On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 01:43:59PM +0200, Herman Robak wrote: > >That's one of the main entry barriers I see for women. We're always > >required > >to be more mature, more grownups, to be able to ignore everything, to > >keep > >calm, not to reply. That's something usually boys do not need to have > >when > >approaching free software world. > > This is mostly about perception. The guys need to have these > traits, too. They are just less likely to be told so. Why? Even that's not true. They're just less likely to pay any attention when told so. > Because the typical situation for being told so is when you > complain about something. With Free Software, the answer to > a complaint will often be "that's not my itch, scratch it > yourself". (translation: Fix it yourself, or fix your attitude) > > If your complaint was legitimate, the "it's your problem, > not ours" answer is rather offensive. It is honest and > accurate, but not particulary diplomatic. If 'diplomatic' here means 'dishonest' or 'inaccurate', then I say shove it. That's precisely the problem with the whole concept: it leads to a scenario where you can't file bugs. Debian is not a social club, we're trying to create software. Accuracy is the absolute priority in a technical forum. > Debian Women is a partial fix, or rather a workaround, > to the problem. If Debian Women can act as a back door, > leading more women into other Debian fora, there is hope. > Sheer numbers will help, by making the "omg! a grrrl!!!111" > responses rarer. They're virtually nonexistant already. I see vastly more people *complaining* about it than there have ever been *doing* it. I doubt people who would act like that are likely to be dissuaded by numbers, and I doubt that they constitute a statistically significant number anyway, so 'rarer' doesn't really apply. My bet is that if people didn't complain about it all the time, nobody would remember that it even happens. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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