Comments on: My second shift

By: Emily

Emily — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:26:27 +0000

Thank you for doing it! This blog makes me feel better about the world.

By: Nathaniel Smith

Nathaniel Smith — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:57:16 +0000

No thanks necessary, but you're welcome! I just posted a bit more context on my (minimally updated) blog. I do plan to stick around, though I am semi-lousy at tracking RSS feeds. In LWN's defense, it is mostly pretty sane, containing actual journalism (!) and commentators who often have actual expertise (!); also, one of the two site founders was female, and one of the 3(?) current editors is as well. But Jon takes a light hand on the moderation (that journalistic neutrality thing, I think), and sometimes... yeah. This place has some advantages.

By: Skud

Skud — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:25:27 +0000

No no, thank YOU for diving in and spending so much time on it. You would not believe the number of people who have been saying “Who is this njs person?” and wanting to thank you properly. So, I for one am delighted to see you here on GF and I hope you’ll stick around. It’s a bit saner here, I hope :)

By: Nathaniel Smith

Nathaniel Smith — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:04:51 +0000

Oh, geez, I lost most of a week to that thread. (Good thing my advisor was out of town!) This stuff takes forever and then at the end of it my brain feels like a squished noodle. And still I’ve only put in a fraction of the work some of you all have…

Thanks for sticking in there.

By: Liz Henry

Liz Henry — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:10:39 +0000

Yes… and yet it is still good work that needs doing. So I try to keep doing it.

By: Yatima

Yatima — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:50:26 +0000

"...non-participation will bite you later if Thing A in November is related to Thing B in January and you have no idea where it came from or what’s going on or for that matter, why it’s happening, because you missed Thing A altogether." Yes. This. I don't find it boring, at all; I find it engrossing, and I want to stand up for women and minorities and speak truth to power and remain au courant. But I have a job, and two children, and a body that needs to be taken out and exercised, and in the time it takes to finish my taiji class and get my kids in the bath the link roundup may have doubled in size. I am indebted to everyone who prepares summaries of the various *FAILS, but where do they find the time?

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 06:05:07 +0000

If you’re replying to me, I was replying to Valerie.

By: Skud

Skud — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:19:36 +0000

Was that directed at Catherine? I’m going to reply anyway :) I find that most of my contributions code-wise aren’t to Linux or even to desktop apps, but to web apps or developer libraries and tools, which tend to be written in higher level languages. Perl is my main language, but I can do minor stuff in PHP, Python, or Ruby if necessary. I couldn’t hope to fix high power consumption on my laptop, but I can hope to eg. improve parts of Dreamwidth or write a useful CPAN module or a Wordpress plugin. In my experience, high level languages tend to have communities that are easier to get into as a newbie programmer, too; there are more often beginner forums/mailing lists/etc aimed at programmers.

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:05:24 +0000

Were you already 1337 when you got into FOSS or did you start out noobishly and use FOSS to gain experience and hone your skills? For me, the lack of skills means I find it easier to contribute in um…less hardcore ways. The time it’d take to learn what I’d need to learn to fix uh…high power consumption on my laptop (probably touching a dozen kernel modules)…is just so enormous that I leave it for the “experts” (people like mjg59 who know this ACPI stuff) and work on translations (not anymore, I forgot the languages I was translating!) or small UI tweaks. Even the teeny tiny bit I’ve learned about audio (maybe 2% of what’s needed to really truly fix a FUBAR sound driver or to write a new quirk) took months to grasp.

By: Seperis

Seperis — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:59:51 +0000

It affects our lives, and also, how fandom is seen, represented, and the culture in it. Not keeping up isn’t just a matter of not participating in this particular thing–non-participation will bite you later if Thing A in November is related to Thing B in January and you have no idea where it came from or what’s going on or for that matter, why it’s happening, because you missed Thing A altogether.

And yes, it’s exhausting; I love meta, but the people I’m debating with most of the time are often either specialists, graduate, or post-graduate. I have a day or maybe two to work out what they’re talking about, where I can read about it, and create a cognizant argument with the correct vocabulary for or against.

I don’t grudge academics their fun, but I admit, I have recently opened up a post with three to five separate references to articles and books to explain their position on X and really kind of wanted to cry. I don’t think there’s deliberate exclusion of non-academia going on; it’s a de facto exclusion when following along takes that much work. I don’t see a solution to the problem, but I see a future problem in de facto exclusion of non-academics who don’t have the time to read up on X or are terrifed by the vocabulary or the start value of the conversation.