List/IRC climate issues (was: What do you want to learn?)
On Wed, 2004-08-04 at 09:47, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 03, 2004 at 09:54:23AM -0700, Akkana Peck wrote:
> > somewhat interested in documentation. Like Carla, I've been daunted
> > by what I've heard about the NM process, and also by difficulty in
>
> What have you heard about the NM process that makes it daunting? You find
> a Debian Developer (DD) who advocates you, an Application Manager (AM) asks
> you questions, then writes a report saying you're clueful and should get an
> account.
Actually, finding an advocate itself is daunting. :/
I've heard friends report enough bad experiences on public lists,
channels, etc, that I've just never joined them. I therefore assume that
I'm not known to anyone in the Debian community, and would be
approaching people as a stranger to them.
Nor do I know anyone in the Debian community (or more accurately, I
don't know that I know anyone in it), so I wouldn't be choosing someone
with any foreknowledge of how working with them would be.
This is how one or two idiots who aren't told to shut up cause a whole
community to lose/not gain women, by the way.
If you get those idiots making women feel unwelcome at the entry point
to your community, and noone slaps them down, the women go find
something else to do - and tell each other.
Take me for an example (though I may be a biased example). I use and
sysadmin Debian. Linuxchix runs on a Debian server, has done since I
took over.
Every time I've heard things about #debian or the debian mailing lists,
it's been some LinuxChick (usually a competent, take-no-nonsense sort of
person) coming onto our IRC channel and sighing that '$generic_idiot is
raising hell again. I wish someone that he'd listen to would shut him
up.'
Now, I should probably ignore that, go and look for myself. But my to-do
list for Linuxchix is calling me.....
It's a very subtle problem, and I don't have a solution. And yes, it's
perfectly valid for you to say 'hey, if you wanted to work on Debian,
you'd have checked it out yourself'.
My response is 'do you only want people who check you out despite having
heard bad reports, or would you like to have good reports?'
And that is your choice.
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@anthill.echidna.id.au http://anthill.echidna.id.au/~jenn/
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