About the recent events in the Rails community about using explicit sexual contents in slides

[Miriam Ruiz-4]

Hi,

For those who haven't heard about this yet, at a recent SF Rails
conference, someone (Matt Aimonetti) gave a presentation with slightly
porny images of women sprinkled throughout the technical slides. It
seems to be the same old story with some guys all over again an again.
The slides are available online [1] but I'd recommend not to look at
them if you have some sensibility, as it includes explicit sexual
images.

Some echoes in the blogsphere:

http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/?p=46
http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-at-gogaruco/
http://dyepot-teapot.com/2009/04/25/dear-fellow-rubyists/
http://lizkeogh.com/2009/04/29/i-am-not-a-pr0n-star-avoiding-unavoidable-associations/
http://www.blogher.com/tipping-point-women-tech-heres-hoping
http://hackety.org/2009/04/29/aSelectionOfThoughtsFromActualWomen.html
http://annaraven.blogspot.com/2009/05/dirty-pitchers-and-conference.html

Mike Gunderloy, a member of the Rails Activists (public spokespeople
for Rails), has resigned his position in disgust over the way his
Rails community comrades reacted to the situation. I think it is quite
a courageous movement and I'm glad that there are guys like him. A new
Rails community seems to have born in response to those events, called
RailsBridge [3] [4]

[1] http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr0n-star
[2] http://afreshcup.com/2009/04/28/a-painful-decision/
[3] http://railsbridge.org/
[4] http://afreshcup.com/2009/05/04/announcing-railsbridge/

Greetings,
Miry


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[Helen Faulkner]

Miriam Ruiz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> For those who haven't heard about this yet, at a recent SF Rails
> conference, someone (Matt Aimonetti) gave a presentation with slightly
> porny images of women sprinkled throughout the technical slides. It
> seems to be the same old story with some guys all over again an again.
> The slides are available online [1] but I'd recommend not to look at
> them if you have some sensibility, as it includes explicit sexual
> images.

[...]

Thanks for pointing that out, Miry.  It does indeed seem that some things are
slow to change.  I'd like to hope that the number of people being outspoken
about the inappropriateness of such behaviour is increasing, though.

Helen


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[Lisi Reisz]

On Monday 04 May 2009 17:59:29 Miriam Ruiz wrote:
> For those who haven't heard about this yet, at a recent SF Rails
> conference, someone (Matt Aimonetti) gave a presentation with slightly
> porny images of women sprinkled throughout the technical slides.

Not as bad as the SF Rails incident, but sadly in the same vein:
If you can stand it, read as far as the reference to rape.  (Apparently we
have no reasonable right to complain at any thread which stops short of
discussing rape.)

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2009/06/msg02044.html

:-(

Lisi


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[Don Armstrong]

On Mon, 06 Jul 2009, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> Not as bad as the SF Rails incident, but sadly in the same vein: If
> you can stand it, read as far as the reference to rape. (Apparently
> we have no reasonable right to complain at any thread which stops
> short of discussing rape.)
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2009/06/msg02044.html

In the future, if you run into threads like this it's best to contact
listmaster@...; I don't think any of us actually read
debian-user@ldo, so we'd miss a thread like this unless it's pointed
out. [And it's better to kill these things of earlier than letting
them go on.]


Don Armstrong

--
Grimble left his mother in the food store and went to the launderette
and watched the clothes go round. It was a bit like color television
only with less plot.
 -- Clement Freud _Grimble_

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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[Serafeim Zanikolas]

On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 03:18:10PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote [edited]:
> In the future, if you run into threads like this it's best to contact
> listmaster@...; I don't think any of us actually read
> debian-user@ldo, so we'd miss a thread like this unless it's pointed
> out.

Would we please add the above suggestion:

(i) in the mailing lists CC

(ii) (ideally) in the subscription confirmation one receives when signing up
to a mailing list

BTW here are some thoughts of mine after I've been flamed recently by a DD:

    What's hurting more than a DD's rudeness is the project's silent
    endorsement of it. I'm not implying it's possible to have firefighters all
    over the place, when DDs are overcommited with real work, but this doesn't
    make it any less painful from the victim's perspective ...


Speaking of the CC, how about re-wording its penultimate rule

    Try not to flame; it is not polite.

to something stronger, say

    Do not flame; it is counterproductive.

-S


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[Lisi Reisz]

On Thursday 09 July 2009 19:59:34 Serafeim Zanikolas wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 03:18:10PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote [edited]:
> > In the future, if you run into threads like this it's best to contact
> > listmaster@...; I don't think any of us actually read
> > debian-user@ldo, so we'd miss a thread like this unless it's pointed
> > out.
>
> Would we please add the above suggestion:
>
> (i) in the mailing lists CC
>
> (ii) (ideally) in the subscription confirmation one receives when signing
> up to a mailing list
>
> BTW here are some thoughts of mine after I've been flamed recently by a DD:
>
>     What's hurting more than a DD's rudeness is the project's silent
>     endorsement of it. I'm not implying it's possible to have firefighters
> all over the place, when DDs are overcommited with real work, but this
> doesn't make it any less painful from the victim's perspective ...
>
>
> Speaking of the CC, how about re-wording its penultimate rule
>
>     Try not to flame; it is not polite.
>
> to something stronger, say
>
>     Do not flame; it is counterproductive.

