21 ms·

In defence of Douglas Crockford

• colordrops 10y ago
  This whole story seems like a joke or a social experiment.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• tootie 10y ago
  I'm pretty sympathetic to the cause of feminism especially in technology and I cringe hard at a lot of the casual sexism that gets thrown around, but this is truly baffling. Assuming this is all they actually have on him this is nothing more than very clever word play with zero gender inferences to be made.
  • gavinpc 10y ago
    It's not even "word play." The word "promiscuous" was used for hundreds of years to mean "indiscriminately mixed" before it had any sexual connotation.[0] And yes, JSLint is opinionated. That's its whole raison d'etre. It's a tempest in a teapot, not at all comparable to the LambdaConf thing, which I almost wish I hadn't learned about. [0] http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=promiscuous http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=promiscuous
  • vidarh 10y ago
    I find it even more confusing on the basis that regardless of gender, calling the second case slut-shaming is bizarre in a context where Crockford is painting the "old web promiscuity" in a positive light for the most part, but pointing out that it has one specific problem in the case where what you want is commitment. To me it reads as part nostalgia for the old "promiscuity" and lack of need for complex network security. It paints it as a period of innocence. I did not see any "shaming" of anything. Unless he followed up with something more offensive, it would seem the person complaining didn't even understand what he was saying. Perhaps you need to be of a certain age (if anyone told me I'd soon be using that phrase about myself...) to be likely to "get" that this was not a description of "bad old days" but of good old days.
    • DonHopkins 10y ago
      There are perfectly legitimate reasons to put a network interface controller into promiscuous mode [1], and it's nothing to be ashamed of, and perfectly acceptable to discuss at conferences. Back in the "bad old days" of the simplex NCP protocol [2], before the duplex TCP/IP protocol legalized same-sex network connections, connect and listen sockets had gender defined by their parity, and all connections were required to use sockets with different parity gender (one even and the other odd -- I can't remember which was which, or if it even mattered -- they just had to be different). The act of trying to connect an even socket to another even socket, or an odd socket to another odd socket, was considered a "peculiar error" called "homosocketuality", which was strictly forbidden by internet protocols, and mandatory "heterosocketuality" was called the "Anita Bryant feature". Anita Bryant [3] slut shamed not only all gays but even Jim Morrison. It's not like Douglas Crockford held a "Rally for Decency" at the Orange Bowl to slut shame a popular poet and performance artist [4]. Just throw a pie in his face [5] and move on. http://www.saildart.org/IMPSER.DOC[SS,SYS] http://www.saildart.org/IMPSER.DOC[SS,SYS] When the error code is zero, the next 8 bit byte is the Stanford peculiar error code, followed by 72 bits of the ailing command returned. Here are the Stanford error codes. [...] IGN 3 Illegal Gender (Anita Bryant feature--sockets must be heterosocketual, ie. odd to even and even to odd) [...] Illegal gender in RFC, host hhh/iii, link 0 The host is trying to engage us in homosocketuality. Since this is against the laws of God and ARPA, we naturally refuse to consent to it. http://www.saildart.org/FTP.NCP[S,NET] http://www.saildart.org/FTP.NCP[S,NET] ; Try to initiate connection loginj: init log,17 sixbit /IMP/ 0 jrst noinit setzm conecb setom conecb+lsloc move ac3,hostno movem ac3,conecb+hloc setom conecb+wfloc movei ac3,40 movem ac3,conecb+bsloc move ac3,consck trnn ac3,1 jrst gayskt ; only heterosocketuals can win! movem ac3,conecb+fsloc mtape log,[ =15 byte (6) 2,24,0,7,7 ] ; Time out CLS, RFNM, RFC, and INPut [...] gayskt: outstr [asciz/Homosocketuality is prohibited (the Anita Bryant feature) /] ife rsexec,<jrst rstart;>exit 1, (The PDP-10 code above adds the connect and listen socket numbers together, which results in bit 0 being 0 if they are the same gender, then TRNN is "test bits right, no change, skip if non zero", which skips the next instruction (jrst gayskt) if they different sex.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promiscuous_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promiscuous_mode [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Control_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Control_Program [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant [4] http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jim-morrison-prompts-a-rally-for-decency http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jim-morrison-prom... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-A2Ql81WTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-A2Ql81WTY
  • tzs 10y ago
    > I'm pretty sympathetic to the cause of feminism especially in technology and I cringe hard at a lot of the casual sexism that gets thrown around, but this is truly baffling. It's not that baffling. Being a victim of harassment raises your status in certain circles. People in those circles tend to accept your word without requiring any other evidence, and so naturally some people will find harassment in anything that happens to or near them that can be stretched or interpreted, no matter how far fetched, in some way to be harassment. This is bad because it makes it harder for actual victims. Too many people making exaggerated or false claims will make people less likely to believe the real victims. This is probably more general. In general, if some event raises status in a group a person is in, and claims of that event are hard to verify, some people will claim the event even if it did not happen to them. They may not even be knowingly lying. They may be convinced it did happen. A couple examples are having Native American ancestry and being abducted by a UFO. Many people claim one or both of these, and there are groups in which those claims will raise your status. Result: a lot more people claim Native American ancestry than actually have Native American ancestors, and the number of people who claim to have been abducted by UFOs is way higher than the number who have actually been abducted. My guess would be most of these false claims are from people who believe they are telling the truth. The desire for status in the groups you are in is very strong. For instance, I recall reading a book about the major criminal gangs on Los Angeles, and they talked about status within the gangs. One of the things that earned you higher status was being arrested, refusing to talk or cooperate, refusing to take a plea bargain, and getting sent to jail. Gaining status was so important to new, young teen gang members that they would purposefully commit crimes that would get them a few months incarceration so that they could gain the status. Note that unlike UFO abduction or Native Ancestry, serving jail time is verifiable, so they young gang members cannot simply claim they served time to gain the status. They actually have to do it, and they do because gaining status is that important. Any evolutionary biologists here? I'm curious if our need for status is just a cultural thing, or if it predates culture? I believe that most of our current close primate relatives live in groups where status relationships are very important, so it seems at least plausible that this is something that developed very long ago, in the common ancestors we share with those other primates.
