Women in the Linux community (Part 2)

Since yesterday's part 1 fell a little short, I thought it might be a good idea to continue with my thoughts on that matter.

After I showed Nelly a couple of nice communities where I know that admins and users alike are all around nice and will prevent things that she experienced in the past, I was thinking how many people are in this hiding-mode.

Gladly I received a couple of messages after I released part 1 that were willing to talk to me about exactly that matter.

Not only women do this, but all kinds of people that have their reason for doing so. Interested in their stories, I had a couple of chats.

Here's my summary:


People hide cause of their race, nationality, gender, sexuality and this is not how we should act as a society and/or community.


Hating someone for the cards the life has given to person is just wrong. That being said, fighting this hatred with hate is also not the way we should react.

There's a reason why people act like they do and I for one am curious to the story behind it. So instead on making a negative thing become even more negative, I try to understand that person first and show him ways of how to see things from a different perspective.

Of course this doesn't work always and there are people that just plainly don't want to see different angles, but not trying to talk to such people doesn't make us any better.

In the sense of a community, this should be a point every admin should know, understand and act by. As an admin, you don't only have to make sure you have the knowledge about the server, software, hardware and what not, but you are responsible for this community.

A community is as strong/good/bad/weak as its weakest link. By making a good example as an admin/moderator it's in your hands how you want to shape your community.

We have different interests, tastes, nationalities, religion and what not but this is what makes us all human.