[UbuntuWomen] [ubuntu-marketing] UWN #51: "... and this evenincluded some wi

[Elizabeth Bevilacqua]

On 8/7/07, Sulamita Garcia <sulamita at linuxchix.org.br> wrote:
> and I totally agree. I told several UW that my impression from lurking is
> that the project is not been listen. Everybody have suggestions or things
> to say about what you should do or accept or change, but I don't think
> they are listening of what you are actually saying.

Luckily your impression is incorrect. In spite of the comments from
Martin/bueno and some random person coming along who has never
contributed to the Marketing list before complaining about political
correctness, the response to me personally has been overwhelmingly
positive.

1. The wiki archive of the issue has been changed to reflect the correction.

2. The fellow who wrote the piece for the UWN apologized and explained
that he "just wasn't thinking" - he's a good guy, I believe him.

3. I've received several comments from community members that have
been positive and supportive. The leader of my LoCo team even dropped
into IRC yesterday during the day (very rare) to express his support
(and disappointment in the response I received).

4. By posting this correction many women have also spoken to me and
thanked me for speaking up about this. A lot of people were offended
or annoyed by the wording in this. These women now feel more accepted
and that there are people to stand up and point these things out.

5. Two proof-readers for the UWN admitted to me that they had read
right through the sentence without even noticing it. They said they'd
be more sensitive in the future.

6. Almost everyone I've spoken to agrees that Martin/bueno's posts
were out of line. These are not just friends of mine, as you might
expect conversations like this bring people out of the woodwork to
comment :) I've met lots of people these past couple days!

In short, I believe our point was made and enough people were
listening to start making the changes we want to see happening for
women within Ubuntu. Martin/bueno's responses have been seen for what
they are by the community and judgments have been made. I fear the UWN
has been hurt by this, I don't think I'll ever be sending in another
correction and I know a lot of other people have been turned off by
the response I received. They will have to deal with that, and I hope
for the sake of UWN that they reign in Martin appropriately so he
stops scaring off potential contributors.

I don't believe further reporting of this issue to Jane or Jono is
going to do anything but hurt everyone involved (including
Ubuntu-Women as a whole). There will always be people who don't agree,
are culturally different, don't understand the issue fully, and/or
resist change in their community - even change that turns out for the
better (like Debian-Women's influence on Debian).

We can't hope to change everyone, but I'm delighted to say that this
issue HAS made an impression on a lot of people who were simply "not
thinking" and simply unaware of the issues.

-- 
Elizabeth Bevilacqua
http://www.princessleia.com