[Techtalk] Politeness, the purpose of techtalk, and fragile flowers

[Jenn Vesperman]

The discussion on techtalk started because the list admins and the
Linuxchix staff were receiving complaints about a member
(gender-irrelevant) dominating discussion and posting in a way that was
interpreted as 'nyah nyah I know more than you' and 'you're stupid for
asking such a dumb question'.

For those who are concerned that it might be them: this member was
spoken to many times. If you weren't, it's not you.

For those who are concerned that this heralds a new and frightening era
of Linuxchix Thought Police: this member was spoken to offlist, in
private, many times.
We make public postings about list behaviour, without naming names or
providing identifying information, to prevent the misbehaviour becoming
entrenched in the list culture. So far, it's worked.

For those who are concerned about this being gender-biased: we've used
this exact pattern on men and women in the past, and will do so in the
future.


Now that that's out of the way: a reminder.

Linuxchix' focus is on women. I won't apologise for that. I also won't
change that. If Linuxchix has had its day and isn't needed, fork the
project!

PLEASE, PLEASE fork the project!

Produce a world-wide, broad-based Linux technical list with no gender
bias, which is polite and helpful and welcoming, makes women and men
both feel at home, and which makes Linuxchix look like an antiquated,
out-of-date anachronism.

PLEASE.

Or if you prefer, create a LinuxChaps. A man-focussed equivalent of
Linuxchix. Give those men who are coming here for technical help (as
opposed to 'to support women in linux') a place to go.

I'd be happy to hear that women were leaving Linuxchix because they
didn't need it. I AM happy to hear that Conor's female friends in
Ireland are perfectly happy with the local LUGs.

If every woman leaves Linuxchix because it's not needed, I'll close it
and I'll consider its purpose complete.
Since there's no sign of that happening, I will defend its existence and
its purpose. And so will the volunteers.

We give our time, effort and bandwidth for the purpose of supporting
women in linux. Not for the purpose of being free technical support or
an ego boost to men.

That's the bottom line.

And I know there's going to be men out there who complain about that.
Some will complain to me. Some will just gripe elsewhere and call me
nasty names. Some will call me sexist.

I don't think I am. I think I'm filling a necessary niche. And I'm still
waiting for someone to fork the project and produce a wildly successful
alternative that starves this project of users.

C'mon. I challenge you. Fork the project. Starve Linuxchix out. Dare ya.



Jenn V.
-- 
    "Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture 
        	you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.
   My book 'Essential CVS': published by O'Reilly in June 2003.
jenn at anthill.echidna.id.au     http://anthill.echidna.id.au/~jenn/