Jev loves programming less, so Jev loves distractions, so Jev loves girls, so Jev hates this thread, Jev hates 4chan, Jev loves JGO, hate to the beloved should transform in hate to the hated, so this all makes sense.
That made made so little logical sense it made sense it was in this thread.
I can’t deliver the finality of Riven, but I’m begging everyone to forget about this thread and
just
stop.
[ Request thread lock ]
Those continuing this atrocity will be excluded from vault proximity privileges.
What’s even stranger to me than the low number of girls in ICT is the complete panic and weirdness thats breaks out when someone brings up the topic. Can’t even have a decent discussion without half the internet yelling to please close off the topic. ???
@Jacob Pickens, you should try to avoid premature optimization, and do some thorough problem analysis before thinking of solutions. From your description I suspect your problem is not so much “girls” but “hormones”. They make you act strange. Unfortunately these little buggers are also here to stay. So just try to live with that… It’s just like boys: some girls are very nice, others not so much.
Based on recent experience I’d advice to build a good and loving relationship and get a kid (best thing that happened to me, period), but perhaps that’s a bit premature for you, hahaha. ;D
The problem is that the whole thread’s topic wasn’t why are there so few females in the IT field or drugs or inspiration (which are at least interesting misc topics to most of the people here);
It was all about how to block girls from our lives, which I think nobody really wants to do here (lol, quite the opposite), and while we have a lot of nice members who are willing to help out 13 year olds with this question this really isn’t something that should be discussed on the JGO forums.
Personally I can’t understand how the Keyboard WPM topic has ended up in chit-chat because it didn’t fit JGO and this isn’t. :clue:
The difference is there is a lesson to be learned from this thread.
Dare I ask what lesson that is? Far be it from me to question the ways of our overlord, but how does this thread improve the quality of the forum at all?
I’ve been proud to send people to JGO because of how interesting and professional it is, but posts like this make me embarrassed to be a member here, let alone send new people here, let alone send women interested in game programming here.
I’m hoping this thread gets deleted, or at the very least, this response lets people realize that this isn’t the norm here. At least I hope it isn’t.
The quality of a forum is not determined by a single post. Anybody reasonably intelligent will realize this. If you feel ashamed to point others at this community, due to a single thread, you might want to advise them not to visit the internet altogether - for obvious reasons. Anybody making bold claims about how a sliver of poorly thought through content severly impacts the forum quality, or makes similarly broad statements, will not be taken seriously by me.
If anything, this thread shows teens being awkward and bigoted, and a few 20y-ish ‘elders’ trying to slap a new sense of appreciation into them. It may have been a tad rough and significantly below average at times, but it seems like some people actually learned a lesson.
Because all of this, and potentially even more of this, this topic will not get deleted. Those yelling to lock the thread, or delete it - to save the children - do nothing less than shoving it in the face, of said children - time and time again. If you hate it, let it die.
[quote=“Riven,post:69,topic:49325”]
“Well it happens everywhere, maybe you should get a thicker skin” isn’t really a valid stance, in my very humble opinion. We can do better than that. I respect this place and you, so I’m not trying to get into a dismissive internet fight, but this thread is a great example of why it’s so hard for females to get into programming. Another example would be the “will feminists boycott my game if I show XYZ in it” thread from a few weeks ago. Neither type of conversation has anything to do with game development, or reality at all, so it seems -at best- a bit out of place here. At worst it’s actively discouraging people who -given very little effort on our part- we could be encouraging instead.
[quote=“Riven,post:69,topic:49325”]
I honestly still don’t know what lesson people learned. Did the teens learn something about being awkward and bigoted? Did the “elders” learn not to bother explaining why threads like this aren’t okay? (Honestly that’s the lesson I’ve learned, next time I’m keeping my mouth shut.)
I don’t think any of us are worried about saving the children. We’re simply aware of the eye-rolling disgust that this thread will be met with by a significant portion of its readers, and we don’t see its point on this forum, which we normally have great respect for.
Anyway, like I said, I’m not trying to start an internet fight, so do what you want. It’s up to you what kind of audience you want to cater to, and I really mean that without any sarcasm. A significant portion of the visitors here are indeed 14 year old boys, and that’s cool (I was a 14 year old boy once), but I guess it’s a decision of how inclusive you want to be to other groups as well.
A significant portion of zero readers, if only it wasn’t bumped continuously by people fighting for their morals. How counter-productive can you be.
Also, stop generalizing. That I allow this thread, does not mean I cater to, or actively support specific groups. Tolerance does not imply support. Not everything happening on JGO happens in the context of this topic, just like this topic doesn’t affect JGO even remotely. Unless ofcourse, people keep bickering.
[quote=“Riven,post:71,topic:49325”]
Or if it was just deleted like the other off-topic posts have been. I don’t think anybody is “fighting for their morals”, simply pointing out (to you, to the OP, to the people making misogynistic comments, to other people reading and cringing) that this isn’t the way most (or I guess some) of the members here feel.
