People saying "Mastodon needs to include more marginalized people" to me just betrays a total lack of effort to even learn about who is working on the project. They assume if they say it's all cishet white men that they'll be right and saying to include marginalized voices is a generally agreeable thing to say to collect social capital and establish yourself as good when actually you're just being a jerk to unpaid trans women
@shel white trans women in tech seems p common tbh, like 1. chill 2. seems like imo that the issues people have, where they feel mastodon as a platform, and mastodon.social doesnt work to fit the needs of people of colour is like a genuine concern and problem.
its late, I should sleep, let us all sleep
@shel paid consultation is good, good to hear.
@slimekat only one person has ever taken me up on the offer but the offer stands, if anyone knows of someone who wants to take me up on it. I paid the person who talked to me at the same rate as what I earn at my job.
@shel would you be open to make that rate public for transparency's sake ?
@slimekat ^^;; no... sorry. But I'll say that it's less than minimum wage if you live in Seattle. More than minimum wage if you live in Massachusetts. I peg it to my own wage as a sign of showing "I value your labor as much as I do my own."
@shel that's some delicious capitalism there, deep apologies. like holy moly pay in the states is badddd
@slimekat i work at a charity, you don't get paid much when you work at a charity. but at least u feel good abt the work ur doing
@shel when I was an instructor for a non profit I was thankfully able to get the like bare minimum of acceptable pay
@slimekat i mean, i get a stable income and i'm not rly wanting for money... but thats cuz im a frugal person w no family and my main expense is rent, debt, and medical w/o car payments or anything. and its also cheap to live in my town
@slimekat yes. which is why I've periodically offered to pay people of color to talk to me about what we can do software-wise to make the space better for them. but the critiques I see are from other white people and don't mention race, so I don't think that's their critique