“True philosophy invents nothing; it merely establishes and describes what is.” Victor Cousin. French philosopher (1792 – 1867)

There’s only something like 2 and half weeks left for the women of all ages in all parts our community to tell us how they discovered Ubuntu for the International Women’s Day Competition.

That means that you really ought to get a move on!

The process is easy:

  1. Women and girls email us (address and rules in announcement) a description of how they discovered Ubuntu. Whether it was at school, work, from a partner or because they were sleep-computing and woke up to the sound of drums — whatever!
  2. In just over 2 weeks time, we put up the stories and let the community vote for their favourite
  3. On March 8th, the favourite is declared, and we make Jono earn his keep by announcing it and drawing the second surprise winner from a hat on his ustream channel or vidcast or whatever it is kids call that funky video stuff these days.
  4. Two lucky ladies get a share of this loot:

Bags, tshirts, magazines, books and other fun stuff

Amber describes the prize packs thusly:

    ***Prize packages are being sponsored by: Canonical, Linux Pro Magazine and Ubuntu-User Magazine. Package includes but not limited to: Ubuntu backpack, Ladies T-shirt, Ubuntu Key Chain, 1 year digital subscription to Linux Pro Magazine or a 1 year print subscription to Ubuntu User Magazine, and a copy of The Art of Community. Thank you all so much for your gracious support and sponsorship.

    Help spread the word by telling all the women you know who use Ubuntu and by hitting up digg and /.

    Folks who follow my various social networking instances have probably figured by now that I am in somewhat of a peeved state currently, and mostly due to the way various things have been handled by the Ubuntu Community Council (as an institution, not any individual counsellor) over recent times. I’ve been involved in the Ubuntu Community for the past 4 years, and my motivation for staying has dwindled rapidly in the past 4 months.

    This post is as much me getting stuff off my chest as it is about providing my perspective on what is wrong with the system. I’m going to work through all this in reverse order, as I think it will make more sense to others this way.

    The appointment (it was not an election irrespective of what the process was called) of the UW Leader was the final straw. Seriously, please don’t get me wrong — my grievance is 101% with the CC here. Amber is a smart and wonderful person and will try her best and probably do an ok job of it, and we’re working on some really cool things together. However, I’m worried about the detriment of latency that a newcomer leading the team will bring about. I have been around the group for years in a passenger-seat role but my experience but was overlooked. I’m really quite terrified that despite working alongside Amber, it won’t be enough.

    Approximately a month earlier saw the eventual (after months of inaction by the CC) appointment of a renewed IRC Council. There are now no original IRC Councillors remaining. I was one of the 2 remaining who put their hands up for another term, and after the CC decided they were unsatisfied with the applicants and staged another call, neither of us was appointed. This Council now lacks the benefit of prompt historical insight in to the evolution of the Ubuntu IRC-scape, the relationship with Freenode, and (in a big way) many troublesome chatters. I’m already seeing cracks showing thanks to this.

    And this brings me to the final point. I was discussing all this with another individual on Tuesday following the realisation that the Asia/Oceania Regional Membership Board is nearing “election” time. After musing whether I’ll be permitted to continue with that role since (I feel that) I’ve been pushed from the other roles, and explaining my discontent with recent behaviour of the CC (as a whole, not individual members), the individual asked me “But if you’re unhappy with the CC, why weren’t you on this list: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/cgi-perl/civs/results.pl?id=E_f802a7d79840b58a“. After responding that actually, I had been nominated, but had been silently dropped in the cut down to 12, the response I got was “I’d rather have public nominations, and then have the incumbent CC select the new CC than the mess you expose.”.

    I think that last exchange this week summarises my discontent rather neatly.

    My opinion in criticism of the CC is, as far as some folk are concerned, moot. If you don’t run, you don’t get to criticise, right? Sure, fair enough. Except that since few people know I was nominated for and willing to hold a seat on the CC, this is the response I’m getting. That hurts. There was a lack of transparency from the CC, and it’s making my word worthless.

    The IRCC went through a fightclub-esque appointment process because folks FUDwashed the CC, convincing them that the IRCC is corrupt and needs supervision. UW got similar treatment because dudes have been petitioning that the group is hostile because there’s not enough good stuff to outweigh the bad stuff.

    Validation for non-elections for both groups has been given as a lack of definition of voting group and that is quite frankly, IMHO, nothing more than a convenience. Voting groups could have been defined (and funnily enough one has been defined for the UW scope vote), but in both cases doing so was refused for the leadership appointment processes.

    I mean, people are aware that folks need to and do talk theories and things through privately. In all groups, especially governance groups like the IRCC. And that this is essential to the functionality of these groups, right? Right? At least, I’d hope so. Privacy doesn’t kill transparency — trying to eliminate privacy does.

