That makes sense, but I predict that if you create such a channel, even
if the intention is for training (in recognition that many women are
more comfortable training in a single gender environment, as kcoyle
says) -- people (mainly women people) will end up 'hanging out' in there
instead of in #code4lib, resulting in fewer women hanging out in #code4lib.
Which I guess you could think is a fine thing, or could think is an
unfortunate thing. I agree with royt that it would be an unfortunate
thing, for a bunch of different reasons.
Of course, like most any other project or venue of code4lib, we don't
all need to agree on this, and no approval needs to be had -- if someone
wants to create an IRC channel for 'code4lib women' or something, they
can do so on freenode.
But I agree with royt it'd be unfortunate. If the intent really is just
for 'training', then maybe call it #code4lib_learning_irc or something,
to try and reduce the chances of it vacuuming women's participation out
of main #code4lib, even if that wasn't the original intent.
On 12/5/2012 4:45 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
Roy,
It wasn't for safety -- it was for training. Some of us haven't spent
much time on IRC -- I never know what to do when I get there -- can't
remember commands, even with a decent GUI. So I was trying to think of
places (e.g. Github, IRC) where we'd like to have more women
participating and how we could give them a chance to learn.* Lots of
people are afraid of making mistakes in front of others, and we know
that women/girls take fewer chances in mixed classrooms. Once they get
adept at the environment they can participate in the group list with
more confidence. Training, mentoring -- it all blends together.
In fact, I'm thinking that at c4l we could put up some big pieces of
paper (I love the giant post-it paper) and have people make lists of
their favorite tools, hangouts, etc. Then we could use those lists as
ways to figure out what people need to learn to feel more like "part of
the community" and to feel more confident about participating.
kc
* Look at the list of edits on the anti-harassment policy -- not many
women there. I suspect it's unfamiliarity with Git. If we're going to
use a tool as a community, then I want more women to be familiar with
it. If someone else wants to train men or a coed group, that's fine.
On 12/5/12 1:35 PM, Roy Tennant wrote:
On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 12:57 PM, Rosalyn Metz <rosalynm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Karen had the idea of creating a women Code4Lib IRC channel, maybe
that can
be a place to start.
I understand the motivation to create a "safe space" for women, but
please let's not do this. "Separate but equal" has never been shown to
make progress toward equality, and I doubt this situation would be any
different. I believe it would instead make things worse, by
balkanizing the community rather than encouraging good behavior within
a unified group. In other words, the solution will never be reached
without active participation by men.
Roy
