A Difficult Situation • Hacker News Board

Re: A Difficult Situation

#481

Post by jennyjenjen » Fri, Mar 22, 2013, 7:00 PM UTC

thisone wrote: post #461

jennyjenjen wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, two great points: 1) the difficulty / contradictions in community manager / evangelist jobs, and 2) free speech in the US. I am not sure where you are from - France, judging by the hour, grammar, punctuation? - but after living outside the US and having the luxury of observing my home country from the outside, I have found that free speech is not treated with as much value as we seem to claim. Some would say that…

Free speech in the US says the government cannot make laws to curtail your speech in most circumstances. Free speech does not, however, protect you from dealing with the consequences of your speech.

Yes, I understand that. It was a blanket statement about freedom of speech, not necessarily a direct correlation between the situation and freedom of speech.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#482

Post by ceol » Fri, Mar 22, 2013, 7:28 PM UTC

burntsushi wrote: post #429

ceol wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, I really hate it when people split posts up like that. It gets unwieldy and strips the post of its overall context. I'm guilty of it, but I've been trying to cut back. It makes my posts smaller since I have to reply to the meat of it, you know? Not just its individual components. Anyway, I'm saying that someone who would feel threatened by accidentally assuming a male gender might not necessarily be on their sid…

I recognize the annoyance of splitting up a post. I find it incredibly difficult to avoid if I am to achieve the level of precision and concision that I want in my replies. This is partly due to my unimaginative writing and partly due to my desire to be as unambiguous as possible. Splitting out the post caters to both, but at the cost of continuity and a more pleasant reading experience. What exactly does it take to…

They were using their feelings to back up their point. If their feelings are misguided, the point they were trying to make is invalid. There is no proof that they would ever be publicly humiliated for misusing a pronoun, so to live in fear of that is misguided, and to use it as a reason why you should change your actions is ridiculous.

I still don't see any impending doom. Her original photograph tweet was retweeted... 20 times, I think? The only reason that guy was fired was because it was featured on HN through no action of Adria's.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#483

Post by incongruity » Fri, Mar 22, 2013, 8:45 PM UTC

zem wrote: post #392

incongruity wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whatever she says on her own personal twitter feed is wholly unrelated to what happens at a professional event. Except: A) She posted the picture in question on that twitter feed and B) She identifies herself as affiliated with her (former) employer at the top of that feed/in her profile. To me, those make her "personal" feed not so personal and wholly germane to this conversation.

are you seriously arguing that if you mention your place of employment on your personal website or blog, they then have the right to police everything you post there?!

Nope. What I'm saying is that once you do that, you run a much higher risk of alienating your employer by saying or doing controversial things. They certainly can't control what you do or say, but they may well opt not to employ you because of the choices you make. There's a distinction there, and it matters.

(Also, in this case, I do believe that she used her twitter feed for 'official'/work-related duties, so that does genuinely blur the line between personal and professional)

Re: A Difficult Situation

#484

Post by mnicole » Sat, Mar 23, 2013, 6:57 PM UTC

kamkazemoose wrote: post #439

jennyjenjen wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could say that I'm surprised that anyone is attacking SendGrid. Even though they have done nothing to deserve such backlash - both before and after firing Adria Richards - it doesn't surprise me in the least that people are taking the opportunity to unleash hateful comments and demonstrate poor attitudes. I agree with you all the way, other than that. SendGrid made a great case for departing with Ms. Richard…

I agree that the backlash to SendGrid has been extreme, and an overreaction, but I feel that they were at least partially to blame before firing Ms. Richards. She stated the SendGrid supported her actions, and without SendGrid saying anything, they are implicitly agreeing that they support her. So I feel people have a right to be angry with SendGrid for supporting Ms. Richards, and I understand people who wrote them…

> She stated the SendGrid supported her actions, and without SendGrid saying anything, they are implicitly agreeing that they support her.

I don't think we can blame SendGrid for wanting to take a few hours to figure out this mess and respond appropriately, and I don't think we can believe someone that was acting irrationally to begin with to make definitive commentary on where her company stands on the matter.

Re: A Difficult Situation

#485

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 24, 2013, 3:11 AM UTC

psionski wrote: post #463

shantanubala wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The redefinition of racism is merely a fabrication meant to suit someone elses particular agenda, or to get you to submit to their particular argument or point-of-view. A dictionary only outlines common usage (it does not provide context), and I indicated the common usage in my comment as well. If you ever want to make a nuanced argument , you must clearly define (and sometimes re-define) the words you are using! O…

If twitter isn't suited for "nuanced arguments", well then you shouldn't be using twitter in the first place! Write a blog post and only share the link (and title). It's that simple. It doesn't matter how good something sounds in your head if you can't voice it correctly.

[deleted]