    And here is the clincher.

    Who knows how the CC (as a whole) came to their decisions on these things? I don’t. It was private. I can only theorise (or ask and still theorise about the response). And to be perfectly honest, I can and do accept that at face value when I can trust the group.

    What I cannot accept is that concurrently similar privacy within the IRCC and different (but not unique, see other unlogged social channels such as #ubuntu-offtopic and various LoCo channels) privacy in UW isn’t acceptable. And this privacy within the IRCC and UW are part of why these non-democratic faux-meritocratic appointment processes were so closed, and exist to begin with in the case of the latter. I cannot accept that hypocrisy, and it alters how I (and others) theorise this stuff. Drastically.

    It kills my trust in the CC.

    Most importantly. It kills my motivation.

    I’m still on the Asia/Oceania Membership Board for another few months (and will be seeking re-whatevering), and I have a few things to do within Ubuntu Women still. Once those things are over with, I really don’t know where I’m going to end up. I do know that if the current trend follows, it is unlikely to be with Ubuntu.

    Blacked Out

    This blog is now Blacked Out.

    It should become obvious why I’ve blacked out this site if you would be so kind as to click that link above and have a read. You might even want to do so yourself.

    A few of us over at Ubuntu Women today launched a little competition to help raise the visibility of Women users(of all ages) of Ubuntu. The competition will be drawn on March 8th, giving us a wonderful way to celebrate International Women’s Day.

    The process is simple and any entrant can win — storytelling skills are a help, but not essential!

    1. Women write to us (see announcement for address) and explain how they discovered this amazing Linux distribution called Ubuntu. They do not have to be a contributor to Ubuntu or Ubuntu women, or a power user, or anything special. They just have to have discovered Ubuntu.
    2. In late February, we will put all the entries out there to be voted on by the community. One of the winners will be the story with the most votes.
    3. All the other entries are put in to a hat (or something of equal value), and everyone’s favourite Community Manager will, with much pomp and ceremony, draw from the pool a completely random winner in a videocast on March 8, and announce both winners.
    4. ???
    5. Profit! Winners will receive goodies (We’ll be able to tell you what once we get confirmation from the sponsors) and everyone’s stories will take pride of place on the Ubuntu Women website, where they can help to make sure other Women do not feel alone in the community!

    Such a low barrier of entry!

    We want to hear from as many Women Ubuntu users as possible, so tell everyone you know, and tell them to tell everyone they know, and … well, you get the picture.

    Edit: Apparently the xhtml fake <strike> tags get stripped out by planet ubuntu for whatever reason, and seem to have contributed to people being upset at my playful tease of Jono’s wonderful (and useful!) showman tendencies that his various music projects, presentations and ustream channel demonstrate. I apologise and have removed it to avoid further confusion.

    As well as going through a leadership appointment process (despite the name, no, it is not an election), the Ubuntu Women Project is currently once again reviewing the IRC channel situation.

    This is of course not an easy topic to get to agreement on since The Ubuntu Women Project has several aspects, and not all the participants require or employ all aspects.

    The current discussion is centred around logging for things like the tracking of project and initiative discussions, etc. To understand how best the channel archiving is to implemented going forward, it requires evaluation of how the channel is used now.

    As I mentioned before, The Ubuntu Women project has several faces. It is a project, and hence it has initiatives. It also provides Mentoring.

    It is also a group who women can make contact with as a starting point. A place where they can get to know people like themselves (read: other linux geeky women) who are part of the community as a whole, who can inspire them through the process of stepping out in to areas like MOTU, or support channels, or their LoCo, and provide somewhere to fall back to if something happens. Instead of a 96:4 male:female gender skew, the proportions are much more balanced and hence more woman-friendly. The IRC channel (of between 60 and 70 people) for example, currently floats around 50:50.

    It is a place that has an incredibly higher chance of being sympathetic to problems that occur due to the 96:4 gender skew. A place that is less likely to attempt to silence discussion of the issues and hence give them more consideration than they would receive elsewhere and more likely to help the individual work through it. It is a place where people are less likely to turn a blind eye to people behaving badly towards women, both within and without.

    And that’s what makes it a ‘safe space‘.

    Being a safe space is not by any means a guarantee of airtight, cotton wool and bubble wrapped safety. It is a relative thing. Even men who are willing to respect the intentions and boundaries of the group are welcome to join, and always have been. The #ubuntu-women channel is available for anyone to join, and we don’t interrogate your intention or ask for proof of possession of ovaries. Questions are usually not asked unless behaviour raises them.

