white ruby ribbon to wear at conferences

[svenfuchs]

The idea for this came up at a discussion at a local railsgirls ruby study group on Monday. We've talked about the recent incidents in the Ruby community and people shared thoughts and experiences.

The idea is based on http://www.whiteribbon.org.au, which was linked to by Ryan in http://ryanbigg.com/2013/10/violence-in-the-ruby-community.

The idea is to hand out white ribbons to wear at conferences and having a simple website which explains the message it represents.

We are looking for people to help implementing this really short-term so it can be used for conferences coming up this week.

[plexus]

for an upcoming conference I plan to wear a ribbon myself, tweet about it linking to this page, and inviting people to come talk to me if they want to talk about it, or if they want a ribbon themselves.

[svenfuchs]

status: @plexus has added a few draft skeleton pages. @ngkhanhlinh is going to do a minimalistic design, @lislis going to implement it.

thanks all :)

[plexus]

Suggestions welcome, especially a few links for the about page to resources for people who want to educate themselves.

[ctrlaltjustine]

This is an amazing idea that I fully support.

[ngkhanhlinh]

I'm done with the first draft. Let me know if you have any comments. :)

[lislis]

nice!

[ctrlaltjustine]

Great start. Mind if I take a stab at some thoughts/change suggestions?

[ngkhanhlinh]

Feel free to let me know what you think :) @saltinejustine

[ctrlaltjustine]

Just a bit of thoughts on cleaning it up a bit and making it a single page?

[ctrlaltjustine]

Could be nice in future for social media to have people tweet photos of them at conferences with other people wearing the white ribbon?

[lislis]

looks really good, too.
@plexus @svenfuchs where will you host the site? any restirctions I need to think of?

[plexus]

Amazing job in so little time <3

@lislis don't think that's decided, probably gh-pages or heroku. Is there something particular you would like to use beyond plain HTML/CSS?

[lislis]

@plexus not really, but it helps me to decide what boilerplate/ generator best fits the job :)

[svenfuchs]

Wowowow, this is really great! Thanks all :)

@saltinejustine The initial idea was to separate the pages, so that the message really stands out, and not draw too much attention to explanations and stuff. Now that i see your draft i'm pretty undecided, because i like it.

@ngkhanhlinh What do you think?

@lislis I'd say GitHub pages? Since we have almost zero time at hand to setup things? What's your take?

[svenfuchs]

After some discussion via email I'd like to propose to remove the "against women" bit, and make refer to just any kind of violence. I think we don't want to exclude minority there. I also feel we need to make more clear that (different from those other campaigns that we reference) we don't only ask men to pledge, but just everyone.

Thoughts?

[anikalindtner]

second that!

[anikalindtner]

and @ngkhanhlinh: super awesome work with the design!! you rock, seriously!

[ngkhanhlinh]

I prefer Justine's version too! Really think we should go with it. :-)

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Anika [email protected] wrote:

second that!

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/1#issuecomment-26414156
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Linh Nguyen

Cellphone: +358 44 2828 342
Messenger ID: [Yahoo] [Skype]: ngkhanh.linh
Social Network ID: [Facebook] [Twitter]: ngkhanh.linh

[carlad]

I think it's great!

Am wondering if it should be "Ruby White Ribbon" instead of "White Ruby Ribbon". I feel like white and ribbon should go together (it's a white ribbon after all) and that Ruby should be used to describe the type of white ribbon it is.

The only other things I'd change is this line:
"White Ruby Ribbon is a way for those of us who want to express we are allies in opposition to violence against women in our Ruby community."

To:
"Ruby White Ribbon is a way to express allegiance in opposition to violence against women in our Ruby community."

But, yeah, great (and quick!) work guys :-))

[ctrlaltjustine]

+1 on changing it to Ruby White Ribbon
+1 on it being inclusive of all forms of abuse, not just for women
+1 on gh pages

[lislis]

alright, i will start working on @saltinejustine's design now. @svenfuchs or @plexus can you create a gh-pages branch I can push to?

[carlad]

+1 single page, but maybe have 'what is this' buttom at bottom of initial speil, above the fold, that scrolls down to bottom of page when clicked?
+1 gh pages

Re: all forms of violence, in principle yes, but this is an initiative that arose in response to a particular issue, and it would be a shame to dilute that specific message.

[anikalindtner]

so cool to see this going so fast!

i'd say "violence, harassment and discriminating behavior", because violence might for some people only trigger images of actual beating (?) with adding the other terms it makes clearer (at least for me as a non mothertongue speaker) that violence is a bigger term.

wdyt?