    • nradov 10y ago
• nopit 10y ago
  Why is crybullying so rampant in the tech community?
  • GirlsCanCode 10y ago
    Don't forget change.org which is basically a crybully clearinghouse
  • empressplay 10y ago
    It was (and in many ways still is) an extremely sexist community, but over the last few years it has gotten better. My worry is that continuing to agitate when there's been obvious improvement is only setting things up for a backlash, which would be counterproductive -- however, I'm not sure many of the "activists" care (they're activists first, after all, so it's in their nature to keep pushing the envelope even when it's no longer profitable to the cause they're championing)
    • ageofwant 10y ago
      I see this assertion made often but never with any justification. Please provide evidence that we are a "extremely sexist community". I posit that the opposite is true, and provide the same level of evidence.
    • hasenj 10y ago
      > It was (and in many ways still is) an extremely sexist community The Tech community is sexist? Extremely sexist? How so?
    • sjwright 10y ago
      There's a world of difference between sexist and statistically gender-biased. Conflating the two is dangerous and ugly.
  • friendlygrammar 10y ago
    It's almost entirely contained in the javascript community.
• GirlsCanCode 10y ago
  I'm a woman with an EE degree. I hate non-tech "women" who go to conferences that have no real interest in (like Pycon, Ms. Richards) just to push some wacky agenda. These "women" aren't making it easier for real girls in real engineering programs.
  • ageofwant 10y ago
    I am a man with an EE degree. Most all placed I worked in my 20 years of professional life I've had female bosses, typically also EE degreed. Yes there were typically less women sure, but as a rule they were better respected as engineers and managers. Especially when they were both. They also drove better cars so I'm going to assume they were adequately compensated too.
  • jacalata 10y ago
    Why are you using "quotes" around women? It also sounds like you are unfamiliar with the job of developer evangelist (which Richards held) - it is actually a pretty common position in the programming industry, perhaps not so much around electrical engineering. Here's an explanation - https://sendgrid.com/blog/explained-developer-evangelism-parents/ https://sendgrid.com/blog/explained-developer-evangelism-par...
    • hgcarter 10y ago
      I suspect she put the quotes because "real women" code and don't talk, just like "real men". Developer evangelist is a nonsense job that can be useful to a company to attract certain funding, nothing more. It's the politically correct version of a booth babe.
    • labrador 10y ago
      I suspect the quotes around "woman" are about trans men who start speaking for all women after they transition. I imagine some women are bothered by this. I have no evidence of this, just trying to explain the quotes.
      • GirlsCanCode 10y ago
• empressplay 10y ago
  I'm pretty vigilant about calling out sexism and trans/homophobia in the tech community but I'm having a hard time seeing Crockford's comments as offensive enough to un-invite him to speak. I expected TFA to be typical apologist fare but it's really more puzzlement over a perplexing situation, a puzzlement I share.
• thomasfoster96 10y ago
  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 have been made with almost no evidence and almost purely based on unsubstantiated rumours. [0] http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html
  • mcantelon 10y ago
    I'd guess people with lots of social capital in the JS community told the conf orgs Crockford had to go and the orgs decided disinviting him would be less risk than having Crockford's enemies campaign against the conference.
    • njharman 10y ago
      Yeah that's called bullying, or blackmail, from one side and cowardly appeasement from the other.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • protomyth 10y ago
    How would he defend himself is my problem. It seems like anonymous other parties can make accusations that can sink someone's reputation.
