On 13-01-18 10:26 AM, "Karen Coyle" <li...@kcoyle.net> wrote:
>Actually, I find the "playing" with Zoia itself offensive. As per my >response to my own message. > >It objectifies women. Treats them as play-things. Makes me very >uncomfortable. If we want to have an information bot, perhaps like the >one used by W3C which takes minutes for meetings (Zakim, I believe it >is), that seems reasonable. But to have a "play-thing" that is gendered >is a really, really bad idea. I think you're reading too much into the zoia's (implicitly) gendered name. zoia's precursor, panizzi, was implicitly male but functioned in the same way zoia does. >In fact, to have a "play-thing" of any >kind on the channel might not be a good idea. I know that some folks >find it fun, but it is akin to the locker-room shenanigans (at least as >I experience it), and it's a HUGE in-joke that makes it obvious to >anyone new that they aren't "in". I would strongly disagree with this point. As a code4lib newbie a year ago, I found that zoia was a kind of participatory in-joke that made it *easier* for me to acclimatize to the culture of the room. I became comfortable more quickly thanks to zoia. And, as I've mentioned on IRC, I see zoia as being a manifestation of the code4lib spirit itself - a collaboratively-maintained collection of plugins by members of the community. Could the more offensive elements of zoia be reined in? Certainly. But I would find it very unfortunate to remove zoia altogether. Misty (As aLways, opinions are mine, not my employers', &c.) >On 1/18/13 8:20 AM, Jon Gorman wrote: >> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 9:38 AM, Karen Coyle <li...@kcoyle.net> wrote: >> >>> ... and BTW, if people see Zoia as a bit of a problem during the >>>conference, >>> doesn't that mean that Zoia is a bit of a problem all of the time? Is >>>there >>> a reason to be polite and inclusive during the conference but not >>>every day? >> There's actually two different but closely related issues: >> >> 1) Plugins that generate a lot of information/responses which have >> been a problem as they can interrupt flow of questions/discussions >> during the conference. @blockparty lists what songs people are playing >> that have registered their irc nick & scrobble. It produces a lot of >> lines and a couple of calls can cause people's screens to >> "scroll-off". Not a problem with the normal traffic in the room, but >> when going from maybe 20/30 active participants to hundreds it can be >> an issue. >> >> There's probably some others like @google or @naf with a long response >> that could be disabled as well. @naf is a nice one for demonstrating >> zoia, but @marc is pretty compact and also wonderfully library-centric >> ;). >> >> 2) Plugins that are crude/offensive like @mf and the urban dictionary >>one. >> >> I think the thread kicked off with the first one, but I think it >> rapidly brought in the issue of the latter. I'm in agreement that the >> latter category probably should be just removed. The first category >> probably would be useful to disable during the conference but to have. >> >> Jon Gorman > >-- >Karen Coyle >kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net >ph: 1-510-540-7596 >m: 1-510-435-8234 >skype: kcoylenet
