On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 01:09:23PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: > There are 3 questions in this email and a lot of explanation. > > When almost all of a population is divided into two classes, > "postitive discrimination" in favour of one class is usually > indistinguishable from "negative discrimination" against the other. A > discriminatory list has been created on lists.debian.org. The creation > of debian-women was mentioned in the depths of the last "bits from the > listmasters"
It looks like you missed the fact that the debian-user-icelandic was also created. That list is even worse. Not only does it discriminates against non-icelandic speakers, it also discourages from people posting in english there. At least men are still allowed to post on debian-women. > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/07/msg00013.html > having previously been bug 252171. Sadly, I didn't spot those, so was > unable to try to fix this new bug before now. There is no equivalent > encouragement list for men, nor any attempt to address any other > unrepresentative demographics. Those of you who read a lot of email > may remember discrimination was discussed a bit (not always usefully) > in the DPL elections: thread starting > http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2004/03/msg00017.html and > others. While it currently doesn't appear to be possible to subscribe to a pseudo-package, you can always subcribe to debian-bugs-dist if you wish to follow what's happening there. There's no equivalent list for men because no one has requested it. I suggest you have a look at http://lists.debian.org as this will not only let you know how to request a new list should you feel it's required but will also point out to you some unrepresented demographics that have lists. For example, debian-accessibility, debian-lex, debian-hams or debian-jr > I only found out about this after Amaya emailed me questions about why > I think debian-women is important and useful. I replied that I think > it is important as a symbol of rampant sexism in debian and not useful > at all in the long term. I don't know the sex of some of my debian > collaborators and I do not see why it is so important. Of course, my > views have not appeared on > http://debian-women.opensource-knowhow.com/supporters.html - it seems > there are only positive views there, even if some mention other skews. > (I can't decide if Matthew Wilcox is being funny or serious, BTW.) > Does debian really support sexism this much? What does Amaya's website have to do with anything? > This new bout of sexism seems to have been triggered by Erinn Clark's > pro-discrimination talk at debconf4. Slides might be > http://cytosine.org/~helix/women_in_debian.pdf (no HTML version?) but > ICBW. "Workshops for young girls" is discrimination, pure and simple. > As the slides note, the DFSG say we don't allow copyright licences to > discriminate against groups of people: should we allow the project to > discriminate against men? Where does it discriminate against men? Looking at the subscriber list, I'd say between 1/3 and 1/2 of subscribers are men. A number of posters on the list are men. Where is the discrimination? > To me, the most obvious fix is to replace debian-women with something > like debian-equality or debian-welcome, to try to get people active > against discrimination rather than actively promoting blatent sexism. > The mailing list howto is clear on how to create lists, but not on the > appropriate method for fixing bugs in list creation. What are the > mechanics to do this? Build concensus on the list in question, then file a bug on the lists package, or get a listmaster to agree with you. If neither works, I guess you'll have to call a GR. ;-) > I expect some flames for even asking about this, as the debian-women > list seems to have attracted some aggressive sexists from other > software-related groups already. I hope that people won't feed the > trolls and it results in debian doing something better to tackle > inequalities. Yes... it's a pity that krooger decided that this was a good place to spam with his 'marriage counseling services' ad. Hopefully, this won't happen again. Pasc (with his listmaster hat on) -- Pascal Hakim +61 4 0341 1672 Do Not Bend