  • danso 10y ago
    It was colossally stupid and unfair of them to tweet what they initially tweeted. I don't have a strong opinion on their larger statement, but they should have tweeted, "A statement about our speaker lineup and concerns [URL]", not a self-contained announcement about Crockford being booted in order to make a "conference a comfortable environment for all". There's almost no way to read that statement without the connotation that Crockford is accused of sexually or otherwise assaulting someone.
• BadassFractal 10y ago
  As the other poster mentioned, I'm very sympathetic to the cause of egalitarianism and pre-third-wave feminism. However, hopefully we will see more and more pushback against this kind of senseless crying wolf. If you're in favor of social justice, THIS is the thing you're fighting against? If this even shows up on your radar and is a priority, then I'd say the mission you're fighting for has been accomplished a long time ago. Time to go home. I don't know who really benefits from policing every word that public tech figures say. There's no monetary value to this unless this is a PR stunt to make the conference get social justice brownie points in some kind of a twisted form of social posturing. Who's to gain from this? Sociopaths wanting to exert control over others? I'm not quite ready to believe that.
  • imron 10y ago
    > I'm not quite ready to believe that. I used to be where you are. I am now however firmly of the belief that there are these sociopaths wanting to exert control over others. What's worse is that their righteousness only fuels their fervor.
    • scruple 10y ago
      > What's worse is that their righteousness only fuels their fervor. Yes, and thankfully that sense of righteous indignation very often causes them to eat their own.
    • gedy 10y ago
      "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis
  • alva 10y ago
    "There's no monetary value to this.." People do make money from this by raising their profile. Every successful no-platform campaign that they organise is attached to their name and raises their credentials in this sordid business. Some of the worst examples end up in extremely well paid positions in the biggest tech companies.
• shripadk 10y ago
  This is ridiculous. How in the world can those statements amount to sexism/slut-shaming?
  • sjwright 10y ago
    Particularly since nothing he said was sex-specific. Anyone who hears mention of promiscuity and assumes sexism are, in my opinion, the sexist ones. Some men are promiscuous too, probably in similar numbers.
• jhummel 10y ago
  So, I have no idea what's going on, but just because this guy could only find these two examples, doesn't mean those are the actual reasons for him being dismissed. In fact, I'd be very surprised if that was the case. For the record, I've seen Crockford talk... It wasn't offensive, it just wasn't very good. He seemed more interested in calling out business decisions which companies have made that he felt were stupid, than actually talking about anything related to JavaScript. Maybe that's just how his talks go and I didn't realize, but it wasn't what I was expecting.
  • sjwright 10y ago
    If those aren't the actual reasons, perhaps the conference operators ought to provide the actual reasons? If they can't, they should issue an apology.
  • mcantelon 10y ago
    The folks calling for Crockford to be disinvited weren't complaining about his talk quality, they were complaining about his behavior. And there really isn't much beyond what this blog post mentions that they are complaining about. One person cited a post of his from 9 years ago about weight loss as being evidence of him fat shaming. They also cited a GitHub comment from 4 years ago where he said some code was "stupid". My guess is the campaign against him is rooted in personal animosity.
  • curioussavage 10y ago
    Someone posted a transcript from their chat room where they discussed it. It was literally in response to that twitter user who was so offended about his weak map joke. Its laughable really. The level of stupidity is just insane.
• whorleater 10y ago
  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 taken it too far, automatically associating Douglas's personality with being a jerk. The other issue at hand is how this influences tech conferences, because I've always attended conferences with the implicit assumption that I was there to learn first and foremost. Discourse and disagreement with speakers is natural and should be encouraged, as it oftentimes leads to enlightening discussions for bystanders and conference attendees, which was the entire point of the conference in the first place. By allowing certain viewpoints to dominate and silence a subset of speakers, we're ultimately limiting our views and building an echo chamber, which is not what conferences are meant to be. If we're going to dismiss speakers, it should be on merit of their talk and previous talks, not their speaking style. [1]: https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSLint/issues/17 https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSLint/issues/17
  • danso 10y ago
    People and organizations can be justified in shunning Crockford's allegedly level of abrasiveness, so I don't agree that Kas took it too far in opining that Crockford, by Kas's standards, is a jerk (I do, however, disagree with the purported evidence of Crockford's "slut-shaming). My tolerance for what is jerk-like behavior is probably not a good one, and I think I've definitely made people feel unwelcome at times, even if inadvertently.
    • hobs 10y ago
      If you want to post on the net that someone is a jerk in your professional forum, you don't NEED evidence, but if you offer it and its complete flim-flam then we all assume you are an idiot. If someone has to be so careful as to not use normal network terminology around people who are clearly ignorant and use their ignorance as a weapon against you instead of take the time to learn what the hell they are talking about, that's not a community you want to participate in anyway.
