Hi All,
I have summarized the comments made in response to my questions. Thanks
very much to the people who replied - all 10 of you. That's something like
5% of the people on the mailing list, I believe, so probably not awfully
representative. I believe that it is representative of the opinions of many
of the people who tend to speak up on the list and on IRC. Groups I am
aware of who I think are not well represented in this are:
1) people who are not active on the mailing list or on IRC (I hope many of
you people decide to come and talk to us sometime - we don't bite!)
2) Debian developers (a pity - I would have liked to learn more about their
opinions on what this project can do for Debian and for interested
developers who agree with our main goals).
Anyway, the most common answers to the questions are below, along with my
brief conclusions about each:
> 1) What would you personally most like to get out of the Debian Women
> project?
>
> a) more knowledge about how to use Debian
> b) more interaction with or contribution to Debian
> c) social benefits from meeting the people involved in Debian Women
> d) benefits (to yourself or to Debian) from you helping other people who
> are involved in Debian Women
> e) other? Please elaborate.
The answers were fairly evenly spread, with emphasis on a and c. My
conclusion is that people are getting a wide range of benefits from the
Debian Women project. This is good :)
> 2) How can the Debian Women project best help you gain more knowledge
> about using Debian?
>
> a) holding "tutorial" discussions on the mailing list or on the wiki
> b) enabling you to ask people directly on IRC
> c) informing you about where to access relevant documentation
> d) other? Please elaborate.
The replies were again fairly evenly spread with emphasis on b (IRC) and c
(better access to documentation, or improved documentation). I think we can
draw the logical conclusions that the IRC channel is very successful (most
of those who are involved already know this), and that Debian documentation
may be one of the aspects of Debian that is preventing involvement of
interested people in Debian.
> 3) How can the Debian Women project best help you to contribute more to
> Debian?
>
> a) holding "tutorial" discussions on the mailing list or on the wiki
> b) enabling you to ask people directly on IRC
> c) informing you about where to access relevant documentation
> d) other? Please elaborate.
b, d (mentoring system), d (understand ways of contributing), b, d (need to
learn more about debian first), d (confidence boost), b, b.
The responses suggest strongly that the IRC channel is helping many people
to contribute more to Debian. The other thing people want seems to be a
mentoring system that will help them learn and allow them to gain confidence
in friendly and confidence-inspiring situations. I think this is partly
happening on IRC already, but I wonder if there are other ways we could
achieve this for people who are not involved on IRC.
> 4) How can the Debian Women project best help you to gain social benfits
> from meeting the people involved?
>
> a) allowing you to talk to people on the IRC channel
> b) enabling discussions on the mailing list
> c) organising in person meetings as part of larger linux/debian events
> d) other? Please elaborate.
Answer a (IRC) wins by a long way here. People would like to meet in
person, but maybe that's for the future.
> 5) How can the Debian Women project best help you to help others (and
> hopefully benefit yourself and/or Debian in the process)?
>
> a) encouraging people to ask questions on IRC
> b) encouraging people to ask questions on the mailing list
> c) allowing you to post helpful information to the wiki or webpage
> d) increasing the amount of cooperation or collaboration between Debian
> Women and other groups in Debian (eg debian-mentors)
> e) other? Please elaborate.
d, e (providing friendly environment), a, e (being visible women), a&b, d, e
(being visible), all, c.
The answers to this one were evenly spread, with emphasis on being visible
women, increasing collaboration with other Debian groups, and providing a
friendly environment for learning and gaining confidence.
>6) Are problems with language preventing you from becoming more involved
> with Debian Women?
>
> If so, what non-English language would you prefer to to use?
Conclusion: Interest was expressed in German, Norweigian and Danish, but
only one person expressed interest in each. Either most interested people
are coping with English well enough, or we are missing non-English speakers
entirely. I suspect the latter, but I don't know what to do about it.
Thanks again to those who contributed their ideas and opinions on this stuff
:)
A reminder that we are holding another IRC meeting on Saturday (precise
topic to be decided on in the very near future, but it will be related to
this stuff). The meeting is on Saturday December 18 at 13:00 UTC, with a
"meet and greet" session for an hour or so beforehand, to let newcomers drop
in and say hello and meet some people. All are welcome to join us on IRC
on the #debian-women channel.
Helen.
