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On 13-01-18 10:26 AM, "Karen Coyle" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


>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.

I think you're reading too much into the zoia's (implicitly) gendered
name. zoia's precursor, panizzi, was implicitly male but functioned in the
same way zoia does.


>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".

I would strongly disagree with this point. As a code4lib newbie a year
ago, I found that zoia was a kind of participatory in-joke that made it
*easier* for me to acclimatize to the culture of the room. I became
comfortable more quickly thanks to zoia.

And, as I've mentioned on IRC, I see zoia as being a manifestation of the
code4lib spirit itself - a collaboratively-maintained collection of
plugins by members of the community. Could the more offensive elements of
zoia be reined in? Certainly. But I would find it very unfortunate to
remove zoia altogether.


Misty

(As aLways, opinions are mine, not my employers', &c.)


>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
>[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
>ph: 1-510-540-7596
>m: 1-510-435-8234
>skype: kcoylenet