[UbuntuWomen] IRC meeting with Jono and IRC bot

[Vid Ayer]

On 4/30/07, Melissa Draper <melissa at meldraweb.com> wrote:
> Jan Claeys wrote:
> >
> > During the last months, I haven't seen any questions that would give a
> > bad impression about someone (except for some trolls coming into the
> > channel, but I suppose you don't care much about _them_ ;) ).
> >
> > OTOH, some people might feel shy, but I wonder if they would ask
> > questions in a group (channel) of 30 people then anyway...?
> The problem is not being shy about asking, but rather being shy about
> your newbie question, or trauma/ordeal and reactions regarding said
> ordeal, being publicly logged and cached in Google forevermore to be
> found if someone later searches you via your nick


Re, Google cache - Logs could be kept for 1-2 months (or any
meaningful time frame found suitable).  As you say logging could be
disabled for short periods when someone has an issue and wishes to
discuss it.  That is the call ( & priviledge) for the channel ops. For
this  the person (I use a gender-neutral term here) needs to know who
are the channel ops (I mean they need to be visible, newcomers may not
want to dig out that information from our website) and how to get in
touch with them.

OTOH, have we had such instances? I am curious as it would help to
keep track of how we perceive what users need vis-a-vis each women
user(s) knowing/using the channel to its fullest potential. If
usability matters, then its the newbie users IMO who should be making
suggestions and we should be listening.


On 4/27/07, Elizabeth Bevilacqua <lyz at princessleia.com> wrote:
> - the only disadvantage is that it's not immediate, people joining the meeting
> late don't have a site to go to to catch up.

Exactly... that is a *huge* disadvantage, since they will have to ask
the channel ops for this information, provided they know who the
channel ops are and how to contact them. Besides that, if there is a
discussion going on, they will not be able to participate to the
fullest extent or offer their ideas/comments/whatever, since they have
no clue about what has already been discussed.


> The same way the LinuxChix IRC logs are "private-ish" - we ask people
> not to post public logs. People have brought logging bots in before and
> we've asked them to be removed. There is no fool-proof way to avoid logs
> being published, but we can avoid having official published ones.

Now LC has changed its old policy of not mentioning about its channel
on the website so as to enable women to find the right place to join,
as opposed to joining  the wrong channel for all teh wrong reasons.
The old closed policy only kept the real women users away and not the
flamers.

>From others experience we learn that openness and transparency helps,
especially if women are expected to contribute in technical areas.
Women should be encouraged speakup and standup openly for themselves
as opposed to furthering a culture of silence. Evenso, if a person is
worried about logs he/she could always use an alternative nick.


> This has been discussed by the IRC team before and we've decided that
> the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. Women join the channel to
> learn how to use IRC, how to get into the community, and the questions
> asked are not always questions you want published openly on the
> internet. We want to continue to respect that so people are comfortable
> joining our channel to learn.

see above..

-- 
Vid
http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/VidAyer