Help me think of potential ally organizations for my project.

March 27, 2007 7:15 AM

Help me think of organizations that might be interested in giving me feedback about (or helping publicize/recruit volunteers for) a project I'm trying to base in Wikimedia Commons (for the free use/free re-use licensing that's inherent).

I first thought of the project while in somewhat contentious discussion with a cosmetic surgeon about gynecomastia ("abnormal" male breast growth) and whether treating it as a severe medical/psychological issue was appropriate for certain types of patients.

The main focus of the goal is to try to gather as many free-use pictures as possible of male bodies (naked torsos only, thank you, not entirely naked), with a focus on man-boobs/torso builds.

My idea is that by having access to a large storehouse of mostly standardized pictures of folks who are "just guys", other guys (doctors, laymen, policy-makers, etc.) might have a valuable resource to be able to look at these kinds of reference photos without having to stare too intently at other guys in the locker room or on the beach (generally discouraged, except at special beaches/locker rooms).

Also, given enough metadata, the storehouse might be helpful for certain kinds of statistical analysis (though the freeness and volunteer-built aspects might cut that down, as might data quality/reliability issues).

Anyhow, in order to avoid self-linking, I'll not give direct URLs. What I'm primarily interested in is that the next step of my idea is to try to refine the methodology (of creating new sets of photos of willing models), recruit others to help me provide photos to the project, and do the tracking/gathering.

For the methodology review/refinement, I've already contacted ISNA.org (Intersex Socity of North America - many intersex folks get this kind of hard-sell from doctors about their bodies) for opinions (response is pending), but if you can think of other semi-medical boards, sex ed resources that serve men and young men, support organizations, boards of doctors for ethical treatment, whatever, please help me come up with a list of organizations that might be interested in being able to help me design the project to serve them better and who might potentially be interested in sending volunteers my way, that would be a great help.

posted by kalessin to health & fitness (2 comments total)

The LJ community VaginaPagina did something similar for women's bodies. You could contact them for ideas.
posted by divabat at 2:18 PM on March 27, 2007

Thank you, I'll see if I can figure out how to do that without wasting their time/breaking their community rules, but a very good link nonetheless!
posted by kalessin at 5:02 PM on March 27, 2007