• danso 10y ago
  I've only seen Crockford once in person, years ago [0], and though I never heard of him and his curmudgeonly-approach to JavaScript, I came away with a very favorable impression of him (and JS in general). So I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, out of sentimentality. At the same time, I know that one speech and/or book is not enough (if anything ever is) to judge whether someone has or hasn't been harmful to people who are not me. But after reading the original critique on Medium, and the OP's transcription of when Crockford allegedly "slut-shames the audience", I don't feel convinced to have a negative impression of Crockford. I'm not saying that the original complainant isn't justified in their critique or that there isn't more to the story, because I know that things are different in person. But I could also be sympathetic towards the OP's defense of Crockford. In terms of Nodevember's decision, well, they have different prerogatives when running a conference. And having a speaker who allegedly so openly derides other speakers is definitely something they have to think about in ways that I as an individual do not. [0] http://original.livestream.com/etsy/video?clipId=pla_1463e546-47ed-4a93-b59a-bd52b236e8b8 http://original.livestream.com/etsy/video?clipId=pla_1463e54... edit: One thing I personally find disingenuous about the OP's writeup is their appeal to the dictionary definition of "promiscuous" to defend Crockford. I guess it's just up to people's opinion, but I felt that Crockford was clearly using "promiscuous" in the first sense -- "indiscriminate mingling or association". I've never even heard of the second sense, and very little in Crockford's transcribed statement seems to suggest why "promiscuous" would be the right word to use instead of something like "heterogeneous". That said, I also don't feel that Crockford's statement was slut-shaming. Saying, "Back in the day, you could browse the web like a whore, not caring what your computer connected to. But with the new web..." But that's not what he says at all. You could read a sexual connotation to what he says, but the words he use is very much about being indiscriminate about security and identity. He even states that there is a benefit to promiscuity -- "because you could go from one thing to another and discover stuff and start forming relationships" and directly implies there's a tradeoff with the security of commitment.
  • nkurz 10y ago
    Saying, "Back in the day, you could browse the web like a whore, not caring what your computer connected to. But with the new web..." But that's not what he says at all. For sake of argument, let's assume that he had said exactly this. Even so, I still don't see the claims being met. First, even though the metaphor may be "sexual", I don't see anything that would make it "sexist". Promiscuity as a behavior is far from limited to females, and he's at least equally addressing males with his "you". But further, the quote leads off with "So the old web was great because it provided promiscuity". Rather than "shaming", if we apply a sexual interpretation, his statement seems downright "sex-positive". If anything I'd expect the critique to be coming from the "family values" side, for putting such a positive spin on promiscuity. My guess is that dissecting Crockford's language leads won't produce useful insights, either into him or his detractors. Instead, I think this is increasingly about "power". Some individuals realized that with the right accusations (regardless of validity) they can replace the old leadership, and others (seeing their success) are excited to try their own hand. The scary part is what happens when the accusations are replaced with actions, as this is when it sometimes get really ugly. I don't know the history well, but I can't help thinking of the violent excesses of the youthful Red Guard in 1960's China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards_(China) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards_(China).
• csanch4 10y ago
  I thought this wouldn't be an issue in CS; thankfully it only seems to be the Js community -- or at least I hope so. Medium is now becoming less informative on technologies and software into a platform for finger pointing and complaining, which is really depressing imo.
  • Matachines 10y ago
    It's happened in Ruby and Python as well—so if you hate it stay away from dynamic web languages with low entry levels.
    • fdsaaf 10y ago
      Exactly. Hardcore languages like C++, Lisp, Haskell, etc. should be safe for a little while longer. SJW presence seems to be inversely proportional to the degree of rigor required to use a language.
      • yuja_wang 10y ago
        I've noticed this too! The communities I deal with that spend the least amount of time worrying about tangential issues like "who's offended" are the CUDA/C++ and the Verilog/VHDL communities. Never see any issues like this come up, ever.
      • db48x 10y ago
        I'm going to start using brainfuck for everything.
      • fdsaaf 10y ago
        It just goes to show that SJW bullshit is what happens when you've solved all your real problems. The JS people got tired of making frameworks every three weeks, so now everything is some kind of oppression. People who use other languages have real problems.
      • aikah 10y ago
        What do you think happened in Lambda Conf this year? no community is safe from this warfare.
• robert_tweed 10y ago
  I have to wonder if this was a real complaint or if it was done to highlight the obvious problem here, a bit like the guy who patented a "Method of exercising a cat". I mean, if you're going to ban Douglas Crockford from your conference it should at least be for his stated prejudice against comments in data-interchange formats. Not vague allegations that may damage his personal and professional reputation, to which he not only has no right of reply, but any response could be damaging by generating more attention. This is the classic trolling strategy, but stepped up a level. If he actually did something wrong, take him to court and let the facts be decided in law. Otherwise, he's innocent and should be treated as such. I also wonder, given that the allegations haven't been published, just implied, if he would have a libel case against the conference organisers?
