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. 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".

kc

On 1/18/13 8:20 AM, Jon Gorman wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 9:38 AM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> 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
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