You're a slashdotter and you need an uninstaller? Lame.

Right, but not on the enormously huge scale that's possible with electronic voting machines.

If hearing Stallman talk about wanting to deflower female virgins during an Emacs speech, is the most psychologically scarring thing you've had to deal with in life, then all I can say is that you've had it a lot easier than most.

Wow. Talk about making the author's point. So, I am supposing that you'd be comfortable with replacing "female" with "African-American" and "deflower female virgins" with "n*ggers"?

The point being made is less that so-and-so in the FOSS community is a jerk/exhibits questionable judgement and therefore FOSS is inherently sexist than it is that vocal members of the programming community feel that sexist and/or offensive behaviours are morally defensible.

Why do women have to feel welcome? I'm a white dude and I feel unwelcome everywhere I go. Is that just me?

Why do we need to make them feel not welcome? What interest does that advance?

Or, perhaps, one needs to have been nerdy and suffer from bullying — something girls rarely have to go through...

WTF, Are you kidding me? Seriously? You obviously haven't been -- repeatedly -- the only "girl" in years of math and science classes, surrounded by immature leering little boys who repeatedly make crude sexual jokes and suggestions in your general direction, tolerated by a male teacher whose attitude is "boys will be boys" and "stop being so sensitive." Then, when such behaviours are publicly denounced as uncivil, watch in amazement as otherwise intelligent male humans will leap up to *defend* such behaviour as normative. Do any of these people truly believe that this *should* be the price of admission that women *must* pay in order to join the fraternal order?

I dunno... Dark Shadows did a pretty decent job with it!

Yes, I read your post. But a campus is a smaller version of the world, one that already kinda makes sense to them/has things to report on that they understand. I'm not saying these things CANNOT be done in the absence of a physical campus, only that I think it's BETTER done in the presence of one.

For example, screw up an article on whatever student government voted to do that week and it's really no big deal; screw up an article on something the city council did you might find yourself on the receiving end of a lawsuit by a councilmember. In this manner, the physical campus acts as safety net that catches you when you fall.

Really? And where would that be?
:-(

Did you do journalism in college? I did (though not as a major) and I cannot begin to imagine how this would work. The idea is that the physical campus is like a microcosm of the surrounding outside world, and you learn to write news, features, opinion and sports by reporting on those things within the microcosm.

Just having them interview professors subtracts so much from that experience (features? sports? opinion?) as does not having any feedback from readers via letters, or being able to hold in your hands a physical newspaper with your byline on it.

I still just can't see it. Ditto for campus radio (in which you operate a real radio station, making decisions about content and what your listening audience wants to hear) and campus television (ditto).

But, how are they going to do this without a physical campus to report on?

Well, as to your first assertion, there actually is a fair but emerging body of "evidence" which indicates NSD (no statistical difference). But, guess who's authoring these studies? Yup; lots of pro-Distance Learning types. Think they drink their own kool-aid much? Early studies lauded how helpful students found PowerPoint presentations initially; later studies not so much. So, yeah, I gotta agree with you entirely on our second comment.

Finally, does anybody find this funny that this is coming out of BYU of all places? I mean, really, if BYU goes entirely online, how will they ever monitor their students' sexual and alcohol-consumption habits?

And, what about theatre, the vocal, performing/musical arts and visual arts? What about newspaper/radio/television production?

Indeed, and for anyone who questions this, I offer the following scenario:

You or a loved one are in an accident and are gravely injured, landing in a hospital. There are two ER doctors on duty: One received a degree via the traditional route and one received it online.

Do you really not have a preference which doctor your are assigned?