Desi

The Rubychicks site appears to now be defunct, btw.

Dan

If we can moderate backchannel discussions through community policing, that would be the best solution. But some situations really benefit from having a dedicated person in charge of reminding everyone what the standards for civil discourse are. There are some great examples of this in other forums. One of the best I’ve seen is Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s moderation of the comment threads on Making Light, which often covers touchy political subjects.

I don’t know what’s most appropriate for this particular case, but I hope we’ll all continue to talk about it, and have some direction to move in for future conferences.

In any event, I also apologized for any offense a few chats later, which was not quoted by you. I’m actually a nice guy, I have a girlfriend I can play WoW with, and nobody who knows me would call me misogynist.

I am blessed by being able to work in a design group with women well-represented. Their input is needed.

The correct way to moderate a backchannel is not to moderate it but to let the community police it.

I don’t think censorship by a small group of elites is the best way of producing a community. It’s better to spread power whenever possible and make things more democratic.

Let people vote down the rude commenters, so that messages from people with low scores appears in a smaller font, a subdued color, or doesn’t show up at all. Even ancient IRC could easily handle a system like that by letting people message a bot.

RailsConf rocks!!