* Helen Faulkner <helen_ml_faulkner@yahoo.co.uk> [2004:07:27 08:10 +0100]: <snip> > But I think the website is going to end up being only a small part of > the ways in which we achieve the aim of getting more women involved in > debian. We need people to be about on the irc channel to answer > newcomers' questions in an encouraging way. We need people to stand up > and give talks at their local LUG and linux conferences. We need people > to pick up on sexist behaviour in other debian spaces and communicate in > an assertive way that this is unacceptable. More than anything, we need > people to give potential debian-women technical help, ranging from > helping them install debian and get their systems working to sponsoring > them through the new maintainer process and beyond. > > I would say that people doing any of these things are contributing in no > small way to the debian-women project. I would like to see the website > making it really clear that there are many ways for people to contribute > to our efforts, and that we would welcome everyone, men and women, to > assist us in this project. I agree with you that these are all important and necessary contributions, but when you increase ambiguity, you decrease focus. I originally only wanted to have profiles of women that are involved in Debian -- this is quantifiable and not open to interpretation. Either you contribute or you don't. And yeah, I know that users contribute somewhat -- they do use the OS, after all, but I think in terms of doing actual *work* for Debian. We have to draw the line somewhere -- it makes no sense to have half of the internet on the website just because they support our cause. Likewise, I don't think people should feel alienated just because they don't have a picture and a bio on the website. > I really would not like to see *anyone* who is trying to help us getting > the impression that we don't want them about. I think parts of the > discussion we've had about the supporters page idea will probably be > discouraging to men who were otherwise interested in helping us, and I > think that is a pity. It feels to me like this discussion is becoming > focussed on making a nearly-exclusive space for women in an isolated > corner of debian rather than encouraging women to be involved in debian > as a whole. They are very different things. I didn't originally have > the impression that we wanted a little ghetto for ourselves. Do we? This discussion is only indicative of opposing ideas, some of them fairly polarised. I'd say for now maybe we should defer it -- particularly the contributors page -- until we've actually started doing work. If people work on the website, they can attach their names to whichever portion they've worked on. However, the supporters page is too controversial (still) and the contributors page is too open to interpretation. -- off the chain like a rebellious guanine nucleotide http://double-helix.org
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