Hi again all,
1. People agree with having a contributors page 2. The supporters page is still controversial I have to wonder what the point of the latter is. I found the perspectives interesting, but I also disagreed with quite a few of them and felt they were a bit condescending; not at all the kind of image I'd like to project (though I can only speak for myself here). It just feels too much like we're trying to prove something: "Look, other people care, our existence is justified." The amount of women on this list compared to other Debian lists is proof enough for me. That is who the project is for, after all.
I don't think the project is just for the people on this list. The project may be first for the women on the list, but I'd hope it would also be for people not on the list, and for the debian-community in general. Does anyone think out efforts won't make debian a better place and help to produce a better distro? (Not that I am suggesting Erinn is saying so.)
I think that if having people who are a bit condescending is where we start, that's where we start, and that's OK. If that is the way people on the supporters page are thinking, that's a lot better than some other viewpoints they could hold. Maybe in time the viewpoints expressed will change.
I don't mind at all looking like we are trying to prove something, because I think we are trying to prove something, not to ourselves, but to a whole lot of people out there who don't want us to be part of the debian community, or who can't be bothered to examine themeslves and their own behaviour and work out what they are doing that contributes to a debian community that is a hard place for women to be.
I agree with the contributors page. People should get credit for things they've done. The interesting bit is going to be defining what qualifies as a contribution..
Yes, an interesting question. I'm not sure whether you and others mean contributers as in people who contribute to setting up the mailing list and the website and so on, or people who are helping to achieve the aim of increasing the participation of women in debian. I think there is a place for contributions in a number of different senses, some of them very concrete and some of them not at all. I suspect the definition of a useful contribution will change with time, as the project succeeds (or doesn't) in it's goals.
At this stage, I would probably define someone who is willing at the least to engage in sensible and sensitive discussion about the debian-women issue as someone who is helping to achieve our aims. As such I'd say they are a contributer. This is pretty broad though.
Helen.