[ngkhanhlinh]

I agree with Anika! :)

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 5:36 PM, Anika [email protected] wrote:

so cool to see this going so fast!

i'd say "violence, harassment and discriminating behavior", because
violence might for some people only trigger images of actual beating (?)
with adding the other terms it makes clearer (at least for me as a non
mothertongue speaker) that violence is a bigger term.

wdyt?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/1#issuecomment-26429181
.

[anikalindtner]

oh and i think what @carlad says is a good point. maybe we can add a sentence to where this idea arose from?

[plexus]

I pushed a gh-pages branch, @lislis it's just a copy of what is on master. You can create an index.html in the top level directory.

[svenfuchs]

wow, awesome progress!

i've just went ahead and added everyone who commented on this thread as a collaborator to this repository, just so that everyone can make changes. if that's not cool please tell me!

i tend to agree with @anikalindtner regarding changing it to "violence, harassment and discriminating behavior". my feeling is that it wouldn't really dilute the origin of this. what do others think?

[svenfuchs]

oh, i'm cool with changing it to "ruby white ribbon", too, of course. should i also rename this repository?

[svenfuchs]

also +1 re @carlad's phrasing of "Ruby White Ribbon is a way to express allegiance in opposition to [whatever-we-decide-goes-here]"

[carlad]

I don't think we need to explicitly state where the idea came from. I think it's more powerful to simply present the initiative. And it defocuses it from whatever current discussion there is/has been around the provoking event.

I also not sure about including the words harassment and discrimination. I agree that some may not link sexual assault to violence, but that might be better explained somewhere else, rather than muddy the basic, strong message (if that makes sense...)

[svenfuchs]

Oh, and btw, I've also just added all participants on this discussion as owners to the organization. If you're not cool with that, please tell me or remove yourself :)

[svenfuchs]

Hmmm, I'm unsure which top level domain I should pick.

I know it's a shame, but I'm at a dns provider from the stoneage which only supports rather limited tlds. Which one would you prefer?

ruby-white-ribbon.de
ruby-white-ribbon.eu
ruby-white-ribbon.com
ruby-white-ribbon.net
ruby-white-ribbon.org
ruby-white-ribbon.info
ruby-white-ribbon.biz
ruby-white-ribbon.mobi
ruby-white-ribbon.name
ruby-white-ribbon.at
ruby-white-ribbon.cc
ruby-white-ribbon.co
ruby-white-ribbon.me
ruby-white-ribbon.tv
ruby-white-ribbon.ws

[anikalindtner]

org <3

[ctrlaltjustine]

Org!

Justine Arreche
HelloJustine.com | @saltinejustine

Skype: saltinejustine
Phone: 216.536.5048

On Oct 16, 2013, at 19:10, Anika [email protected] wrote:

org <3

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[svenfuchs]

ok, so org is it. i've purchased ruby-white-ribbon.org and added a cname file to the gh-pages branch. i've also made gh-pages the main branch.

i have also AGAIN renamed the repo to ruby-white-ribbon/ruby-white-ribbon.github.io in order to follow github's convention for "user/organization pages". stoopid me, sorry about this.

for some reason the page still isn't available though, neither on http://ruby-white-ribbon.github.io nor http://ruby-white-ribbon.org. maybe github just likes to take a bit longer to build it right now.

[jlsuttles]

@svenfuchs You named the repo to be an org page, not a project page which means the static site should be on the master branch, not the gh-pages branch. Yay gh-pages :(

[svenfuchs]

wow, thanks for letting me know @jlsuttles! i had no idea about that difference. gonna merge to master, and change the main branch back, ugh.

<3

[jlsuttles]

I support this idea but at the same time I think it could be problematic. The important part is not wearing the ribbon. The important part is not pledging to speak out against violence. The important part is the act of speaking out against violence. It think it could be easy for some to think, okay I wore the ribbon, checked that box, my job is done. A possible solution is for strong leadership to set an example of real action and not just ribbon wearing. In contrast, I think the ribbons are a way of identifying those who share the same beliefs, and the ribbons are also reminders/conversation starters that violence is real.

[svenfuchs]

@jlsuttles thanks so much for your input, super appreciated!

We've had a discussion before where we've had the concern that after a while this could easily turn into a "false ritual" where everyone just wears this ribbon, but forgets about its meaning. The main intention is to raise awareness at soon coming up conferences though, make sure there's communication happening, and people become more aware of the code of conduct and such. It's also unclear if it makes sense to keep this up for long, but we think it makes sense to do it now.

Obviously this can only be a tiny contribution. But it might raise chances that people step and speak up if they see something. I super agree people do need to step and speak up, and this can only be a small step towards making that more common and standard.

I personally feel that if at least some conference attendees walk up to those wearing ribbons and a conversation evolves, of maybe motivates some of the speakers to pick up on the topic, ... I'd feel that would be good, even if tiny, step.