  • danso 10y ago
    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-conferences-with-douglas-crockford-anymore-61bc29f028c8#.fpymdqsnr 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 complainant before her talk, "the talks as the day went on just got stupider and stupider.” Unless he can convincingly prove that he never made such a statement to the complainant, he's not going to have much of a libel case. He could argue damages based on "false light", I suppose. [0] On a (computer-related) technical standpoint, I disagree with what you think is the right reason ban a technical speaker, e.g. Crockford "for his stated prejudice against comments in data-interchange formats". That's the kind of strong diverse opinions that a tech conference should be thirsty for, just like a Ruby conference should be thrilled to have Edsgar Dijkstra talk about object-oriented programming. But if someone says, "People who think comments belong in data interchange formats are fucking morons"...Yeah, I could see why some conferences wouldn't invite them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light
    • jonahx 10y ago
• georgemcbay 10y ago
  I know nothing of this situation other than what I just read in the linked blog, but speaking as someone who is very sympathetic to the cause of the continued problems of sexism in the tech industry, I'm very confused about what the problem is, if it is in fact related to either of those two quoted statements. Nodevember's tweet seems borderline libelous to me, unless they are willing to explain exactly what the event/statement/whatever is that got him pulled from the lineup is.
• Tehnix 10y ago
  I generally feel like there's a kneejerk reaction from people (especially in the tech community) to be "PC compliant", at the level where you almost can't have any discourse because it's such a minefield (can't imagine a rational person whoms first intepretation of the tweets is "that's sexist" to be pleasant having a conversation with). I almost feel in the minority (or just a silent one?), but I honestly don't care what kind of political views, personal preferences, outrageous statements or whatever problems a speaker at a conference might have, as long as he gives a good talk/presentation.
  • eli 10y ago
    I feel there's a knee jerk reaction from people in the tech community to minimize very legitimate concerns about bias and about making people feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. I think it's easy to look past someone's personal preferences and outrageous comments when you're already part of the club. But respect that that isn't everyone's experience.
    • tzs 10y ago
      > I think it's easy to look past someone's personal preferences and outrageous comments when you're already part of the club. But respect that that isn't everyone's experience. What specifically did Crockford say that was outrageous?
      • eli 10y ago
        I have no idea. The conference organizers said people privately voiced concerns and other speakers threatened to pull out over his presence. I was addressing the parent comment's point about inclusiveness in general.
        • cheez 10y ago
          As it looks now, the people who voiced concerns and threatened to pull out were the same person.
• forgottenacc56 10y ago
  We smash people for this and don't blink an eyelid to the violence and privacy violations of our government.
• rdtsc 10y ago
  > We will also be removing Douglas Crockford from our keynote speakers list to help make the conference a comfortable environment for all. If they are going to insinuate things about what he said, they should mention exactly what he said or did. The fact that they don't somehow tells me there is not much there to go on. To put it another way, if they have the guts to remove Crockford that should have enough guts to clearly explain why. I've been saying this before, and maybe it is just me, but it seems Node.js community somehow attracts a disproportionate number of immature people but with big egos. Because, let's call this for what it is -- childish immature behavior. That's at best, at worst it is getting attention and hurting someone's reputation just for a power trip. "Look how important I am, I kicked Crockford out of a conference with a single tweet". Well the lesson is when you pick some open source technology, the community comes with it. Maybe even if technology has good merits, it makes sense not to pick it because the community behind it is not compatible with what you think a community should be.
  • eli 10y ago
    I don't think they insinuated anything beyond that he apparently made others uncomfortable.
    • oh_sigh 10y ago
      This comment makes me uncomfortable.
    • rdtsc 10y ago
      They said "We will also be removing Douglas Crockford from our keynote speakers list to help make the conference a comfortable environment for all." Imagine saying that about anyone, to any group (here it was to the whole world). Let's say the invite you to a gathering publicly then wrote a tweet about "We will also be removing eli from list of invited guests, to help make the venue a comfortable environment for all". That is just insulting, because it insinuates something terrible has happened, or you did some shameful unspeakable thing and they are just being considerate and not disclosing it publicly.
      • 10y ago
• meddlepal 10y ago
  This is fucking rediculous. Slut shaming? How about opinion shaming?
• aidenn0 10y ago
  My thoughts: Maybe someone can tell me what's offensive about the first comment. It seems to be poking fun at programmer machismo. The second quote is more problematic. I'm firmly of the opinion that it is not slut-shaming because it presented both promiscuity and commitment in a positive light. On the other hand, it is perfectly reasonable for a conference to not want sexual metaphors in presentations. The whole "he used the word correctly" in TFA is a non-sequitur when the first definition is clearly sexual, and promiscuity is contrasted with commitment. Still, I would hope that less extreme measures than banning would be used to address this. Now to one thing not in TFA, but in the linked medium post: > I’ve never dealt with Crockford in a way that I felt pleasant afterward. He is rude, unrepentant, and completely (one could argue willingly) oblivious to the meaning of his statements. I’ve never seen a person use the word ‘stupid’ so liberally in replacement of constructive criticism. A conference is more than a bunch of people giving talks, it's a social gathering. If there were a lot of people who agree with Kas on this, then it's a much more reasonable reason to keep him out. On a much smaller scale, I often run pencil-and-paper RPG groups. Being a jerk is much more likely to find yourself out of my group compared to game-mechanics related issues.
  • vidarh 10y ago
    "Promiscuous" also has a long history in computer networking. E.g. network cards with "promiscuous mode" (allowing it to receive all available packets rather than only passing on packets with the correct address; not as relevant any more, but was commonly used to sniff packets on a hub, but also to implement aliases). Commitment is non-sexual and often used in all kinds of contexts that does not imply anything sexual. But I agree with you that no matter whether you are ok with the terms, calling it slut shaming is just strange. I also agree with you that acting like a jerk would be a better reason for banning someone. But I'd also argue that "outing" him is worse than the alleged behaviour in that respect - if they're going to punish him for what has been reported, then they also ought to punish that kind of public shaming that pretty much makes it impossible for said person to get fair treatment.
    • NDizzle 10y ago
      There is an absolute zero percent chance that these morons have heard of promiscuous mode. That was my first thought as well. Eventually they'll get to that. Hopefully they'll denounce TCP as a result and remove themselves from the internet.
• aikah 10y ago
  TLDR; personal vendetta against Crockford led to accusations of "sexism", and him getting uninvited from Nodevember conference. There is absolutely no proof of sexism anywhere ,only a bunch of people who want to take him out professionally because he might have pissed them off for whatever reason in the past. Only now these people can use dubious political arguments to justify their vendetta. This can happen to anybody in any community.
  • eli 10y ago
    I don't think public evidence of sexism matters if other speakers were uncomfortable enough to withdraw from the conference. They're trying to run a conference where people feel comfortable, not hold a public tribunal.
    • bhk 10y ago
      Conflicting ideas and opinions can make some people uncomfortable. But this seems less like an attempt to avoid exposure to DC than an attempt to prevent others from being exposed.
      • eli 10y ago
        Whatever was said to the conference organizers was apparently persuasive enough for them. I'm not in a position to judge.
    • dlmetcalf 10y ago
      So because someone else decides to withdraw, for whatever reason no matter how petty and irrational, that's now grounds for public character assassination of another professional and their being cast into exile? That's insane. The bar shouldn't just be automatically dropped down to whichever crybully can play the biggest victim. You don't need a public tribunal to understand this failed the reasonable person test.
    • mlsarecmg 10y ago
      The "speakers" you talk about are two Twitter users. Kas Perch and Nexylove. They started to cry wolf, without any reason what so ever, and that's that, he is out, ruining it for those that actually wanted to learn about Javascript. Listen to actual conferences these two have held. Calling others assholes, subhuman, human garbage and worse simply for dismissing their twisted ideology. Kas has shamed Twitter users lives. All of this would be against Nodevembers CoC.
• DonHopkins 10y ago
  Maybe this is long game karma revenge for his notorious role in spreading communicable diseases in Habitat. [1] Disease One of the more successful "games" we invented for Habitat was the disease. There are three strains currently defined: Cooties Happy Face Mutant (AKA The Fly) We only were able to test Cooties with live players, but it was a hit. It works like this: Several initial Avatars are infected with a "Cootie" head. This head replaces the current one, and cannot be removed except by touching another non-infected Avatar. Once infected, you can not be infected again that day. In effect, this game is "tag" and "keep away" at the same time. Often people would allow themselves be infected just so he could infect "that special person that they know would just hate it!" Every time the disease was spread, there was an announcement at least a week before, and for at least a week afterward it was the subject of major discussions. One day that the plague was spread, a female Avatar that was getting married got infected 1 hour before her wedding! Needless to say, she was very excited, and in a panic until a friend offered to take it off her hands. Some interesting variations to try on this are: Touch 2 people to cure; this would cause quite a preponderance of infected people late in the day. The "Happy Face" plague: This simple head has the side effect of changing any talk message (word balloons) to come out as "HAVE A NICE DAY!"... can you imagine infecting some unsuspecting soul, and him saying back to you HAVE A NICE DAY! ??? ESP and mail still work normally, so the user is not without communications channels. The Mutant Plague: The head looks like the head of a giant housefly and it has the effect of changing talk text to "Bzzz zzzz zzzz". We think these all will be great fun. [1] http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html
• inopinatus 10y ago
  "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 conference speakers are male. In other words, neutral language is more rational, not less.
  • rand_r 10y ago
    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.
    • unimpressive 10y ago
      I notice a fairly common tactic for trying to change norms is to pretend that the norms aren't norms and then aggressively shame people for doing a normal thing. This leads to a toxic atmosphere where people can't be secure in their words, social reality keeps being pulled out from under their feet.
      • tamana 10y ago
        When the normal thing marginalizes people, marginalized people are hurt. In recent years, they have started to defend themsves in force, the ks to unifying power of the internet. The insecurity you observe is feeling of the erosion of privilege.
        • unimpressive 10y ago
          I'm sure it is. http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/hot-allostatic-load/ http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/hot-allostatic-load/
        • colordrops 10y ago
          Where should boundaries get drawn? And when should they change? In the past, gender and race were dividing lines for privilege. What about animals? Don't they have the right to not be murdered and be free? Are they not conscious pain feeling beings? Is it OK for me to constantly call everyone out on their meat eating murderous ways? Many people are offended when people talk about eating steak.
• throwway1111 10y ago
  This is happening in all parts of society. So-called "social justice warriors" and parts of the liberal left have sprung up that are very hostile to free speech and seek to destroy and silence anyone whom they oppose. Unfortunately, they have the full support of not only college administrations, but increasingly HR departments as they ascend into the workforce, and PR departments as they air their grievances over social media. I am posting from a throw away account because voicing an opinion such as this is reason enough to be targeted.
  • olalonde 10y ago
    Somewhat related: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf
    • unimpressive 10y ago
      Unrelated to the general tone of the thread but: My biggest problem with this Taleb piece is that it doesn't really take into account the probability of success from a particular intolerant minority. In practice there's a kind of signal-strength effect where the further up the chain you go the less effective any one person becomes. Once you factor that into the model Taleb's argument falls apart.
  • titanomachy 10y ago
    Not all universities, apparently. [1] My educational experience doesn't really jive with what you're suggesting, either. There was certainly a large and vocal neoliberal/SJW caste at my (large, Canadian) university, but I never saw the administration or faculty kowtow to them in any significant way. However, I'm prepared to believe the problem does exist at some schools. 1: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/25/u-chicago-warns-incoming-students-not-expect-safe-spaces-or-trigger-warnings https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/25/u-chicago-war...
  • scrollaway 10y ago
    I'm really tired of shit like this being bucketed as "the liberal left" when it has just about nothing to do with liberalism or leftism. I suspect I'm just as tired of that, as actual conservatives are of their views being mixed in with Trump's. It's censorship and bullshitocracy.
• ebbv 10y ago
  This kind of petty, childish nonsense is why I find the whole talk/conference community awful. Which is a shame because there are good talks that are given all the time. But those can be watched online without having to deal with people who get outraged over the kinds of harmless comments quoted in this post.
• aaron695 10y ago
  I find the fact people continue to support these conferences quite disturbing. Things are not going to change until people, including speakers pull out of conferences that display this sort of behaviour.
  • generic_user 10y ago
    Vote with you feet. I don't support Organizations or communities that imposes speech or behaviour codes. Or tries to cram identity politics, feminism or any other unrelated virtue signalling nonsense into there content. Its a hard at the moment but more and more people are starting to realize there is a corrosive agenda behind a lot of these movements and personalities. And you can have all the inclusion you want without opening the door to social justice activist to destroy your community and derail the focus into endless navel gazing and radical social activism.
• laser 10y ago
  Given information publicly available this seems infuriatingly ridiculous, but Nodevember's official statement in response seems quite reasonable: http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html The theories here about sociopaths attempting to exert control are quite exotic and interesting, though :P
  • BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    > Given information publicly available this seems infuriatingly ridiculous, but Nodevember's official statement in response seems quite reasonable: http://nodevember.org/statement.html 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 speakers), something is fishy. They can call him out publicly but not share their reasons publicly so he can defend himself publicly? Alternatively if they want to keep the reasons private they could have just said something along the lines of "Crockford will no longer be a speaker at our events due to <some bs>". Something that doesn't insinuate he's a misogynist without proof. No. Absolutely unreasonable.
    • prance 10y ago
      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.
      • justaaron 10y ago
        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.
• borplk 10y ago
  I bet someone will also complain that he "mansplained" one of his talks. Give me a break. Go solve a real problem. First-world morons who are so fed up with the comfort of their lives they have to actively go chase drama.
• Garbage 10y ago
  Official statement from Nodevember - http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html
• maglavaitss 10y ago
  Leave Douglas alone!! (on a more serious note, I guess we're done with Appelbaum's lynching, so the next target is Douglas Crockford?)
  • habitue 10y ago
    Big difference there! Applebaum blatantly crossed the line sexual harassment. Crockford... is kinda cranky?
    • mpweiher 10y ago
      Did he? (Asking seriously) All I have seen were allegations. And of those allegations, the ones that were looked into more closely turned out to be completely false.