    As I mentioned before, the topic of archiving IRC activity is under discussion, and part of this involves understanding what a safe space is. I sent a mail to the list yesterday describing what I understand a safe space to be:

    What tends to be needed from a safe space is:

    * The ability to approach people who advertise to care about the issue
    at hand, and can share experiences and advice.

    * The ability for these approaches to be an environment where we can
    seek privacy if we need it,…

    * …and likewise do not feel shamed into a confessional booth if we do
    not wish for such.

    * A *balance* between public and privacy.

    * A moderation policy that is accommodating of proactive moderation, not
    just reactive.

    * An understanding that the boundaries of the target demographic takes
    absolute priority over the boundaries of those who are not of that
    demographic.

    * The ability to socialise and learn in an atmosphere in which the above
    principles establish the tone.

    Right now, the moderation of the IRC channel is sub-optimal as far as this is concerned. I have been, in the past, condemned for greeting a new participant who turned out to be looking for hawt ladeez and consequentially banned. I have been, in the past, condemned for directing to the rules a new participant whose behaviour in either PM or channel had been inappropriate, leading to their earning a ban for continuing the bad behaviour in the channel. In these (and other) cases I had blame for causing the behaviour of the individuals placed upon me because I dared to be proactive. This needs to change.

    Introduction of blanket logging of current #ubuntu-women discussion would put everything we say in this channel out in to the Public Domain (as this is what irclogs.ubuntu.com is licenced as). This includes women asking advice for dealing with online stalking, or inappropriate behaviour by people within the Ubuntu community. This would ruin the balance of public and privacy. You may be on the ubuntu-women mailing list and wondering why the discussion of this stuff is rare there. The mailing list is publicly archived.

    Both these things have happened on multiple occasions, and were discussed in #ubuntu-women. Without these discussions in #ubuntu-women the issues would not have seen resolve, and eventually would have driven the women away. The incidents included some actively participating women whose names are linked to their IRC nicknames on their wiki pages and elsewhere, and whose discussions would have, if logging had been in place, been locatable by a google search on something like ‘”her_nick” + “his_nick” site:irclogs.ubuntu.com/year/month/’.

    Right now this is not possible, so women who discuss incidents in #ubuntu-women are not currently doing so on the reflective side a 2-way mirror. If logging the social, mentoring and advice discussions occurs, they will be. The chances of someone guessing the domain of sekrit unauthorised logging is minimal. The chances of someone being told to look for logs in irclogs.ubuntu.com via say, a factoid in the Ubottu the official IRC bot, is rather high.

    If however we split the channel in to sections, then we can target the important discussions, pertinent to the project’s initiatives. Siphoning all project discussion to a publicly-logged project-specific channel would un-bury it from the social discussions that occur daily in the channel now. I honestly believe this is the best way to resolve the issue of archiving positive activity.

    The alternative that has been proposed is to split off a counselling-specific channel and leaving the regular socialising and project discussions all mixed up in the current channel and log that. I don’t think this would solve much. It would not give the project-specific discussion the focus it would greatly benefit from, and it certainly would not solve the “argh evil feminist Amazonian fem-bots are plotting our demise in sekrit discussions” attitude, since there would still be a private forum. And private discussions in PM which would need to be referenced in the channel. This privacy is needed for sensitive discussions that I mentioned above.

    There is no doubt that the discussion archiving needs work still. A policy that declares to a participant from the outset the circumstances (ie, need for higher intervention) under which personally held logs (of whichever area ends up being not-publicly-archived) will be exchanged with parties such as Freenode, the Community and IRC Councils, should be drafted. Here in Australia, private recordings of discussions are, AFAIK (and IANAL), able to be shared in spite of a privacy agreement if all stakeholders waive their right to privacy for the specific exchange. A written policy that permits the exchange of logs of presumed private discussions with respected parties under this sort of practice is probably worth investigating.

    On a personal level, the idea of logging the #ubuntu-women social banter is a real concern and worries me to no end. #ubuntu-offtopic is not logged, and is a social channel that caters to the 96% male/4% female audience. The prospect of logging a 50% female social channel because some people who haven’t bothered to really take the time to understand the Ubuntu Women Project think that maybe they might kinda one day be mentioned potentially negatively doesn’t sit well in comparison. Letting women socialise with a group half-comprised of women under the same circumstances as men are allowed to socialise with a group almost entirely comprised of men isn’t going to ruin the whole Ubuntu project. Seriously, it isn’t. Not even slightly. Really, it won’t.

    The meeting tomorro^WToday is set to decide on this, and the implementation of the result will be up to whoever is appointed Leader next week. Lucky them! And will no doubt involve sleepless nights like this one has been so far for me. I’m off for a nap. The meeting is in 4.5hrs.