Re: DW Mailing List: Would it be better if it was not archived?

[Éric Araujo <merwok@netwok.org>]

Hello

Since this is my first message here, I’ll introduce myself first. I am,
in no particular order, French, male, student, Python programmer,
activist, happy Debian user and Free Software enthousiast.

Debian-women is one of the two Debian mailing-lists I’m subscribed to;
other ones have too much traffic. The other one is
debian-devel-announce, to keep an eye on the news.

I subscribed to debian-women after reading about the project and paging
through the archive because I liked the goals of the project and the
atmosphere of the conversation. People are friendly, help each other,
don’t tell people their question is stupid, and are working to make
Debian a better place. They even talk about babies! Truly a different
atmosphere than some debian-devel threads.

So I’ve been getting mail for four months, following the debates without
piping in. I didn’t want to rush in and voice opinions before I had
observed the list. It was strange to feel myself in the minority, in the
group that had to be cautious, because not dominant. This is at least
one thing I’ve learned from d-w. My invisible contribution has been
going to the archives to report spam :)

Back on topic, I think archives are useful, because they turn discussion
into resources, both about technical stuff and women/inequality in
Debian/Free Software/computery things. Someone shy can directly mail
someone listed on the d-w website, can’t they? Plus, if someone writes
to the list confident it will not be made public, and then someone uses
the message to do something Bad™, the plan would backfire. Knowing your
message will be public when writing avoids that. (This scenario is very
hypothetical, but still.)

My €0.02.

Kind regards, Merwok