OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

So this conversation has predictably gone to crap. Not quite as hard or fast as the Healthcare one though, so I'm a bit impressed. Maybe some who participated in that one have gone off to ESR's blog to plan out their field trip to light a burning cross on the White House lawn?

Another project that -- from my understanding -- has a decent set of female contributors is Wikipedia. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing that to be the case. I wonder what effect their 'assume good faith' type argument-diffusion policies have in making the project more welcoming. I think if the LKML, etc, were to adopt a 'don't keep the flamethrower cocked and loaded' policy, then such places might become a little bit more hospitable.

It's something worth thinking about. Although I hold that my criticisms of Kirrily's speech at the top of this thread still stand: if you're going to use participation as a launching point you need to correct for other sources of bias. I think it very likely that it's a lot easier to find women willing to write in their free time than program. Wikipedia's success with gathering a broader cross-section of the population as contributors might be because the activity of writing articles is more broadly appealing; it might have nothing to do with community dynamics.

On the other hand, it might be worthwhile to observe that most men don't like to be flamed for the most minor infraction, and recognize that poisonous communities are not good regardless of how you feel about feminism and female participation. What I mean is, it might be good to de-politicize the issue of basic civility by avoiding looking at it from the context of female vs male needs.