[UbuntuWomen] UW article for Fullcircle mag

[Emma Jane Hogbin]

Jacinta Richardson wrote:
> I personally am not part of the general Ubuntu community.  I've asked questions 
> on the forums a couple of times, but I find the whole interface so amazingly 
> unwieldy that I usually don't bother.  When my web searches return Ubuntu forum 
> pages, I find that the majority of responses are "yeah, I'm having that problem 
> too" followed by "Okay, it's fixed thanks".  I can't help but think the whole 
> thing would be improved by a original author link to a web page somewhere else 
> which gave a better description of the problem (the stuff the author learned as 
> the forum went on) and a full answer of their solution (if any). 

This is a great suggestion. Would the other Web site be like a Wiki? How
do you think it would work? I think the core Ubuntu community is open to
suggestions on how to make the support forums easier to use. I agree
that the volume of *stuff* is hard to sift through. If the group was
able to flesh out some ideas about how to improve things, we could
present it to the core group...


> Further, I 
> find some of the posters offensive.  Whether in their posts, signatures or just 
> general tone.

Definitely you need to report problems! Or at least hop into the #UW IRC
channel and get help reporting the negative behaviour you find.


> Our long term goal is to get more women contributing directly etc.  Our 
> immediate goal (as I understand it) is to get more women contributing at all. 
> Showing that UW does some technical stuff (while encouraging our subscribed 
> women to stand up and be vocal) shows interested people that we're not just a 
> social club.  It allows people on the outside to see that perhaps we can help 
> them if they're too intimidated by trying out there.


I think highlighting our participation in the core Ubuntu project will
also help to show that we are technical. I would personally be shocked
if a technical question wasn't answered on the list or in the IRC
channel... With Lyz's help we've added a new column on the Profiles page:
	http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/Profiles
I think this will really help everyone in the community to see that the
group has a range of skills and that we are able to answer questions on
just about any topic. I'm hoping that everyone will have at least their
LoCo team to add to that column, if not another another area as well!!


regards,
emma

-- 
Emma Jane Hogbin, B.Sc.
Founder, xtrinsic
phone: (519) 371-2665
web: www.xtrinsic.com