On Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:25:19 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote:
We can certainly educate our community, as a first step. Many behaviors are really putting off people from different backgrounds (not just women).
This is certainly true. We had a request over in the forums for a section that was friendly to the elderly because some of the behaviours that are considered acceptable within the community as a whole (and the forums in particular) might be off-putting to those who are more advanced in age. My own personal feeling is that it doesn't make sense to segregate the community based on arbitrary lines of race/gender/age/etc, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense to try to make the community more accepting of those differences. In the forums in particular, I've noticed that there are two separate audiences served. 1) the technical audience who prefers web forums (or NNTP groups) to e-mail lists, and 2) a non-technical audience that is made up of mostly end-users. This makes for an interesting - and occasionally volatile - combination. The technical audience tends to apply tact to what is being said to them; the non-technical audience tends to apply tact to what they say. Mixing the two can be a challenge (I know I've mentioned this idea of a 'tact filter' on the user list in the past - that's what I'm talking about here as well).
From a standpoint of making a community statement, it makes sense to me to make it clear that the community consists of not just a geographic/ racial/gender/ethnic diversity, but also a diversity in the technical skills of the membership as well. It shouldn't be assumed that because one is using openSUSE that one possesses deep technical knowledge about computing environments.
Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org