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Q: Apache does everything by e-mail. I do not know or care about the race, ethnicity, gender, age, weight, or any other personal characteristics of other contributors. Why are diversity and inclusion relevant issues for Apache?

A: See the section on "Unconscious Bias" in the Resources page. People's reactions to a resume or a Git pull request can be affected by something as small as a given name. We generally know the names of our ASF colleagues. In addition, how someone's mail handler introduces quoted text indicates their normal working language and, in some cases, locale. Mail headers may reveal their time zone.

English is a language with many different dialects. Some, but by no means all, ASF participants have native speaker fluency in one of those dialects. The same word can have entirely different meanings in different dialects. For example, Indians may use "doubt" in situations where an English person would have used "question". See Indian English: What usage is allowed for “doubt” (meaning “question”)?  Others learned English less completely, and may find it harder to express or recognize subtle shadings of meaning in English than they would in their native language. Style and writing etiquette, such as how directly or indirectly one indicates that another writer has made a mistake, also varies by subculture and by gender. Most of us are, consciously or unconsciously, more comfortable communicating with those who write the way we write.

Unintentional insult through stereotypes is a greater risk in e-mail than in face-to-face communication. A person who would be too polite to make a joke about fat people, or older people, if they saw them in a face-to-face meeting may do so in e-mail not considering the full range of their audience.

English pronouns carry an implication of gender. At the simplest, there may be a tendency to use masculine pronouns to refer to people whose gender is not obvious from their name etc., and to guess wrong because name conventions are extremely dependent on culture and parents' native language. Pronouns have been invented, in addition to the traditional masculine and feminine ones, to better cover the range of gender possibilities. Disclosing pronoun preference implies disclosing gender. Not disclosing pronoun preference may lead to a participant feeling awkward whenever the wrong pronouns are used to refer to them.

Finally, Apache interactions are not entirely e-mail. Participants often meet at conferences, including but not limited to ApacheCon. Attending a conference will disclose information about race, ethnicity, gender, age, weight and other personal characteristics.

Q. Someone just wrote something inappropriate, or strange, or confusing. What should I do?

A. Consider the fact that they may be writing in a different dialect of English from the one you use, or may be writing English as a foreign language. Respond, politely, explaining what their remark meant to you and asking for clarification.

Q. I'd like to help work on this FAQ, or other pages on the wiki. What should I do?

A. First, work with the dev@diversity.apache.org mailing list to build your content. Then, ask in your thread to have someone on the D&I Committee add your content to the right page on the wiki. If you continue to contribute, access to directly edit the wiki will probably be granted..