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Comment by agrover | Hacker News Reader

It's not about sexism, it's about decreasing "geek machismo" that has existed in the community, and how this helps more people be comfortable putting themselves out there and having a technical discussion (where there is always a nonzero chance one is wrong) in public.

fwiw the Kernelnewbies list and irc is another good place to start for civil kernel discussion. I would suggest that common to both it and Linuxchix is the belief that no matter what the questioner or respondents' level of expertise, the only possible response to a question is a positive, helpful one.

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This entire article could communicated everything it intended by focusing on the motivations behind creating intermediate "safe spaces" to have an open judgement-free discourse. Instead, it was pitched as a pro-feminist piece coming across as Feminism = InclusiveProgress. I'm in agreement with ObviousScience when he says that it came across as a propaganda piece.

Also, I would rephrase the "geek machismo" to "geek hardassery" since machismo seems to outline masculine pride. I do, however, agree that people tend to be hardasses with the whole RTFD/RTFM angle and that's something we could collectively improve upon.

I think this is a biproduct of what open source is. People contributing their spare time for little to no financial gain, and when new people expect them to hold their hands they take offense and lash out. I think it could be a slippery slope to expect people to act a certain way when contributing to the common good (open source and the like) because really there is no obligation to use the work these people produce.

Conversely this sort of behavior when dealing with vendors where money changes hands is almost non existent. And I suspect this is because there is a economic incentive in place for people to act civil to each other.

Complaining about this dynamic wont change it only changes to the economic model will change peoples behavior.

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