Great!!  It would seem to me to be a good idea, so I am definitely not flaming
you.  

But it wouldn't help in the case I mentioned.  It would have helped if I had
known I could report it.  I assumed that the fact that no-one else had
stepped in and stopped it, meant that it was acceptable on the main Debian
list.  I had no doubt that it would not be acceptable here.

>  What's hurting more than a DD's rudeness is the project's silent
>     endorsement of it.

Quite.  Hence my feeling so bruised.  The attitude displayed even in the one
personal apology I received (after the rape comment) shows that, from my
point of view, the entire ethos of the list is hostile.  _One_ man got it and
said so, and I am very grateful to him.

Lisi



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[Don Armstrong]

On Thu, 09 Jul 2009, Serafeim Zanikolas wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 03:18:10PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote [edited]:
> > In the future, if you run into threads like this it's best to contact
> > listmaster@...; I don't think any of us actually read
> > debian-user@ldo, so we'd miss a thread like this unless it's pointed
> > out.
>
> Would we please add the above suggestion:
>
> (i) in the mailing lists CC

listmaster@... is listed right below it as the contact
information for the lists. We're not really the list police, though,
so in general its best if people contact people who are out of line
off-list and remind them of decorum. When things get out of control,
though, let us know.

That said, I'll ask the other listmasters and see what we all think.
 
> (ii) (ideally) in the subscription confirmation one receives when
> signing up to a mailing list

No one ever bothers to read or keep these things, so it's not worth
it.

> BTW here are some thoughts of mine after I've been flamed recently
> by a DD:
>
>     What's hurting more than a DD's rudeness is the project's silent
>     endorsement of it.

The lack of a public recrimination doesn't equate to endorsement; the
project is large, and necessarily remains silent on a large number of
topics.

>     I'm not implying it's possible to have firefighters all over the
>     place, when DDs are overcommited with real work, but this
>     doesn't make it any less painful from the victim's perspective
>     ...

Flames happen. It's the nature of communicating using email that its
difficult to see in real time the effect you have on other people.
Where its particularly egregious and uncalled for, people get it
pointed out to them, often privately.

When its obvious to me as a bystander, I occasionally send out mails
to people about it. When people flame me, I try my best to get to the
fuel beneath the flames.

> Speaking of the CC, how about re-wording its penultimate rule
>
>     Try not to flame; it is not polite.
>
> to something stronger, say
>
>     Do not flame; it is counterproductive.

If the words of the CoC were enough to stop people from flaming, even
the first would be enough.

All of that said, suggestions for changes in lists.debian.org behavoir
belong in bugs filed against lists.debian.org, not in a thread on
debian-women@ldo. Feel free to file them if you still feel they're
necessary.


Don Armstrong

--
You think to yourself, hey, it's a test tube, for God's sake. Pretty
soon, though, the rush from a test tube isn't enough. You want to
experiment more and more. Then before you know it, you're laying in
the corner of a lab somewhere with a Soxhlet apparatus in one hand,
a three neck flask in the other, strung out and begging for grant
money.
 -- Tim Mitchell, 1994 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize Speech

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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[Serafeim Zanikolas]

On Thu, Jul 09, 2009 at 05:31:49PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote [edited]:

> On Thu, 09 Jul 2009, Serafeim Zanikolas wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 03:18:10PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote [edited]:
> > > In the future, if you run into threads like this it's best to contact
> > > listmaster@...; I don't think any of us actually read
> > > debian-user@ldo, so we'd miss a thread like this unless it's pointed
> > > out.
> >
> > Would we please add the above suggestion:
> >
> > (i) in the mailing lists CC

I've opened #536575 about this.

> > BTW here are some thoughts of mine after I've been flamed recently
> > by a DD:
> >
> >     What's hurting more than a DD's rudeness is the project's silent
> >     endorsement of it.
>
> The lack of a public recrimination doesn't equate to endorsement; the
> project is large, and necessarily remains silent on a large number of
> topics.

I think that when a non-DD is flamed by a DD, and no other project member
steps in, the first will justifiably feel disappointed by the project. You
don't need an explicit endorsement, when the flame comes from a DD.

(BTW in my case it was even worse, because a second DD publicly supported the
flaming DD, and a third one acknowledged to me in private that the whole thing
wasn't right. Alas as you say flames happen.)

> Flames happen. It's the nature of communicating using email that its
> difficult to see in real time the effect you have on other people.
> Where its particularly egregious and uncalled for, people get it
> pointed out to them, often privately.
>
> When its obvious to me as a bystander, I occasionally send out mails
> to people about it. When people flame me, I try my best to get to the
> fuel beneath the flames.

Well said. Just to make sure I don't sound too negative: the project does have
many outspoken, thoughtful and smart people, which is why I'm still around.
But this aspect is certainly one in which Debian can be greatly improved, and
IMHO any improvement will be gradual and via small changes here and there
(like the one proposed in #536575)

Cheers,
Serafeim


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