Re: Clarification about krooger's platform
Ben Burton <bab@debian.org> wrote:
> As for secrecy, I find your objections interesting. The debian-women
> project has been making great efforts to actively improve transparency
> of processes and access to relevant documentation throughout debian.
They have? I thought they just posted "bugfixes" for using the
"wrong" gender in examples. (Seriously, I've seen a bit more
from reading blogs, but the bugs are the most visible act so far.)
> Immediate examples that come to mind include their detailed articles on
> the NM process, the new mentoring programme that they are developing and
> a growing collection of entry-level articles on packaging and bug
> squashing.
Where are these articles posted? As a package sponsor, it could
be a useful resource for me and my maintainers. I didn't find
them anywhere obvious on http://www.debian.org/devel/join/
I didn't find "the new mentoring programme" either. I remember being
told some time ago that a mentor course would be announced,
but now you mention it, I don't recall ever seeing it.
> As for their own processes, they use a public mailing list,
> a public IRC channel, post regular summaries of off-list activity and
> have regular online meetings whose minutes are publicly posted. Their
> goals and guidelines are publicly available on their website. Doesn't
> entirely smack of secrecy to me.
Both their list and IRC judge you and if they consider you a
"troll" then there is a secret silence against you (again
endorsed in the last IRC meeting, it seems). You don't have
to fight flamewars with your critics, but you should respond
to them, even if only dismissively. Hell, the effort I've put
in to trying to persuade debian-women should suggest I'm not
just trolling. If anything, it's debian-women who are carrying
out classic troll "asymmetric infowar" on the rest of debian
with their "ignore those who don't agree" approach.
As to meeting minutes, I think posting them on a wiki on an
alioth site and not bothering to link them into the meeting
news item (directly or even within 3 clicks, as far as I can
tell) is a bit better than putting them in a locked filing
cabinet in an unlit downstairs toilet (and so on, go read
Douglas Adams) but not much.
It would do everyone good to read these minutes actually:
http://women.alioth.debian.org/wiki/index.php/English/IRC16January2005
Notice that most of the points under how to avoid being sexist
haven't actually been done yet. There are members of single-sex
linuxchix chapters active in the subproject too. While it's
unconstitutional for debian to demand that debian-women support
other excluded groups, we should request this subproject stops
discriminating. Their list charter still excludes purely on
sex and it looks like being female is the only criteria for
the "Debian Women Weekly News" (and do we need yet another
publication modelled on the US tabloid "Weekly World News"?).
In the detailed section, on the first question, it looks
like debian-women still hasn't done basic research on the
scale of the problem, overestimating the number of active
DDs by about 150. That's a basic fact on every vote in
http://www.debian.org/vote/ isn't it? (And no, there's not
1100 maintainers either, http://www.debian.org/devel/people
suggests there are around 1400 of them.)
I'll stop there, as it's not really useful to continue, but
debian-women really looks like it needs slight reform, more
people, more publicity and SMART action plans if it's going
to do good work. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic,
Time-limited.)
> And as for accountability: who do you want them made accountable to?
> Ah, the DPL, which would be.. well, you. Mmmm.
Accountable != run by. The DPL can't force them to act and
general exclusion/demography questions seem appropriate for
the leader, don't you think?
--
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Subscribed to this list. No need to Cc, thanks.
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