* Patty Langasek <harmoney@dodds.net> [2005:05:02 09:45 -0700]: > On Mon, May 02, 2005 at 09:35:42AM +0200, Patricia Jung wrote: > > > -Debian Women should, in my opinion, have quite a technical focus. Don't > > move technical discussion out of here to those places that often are > > perceived to be discouraging to women. You'll end up with the status quo > > we already see everywhere. How would we end up with that? There are already lots of women involved in Debian (relatively, anyway -- we have more than any other free software project I can think of). Seeing each other on all the other Debian lists is encouraging; seeing us all stay here is not. > Though I understand the point here, I must disagree that Deban Woman should > have a technical focus. There are plenty of facets of Debian that need to be > filled that aren't necessarily coding-related (translations, documentations, > web page, relations, etc.) - and pushing a forum into a technical-only focus > doesn't exactly invite and encourage others who may not feel comfortable > with their technical skills to participate. Debian Women, as it was > intended, is an outreach to help encourage others (especially women) to > become involved in this kind of a community. Perhaps later those who become > involved will become more interested and curious with the technical aspect > (a rather large one, but remember, not the *only*) and we can help point > them in the right direction. Mmm. A few points: - People new to Debian are not necessarily lacking technical skills and it's unfair (and likely incorrect) to assume that technical discussion will scare them off. If I were to join DW now and had not been a founder, I would probably be annoyed by a lack of *any* technical focus. - Our "focus", such that we have a particular one beyond getting women involved in Debian, is not static and depends on what community members want at any given time. Anyway, we don't need to legislate which discussions are appropriate for the list. I'd like people to be careful not to turn this into a ghetto though. DW was never meant to be a safe haven; it was intended to be more of a conduit. We cannot afford to remain secluded and it's not useful to do so in the long-term, though I think there are short-term benefits to it. > I could be wrong, of course, and welcome Amaya or Erinn to smack my hands > for jumping the gun and not waiting for their responses to the question. > However, given the "historical" start of Debian Women, I think it would be a > rather... questionable precedent to not encourage others to participate > within other levels of Debian. Yeah, we definitely want to encourage people to branch out. Debian people are so not scary and a lot of people's fear can be attributed to some sort of self-perpetuating myth. And anyway, if anyone is scared to post to a list, just let me know privately and I'll make sure to monitor the thread and tell you who to ignore. :) -- off the chain like a rebellious guanine nucleotide
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