Ummm, does that make any sense to you?

[svenfuchs]

and yay, github has deployed it meanwhile. the site is on http://ruby-white-ribbon.org now.

[ctrlaltjustine]

Note: campaign is misspelled in the last paragraph

[plexus]

@svenfuchs I can't merge @saltinejustine 's PR, can you make me member of the org?

Risking to be pedantic, but this sentence seems incomplete to me

"Ruby White Ribbon is a way for those of us who want to express we are allies in opposition to violence against women in our Ruby community."

it's saying "RWR is a way for <people who want to express something>" ... to do what?

I would suggest either changing it to

"Ruby White Ribbon is a way to express we are allies in opposition to violence against women in our Ruby community."

or

"Ruby White Ribbon is a way for those of us who want to, to express we are allies in opposition to violence against women in our Ruby community."

[plexus]

And the icons at the top don't do anything yet :) I need to head out now but might have a bit of time before flying out to Paris this afternoon.

[lislis]

@saltinejustine I think I'm blind. Where is the typo?
@svenfuchs cool late nigth action +1
@plexus yea ;) I guess learn more scrolls down, and the twitter thing opens a tweet window, but what should take the pledge do?
As hover effect I thought about a white outline for the icon?

[svenfuchs]

@plexus @carlad had proposed to say "Ruby White Ribbon is a way to express allegiance in opposition to violence against women in our Ruby community." earlier in this discussion.

Since it seems most of us also agree to refer to just any kind of violence against anyone, maybe it should be:

"Ruby White Ribbon is a way to express allegiance in opposition to violence in our Ruby community."

Also, @anikalindtner then also proposed to change it to:

"Ruby White Ribbon is a way to express allegiance in opposition to violence, harassment and discriminating behavior in our Ruby community."

... which @carlad has questioned, and hasn't been quite decided on yet?

I guess we should come to a decision today. When's the conf gonna start exactly? Is there a warmup today?

@lislis for me none of them do anything in Chrome 30.0.1599.69, am I missing something? I don't see any JS errors or anything either.

[plexus]

Hey everyone, I need to run to catch my plane... would love to share this on Twitter today before the pre-conf get together tonight.

[carlad]

Happy with this:
"Ruby White Ribbon is a way to express allegiance in opposition to violence, harassment and discriminating behavior in our Ruby community."

[lislis]

@sven those were suggestions or questions, nothing is implemented yet. I wanted to see if everyone's ok with that of if there was something else in mind.

[plexus]

👍 "Ruby White Ribbon is a way to express allegiance in opposition to
violence, harassment and discriminating behavior in our Ruby community."
On 17 Oct 2013 14:13, "Lisa P" [email protected] wrote:

@sven https://github.com/sven those were suggestions or questions,
nothing is implemented yet. I wanted to see if everyone's ok with that of
if there was something else in mind.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/1#issuecomment-26498946
.

[svenfuchs]

@lislis ya, understood, no worries! :)

@plexus you're right. i know i had copied over all the handles while creating the org last night, but somehow no one actually ended up being an owner except me.

I've now, again, copied all handles over, and made everyone an "owner".

You can "publicize" your membership here https://github.com/ruby-white-ribbon?tab=members if you want others to see you're a member.

[svenfuchs]

@lislis it seems we have a consensus about "Ruby White Ribbon is a way to express allegiance in opposition to violence, harassment and discriminating behavior in our Ruby community."

could you copy that over? i think it clearly reflects our ideas better than what we have on the page now, and we can still always improve on it.

[lislis]

@svenfuchs done ;)

[svenfuchs]

@lislis hah, thank you :)

i took the liberty to also update pledge 1 accordingly, see a0450fe

[svenfuchs]

@lislis ouch, the list indentation is now messed up :/

[lislis]

@svenfuchs i pushed a quick fix, I'll look into proper indentation styling later. I'm currently at work ;)

[lislis]

then I'll also 'populate' the links in the header. What should the tweet text be like? Do we have a hashtag? 'Take the pledge' and 'learn more' just scroll to their sections i guess?

[ctrlaltjustine]

I think @jlsuttles brought up a good point. I'd hate for it to end up like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3iV8X8ubGCc#t=11 - But it's like any other ribbon campaign, you don't HAVE to wear it. It's just something some people do.

@svenfuchs looks like campaign got fixed, it was missing an a when I looked at it last night. Though maybe sleepy eyes were playing tricks on me.

[svenfuchs]

in case you've missed it, @carlad brought up an issue here: #3

[plexus]

Peeps, does anyone object that I already share the link? I'm heading out to a pre-conf meetup now and I'd like to be able to point people somewhere... thanks!