You misunderstood. “For x read y” is a common idiom in the English language that means “take the following text, and substitute ‘y’ wherever you see ‘x’”.

In essence, he was repeating an old joke about men not being able to understand women, but putting it in the context of him being unable to understand newbies. He wasn’t saying that women are newbies, he was saying that it’s pretty damn difficult to understand newbies at times.

Thus the lamented departure of this Caroline person due to her use of the EFF word is fair and just. After all, if one cannot accept that they might be judged not only by what they say but also by what they do, then they are hardly welcome in any community aiming to Get Stuff Done.

It would also be a good idea to consider that there are also persons who join communities in a bid for personal power, similar to why certain people go into a police career. Permitting a person’s gender to affect one’s judgement (particularly if they have a cute first name) is likewise inadvisable.

Check this out (link): http://ubuntulinuxhelp.com/can-we-talk-here/ It’s very heartfelt and compassionate; and really does say what Ubuntu really is about.

I think sometimes people forget the guidelines for the mailing list.

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community/mailinglists/etiquette

I don’t think this blog post really is helpful to the ubuntu-uk community.

*wham*

Immediate Code of Conduct waving hand-wringing whinging bastards everywhere, and then a nick ban so weak I had to rejoin the channel and explain to the retarded ops how to ban someone properly.

I gave up helping out in there after that.

IMHO, CoC is the Red Tape of Ubuntu and a PITA most of the time.

- Chris