On Tuesday 21 September 2010 05:51:55 Helen wrote:
From a woman's point of view, this is a pretty terrible page. It really does that whole minority-group thing that makes me uncomfortable. I can't assume that I speak for other women though - I've always been a bit of a geek. But I think the reality is that most women who get interested in Linux will have a bit of a geeky streak anyway.
I'm really busy right now but I'll have a look at this page and see if I can make it sound a little more inviting and less like an equal-opportunity speech.
The other thing is, how do women even find such a page? I didn't know there was a women's mailing list, because it didn't even occur to me to look for one!
Equality and inclusiveness isn't about creating little subgroups. It's about making sure that everyone is treated with decency, and not indulging in rude toilet humour or sexist humour, treating newbie/silly questions kindly, not assuming ignorance nor knowledge.
Has anyone noticed the rather rude comment that is usually on the opensuse-chat page when you log into Freenode? Where does that sort of thing come from? This is really pretty gross and unnacceptable. Fixing this would be a nice first step.
" Topic for #opensuse-chat is: Welcome to openSUSE chat! Tech support is in #suse :: <<sPiN-> well its new to me and it excites me sexually :: * sPiN tweaks his nipples with jumper cables in anticipation - * sPiN touches him self in anticipation"
Not sure where that comes from, but anyone who knows what to do about it - please. Otherwise, Helen, while it obviously doesn't directly concern me, I very much share your feelings on this matter. KDE, where I come from, is a large FOSS community with a particularly big number of woman involved. And they never made a point of it in any way. Yeah, the edu team is lead by a women. Yep, the amarok community manager is female. KDE e.V. had a female president for years, and I can go on. But those positons were just as merit-based as any others - as with most other positions (except for president), they are not given or taken by or to anyone - but assumed by doing the associated work. Which is what these ladies did. The only thing KDE might 'do' is being very nice and polite in general - and very unaccepting of behaviour which does not fit that. Sexism or general unfriendlyness is not accepted and will result in many corrective responses to the person acting like that - social order is restored quickly that way ;-) In general, I think we, in openSUSE, should surely act like that. Otherwise it's fine to have a women IRC channel - if any women are intersted. KDE has a Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transsexual channel, why not? We're a Free Software community, anything goes :D
regards,
Helen
Greetings, Jos