Higher Standards for Male Participation in Indusladies

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Induslady, Jun 30, 2013.

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  1. Induslady

    Induslady Administrator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Dear IL'ites,

    Time has come for us to address the issue of male participation in IL. Quite a few male members have started participating in ways that doesn't suit our community.

    A few male members have just started "hanging out". They make posts there are frivolous and tangential and took pleasure in just being around women discussions without providing contributions of value. There were other male members who took these extreme points of view to rile women up and basked in the conversation that ensured. Some did these long thesis on sex and **** in ways that were plain silly. Then we started seeing pictures of men in profile and avatar. Some profiles said they are divorced and looking for alliances etc. These are clearly unacceptable.

    The noise of these male members have reached a stage that we started thinking seriously on taking significant steps to curtail this. My first instinct was to update our terms of service to not allow male members in any section of the site other than good-to-read.

    However, there seem to be a few male members who provide thoughtful male-perspective that are valued by women in our community. We debated whether it is worth dealing with all the noise by men who make undesirable posts just for the sake of few male members who make quality posts. I thought long and hard and finally decided that I will try one more time to filter out the noise. So, we are instituting a higher standards for male participation in our site. See below.

    In a month we want to revisit this. If the effort to deal with enforcing this higher standard become unsustainable, then I want to bring in the policy to not allow male members in any section of the site other than good to read.

    We will have a higher standard on what we think is "substantive". As we debated this decision over a month, we let a few questionable male members continue to participate in our site, even though we knew they crossed the line. The reason is that I didn't want to take one-off decisions. Now that we have announced this higher standards, you will see those members removed in the next few days.

    If you find male members participating in questionable ways, please report the post. We will deal with it swiftly. As always, lets self-govern ourselves so that we continue to make great strides in making Indusladies a friendly, helpful and safe community for Indian women worldwide.

    Thank you!

    Malathy

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    Higher Standard for Male Participation

    1) This is an Indian women community. All our policies are formulated with that in mind. Our goal is not to build a "gender-neutral" community. With that said, men are welcome to join and participate, but need to adhere to this higher standard of participation.*

    2) Male participation in any forum other than "good-to-read" need to be "substantive" in nature. They should offer a thoughtful, well-balanced male perspective that adds value to the conversation. We do not encourage men to just "hang-out" in the site, making chit-chatty or tangential comments.*

    3) Posts by male members that are fanning flames, that take extreme points of view to rile members up, that is argumentative, that stalks others will be removed. User will also be removed from the site. While this applies to women as well, we want to make sure we call this out specifically in the context of male participation.

    4) Male members are not allowed to have personal photos of themselves either as profile pictures or as avatars. There can be no indication of matrimonial intent either in their profiles or in their posts.*

    5) Needless to say, male writers, who share their work in the good-to-read forum are already adhering to this higher standards. This is mostly to address the new category of men who are participating in ways that are concerning in our effort to build an online women community.*
     
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