Launch an Inclusive Naming awareness campaign in Fedora Community
Summary
Create a communications and awareness campaign for Fedora contributors to follow best practices around inclusive naming and inclusive language (especially with gendered language).
Background
In pagure:fedora-diversity#204, it was pointed out by a community member that it was unclear how the Fedora Documentation and localization in French approached gender. Some translators might write a sentence one way, and others would write it a different way. Even though there were suggestions given on what is more inclusive, the challenge remained that Fedora is fairly decentralized and not all of our community may follow these practices, or in some cases may not want to.
Our role as the DEI Team is to provide the information and guidance for people to make the best choices for inclusion and equity in their Fedora work. A good place to start is thinking about how we can engage with the many different pockets of Fedora contributors and encourage some unity around inclusive language.
There are a number of ways this could go, so this either needs to be split up into several small campaigns or a larger, community-wide campaign should be planned.
Details
There is an Inclusive Naming community which focuses a lot on avoiding use of harmful language in open source projects. While it does not seem specific to the issue of gendered language, this seems like a good Community of Practice that would have lived expertise about these topics. They might have unique insight for issues we have not yet looked at or reviewed in Fedora.
However this would be implemented, it likely needs to start with a lot of research. What work has already been done around inclusive language in Fedora and in the wider Open Source space? Are there any learnings we could borrow from? Are their specific areas of Fedora that might be more impactful to focus on first? What would a campaign look like, and should it just focus on English or also other languages? If it includes other languages, how would we engage with native speakers of those languages to adopt best practices for inclusion?
There are a lot of questions, and ultimately, we need to narrow down some of these questions first before taking on this project. Because it involves working closely with a few other teams in Fedora, the scope of the work could be quite big if we are not careful.
Outcome
- Fedora contributors use more inclusive language across our project, including in names, translations & localization, and everyday development
- We continue to create a friendly, inclusive environment where anyone feels welcome to be a part of the Fedora Community