16 Days of Activism with Uli

What exactly is 16 Days of Activism

The global 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence runs from 25th November until 10th December every year. You can read more about it here. Campaigns through the sixteen day period aim to bring attention to the gravity of gender based violence. The campaign started after the first Women's Global Leadership Institute coordinated by the Center for Women's Global Leadership in 1991. We think of this campaign as a period for advocacy for all genders.

Background to the task

In 2022, with a few activists and researchers, we create a list of words and phrases in Hindi, Tamil and Indian English that are used to target people of marginalized identities. That list can be found here: https://github.com/tattle-made/Uli/blob/main/browser-extension/plugin/scripts/slur-list.txt

We knew even then that we wanted to grow the slur list to include more words and more languages. But, from a year of testing we also know that people want more than just the word and phrase to make sense of it. A common feedback we heard was: "I would also like to know why this word is problematic." Other inputs were around the multiple ways in which an abusive word can be used. A word when reclaimed by a marginalized community should be distinguished from usage for demeaning and stereotyping a group.

We've been developing a lexicon that enables us to nuance the words in the list so that it is useful for researchers, Trust and Safety teams, and the Uli plugin. Through the 16 days of activism, we will be fleshing out the slur list alongside this lexicon. Go to Annotation Guide. A shout out to folks at Nazariya and Point of View for testing out the lexicon as we iterated over it, and for providing feedback that led to this version. And to Cheshta Arora for leading the work on it.

Okay, but what must I do?

TLDR: Spare 5 minutes or 5 hours (depending on what you can share) to add information about the words you know on the list, or share words that you think should be on the list.

You can contribute through two ways:

• Synchronously, by joining any of the four one-hour sessions through the sixteen days.

• Asynchronously, by adding to a google sheet whenever you have the time. Please see detailed instructions for both methods below.

Note: Since we don't have extensive editorial resources, we are selective about whose contributions make it to the list. The basic things we are checking for are: experience in gender/digital rights or linguistic knowledge.

For any questions, please email [email protected].

For Synchronous Contributions

To join in one or more of the sessions, please sign up using this google form (we replaced the doodle link): https://forms.gle/6cKzWBGmMnbcMEWT8

After you state your preference on the Doodle link, you will receive a calendar invite with a meeting link. Please join the meeting during the hour. In the hour, we will share a google sheet which will be shared with all the people who have signed up for that session. Every session will contain about 5 people. You can discuss words and interpretations with others on the call to inform your annotations. That is the primary difference between this method of contributing, and asynchronous contributions.

For Asynchronous Contributions

1. Please make a copy of this google sheet. It is currently read only - Click Here

To duplicate the sheet, navigate to - File -> Make a Copy. Click on Make a Copy.

2. Once you make a copy of the sheet. You will be re-directed to a new sheet, which is essentially a duplicate of the original sheet.

3. Now you can start making edits in the Copy Sheet. You can rename the New Sheet as per your convenience.

4. Instead of Annotator Name in the first row - please add your name.

5. Once you have annotated the slurs. Share the google sheet with [email protected].

6. If you don't receive an email from us acknowledging your contribution, within 24 hours, please reach out to [email protected].