Re: DW
On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:31:50 +0200, Clytie Siddall
<clytie@riverland.net.au> wrote:
I had a small group, some of them not feeling confident about posting on
the main list, and we had a lot of specialized stuff to discuss. It made
sense to me to combine the specialized aspect with mentoring the
less-confident people. It beats me why it _was_ a contentious issue. It
never seemed to me that the people who responded, and I, were talking
about the same things. :(
I have encouraged new people to post here, and I've been disappointed
with the response to those posts. Does anyone say, "Welcome to Debian-
Women, X! Great to see you here. I can see that Y is important to you,
and I'm sure there will be someone here with the expertise you need, or
who can refer you to it. ;)"
<distanced response>
It does not scale very well. Debian is vast. Scaleability matters.
</distanced response>
This is not superfluous, it's the stuff of which growth is made. People
need to feel welcome, valued and that others are willing to listen and
to understand. I have never encountered such difficulty trying to get a
simple point across as I did in that "contentious issue", yet this is
the place where I would have expected _more_ understanding and
willingness to be flexible, not less.
Thank you for emphasising this so thoroughly. You have pre-empted quite
a few "buts" here. The kind of environment you are promoting here is
just not sustainable on a big, general mailing list. It has to be small,
so that the core members can spend much time on each newcomer.
I don't think anyone here dismisses the value of such a friendly
environment. However, if it has to remain small, will it last?
Maybe we should just give it a try...
--
Herman Robak
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