On 13 January 2012 15:20, Patrick Elliott-Brennan <m...@elliott-brennan.id.au> wrote: > Bianca Gibson > Ben Finney > +1
Heh... Top post and quoting what appeared like the entire digest email. Bad boy, Patrick! ;-) Not even sure which bits the +1 is to be applied to. I am not totally sold on the making a compliment when you don't feel like it as it could sound a little facetious. I could be totally off base on the matter. Is it better to include women (and those who are at the ends of the age bell curve) in discussions by finding out what they have been doing or what they want to do next? You may not be interested in writing something in Ruby, Python, Java or Blah nor the project itself directly but you might still learn something. As an example, how did you solve this and that problem? If I am teaching someone about Arduino which is written in a C derivative (to the pedants reading this: it's near enough for this discussion), I will take the person through a simple hello world example and the procedure for 'uploading' the program. Then suggest making a change. Suggest a code alteration to do on their own. This could be applied in just about any other platform, language or framework. I have never moved the keyboard from the student, to my knowledge. Neither subtle nor overt harassment should not be tolerated. Name calling or stating that someone's argument doesn't matter is wrong, perhaps there is something in the person argument or some side of it that you haven't considered. In the recent past, I have found some people on this list to be obnoxious at worse or blunt at best. While I am on the harassment issue, I would like to point out that those that have been bullied relentlessly (as in just about every hour of every school day for years) during their school life can be carrying anything which varies from self-doubt to full on trauma for life. It doesn't matter what the sticking point was, whether it's because you are/were overweight in school, or a speech impediment, too short, wears "uncool" styled glasses or full year older than the rest of your class mates, or a range other reasons to nit pick. I am not saying that we should not argue passionately out of fear of hurting someone's feelings but careful of rejecting a point without justification as it can come across as though you are rejecting the person whose point doesn't matter. If I have struck a raw nerve with someone, I apologise but felt that I had to put it on the table as some people out there still don't get it. I'm thinking back to the aftermath of the last keynote from a FOSS conference last year, but it could have been any conference or presentation. I'm not digging up specific examples as it's beside the point but to paraphrase from memory: "I did not feel that the photos were that bad". If I am judged negatively for what I have said above, so be it as the more rights of marginalised or vulnerable members of any community need to be supported, promoted and defended as and when necessary. (Hopefully most of this makes a moderate of sense at this hour) Regards George _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
