> FOSS projects are HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOES for UI/usability work, in my > experience. Mo Duffy and the Fedora Design Team ( > https://fedoraproject.org/**wiki/Design<https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design>) > may have some thoughts if you pop into #fedora-design on freenode (Mo's > nick is mizmo, if you haven't yet met her). >
I'm skeptical of trying to get these students excited about Fedora because I don't think many of them are excited about Linux or operating system development. To work on it they would probably need to find a way to install it and look at it running? That would be a technical hurdle I'd rather not stick them with. (Unless I'm missing something and making assumptions about Fedora development workflow? I've certainly never worked on such a system, and wouldn't know) This is good to know in general though. > Also, last time I checked, Terri Oda desperately wanted people to redesign > Mailman's awful awful interface (http://www.gnu.org/software/** > mailman/devs.html <http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/devs.html>). > Waiiit...seriously? Just checking now; hadn't realized Mailman was mostly in Python (had thought it was in C, which would have alienated these students I think). Of course, contributing to the Mailman user interface would be baller as hell (at least as far as FOSS contributions go). Thanks for pointing me to this! > If you think you could pull this off by instrumenting mailman, definitely > talk with Terri (terriko on freenode). It would be frickin' awesome to look > at web community formation by using data from existing FOSS projects (and > if you do, CAN HAZ COAUTHOR PING PLZ 'cause I'd *love* to work with you on > this). Noted :) I'm mostly trying to keep my head above water with coursework these days, but that's largely to get up to speed on methods/theory. Hope to be able to work more on actual research next year. Let's be in touch. > Dave Neary pointed the list to http://libresoft.es/research/** > projects/flossmetrics > <http://libresoft.es/research/projects/flossmetrics>earlier (an open source > project from the University Rey Juan Carlos in > Madrid) which may be another interesting starting point. > Nice. > Anyhoo, point being -- even with these ideas, you *can* (and I would > personally say "should") build on existing work by an existing community > that will maintain it after students graduate. Ok, ok, ok, I get it. :) > I like that the question you're asking seems to be not "how do we drag >> more women into FOSS environments??!?!" but "how do we make FOSS projects >> into environments a gender-balanced population will feel safe in and drawn >> to?" Making things better for women == making things better for human >> beings; a lot of quiet guys, less-bold white folks, etc. are equally >> excluded by some aspects of FOSS culture, and I wonder what the people in >> your class will be like. > > Yep, exactly. Me too. > Which reminds me... if there's a way for us to watch your class next > semester (if you'll have a blog/website/Planet/etc for it, or will be in a > particular project's IRC channel, etc) I'm pretty sure folks here would > love to know -- I know I would. Of course! I'll send a link to any resources that we use, if I get this off the ground.
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