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Yet another male perspective on women in free softwareYet another male perspective on women in free softwarePosted Oct 4, 2007 5:21 UTC (Thu) by paulmfoster (subscriber, #17313)Parent article: Yet another male perspective on women in free software
Here are some simple rules:
1. Don't say anything in email you wouldn't say in person. If someone would punch you out in person for saying something, perhaps you shouldn't say it in email.
2. Your conversations on the internet are *not* private. Even private email conversations can become public. Consider that every word you utter on the internet can be read by the whole world.
3. People should *not* have to develop "thicker skins" around you.
4. If you originate the communication, then you're to a greater or lesser degree responsible for the reaction on the other end.
5. If you really want to fight, become a pugilist.
6. Know when to shut up. It's not your job to correct every stupid utterance on the internet, and you don't *have* to respond to them.
7. Some people specialize in provoking other people. Don't take their bait.
8. You're not in the locker room on the internet. You're in the town square with directional microphones pointed at you from every corner. (See #2 above.)
9. Where possible, ignore personal attacks on you. Consider that they say more about the attacker than they say about you. (Develop a "thicker skin". ;-})
10. Consider the difference between written and spoken communication. In writing, you can't see the person's face or posture, and you can't adequately judge their real reaction the way you could in person.
11. Women are potentially as capable as men in most areas. It really depends on whether they're *interested* in an area or not.
This business of driving off women before they can fully join our community (or after they've joined) is a matter of *manners*. And I suspect that if people simply followed the above rules, we wouldn't have this problem.
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Answers from postions of typical uber-geek Posted Oct 4, 2007 6:57 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Note: I'm not uber-geek, I just play devil's advocate. Just 1-2% of ubergeeks in community are enough to drive all women away, so we can not just ignore them. ----- 1. I never understood why people so often want to punch me - so I've stopped talking serious on public. The people from this mailing list will never punch me if I'll say what I write in my e-mails so I think I'm safe here. 2. See above: I know my conversations are not private, but the important people are seeing them anyway and the rest of the world are not important, so I just don't know what are you trying to say here. 3. Why not ? This my place and we play by my rules, on public I'm mostly silent so "general public" can do anything they want. 4. Other end is other end - I can not predict their reaction. If I said truth as I see it - what more can they want ? 5. I do not want to fight - other people have strange urge to fight me, but that's their problem, not mine. If they can accept the truth and can not prove that what I'm saying is false - what they are are trying to achieve anyway ? 6. It's not my job to correct all things on the internet, but if someone says some incorrect things on my turf - it's my responsibility. Stupid people must be corrected (and weed out if the need arises) or else pointless noise will drown all things here. 7. How will I know ? I see falsehood - I respond. Sometimes I don't have time and hope someone else will respond, but it rarely happens. I wonder why. 8. This is repeat of 2. above or does it have some new points ? 9. Good flamefest can be interesting mental challenge sometimes. It's not important but can be fun - I forget about it once the flames stops, but other people sometimes remember it for year... wonder why... 10. Huh ? There are a difference between written and spoken communication ? What are you talking about ? Do you talk about how some people's face becomes red before they start trying to punch me ? 11. If they are as capable - they can send patch, I'll happily accept it. Instead they are starting to talk about silly things like tact or manners. I just don't know how to shut them up. Why can not they say something useful for once ? ----- It's very true that it's all the question of *manners*, but sizable percentage of geeks feel that manners are useless waste of time or even worse: burden that hurts discussion by clouding issues. Before you'll try to explain to geeks how can they use tact you should explain to them why they should bother
Answers from postions of typical uber-geek Posted Oct 4, 2007 9:21 UTC (Thu) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link] O wad some Power the giftie gie usTo see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, An' ev'n devotion!
Robert Burns
Answers from postions of typical uber-geek Posted Oct 4, 2007 13:43 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] > I'm not uber-geek, I just play devil's advocate
...you mean you troll...?
Answers from postions of typical uber-geek Posted Oct 4, 2007 16:25 UTC (Thu) by amikins (guest, #451) [Link] To be fair, it looks to me more like this individual isn't clear on the purpose of playing devil's advocate.
Devil's advocate is an attempt to advance understanding of a problem by presenting alternate points, as well-reasoned as possible. If the points aren't sufficiently well framed as to be able to usefully further discussion, then the goal isn't served.
Care must be taken when attempting to take on the devil's advocate role; if you aren't precise in how you present these views, you do in fact come across as a troll.
Answers from postions of typical uber-geek Posted Oct 20, 2007 1:01 UTC (Sat) by einhverfr (guest, #44407) [Link] I actually thought the points were well demonstrated. Not strictly devils advocate, more along the lines of what one might expect from, say, Jonathan Swift. I think the main issue however, is that it really does come down to community management. Some people "get it" and some don't.
Yet another male perspective on women in free software Posted Oct 4, 2007 12:40 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] In summary: be mature.I daresay that a focus on maturity is the real challenge. Fretting about the plumbing of individuals in the free software community, in my opinion, is a distraction. In fact, if I was a proprietary vendor, I would view fanning these flames of fretting as yet another way to keep the free software community distracted and divided, a big strategic win.
Yet another male perspective on women in free software Posted Oct 4, 2007 13:47 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] > 11. Women are potentially as capable as men in most areas. It really depends on whether they're *interested* in an area or not.
10 or so years ago, that wouldn't even have had to be stated explicitly - it was a generally-held assumption. Have we regressed in the last decade?
Yet another male perspective on women in free software Posted Oct 4, 2007 20:07 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] Yes, we have. The mass resurgence, on the global political scene, of ultra-reactionary fascist thinking has led to a commensurate erosion of respect for women, racial minorities, religious diversity, and in general everybody who is different from "the norm" in the country in question. It's especially bad right now in the US and in the Muslim world, but it's by no means confined to those places.
Yet another male perspective on women in free software Posted Oct 17, 2007 17:41 UTC (Wed) by einhverfr (guest, #44407) [Link] The simple solution is to find a way to show who has been overtaken by such thinking that serves nobody. I have found that most of the jerks who mismanage software communities are also sexist. The problem is not what we as a society have regressed to but rather the fact that we give some people way too much power. I think that someone to start rating open source communities in terms of things like how welcome women feel in the communities.
More on your points Posted Oct 17, 2007 3:57 UTC (Wed) by einhverfr (guest, #44407) [Link] Points 1, 2, 8, 9, and 10 often also come down to: Slow down. It is really easy to communicate unintended thing in email, so take your time, calm yourself, and communicate exactly what was intended. Furthermore don't be afraid to appologize when someone takes soemthing the wrong way or you are factually wrong. Point 3: I agree here with a major caveat. Project leaders should have thick skins and should demand often brutal honesty from community members. They should not, however, demand that community members have thick skins. Point 4: True to some extent or another. At the same time, the key is sympathy and compassion, not who is at fault. Somone could just blow up because he/she is having a bad day. People have to share responsibility for a conversation's outcome. On your last point, let me share my experience with LedgerSMB. We have never gone out of our way to recruit women. Yet, we have done what we can to promote an open community where people feel comfortable contributing. As a result, 1/3 of those with commit privelege are women (I am guessing that this may be more than most projects). How did this happen? Simple. We accepted contributions from them and they found they enjoyed working with us. No great mysteries here. I will say this though-- every one of our committers is a demanding, exacting individual with a strong emphasis in developing quality software. THere is no difference here between the men and women that I can attribute to gender (more of it seems to do with expertise than gender). We have had fights on private lists that are very intense, but are always generally respectful. I have watched this start to push away contributors from time to time but I am not sure if this is good or bad. On the positive side, the big issue tends to be whether people are willing to put in the effort to make their patches committable in a codebase that is both rapidly being developed and where it hasn;t changed yet, it is very brittle.
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