Comments on: Women and the backchannel

By: How the Design Community Can Improve? | Inspiring Pixel

How the Design Community Can Improve? | Inspiring Pixel — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:23:46 +0000

[...] is the article that speaks about it in a more livid fashion giving the background info for Paul’s justified [...]

By: Boagworld Podcast Celebrates 200 Episodes | allphp.com

Boagworld Podcast Celebrates 200 Episodes | allphp.com — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 05:01:47 +0000

[...] live marathon was a remarkable success, with some participants saying the show felt like a free web conference. An edited version will be published on the Boagworld site (and [...]

By: Organic freerange sustainably harvested linkspam, 28 February 2010 | Geek Feminism Blog

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:00:45 +0000

[...] event backchannel inappropriateness, this time in the PHP [...]

By: Boagworld Podcast Celebrates 200 Episodes

Boagworld Podcast Celebrates 200 Episodes — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:55:17 +0000

[...] live marathon was a remarkable success, with some participants saying the show felt like a free web conference. An edited version will be published on the Boagworld site (and [...]

By: Deborah

Deborah — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:52:24 +0000

Unfortunately, this is the 3rd time I’ve encountered this type of talk in backchannel of online conferences in the past year.

It’s disappointing, frustrating, and detracts from the wonderful and amazing 200th episode of Boagworld.

Yes, Kimberly, the nastiness was called out during the podcast.

Thank you Rachel for sharing your response, and offering some solutions. I look forward to future online conferences and podcasts, without the degrading comments in the backchannel.

By: Architela

Architela — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:23:16 +0000

Hear hear! Kudos.

By: Simon Bingham

Simon Bingham — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:17:28 +0000

Well said Rachel. As with society at large it’s often a small number of idiots that spoil it for everyone else.

I would be surprised if the people posting the negative comments in the chat room had even heard an episode of Boagworld before and, quite possibly, they were not even web designers.

By: Dan W

Dan W — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:00:49 +0000

I liked the solutions for backchannel rudeness used at the last FOWA. Anyone being unpleasant on the backchannel were asked to stand up and show who they were. This quickly solved the problem.

By: DAZ

DAZ — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:42:24 +0000

I think it’s great that you’re bringing this to people’s attention and it is a shame that such moronic behaviour went on unchecked, but I have to disagree with your ‘solution’ to use Facebook connect. There are a number of problems with this:

1. Not everybody has Facebook.
2. It’s not a given that you can use Facebook to ‘see a real person’. I don’t have my photo on my FB profile, or any workplace details.
3. People could set up FB profiles just for the purpose of sending nasty messages. And I can’t see FB being in a rush to kick them off the service – there are already far more offensive things on FB that don’t get taken down.
4. The ability to post anonymously makes things quicker and encourages more people to do it. If you got rid of this, you’d also lose a lot of the good postings.
5. Freedom of speech and people’s privacy are both important principles. Sometimes it’s worth tolerating a few idiots to maintain these principles.

I think the answer is to have better moderation of comments and to call people out on it sooner. Explain that there behaviour is offensive.

By: Scoville Units Unite » Blog Archive » Attack of the virgins from mums basement

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 10:57:26 +0000

[...] of the women involved in the show Sarah Parmenter and Rachel Andrew have written brilliant pieces laying into these Neanderthals which I would highly recommend [...]