On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 02:42:17PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: > On 2004-08-07 13:11:55 +0100 Matthew Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >So you think that changing our culture to be less confrontational > >would be > >beneficial to encouraging participation by multiple groups? > >Excellent. > > Yes, but I'd like to see metrics for this and the data gathered. We > can all act as we think, but it would be better to see the effect in > an obvious and agreeable way. I strongly suspect these are going to be > general across demographic splits and don't understand special-casing > women so early.
Women have been special-cased because they've stood up to be counted. They're an easily recognisable demographic who have said "we have these problems". > So far as I have seen, debian women's acts seem sexist and likely to > discourage participation by men. Is a bug in the aims or a bug in the > presentation? I'm pretty confident it's presentation. Mostly, I think it's a different form of confrontational behaviour, expressed as a reaction to attack. Not very different to krooger's quasi-religious bangings-on in substance, merely a difference of form. > >I think we're probably under-represented amongst those groups, too, > >and I > >think that if there's anyone who feels that it may be to the project's > >detriment they should try to work out the reasons why and try to > >rectify > >those if appropriate. > > Later in the message you wrote that we probably miss out, so I assume > you are one of "anyone who feels ...". Is only addressing women now > trying to work out the reasons why for those groups too? I'm addressing the problem of women in Debian because I have experience with women in "non-traditional" roles, and because they have taken some of the initiative in starting things off. I also believe that the culture shifts that might take place could be beneficial in a larger scope. To address your question more directly, in a limited way, addressing the problems some women have expressed about Debian will hopefully address the problems that *some* other groups have. - Matt
