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Are We An Unjust People?

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Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#11

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

felix wrote: post #8
IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #4

In short, yes, we are, and it's shitty. Reg, everything you wrote here is pretty spot-on. Adria Richards' behavior was definitely a tactical misstep. With the benefit of hindsight, she should have reported the inappropriate behavior to the conference staff more discretely. Or, even, turned around and told them to show some respect. (And, if they didn't cut the crap, THEN get them kicked from the conference.) I don't…

I don't believe this was a Python problem or an issue of the Python community, it's a general issue plaguing technology. We're all trying to figure our way through it as best we can - and when things like this happen we need to do our best to stay calm and rational and keep everything in proportion. I think no matter who's "side" you were on in this debate, everyone can agree that most reactions were overblown for th…

True, despite my joking tweet earlier, I don't think that this is at all a Python problem, except insofar as the "python community" is a huge community of people who (by virtue of its size) mostly are strangers to one another.

You're right that it's not about the language of choice. But a community is made of people. I think that the Node community's niceness has little to do with JavaScript, and more to do with the fact that there were folks like you, mikeal, maxogden, nexxy, polotek, ryah, substack, janl, etc, who imprinted the community with your sense of values and a culture of kindness early on.

But keeping that ball rolling, as the community gets bigger, is very challenging, and it does stress me out a bit. It takes such a little match to set the whole thing on fire!

Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#12

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #11
felix wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe this was a Python problem or an issue of the Python community, it's a general issue plaguing technology. We're all trying to figure our way through it as best we can - and when things like this happen we need to do our best to stay calm and rational and keep everything in proportion. I think no matter who's "side" you were on in this debate, everyone can agree that most reactions were overblown for th…

True, despite my joking tweet earlier, I don't think that this is at all a Python problem, except insofar as the "python community" is a huge community of people who (by virtue of its size) mostly are strangers to one another. You're right that it's not about the language of choice. But a community is made of people. I think that the Node community's niceness has little to do with JavaScript, and more to do with the…

(I'm assuming that "felix" is Felix Geisendorfer. If not, sorry for the confusion :)

Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#13

Post by aredridel »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #4

In short, yes, we are, and it's shitty. Reg, everything you wrote here is pretty spot-on. Adria Richards' behavior was definitely a tactical misstep. With the benefit of hindsight, she should have reported the inappropriate behavior to the conference staff more discretely. Or, even, turned around and told them to show some respect. (And, if they didn't cut the crap, THEN get them kicked from the conference.) I don't…

This, a thousand times this.

Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#14

Post by jerrya »

Hmm, I couldn't read your entire essay because your choice of font size and font color and background color makes for very difficult reading, and probably for many people.

Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#15

Post by felix »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #12
IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, despite my joking tweet earlier, I don't think that this is at all a Python problem, except insofar as the "python community" is a huge community of people who (by virtue of its size) mostly are strangers to one another. You're right that it's not about the language of choice. But a community is made of people. I think that the Node community's niceness has little to do with JavaScript, and more to do with the…

(I'm assuming that "felix" is Felix Geisendorfer. If not, sorry for the confusion :)

Sorry to disappoint! But different felix. :) I'm still nice, though.

Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#16

Post by IsaacSchlueter »

metaphorm wrote: post #3

so the moral of the story, according to raganwald, is that Adria Richards worst mistake is that she trolled somebody candidly instead of anonymously? indeed Reggie, what can be done about anonymous trolling on the internet? this is an honest question to which nobody knows the answer. do we all need to admit that we are powerless to stop anonymous dickheads from making death threats on the internet? I admit it. We all…

A good first step is to actively reduce the level of misogyny and other ugliness in your circles to the degree possible.

This sort of crap goes on in part because it has tacit support from "normal" folks. We rush to punishment of Adria, but we shrug and say "oh well" about the others, or the initial incident that started it all.

Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#17

Post by luigi »

There are two really interesting, and frankly devastating, double standards at work here:

(1) We all know Adria Richards's name. We know all about her. Her personal address has been spread. Things she wrote in the past have been used against her. But we don't really know anything about those guys. We know who they work for and what they look like, but there's been no widespread effort to expose them in the same manner that Adria's been exposed.

(2) When that guy lost his job, everyone thought it was a great injustice, and that Adria should make a heartfelt apology to him. But when Adria lost her job this morning, there were no such pronouncements going the other way. No one declared, "That dude really needs to apologize to Adria for making the dick joke that eventually led to her getting let go." That's not an argument that's being made anywhere.

Ask yourself why these things are happening in one direction. In an equal world -- a balanced world -- things should cut both ways. These tactics should be used by people on both "sides". But in this instance, that's decidedly not happening.

Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#18

Post by mxfh »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #4

In short, yes, we are, and it's shitty. Reg, everything you wrote here is pretty spot-on. Adria Richards' behavior was definitely a tactical misstep. With the benefit of hindsight, she should have reported the inappropriate behavior to the conference staff more discretely. Or, even, turned around and told them to show some respect. (And, if they didn't cut the crap, THEN get them kicked from the conference.) I don't…

I'm afraid this is a pattern in the history of technology, we as a society, have yet to overcome:

As along as it's experimental women are welcome (or at worst ignored) by the early adopter community. When it's proven to be economically lucrative, new players enter the field, turf war behavior kicks and - consciously or not - nothing seems easier than driving out a good part of potential rivals by resorting to means like sexism.

This happened in early film [1], early computing (ENIAC) [2] and now in seemingly every small programming sub-community on it's own. I'm just tired of waiting for this to end. We loose so much as a whole, by letting a small subset of people with the most reckless of tactics win again and again.

[1] http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9781421402093

[2] http://xplqa30.ieee.org/xpl/bkabstractplus.jsp?bkn=6451065

Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#19

Post by balupton »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #9
chilts wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens when Node is as big as Python? How do we keep this going? Keep being nice to each other at all times. At all times we'll be growing. Therefore at the end, we'll be nice to each other. Don't let it slip, since one or two slips allow more. Be nice, stay nice. :) It's a habit which can be kept.

I do hope it's that easy, or at least, we can keep making it look that easy :) In the last 3 years with Node, I've seen it go through some definite changes, and we have had to respond to those. I suspect that will continue.

Gotta agree too, I'm not sure I would use the word "easy" though, as it sure is a simple rule to follow - be nice, continue to be nice, zero-tolerance for not nice behaviour - however, simple things are often the hardest to implement - as you gotta be drawing the line somewhere, which as was mentioned, if one thing slips through, a lot more could slip through - this seems to be a big misconception with society in large, lack of enforcement of an ideal, does not mean that the ideal doesn't matter and shouldn't be respected - that to me seems like the vehicle for these small things to slip through, and a lot of similarity of your original post - how can we make people feel empowered to act correctly when misfortune occurs instead of letting it slip by? be it a conference, a meetup, an IRC chat room, or any circumstance.

Re: Are We An Unjust People?

#20

Post by mk3 »

IsaacSchlueter wrote: post #4

In short, yes, we are, and it's shitty. Reg, everything you wrote here is pretty spot-on. Adria Richards' behavior was definitely a tactical misstep. With the benefit of hindsight, she should have reported the inappropriate behavior to the conference staff more discretely. Or, even, turned around and told them to show some respect. (And, if they didn't cut the crap, THEN get them kicked from the conference.) I don't…

What I see here is a person who saw possibility to get some social high fives after posting the photo. The female who did the tweet should have spoken to them first, instead of Tweeting. In the end Even when speaking one should first think and then speak.
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