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Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

asherwolf.com

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Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#31

Post by mburshteyn »

w1ntermute wrote: post #5

The problem with this woman's story is that she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. Or at least that's how I see it. Perhaps she is just commenting on the general douchebaggery of the community, but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong. Although sexism is clearly an issue in t…

You may be interested in reading this: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/complete.html#proveit.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#33

Post by venantius »

timmm wrote: post #26
venantius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At no point does she explicitly cite HN. The post is directed to all "hackers."

Hence my use of the word imply. As in 'implicit' ... you know - the opposite of 'explicit'. I also believe she changed the title.

I don't think there's anything implicitly linking the people in her article to HN, either. We don't have a monopoly on the word "hacker," after all.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#34

Post by krakensden »

> Would 10 minutes at the start of a conference explaining anti-discrimination policy and acceptable conduct really infringe on anyone’s “fun”?

> It won’t change the culture of asshattery over-night, but it will begin a conversation that’s needed – far more necessary than another article or blog post like this, or more red-card waving in the wind.

It's an interesting strategy, but I don't have much hope for it. The thing that makes HR rules effective is that they can forcibly eject people from the workplace. They also work in a framework of a fairly static population and an understood hierarchy. A conference is a bunch of strangers together for a quick day or two. It's hard to police, and hard to trust complaints from people you don't know about things with no evidence.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#36

Post by Locke1689 »

46Bit wrote: post #4

That's quite the rant. It's a shame that someone's been put off like this, but it doesn't seem like there's enough in this article to really work out what's gone on. Regret that I'm only learning of Cryptoparties now - I quite like the concept.

I agree; I find the message clear but the story itself very hard to follow.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#38

Post by venantius »

mburshteyn wrote: post #31
w1ntermute wrote: post #5

The problem with this woman's story is that she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. Or at least that's how I see it. Perhaps she is just commenting on the general douchebaggery of the community, but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong. Although sexism is clearly an issue in t…

You may be interested in reading this: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/complete.html#proveit .

I've never seen this before, but this is seriously fantastic.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#39

Post by Maxious »

sublimit wrote: post #19

Moral of the story: focus on the damn hacking and stay on your computer, at least until you've achieved something worth having a conference speech or "Cryptoparty" about. The thing about the hacker community is that people won't like you if you draw unwarranted attention to yourself. Hoping that people would accept her, the author just keeps on hitting herself with "creeper cards" and social media outbursts that draw…

> Moral of the story: focus on the damn hacking and stay on your computer

Focus on the damn cooking and stay in the kitchen?

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#40

Post by krakensden »

venantius wrote: post #9

It's so hard to know what to say in response to stuff like this. I want to believe that there's a consensus amongst the enlightened hacker community that the type of sexist behavior described is Not Acceptable, but it seems hardly a week goes by without another major incident in which a long-standing female contributor is finally pushed out of a project by stuff like this. I agree with Ms. Wolf that community and con…

Prominent male members of the community burn out all the time (_why, Mark Pilgrim) too. I think sexism isn't really the culprit, so much as being exposed to the howling nether of the internet. There are a billion people online, and some percentage of them are in a shit mood, and the more prominent you are the more likely it is that someone will try to shit all over you for no visible reason. If you get famous enough, you'll get it every day.

A lot of the other stuff sounds like the mundane bullshit that happens to every open project- people promising to build stuff that then don't, bikeshedding, flakiness, poor communication and clashing goals. The eternal heartbreak of people preferring talk to action.

This sounds like her first rodeo. It sounds like that made everything worse.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the gender stuff is basically incidental to the people making her life miserable, even if it feels central to her. Being internet famous and trying to organize internet volunteers is a recipe for awfulness.

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