Re: Proposal: DNS change irc.gnome.org becomes A record and irc.gimpnet.org starts getting phased out.

[Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Sat, 2013-05-11 at 01:27 +0900, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:

> Would you like to join a community where everything you say is
> under strict scrutiny ? where you cannot freely express yourself
> in your blog without being really careful to make all of your comments
> "gender neutral" and politically correct ?

Or would you prefer to join a community where you're made fun of on a
routine basis, mocked, ridiculed, made to feel like shit, because you
were born with one leg shorter than the other, or you were in a bomb
blast and got injured?

What if we start jabber.gnomefags.com? or a message that says, "It's
gone Dutch" when a device can't be mounted? Because some undergraduate
thought it was funny in their dorm room to throw stones out of the
window at the people who have to walk slowly.

You can express yourself in your blog as freely as you like, subject to
local laws, but if you claim to -- or are seen to -- represent the GNOME
project as a whole then yes, you have a responsibility to be respectful
of others in that context.

The problem is the way labels are used in some cultures as a way to
exclude and discriminate against people - a practice that's so
entrenched in US (and UK) culture (for example) that there are laws
about it. This may be a cultural difference itself that doesn't
translate into all other languages, I'm not sure.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml