Women and TLUG - a personal rant

Thu Jan 16 16:35:49 UTC 2014

I have a suspicion the recent william incident and the Z issues (tlug list
subscriber with name starting with Z),
are perhaps "mel gibson" moments. It happens. Maybe they will apologize,
work well for Mel (or did it). The mail list , i think overall, hasn't been
to bad over the years at all, but what alarms me is the quotes on the meet
ups. Sounds like if someone recorded the meetings, it may spawn a new
reality TV series! Personally, sounds like a TLUG meeting, to me, would be
more entertaining then Pawn Stars, Homes on Homes, or even Man Tracker :)
(And by entertaining I mean in a more WTF! did they just say/do way). Oddly
enough, if the meetings were recorded (not uncommon in presentations), one
may find the misbehaviours miraculously start behaving. But in the emails
of late, even sounds like the social meet ups after are very problematic.

I don't think people should get to hung up on free-speech, its is of huge
importance, but its secondary to democracy. The people in TLUG who share
common thoughts on this stuff can do what ever they want as a majority (
note however some groups I am a member of require 2/3 votes to make some
changes to things, as if the majority is 51/49, you some times don't want
to make decisions on that tight a vote). Even the board serves the member
base, and long term have no power, as they are elected. In the end the
majority hold all the power, so I hope TLUG doesn't get caught up in a lot
of necessary politics and red tape, and complicate something that is in the
end very very simple. I am a member of a home owners association that owns
land amongst the group where we live, some times things get heated, but in
the end, there will be a suggestion in the meeting, owners are present, and
the board, there is a show of hands (or secret ballot i.e. if election) on
issues, and the will of the majority gets things moving along just nice in
the end. A strong minority can always go off and do their own thing if they
don't respect the governance of the majority, so no concern has to be given
to breaking a few eggs.

-tl

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Matt Seburn <mattseburn-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> This thread is absurd to me.  Count me as one of those put off enough by
> what I see here to consider TLUG utterly useless.
>
> I attended one meeting years ago, and felt so unwelcome that I haven't
> been back since.  Heckling was an issue, but I chose not to come back
> because the group felt very unwelcoming.  It felt like I had walked into a
> clique of people who had known each other for years and had no interest in
> letting newcomers into the group.  I tried to follow along to the
> post-meeting social time (hoping that I'd have better luck socializing
> there), but everyone walked ahead of me and occasionally looked back to
> glare at me until I gave up and left.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who
> has had an experience like this.
>
> I stayed on the list because of the useful and interesting discussion, but
> now I'm reconsidering that decision.  I see a group of people condoning
> sexual harassment, and prioritizing the harasser's "right" to harass above
> others' right to not be harassed.  This is absurd to me.  Free speech does
> not mean you have the right to say whatever you want without consequences.
> You can't yell "fire!" in a crowded theatre, and you can't sexually harass
> people.  Both actions can and often do have serious consequences, and for
> good reason.
>
> Moderation is an important part of any internet community.  I agree that
> the banhammer should be used sparingly, but at a minimum the moderator's
> role is to set the tone and ensure that the space remains useful for its
> intended purpose, and in TLUG's case this extends to in-person meetups.
> Many people in this thread have shared that they feel the group has become
> problematic and is not useful to them.  I think this is a real problem that
> those in charge of TLUG need to pay attention to.
>
> If you want to get together with your friends and heckle each other and
> make sexist jokes, you are free to do so whenever and wherever you like.
> That is not the purpose of TLUG, and it's the responsibility of those in
> charge to ensure it remains true to its purpose.
>
> Matt
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:19 AM, Colin McGregor <colin.mc151-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 9:37 PM, Stewart C. Russell <scruss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>wrote:
>>
>>> On 14-01-15 07:53 PM, William Park wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Come on, guys.  This bitching about TLUG meeting is strange to me and
>>> > counter productive as group.
>>>
>>> Actually, no; it's very productive to constructively criticize something
>>> you want to see improve. In the link that Colin posted, it's written up
>>> under “Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am”:
>>> http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html
>>> — read it, it's good.
>>>
>>
>> Sorry, my bad, I first heard about the Geek Social Fallacy article via
>> Stewart Russell on Monday, and I didn't credit him. Bottom line though,
>> there are points in that article that should be driven home to a GTALug
>> (and several other geek groups) audience (sad but true).
>>
>> I often attend the GTALug board meetings, even though I am not a board
>> member. It is my hope that at the next board meeting GTALug will adopt a
>> formal code of conduct and then be prepared to enforce the code...
>>
>> So, while I know the TLUG directors have tried their best, I have to say
>>> that the new room at Ryerson is definitely sub-standard. In the days of
>>> pretending to be associated with UofT, at least the rooms were big
>>> enough that the annoying back-channel chatter didn't prevent you from
>>> hearing everything.
>>>
>>> > People come to the meeting because they
>>> > want to learning something, and people don't come to the meeting
>>> because
>>> > they have nothing to learn.
>>>
>>> While TLUG has a roster of genuine subject matter experts who are a joy
>>> to listen to, there are a number of folks at meetings who - maybe - just
>>> come to give their 2¢ on whatever topic is being presented. I understand
>>> that it's sometimes hard to contain one's natural exuberance about
>>> sharing knowledge, but it's better to be kind than correct, so we should
>>> strive to remember that a presenter is just giving their experience of
>>> their way of running their system. It may be vastly different from the
>>> way we'd do it, but if it works, good!
>>>
>>>  Stewart
>>>
>>> (who may have occasionally used “cat file | …”, but is yet to run out of
>>> processes to do so)
>>> --
>>> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
>>> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
>>> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>>>
>>
>>
>
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