The Developer Formerly Known as FreeBSDGirl

I think it's interesting watching how HN responds to posts like this, because they are kind of political, and HN is a good representation of how a lot of people in tech feel. I'll get a lot of support on Twitter (because I've blocked most of the trolls), and 140 characters isn't very much to leave a detailed response, anyways.

I like seeing thoughtful criticism, and the HN community is (mostly) good at that. It's why I don't excessively comment in these discussions, except maybe to clear up a point here and there. HN brings up points I haven't thought about, and I don't want necessarily to be part of the discussion about things I've written except as an observer.

I read an article the other day about devastating, long-term harassment that one person suffered. She had a dream where she was physically attacked by a harasser -- stabbed with a knife. In this dream her primary feeling was one of overwhelming relief. Why? Because the harasser had done something so obviously wrong that her complaints could now not possibly be ignored. She woke up disappointed.

The Swing dancing scene had a big scandal this year, and everywhere CoCs are popping up.

But do you really need to write down that an adult (quite old, in that case) dance teacher is not allowed to sleep with just-teenage dance students? Or that racist remarks are not welcome?

No, so you adopt very broad language. Usually something like "harassing", "making uncomfortable" etc.

If your community needs those two sentences to police such behaviour, you've got a much bigger problem.

I simply don't believe that you can convince anybody to take action because some very broadly written CoC authorizes them to do so. They either see that the behaviour is a problem, and are willing to act, or they will just start to debate whether the CoC's specific wording is really covering the behaviour in question.

Then again, I have zero practical experience with policing a community.

Damn! Missed midnight. :-)

On the pro-GG side, look at the supposedly pro-gg websites that have sprung up that sell things or review things basically do everything that they are saying the current status quo is doing wrongly or unethically.

On the anti-GG side, look at how much the leaders are charging for talks related to inclusion issues, something that they want to help spread. I am not saying they should run a charity (which they actually do from what I remember, literally run a NPO), but at some points it just looks like they are doing it for the money. The talks are weird, after seeing them, they looked like more about the person giving the talk and less about the actual issue at hand.

Every Time things quiet down another shitshow start from nowhere. It's like a massive online bait. If things keep going, the people making money keep making money.

If you look at it from an outside perspective, both sides are right. There are huge inclusion issues in gaming. Actually there are huge inclusion issue in almost everything, not sure what makes computer games special. On the other side, there are certainly ethics issue in game media. But then there are ethics issue in every media. Not sure what makes game media special. So now the question why all the fight, especially when both sides are fighting for different things. Both sides are obviously right. The only reason I can think of it is, and it's actually pretty evident, that people have found ways to make money out of it and they rile up the crowd every time things calm down to ensure the money keeps coming in.

If both the sides worked on this together both of their problems can be solved mutually, but I am not sure why that is not happening. It's like they don't want to work together. I am sure the people smart enough to figure out how to control this also know that neither side is the picture they have painted, so if they actually wanted to solve this, they can easily do it.