to talk about being inclusive or lack of diverstity but some people (not necessary @mbauman the quote is just an example) are extremely exclusive on the way this topic should be talked about and what opinions are valid in such a discussion and what is not.
In my opinion, if we talk about increasing the inclusiveness in this community we have to deal with all opinions on this matter, even if someone expresses something against inclusiveness or against more women or against some kinds of diversity, whatever.
If a discussion like this is not really open to all sides those who like to contribute to this matter would have to be extremely cautious on how they speak (like @PetrKryslUCSD above) . And this can not result in a good discussion if everybody has to avoid the holy inquisition.
We can’t improve on this matter if talking about is already censored.
Great post @mohamed82008. A few things to mention.
Or fields. I’ve noted before that some scientific fields, like biology, pharmaceutical sciences, and social sciences, tend to be a lot more diverse than the core fields that a lot of the Julia founders and package developers come from (mathematics, computer science, and physics). One effective way to increase diversity in our community may be to more actively recruit in these fields.
I think things like the NumFOCUS small development grants, and also making sure there’s continued funded student programs, helps this. Open source naturally selects for those who have the time and privilege to invest in something that either won’t have professional payoff or if it does, it may take years before there’s any clear advantage. It’s no surprise then that most people running open source communities come from places of privilege, since you need some kind of safe background in order for getting involved in open source to be sensible. Funded student programs is one way to break down those barriers, and it’s by breaking such barriers that we can begin to make major inroads into diversity of our community.
Indeed, this is great to have, but we do need to ensure that the burden of increasing diversity does not fall onto the underrepresented individuals of our community themselves. Too much diversity work in the hands of such individuals could detract from other professional activities and accidentally have the wrong effect. In that sense, we should not only attempt to foster more underrepresented models but simultaneously try to find ways to support them in that the work is shared by others as well. This means its important to have as many individuals as possible as part of such diversity initiatives! Exactly how to do this balance is hard, but it’s definitely the right question to ask.
There’s a whole literature on this (shameless self-plug, though I’ll note that men self-cite more than women). Unfortunately, it’s not super clear why this is the case.
Exactly what I’ve been thinking about. Of course, this is just one approach, but hopefully a fruitful one. Getting back to the OP, I think this is one of the reasons that the group of R users is so diverse, because it’s so widely used in biology and ecology.
I don’t like the concept of “diversity work”. Promoting diversity is just an education and marketing task primarily. What I mean by being a role model in this context is just doing whatever you are good at and having your work highlighted by the community and maybe even your character. It’s not much more than that. Anything beyond that is purely optional and so people can simply bow out when feeling overwhelmed, nothing shameful about that.
Hi, I can create a google forms for the survey, but I’m extremely new to the Julia community, any idea where I should post it to get good answers?
Also maybe a more official effort would be better, made by people with more ability to change things and that could use Julia’s official channels to spread/promote the survey
Wow that discussion was painful, was gonna read through it, but after about 20 replies I couldn’t go on. Thankfully this discussion seems to be going towards a better direction
Talked to a friend and we ended up with the following 7 questions (better keep it short) partially inspired by @PetrKryslUCSD
Should we extend the survey to other groups as well or just women for now?
We could ask what minority the person is part of
Maybe its better to focus on one group at a time otherwise the survey could get too long/distracted from the goal.
I would suggest to create a Google survey (Is creating an anonymous survey on GoogleForm's free app still possible today? - Google Docs Editors Community), and post the link here. Perhaps in a separate thread with a clear subject label to draw attention.
What do you think?
Might help to word this more neutrally, since some people might not be turned off from the community.
Perhaps “Is there anything that would turn you off from the Julia community?”
I believe that these questions my apply not only to people in other communities, but in this one as well. There have been some steps taken to make discourse more welcoming etc. So: let’s find out what worked and what didn’t.
But you are right: the question could also be directing respondents to their experience in other communities as well.
Oh yes. That thread. I was beaten by Stefan by about 2 minutes. I wrote a long answer to a “biology” argument and when tried to post it, the thread was already locked.
It hasn’t mentioned here yet so I do it. The Julia User and Developer survey had some questions about diversity in our community. See blog and results here:
(I think you all know but for the completeness…)
Same 2019
The numbers (of diversity) haven’t changed much (at all?).
As regards naming, I remember there were some preliminary moves towards forming a group of this kind a few years ago (2018). I remember making up some logos - still have them on disk here:
Not sure about some of them now… 
Perhaps with Logan our Community Manager at the helm some more progress could be made this time round.