It’s not going to be deleted, so it stays, just to be discouraging to any girls here reading “jokes” about shutting girls behind doors despite their screams, how it should be okay to hit girls, how girls are at best a “distraction” to be avoided, much less respected… none of which have anything to do with Java game development. So the best we can do is reply to let people know that this isn’t representative of everybody here, or of everybody in the game development community.
This post now shows up on the first page of google results for “java game development for girls”. If it’s not going to be deleted, it’s going to be there for a while. Something about that makes me feel ashamed. But now people who find that result will also read these kinds of replies, which might make some bit of difference.
[quote=“Riven,post:71,topic:49325”]
I don’t have to do any generalizing to find the kinds of comments I mentioned.
Those “jokes” are jokes (notice the lack of quotes). The whole reason jokes exist, is to misdirect, to take an odd perspective, to introduce absurdities as fact, to provoke thought.
Taking the joke’s contradiction out of its context, and exposing it ‘for what it is’, is exactly what one shouldn’t do, as that was supposed to be the clue, obvious to all - boys and girls.
Anyhoo, this has gone on long enough, but just like the rest of this thread, I’m going to tolerate your contribution, which shouldn’t be perceived as catering to your specific demographic, nor excluding others.
You can have the final word.
[quote=“KevinWorkman,post:72,topic:49325”]
There’s more than one way to look at this. One way is just to hide/lock/delete any and all posts / threads which show any kind of immature/bigoted ideas about girls/women and ICT. This is an approach of active censorship. Another way is to leave these posts/threads as they are and provide them with some feedback and insights which put them in a different light. This is free speech done right.
Any girl interested in (game) development will learn soon enough that many kids / men have strange ideas about girls in technology. I like to think a thread like this may offer them some support in knowing that, yes, while there are people with strange ideas, there are also others that do not think like that at all and stand up to that. I personally know a number of very capable women developers, so I know for a fact that the perceived differences in capability between men and women in technology is culturally defined and not something inherent being a man or woman.
Bigotry will not magically disappear if we all pretend it does not exist (i.e. censorship).
[quote=“Grunnt,post:74,topic:49325”]
That’s an interesting point. But there’s a difference between “censorship” and “officially letting somebody know that something isn’t okay in civilized conversation”. If this is supposed to serve as a lesson, why not at least add a disclaimer at the top, or edit the offending posts to include that lesson at the bottom? I still don’t know what lesson this thread supposedly teaches.
How are new readers, who will now find their way here by googling “java game development for girls”, supposed to know that this thread, which shows up on the very first page of results, isn’t what the rest of the forum is like? (Especially after looking at how many medals these types of comments received.) How many people is this going to discourage from pursuing programming? (If the answer is more than zero, that’s way too many people.)
Jeff Atwood says it much better than I could: “if you are unwilling to moderate your online community, you don’t deserve to have an online community.”
I can be accused of generalizing or being too melodramatic, but this thread (and the others like it) have really turned me off of this forum. Hopefully it gets better, but I’m going to be looking for a new place to lurk. At least then I won’t have to be “tolerated” for having the audacity to say that misogynistic jokes aren’t funny in a technical forum, so I guess everybody wins.
[quote=“KevinWorkman,post:75,topic:49325”]
Maybe your google is different from my google, but I cant seem to find the thread by googling for it. Definitely not on the first pages when using your search terms.
Neither am I really shocked by the thread’s content (apart from m77’s post which is troubling - edit: also gibbo’s). A 13 year old boy wonders about how not to be distracted by girls. Kind of cute, really. Some silly replies, some replies about how sad it is there’s so few women in (game)development and how nice it is to have a good relationship or friendship. Oh yes, and lots of people yelling that their eyes hurt and plz censor this 
No girl that I know would be scared off by that. And I’d rather have her see what the JGO community is like than pretend it is anything else than it is (which in my opinion, is not that unfriendly to women at all).
Anyways, I guess we both feel strongly and similarly about the same thing, and just have a minor difference of opinion on how to approach things.
[quote=“Grunnt,post:76,topic:49325”]
I logged out of google so my search results weren’t catered to me, and googled “java game development for girls” without the quotes. JGO shows up as the 9th result, with quotes from this thread as the description.
[quote=“Grunnt,post:76,topic:49325”]
True enough. I guess I (and others who said this should be deleted) were surprised when this wasn’t sent to the chit-chat monster, considering that threads with much less questionable material have been sent there pretty regularly. I think cleaning up the garbage is good (in fact, it’s required for a good internet community), I’m just surprised this isn’t considered garbage.
[quote=“KevinWorkman,post:77,topic:49325”]
Yeah ok, I also kind of expected the mentioned posts to be moderated. Anyways, let me conclude my participation in this thread by yelling: Yay to more women in tech!
Here is my blocking method in practice
http://gifwall.net/gif/gw-close20door.gif
Sorry if I offended anyone :point:
i feel locked out :emo: