[luau] IMPORTANT - Upcoming List Policy

[cpaul at telemetrybox.org]

> With the Linux for Schools project successfully underway, more and more
> educators and non-techies are joining this mailing list.  The
> self-censorship that MonMotha mentioned would be ideal, and possibly
> crucial, to keep these people interested in the Open Source community. 
> Wouldn't they rather trust a group of individuals who can express their
> ideas and opinions eloquently? 

I will not support efforts to water down geek culture for the sake of keeping appearances with the bourgeois.  Tactically speaking, an informal prohibition against some of the 'baser' elements of geek language and culture might be a good way to attract and retain total newbies.  

Strategically however, it will be a bad move.

Geek culture and jargon are a part of our identity as hackers -- we should never allow our language and actions to be constrained within a set of words and behaviours deemed acceptable by some close-minded suits (And at the same token, we shouldn't force the newbies to speak our language).  

A starched list of self-censored emails will end up as being repellant to geeks who have already been exposed to the global Free Software hacking culture.  This may or may not seem trivial - but I feel that this is an important fact that needs to be taken into consideration.  I, for one, know that a young geek would rather spend time communicating about hackish things and plugging into a rad international community, than immersing themselves into a business-friendly medium with imperatives to increase market share for a certain category of software 'products'.  


It's about being understanding and open-minded.  And if new list-members can't fight the mind-fuck and broaden their horizons to accept another culture's idiosyncrasies, they might need to be subscribed elsewhere.

We have mailman, it's not that hard to add another list.


Mahalo and thanks for the thoughtful response,
charles
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