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• Cliques, openness and meritocracy (Score:1)

  by autarch (914) on 2002.01.03 17:12 (#2652) Homepage Journal

  As elaine and others have pointed out, its not 100% open.
  
  But...
  
  One interesting facet of the community is that it is very difficult for it to discriminate based on race, sex, age, etc.
  
  This is a facet of the general nature of the Net and in particular of the fact that the Perl community is largely text-based (IRC, mail, news).
  
  Sure, we might see each other at conferences but if I never showed up to one you wouldn't necessarily know anything about my age, race, etc.
  
  Of course, due to discrimination in the world at large that keeps people off the net (due to lack of privileges that middle-class white guys like myself take for granted) this facet of the community isn't as meaningful as it could be.
  
  But its still somewhat encouraging that there are some built in barriers to some of the discrimination that plagues meatspace.
  
  -dave

  Reply to This

  • Re:Cliques, openness and meritocracy (Score:2)

    by Elian (119)

    I think Elaine might disagree on whether it's easy to discriminate based on sex, race, or a number of other factors. (Age is one of the few that isn't that easy) It's also more than just active discrimination. Some of the perl areas (clpm for one) are pretty actively mysoginistic and, while they might not necessarily discriminate against you because of your sex, they do make it damn uncomfortable to be there. It's certainly not everyone, and might not even reflect the views of the poster, but that doesn't m
    • Re:Cliques, openness and meritocracy (Score:1)

      by autarch (914)

      Ah, I avoid newsgroups in general quite a bit. I was mostly writing based on my experiences on various mailing lists (p5p, dbi, mason, etc), plus to some degree IRC and use perl, etc.
      
      My point was that its harder to discriminate against a particular person based on some quality they have (like race or sex). That doesn't mean that there aren't still plenty of barriers to entry.
      
      Plus there's the issue that once a person identifies themselves in some way (as Elaine has, for example), then they may start be
      • Re:Cliques, openness and meritocracy (Score:2)

        by hfb (74)

        I don't know, since I earned a bit of armor many moons ago...but, I would say that even at the highest ranks of our little Perl world there is plenty of gender issues that plague the rest of humankind still. Anyone over the age of 30 who says he or she is completely unbiased with regard to gender is not being fully honest with themselves....myself not discluded.