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In defence of Douglas Crockford

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Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#251

Post by chris_wot »

rand_r wrote: post #76
inopinatus wrote: post #59

"as long as he gives a good talk/presentation" Given the content of your first remark, I'm strongly inclined to suspect this use of the explicitly masculine pronoun is first-degree trolling. This serves as a counterexample to your point, because as statements go, it would be simply be factually (rather than politically) correct to have said "they" rather than "he", unless you really do hold an expectation that all co…

Using the male pronoun by default is simply common practice in English, dating back at least hundreds of years. I wouldn't read into it.

Take care, someone might say you should be fired for it.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#252

Post by justaaron »

prance wrote: post #239
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given information publicly available this seems infuriatingly ridiculous, but Nodevember's official statement in response seems quite reasonable: http://nodevember.org/statement.html That statement is the opposite of reasonable. If you're going to call someone out, publicly, that they're making other speakers uncomfortable to the point where they won't show up if he's there (when he was one of the first confirmed s…

No, absolutely reasonable. They say that multiple other speakers have stated that Crockford's "presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak." So they chose to prioritise them over him, something which they can totally do as organisers. Do they owe everyone a detailed explanation for that? I think not.

1) "owe" - as in some kind of contractual obligation? were I a ticket-holder or Mr. Crockford, I would speak of being owed something, but I think you are using a strange word for a privately-presented public-conference that has insinuated quite a LOT, actually, by such a provocative statement. This private organization presenting this public conference can, of course, refuse to divulge anything it wishes to. The stench, however, only grows more fetid, like a used diaper hidden under the bed.

We are currently led to believe that the early invitation to speak issued to Mr. Crockford has been rescinded due to some horrible and recent behavior on the part of Mr. Crockford, sufficient to warrant taking said secret allegations seriously enough to both rescind the invitation AND maintain the secrecy of both the allegations AND the identities of the accusors.

While we, the rubber-necking public, are not "owed" any explanation, it's not a reasonable position to not provide one.

The pastebin conversation suffices, meanwhile to show us, the rubber-necking public, the paucity and weakness of evidence being used to dis-invite Mr. Crockford.

This is seriously some stupid shit.

It's not advancing humanity at all, and it's not EVEN worthy of the label "Social Justice Warrior" as it's more American cultural colonialism, forcing the world at large to behave like a stupid American television series of 30-minute-episodic-duration, often set in a domestic kitchenette... but I digress...

The actual Social Justice Warriors are concerned about real issues.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#254

Post by [deleted] »

olalonde wrote: post #56
danso wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: whether Crockford has a case about libel. The allegations are published and the OP links to the original complaint on Medium: https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-... Furthermore, the best defense against libel is the truth. Part of the complaint is an opinion based on public statements made by Crockford (the "slut-shaming"). The other published complaint is that Crockford said to the compl…

> The allegations are published and the OP links to the original complaint on Medium: https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-... That passive-aggressive "update" is quite telling of his/her personality: "I’ve switched comments to ‘not visible.’ I won’t be reading them. I don’t feel the need to justify this, either. Thanks <3."

[deleted]

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#256

Post by thomasfoster96 »

unimpressive wrote: post #57
thomasfoster96 wrote: post #7

I’d really like to know how a decision like that is made. In Nodevember's statement on the matter[0] (which the parent link doesn’t mention, a rather glaring omission), they quite openly admit that they “...aren't professional organizers or PR people. We are still learning, and will make mistakes.” So why not admit a mistake? I certainly don’t want to see sexist speakers at conferences, but this decision seems to hav…

>I certainly don’t want to see sexist speakers at conferences, I don't want to see a sexist talk (as opposed to a-sexist talk), but an 'objectionable' speaker really shouldn't be a problem if their talk would otherwise have merit and they can be reasonably expected not to be objectionable on stage. No-platforming and economic warfare are tactics used by the worst kind of political actors, the kind you should be activ…

> I don't want to see a sexist talk (as opposed to a-sexist talk), but an 'objectionable' speaker really shouldn't be a problem if their talk would otherwise have merit and they can be reasonably expected not to be objectionable on stage.

I agree, you’ve worded that better than me.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#257

Post by thomasfoster96 »

lake99 wrote: post #196
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #160

The Nodevember folk(s) posted a statement regarding this whole kerfuffle [1]. It's pretty hollow IMO. > While we have a tremendous respect for Mr. Crockford's abilities as a speaker and his contributions to our craft, we became aware that based on private feedback - not simply the dialogue on Twitter - that his presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak. Okay so…

> You apologized for lacking nuance on Twitter with your "announcement" and yet continue to do so. I saw parallels of this earlier this year against Richard Dawkins, when the NECSS uninvited him over twitter, followed it with a longer post on their blog[0]. After their actions caused a blowback, they apologized for their lack of professionalism. NECSS backtracked on their position[1] because the blowback was from pro…

The major difference there is that they actually identified the particular action that got him uninvited - and to Dawkins’ credit, (as far as I know) he deleted the offending tweets.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#258

Post by thomasfoster96 »

angry_octet wrote: post #240
rtpg wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? The talk organizers were faced with a dilemma: either keep Crawford and lose a bunch of other speakers or lose Crawford but keep others I do think clarification is needed, but I could see "being a jerk " as a legit reason to not want to associate with someone. People do the same with people like Torvalds Being unliked is also a reason that people won't want to associate with you.

Being a speaker at the same event is hardly being forced to associate with someone, nor indeed a reason to attempt to publicly repudiate them. Additionally, in my experience Linus Tovalds is not a jerk. Is this something you sense you get by reading email threads? Perhaps you associate a lack of politeness and deference with being a jerk, but it really isn't the same.

> Perhaps you associate a lack of politeness and deference with being a jerk, but it really isn't the same.

I would certainly associate those two attributes with being a jerk.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#259

Post by atom-morgan »

prance wrote: post #244

This article is based on the assumption that those two statements from Rockford were the actual reason for his disinvitation - because that's "everything [the author's] been able to find". Which is not the case according to nodevember's statement[1]. Besides, the fact that the author is criticising people for calling for a disinvite of a white supremacist speaker from LamdaConf[2] doesn't quite increase my trust in h…

Nodevember's statement was released after my blog post. In fact, I believe my blog post helped in leading them to releasing their statement.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#260

Post by thomasfoster96 »

Natsu wrote: post #118
whorleater wrote: post #12

Ignoring the fact this discussion about this, and this culture as a whole, is a minefield to navigate, it's important to note that Douglas Crockford can definitely be abrasive [1]. The issue at hand is that whether this abrasiveness is a bad thing, when compared to the contributions he's made and whether it leads to constructive discussions. The javascript developer who took offense (Kas?) definitely seems to have ta…

That said, from your very link I find this: " douglascrockford commented on Feb 21, 2011 I am sorry I hurt your feelings." I'll take someone who realizes they made a mistake and apologizes for it any day over someone who seeks to get rid of all the people they don't like.

I read that as being 50% sarcastic.
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