Someone called "alankila" complained that women don't join ircnet #Perl. So I thought I'd go represent my gender by joining #perl on irc.perl org tonight.
What a great start! I was greeted with the following (presumably out of context) topic:
(22:32:24) The topic for #perl is: Happy 10th Birthday Purl | iPhone 1.1.1 released | <hex> It was going well until the young girls peeing. <wsdo_okadr> I've seen too many of those around lately | COCKROACH PORN
Hmm.
Since I wanted to see whether purl had a command that would allow me to see if anyone of the name alankila had been in, I PMed it and had the following "conversation":
Conversation with purl at Sat 29 Sep 2007 22:33:22 EST on jarich@irc.perl.org (irc) (22:33:24) jarich: help (22:33:27) purl: help isJesus is coming! Everyone get naked and fuck! (22:33:40) jarich: help (22:33:46) purl: help is HELP IS AVAILABLE FOR YOU. SAY "HELP" OR ANOTHER COMMAND. FOR A LIST OF COMMANDS, TYPE "COMMANDS". (22:33:58) jarich: COMMANDS (22:33:59) purl: COMMANDS are HLAGH, DONGS, JERK IT
Yup, I feel included and welcome here. :(
UPDATE: Fixed the attributions in the topic I posted as I didn't realise that use.perl was eating them.
Re:#perl
nicholas on 2007-09-29T16:59:41
Or it just offends in every other way more.Yes, this is what I feel about
#perl. The odd times I pop in someone somehow says something I find offensive or irritating rather quickly. So I leave. And I'm under the impression that I have a fairly think skin.I much prefer
#london.pm(and#p5p) which as far as I can tell are most welcoming to anyone*, regardless of gender (or location** or programming language preference). It's amusing that about half the female regulars on#london.pmdon't actually realise who all the other female regulars are.I have no idea how to make
#perlmore like this. It's all very well for people in the know to know where the newbie friendly channels are, but by definition newbies aren't in the know.* unless they are both new and (rude or stupid). And excessive rude or stupid is not tolerated from the regulars. The list seems to run on the same rules, with sexism triggering both the "rude" and "stupid" clauses.
** In particular, sometimes it feels more like
#amsterdam.pm. It seems fair game to organise dim sum in Amsterdam on channel.:-) Re:#perl
rjbs on 2007-09-29T18:19:35
The way to change #perl is for ops and/or opers to agree to enforce stricter codes of conduct. There are other channels on magnet that are like this, like #london.pm. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about whether #perl should be gelded, but I do think that it will only happen if the "pillars" of #perl agree to it.
The only reason I think it might be worth doing is that irc.perl.org#perl is pretty darn easy for a newb to guess. It would be nice to have #perl's current culture still available in, say, #metallica.Re:#perl
perigrin on 2007-10-01T05:40:01
But where then would we bash.org readers get our Perl questions answered?
I've managed six something years of irc.perl.org life without having #perl in my IRC client more than once annually. I can't say I feel a loss...
05:58 <+kd> purl, this channel?
05:58 <+purl> well, this channel is not for help, it is for laying down and avoiding
Perhaps I'm totally ignorant as to what makes women feel welcome in online communities but from reading your post it sounds as though everyone who dislikes lewd sexual jokes from the resident bots and meatbags is unlikely to like #perl regardless of their gender.
Even if we were to operate on the assumption that sexual jokes aimed towards a given gender would make members of that gender feel uncomfortable the #perl flavor of sillyness is mostly derived from Jerkcity and thus at large devoid of any women whatsoever.
Having said that I personally think that #perl is one of the friendliest channels I've ever entered. Malice is virtually unknown there although there's plenty to be had of the aforementioned sillyness. Although if you enter it in the mindset that you're representing a given social group, nation, ethnicity or even (approximately) half of humanity you're probably going to get offended there sooner or later, so uh, don't do that >:)
Re:Women?
hex on 2007-10-02T21:20:10
First thing - #perl has a tradition of setting embarassing out-of-context quotes as channel topics. As quoted above it's been mangled: use.perl has stripped out the angle-bracket-wrapped nicks in the quote, and given it a nasty spin.#perl is far and away from the kind of anti-female sexist atmosphere you get in some places, like this. There's not a single person in the channel that would subscribe to that viewpoint.
jarich was unfortunate enough to have appeared in channel when nobody seems to have been talking, and ended up talking to purl. purl, as anyone who has used it knows, is a decade's worth of information dump. Some good, most pointless, some downright inaccurate, harmful, abusive, or all three. The "help" factoid was one of the latter (#perl's reputation as "where the assholes go to die" is well earned). But it's now been replaced with something better (thanks, Skud).Basically, if you can get past the initial learning curve (which mainly consists of lurking until you notice that all the shouting isn't serious), you'll meet smart people. But it's a steep curve. That's how we play the game.
#perl has never made any representation of being friendly and welcoming to newcomers; it's a social club for a small group of people. That it resides on irc.perl.org is only a very recent development in its history. Discusson in-channel earlier today suggested a fair few people would prefer that the network stop being irc.perl.org and go back to being obscure. That way people wouldn't turn up, be shocked at all the assholes and run away again.And yes, there's a fair amount of "DONGS" and "HLAGH": it's been a running joke for years. (BTW, it's mainly about men; the Jerkcity cast is largely male. And unashamedly queer. So it's not like a woman would enter the channel and immediately be greeted with "funny" requests to give head, or some other similar bullshit.) The solution is a careful application of
/ignore. Filter out some words and your #perl experience will be a much milder one, to be sure. Re:Women?
sungo on 2007-10-02T21:22:44
hex, I love you. Will you have my illegitimate love children?
