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Who’s afraid of Ubuntu Women?

“The group seemed to feel that there was confusion about what
this IRC channel was for. A couple of men in the room said that
they didn’t know whether they could or should join the
channel, because it had the word “women” in the
name.

“The core of the issue seemed to be less about purpose than
governance. The group was concerned about the fact that the channel
was not publicly logged like most other Ubuntu channels, and that
this gave the impression of it being a “fiefdom” within
the community, or a place where people would
“gossip”.

“As far as I’m aware, there is at present no requirement
that Ubuntu channels (official or unofficial) must be publicly
logged, and there are many channels which are not.

“If this is considered to be a requirement for a healthy IRC
community, then the Ubuntu IRC council would be in a good position
to put forward such a policy. I don’t think I have enough
experience in regulating IRC discussions to say whether this is the
right thing to do, but it seemed a bit odd to me that this came up
in the context of #ubuntu-women. It isn’t clear to me what
problem this is meant to solve, and whether it is consistent with
precedent (again, I’m not very familiar with IRC
governance).”

Complete
Story

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