No more rock stars: how to stop abuse in tech communities

This is flat out wrong. In the US/EU, you can't be put on trial for being a rape victim. What offence would that be? Complete hyperbole.

They don't like swear words.

i read the allegations, he's a funny guy if its true.

First off, there is lots of different potential abuse in a tech community. Second, not all of it comes from "rock stars" - the aggregate cases of abuse probably greatly outweigh rockstardom-enabled abuse. Third, the abuse was perpetuated not because Jake was a "rock star", but because your community's values suck and nobody would stand up and call him out, AND nobody cared once they did. This was primarily a failure of your community. But like I keep saying, this is a feature of all in-groups.

"Why are rock stars so common and successful?"

Because communities like "leaders", and they have shit heuristics to determine it. And everyone loves an asshole, and there's tons of asshole hackers.

"How do we as a community prevent rock stars?"

Stop being a community.

I'm serious. Communities breed power in individuals and it's been proven time and again (and "in studies", no less) that in an in-group, a person with power and low morals is more likely to abuse their power. It's inherent to in-groups. Remove the community, you remove the power, you remove the social and other influences that bring the immoral, not-powerful person into contact with the vulnerable. No community, no abuse.

"Our recommendations can be summarized as: decentralizing points of failure,"

....What? This isn't an Active Directory tree, these are humans. Every node in your network is a point of failure.

"increasing transparency,"

And what would that look like? Sending an e-mail to a listserv every time someone says something passive-aggressive to you? Again, there is no simple way to police the myriad of potential abuses, micro or macro, from all sorts of personalities.

"improving accountability,"

Which, for a community that shuns the police, looks like what? K-lining him from your IRC server?

"supporting private and anonymous communication,"

You already have that. This whole debacle has shown how anonymous communication is dismissed until a real face is put to a complaint, and many of them, all at once. This is pretty standard group dynamics, again.

"reducing power differentials,"

So... everyone is an op. Nobody is allowed to like anyone else more, and everyone has to be invited to your party.

"and avoiding situations that make violating boundaries more likely."

No more alcohol or drugs and nobody is allowed to be in a room alone with one other person, AND no PMs allowed, everything in-chat and logged. Got it.

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The points, one by one:

Codes of conduct won't be followed if the people enforcing the code of conduct don't enforce it. This is why there are police that police the police.

"Start with the assumption that harassment reports are true" - if Jake had made the first report against his victim, now we would have to believe Jake. Default assumption of guilt doesn't work - this is why our own country's laws do the opposite. All the examples given of "investigating for bad behavior" are things regular non-rapey people do all the time. "nasty emails, stolen credit, rude behavior, and unethical acts big and small" ? That's every fucking hacker troll alive.

Making it easy for victims to find each other is not a good idea, because coordination leads, again, to failed heuristics: one person felt uncomfortable with a consensual act, another was actually violently sexually assaulted, and now the first changes their story so they're taken more seriously. (This is not something i'm making up to gaslight an invisible person, btw, this happens to real victims) It would, however, be GREAT if there were a community-specific organization that anyone could contact to discuss how they feel in a safe way.

Watching for boundary pushing and react strongly - yes, 100%.

Call people out for "monopolizing attention" - uh.... Right, popular female hacker scenester. Let's police the social convention of "taking credit for work" or "being loud and outgoing". You and I both know nobody's going to shout down the hacker media whores - and there are so, so many.

The "deep bench of talent" thing is again, almost completely irrelevant to generally preventing abuse in communities.

You basically explained why your point about hierarchies is invalid, so no need to comment.

"Failing up" is a minor aspect of corporate hierarchy and has nothing to do with social or personal power in in-groups, this is not relevant to the subject.

And, sure, "no relationships in the workplace". You go ahead and explain to Sally and Joe (or Jane, or Zed, or whatever) that Sally is going to have to support her kids without Joe's help because Joe needs to leave the company because you feel uncomfortable that they might one day have a domestic dispute.

"Avoid organizations becoming too central to people's lives" - this really has zero to do with the subject.

"Distribute the keys to the kingdom" - Same.

"Don't create environments for potential boundary violation" - Like I said above - no drugs, no alcohol, never leave anyone alone with another person. Your parties are gonna be a blast. Chiptune, diet shasta orange, and vacation slides. Wheeeee.

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"We waited too long to do something about it."

Correct. Now, next time, do something about it. That is really all that needed to be said and all that needs to be done.

Yes, but young girls being forcibly gang raped is a far cry from what is laid out in this article.

Yes, the action is on the abuser. I never once said the blame is on the victim. However, most of what the author has laid out is "He is a jerk, people have said he is a jerk, he takes advantage of people, etc". Not "He forcibly raped me and others." So - as an individual - taking very simple steps, like the ones I outlined in my first comment, are only common sense, and can only work in said individual's favor.

I've read some of this author's other posts, including the one that talks specifically about her relationship with Appelbaum (including consensual sexual acts). Calling her a victim because she was taken advantage of, on the same level the girls in Australia you mentioned who were forcibly gang raped are victims, is absurd.

Edit: Leaving the above alone, but on further inspection, it looks like several people have claimed that he "sexually assaulted" them. Now, if true, they should have reported these things to the police immediately. However, I went ahead and read through the stories on the Appelbaum shame website. In every one of the instances, the victim put themselves in a situation to be taken advantage of by this scumbag - drinking heavily enough to black out with him, sleeping in the same bed as him, etc.

Am I defending him? Hell no. But something has to be said about taking responsibility for one's own safety and well being, and being intelligent about not getting into situations like these.