One of the reasons I've taken an interest in this whole fiasco is that I occasionally make "colorful" jokes. Not dissimilar from the two guys at PyCon. I make every attempt to keep these jokes private between my friends and I, but I'm sure others have heard me make them. Some people might find them funny, others may be offended. It scares me to think that making an offhand penis joke could result in being publicly ou…
Fucking NorCal. Nobody in NYC would've blinked at that joke. Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FAI_-woNh4
PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
301–310 of 387 posts
Re: PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
#302The comments here are curious. The bulk of them are arguing the finer points of rampant speculation. Why did the guy get fired? What were her motives? Was their conversation intended to be private?
This is all beside the point. Engaging in such conversations is feeding a witch-hunt (on either side).
The facts as I've seen them are simple. He made a penis joke which could be overheard. She took offense. He admitted it was an offensive penis joke. He got fired.
The telling point for me is her other behavior. She made a penis joke on Twitter. Unless she admits that that joke was offensive, she's a hypocrite.
I find that more offensive than the original joke. Being offended at behavior you do yourself is at best naive. At worst deliberately hypocritical and amoral.
Re: PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Public shaming is a tool in the kit, but in this case it was the first one that she reached for. From her blog post, it sounded like it was out of frustration over other incidences (maybe even worse cases of offence / harassment) that she had also ignored. It was the 'straw that broke the camel's back' so to speak, and unleashed her pent up anger/frustration. Personally, I think that there were other avenues to pursu…
Public shaming is a tri-edged blade with no handle, made of fire. Yes you can wield it, but you are going to get hurt, possibly badly, likely you are going to take somebody who just stood next to you down with you too. If you hurt your intended target, you can't control the degree and it is going to have unintended consequences that you can't stop, let alone control. Do you really think it should be in the toolkit?
As a weapon of last resort. Even then, only when retreat / choosing your battles doesn't make sense.
For example, if something progressed to getting the police or lawyers involved, at least some amount of it is going to be public record. Even though it might not (initially) be broadcast widely, it would eventually hit the tech press if it stemmed from events at a tech conference.
Re: PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Adrea[sic] did an arguably right thing in a wrong way It seems she did 2 different things. 1) She reported an incident that made her feel uncomfortable. (I think she did the correct thing here, at least I agree with it) 2) She posted a face photo of some attendees from a sponsoring company, publicly (not just for PyCon attendees but for the whole world) along with an insult "ass clowns". [note: 2 came before 1 as w…
Isn't publishing someone's photo without their consent, like, illegal ? I'm aware that copyright of the picture rests with the photographer, but if you want to publish someone's picture (and, as far as I understand it, tweeting is 'publishing'), don't you need their explicit consent?
No, you don't not need consent to publish a photo of someone. You need consent to make money off of that photo because you're making money off their likeness. But even in that case, it's a civil, not criminal offense.
This applies to photography in public. A conference can have their own policy about what is and isn't okay. Although if the convention center is a public building that may complicate things. Even if the conference had an issue with it, it's not illegal.
Re: PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
We live in a politically correct world, and employers will do the wrong thing in order to save face because it's more expedient. It's hard to both try to help run a business and simultaneously wage war over social discourse. The pattern is that firms will react, and overreact, to what they perceive as a scandal involving hot-button issues. The firing was a mistake but maybe the people involved were afraid of what mig…
Exactly. Think of yourself as an employer - either you retain the employee and get branded as a "Women unfriendly company", or as a company that harbors "Male chauvenists". Or you just fire the relevant folks and save face. Both are tough choices - but its obvious which one is the most (to the employer).
Hopefully with more incidents like this, employers branded as "overreacting, bending over backwards PC twats" will start receiving similar unfavorable treatment as the aforementioned labelings.
Re: PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
People use POP email at work all the time. I can see their plaintext passwords coming through the network monitor (which it's my job to review), and I've seen some patently offensive passwords being used. This brings up two of your points: First, I ignore the fact that I can see their username and password. The responsible thing to do is to completely forget that you can see it. I have no business with their login in…
Shouldn't you advise them to use POP over SSL?
We can advise them to use whatever we want, the trick is getting them to listen. Our corporate email disallows POP, but we aren't in the business of blocking their personal email on our non-secure network.
Re: PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
#307One of the reasons I've taken an interest in this whole fiasco is that I occasionally make "colorful" jokes. Not dissimilar from the two guys at PyCon. I make every attempt to keep these jokes private between my friends and I, but I'm sure others have heard me make them. Some people might find them funny, others may be offended. It scares me to think that making an offhand penis joke could result in being publicly ou…
there's no opportunity to defend yourself from a tweet? tweet back. certainly you agree twitter is effective now that a bunch of racist, sexist scumbags used it to harass her company into firing her.
I look forward to the day when debates are settled by who has the most twitter followers. Or who has the loudest voice.[1]
Re: PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
No.
Then why blur faces in some published photos / video footage? I live in the UK, could be a different legal situation here...
In the U.S., you might see blurred faces on a reality TV show because the show is making money. In that instance, a signed release or contract would be needed to show people's faces.
But an individual posting a photo in public for not-for-profit uses is protected under the 1st Amendment.
Re: PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you take a look at my comment history you'll see that I tend to comment on womens rights issues quite frequently, since I'm LGBT myself so their cause is quite close to my heart. I can tell you from experience that I've seen my votes go up and down 5 or 10 points easily when I comment on topics like these. I've never noticed that for any other comments I make.
I could understand your statement if the post in question was a worthwhile contribution to a discussion, was well formatted, and had a reasonable writing style (grammar and spelling). But with as many flaws as the post had, attributing the downvotes purely to an apparently large population of misogynists on HN seems to be a strawman designed to further the already controversial discussion at hand.
He seemed genuinely confused as to why he received these downvotes and I just tried to inform him that, apart from his comment not being particularly good, he was probably also the victim of excessive downvoting due to the polarizing nature of the topic.
Re: PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming
#310One of the reasons I've taken an interest in this whole fiasco is that I occasionally make "colorful" jokes. Not dissimilar from the two guys at PyCon. I make every attempt to keep these jokes private between my friends and I, but I'm sure others have heard me make them. Some people might find them funny, others may be offended. It scares me to think that making an offhand penis joke could result in being publicly ou…
I believe she's being a hypocrite by taking offense one day, and making her own penis joke on Twitter the next. I've seen that argument tossed about. There's a difference between reading someone's Twitter stream and hearing someone's joke while sitting in the audience at a convention. The former is reading content from someone you chose to follow, the latter is the equivalent of having people talk behind you in a mov…
So people communicating in sign language can never have a private conversation unless closed off in a room?