My Micro Monday recommendation is for the guys here… You’re likely not following enough women. Follow some, shut up, and listen. Let them tell their stories. Don’t interupt or “explain” to them. Trust them. Believe them. Respect them. Then, do it offline too.

@patrickrhone I'll admit, my follow policy here has been "woman? follow!" and "man? review feed, is he participating in conversations, is he interesting for my definition of interesting, okay, follow." I'm aware of my biases, frustrated at my different criteria, and hope some day they merge into "interesting? follow!" instead. Thanks for your post.

@kitt It's a policy more men should follow for a while (and one I'm not ashamed to say I'll try harder at myself).

@patrickrhone @kitt I've been struggling to find more women to follow lately, so I haven't been following or recommending anyone. The Discover feed doesn't feel very diverse lately. Def. want more diverse recommendations for following here!

@jamesshelley Ditto. Pre-Kickstarter the ratio was even worse, which is why I stopped using the service before it was called Micro.blog. I'd hoped things would improve now, but I'm unsure at this stage.

@belle @kitt It is the most lopsided community I've ever worked with. I have put together a private channel on our Slack to address the equity issue. If you're interested in being involved, please message me there.

@macgenie I'll pass because I don't like Slack, but didn't want it to seem like I'm not interested or ignoring your offer! Really keen to help if there's anything I can do—let me know.

@macgenie @belle @kitt We've had the same problem in our area of sports journalism with the lack of gender diversity, esp. in hiring. One of our better ways of putting a dent in it was via word of mouth via women to women. Perhaps set up an ambassador program for this sort of thing in addition to offering free micro.blog hosted accounts? I don't know if you're set up for it yet, but bringing in new people via internships for community building could help also.

@belle I’ll ping you on email, so we can communicate that way. I try to be sensitive about putting the work of diversity on the underrepresented groups, but I’d love to run a couple ideas by you.

@belle @kitt @macgenie @jamesshelley @patrickrhone This is really disheartening to hear/see; back when I joined around the end of Dec, it seemed like women’s voices were always prominently featured in Discover and I was hopeful :-(

Recently, I’ve been showing up in Discover a lot more than I thought was warranted; I had three posts/comments in there at one point either Tuesday or Monday. I’m not that brilliant and I’m not that interesting and I don’t need to be taking so many limited “featured” spots, especially not with the current dearth of women’s voices there.

@macgenie Glad to hear it! Definitely not fair to make those without privilege fix the privilege imbalance. At the same time, we feel the imbalance most and I'd love to help if I can :)

@smokey You can be certain that this is key part of the mission for @manton and me. Not just gender, but overall representation. I have been committed to this for a long time. It requires more than good intentions, I do know.

@macgenie As a deaf person, I'm glad to hear this. I agree diversity is important. Be glad to help out however I can, feel free to reach out.

@macgenie I didn't intend to come across implying that I think Micro.blog wasn't taking it seriously; rather I was trying to express that I was saddened by how quickly things seemed to have shifted after I arrived. The fact that you were the first hire speaks volumes about the mission/intentions at Micro.blog, and contributes a good deal of goodwill, from my perspective—as does the fact you are already working on something :-)

@belle I was just doing that too. I've only been a member for ten minutes, but would like to start off with a healthy balance.

@jamesshelley @macgenie @manton @smokey Absolutely. The focus on community right from the start shows that m.b is different. I think that idea being rolled around recently to do “user features” could really help people to find different voices as well.

@macgenie I’m happy to help if you need anything from someone who is part of the over-represented group

@belle I have yet to work out how the discover thread works a lot of people I have followed in there are still there - so no new ones surfacing

@JohnPhilpin I think someone said that it's human-curated which I guess is why it doesn't change super often. But yeah, the suggested people to follow part hasn't seemed to change at all lately.

@macgenie that's awesome to hear. I work in the field of accessibility and if there's anything I can do or contribute I'd be happy to help

@belle @JohnPhilpin Yes, it is manually curated, and it is not dynamic based on who you follow. It was kind of a down-and-dirty solution when we first launched that needs lots of refinement.

@macgenie thanks for clarification.

@macgenie @belle @JohnPhilpin One idea that came to me today: what if, in addition to the manually-curated Discover and “suggested users to follow” lists, there were also an automatically populated list of users’ first posts (could be 👤 or 👥 or some sort of post- or note-related emoji, in the “Micro.blog Discover Emoji Collections” parlance) so that everyone can see when someone new “shows up” (and hopefully by then will have filled in a bio/listed a website, so combined with a first post would give one an idea about the new person)?

I don’t know how many new people join each day, but if those people don’t know anyone already or don’t follow a few people and start interacting so that other people know they are there, they could be posting in a vacuum.

This proposal doesn’t necessarily directly address the diversity issue, but by helping more people know about more people, more people overall are visible, which could help funnel more new voices into the manually-curated Discover, and help indirectly without having to “make a collection” of any given underrepresented group.

@smokey I like this

@mmarfil @smokey @maggenie @manton ... ok. - next job #clonemanton ... volunteers?

@smokey +1 to the general idea that further improvements to the mechanisms through which people can discover each other are a good angle from which to approach the issues of diversity. I think these approaches definitely need to mix well with community-centred work on Micro.blog, since that is one area where traditional social media seems to have been lacking in the early days.

An interesting post from 5 years ago. It’s amazing what you stumble across after a while. (view conversation)

A blast from the past from @smokey ...