    • PavlovsCat 10y ago
      He was blatantly accused of being a "sociopath, rapist, plagiarist", with no hard evidence on even the plagiarism claim. After the hit job was done, the entitled victims retreated into their wagon circle of blocking people on twitter or at best writing soppy articles full of straw men and other sophistry, supported by hack "journalists" just parroting their side of the story. They openly displayed the narcissistic and psychopathic behavior they accused Appelbaum of, yet somehow, because they attacked first, noticing that was somehow beyond the ken of large swaths of the baffled crowd. In all aspects that matter, this is the same stuff: they are projecting and displaying double standards, they are crying victim while attacking, and when the response is not as enthusiastic as hoped for, there is just a unilateral declaring it all over. That's all there was with Appelbaum, that's all there will be now. That's the pattern, if anything, and it's not just about the things people say and do, it's also what they are incapable or unwilling of. It's about the personal dysfunctions of the people in the lynch mob, not about what the person they were lynching may have done. That would be settled amongst adults in good faith, not via antics like this. In this case, the antics, the "medium", ARE the message and the content.
• bsder 10y ago
  This is becoming increasingly concerning to me. The problem is that there is no way for the person affected to receive "justice", "fairness", or "a day in court". You want to not invite somebody? Fine. You want to disinvite somebody? Okay, but be prepared to be called a jerk. But assassinating someone's professional character publicly? You'd better be standing on REALLY solid ground for a REALLY good reason. Crockford might just ignore this--it's probably the best course of action given his station. He's probably sufficiently more important than these people that he's good. However, one day these people are going to get someone with financial means all fired up and they're going to be dragged through court for a LONG time--and probably lose because they won't be able to put up the money to mount an effective defense. Until one of these accusers loses THEIR ability to work in the field, nobody will pay attention to the repercussions.
  • madeofpalk 10y ago
    You've kind of just resolved your concerns yourself. > The problem is that there is no way for the person affected to receive "justice", "fairness", or "a day in court". Of course there is. There's 'private arbitration' - just resolve the matters yourself like regular people do. Then then, if the victim feels particularly damaged, there's the courts. > Crockford might just ignore this--it's probably the best course of action given his station. Yup. He doesn't need 'justice' because he doesn't feel he's been particularly wronged.
    • Inconel 10y ago
      Does "private arbitration" require money? I don't know anything about Mr. Crockford's financial situation but, and this is purely from a self interest perspective, I um, don't have much money to adjudicate such a matter using arbitrators. This is what makes these kind of public accusations so troubling for me. If I happened to find myself on the receiving end of these kind of accusations I would have essentially no recourse to try and clear my name. I will embarrassingly admit that I hadn’t heard of Mr Crockford before this article but after doing a bit of research, he seems to have quite a few professional accomplishments. I don’t have any such accomplishments or a professional reputation outside of the small group of people I work closely with, I don’t have much money, and I don’t even have a college degree to fall back on as some basic certification of my competency. I imagine it would be trivially easy for someone, particularly a group online, to completely destroy my professional life based on what could very well be a simple misunderstanding. This is absolutely terrifying to me. I personally don’t see the offense in his specific comments about “promiscuity” but I’m going to defer to those here who may have had other interactions with Mr Crockford on whether or not he is abrasive and how big of a problem that may present to attendees. With that being said, suppose that at some point in the future, perhaps a week, month, or year from now, it becomes apparent that he didn’t do anything untoward. Will such news make the front page of HN? Hell, would such an article be written at all. How can you regain your reputation after it has already been trashed? This whole concept of publicly shaming people without an accompanying impartial investigation seems like it’s rife for abuse and sets a chilling effect in motion. I can envision a future where the elite, those with the money, power, or reputation to withstand these kind of attacks, are the only ones permitted, or willing, to speak. With regards to him not feeling the need for justice because he doesn’t feel like he’s been wronged, we really have no way of knowing that. Perhaps he’s just resigned himself to the fact that this isn’t a battle worth fighting, or even more worrying, it simply isn’t winnable.
• hackaflocka 10y ago
  David Crockford, if you are reading this: You need to declare yourself a closeted gender-queer trans-sexual immediately. After that, anything you say will be excused due to past oppression. And the conference will re-instate you. Drop a message below if you want my help with this. I will give you a step by step PR strategy to achieve this. Paul Graham: if you're reading this, would this be a viable startup idea? Helping people declare themselves closeted gender-queer trans-sexuals to escape oppression from SJWs?
  • douche 10y ago
    I don't think that's enough to take out all the stain in the minds of the pitchfork brigade. Just look at Milo Yiannopoulos. Even being gay isn't enough to shield some opinions.
    • hackaflocka 10y ago
      If Milo weren't gay and Jewish, he'd have the EU human rights commission on his ass. In a bad way.
• EdSharkey 10y ago
  The whole bit about Kas saying "mmm" to Crockford's face when he said an insensitive thing and then publicly shaming him once he was safely back on the internet galls me, if true. Culturally, our tendency to troll needs to decrease on the web and increase in in-person encounters. I'm convinced we'd all be better off if we showed some spine and got more vocal whenever we disagree. I also don't like these (I assume) inter-generational squabbles in our industry. It is clear that moral views can differ between generations, so a little understanding and empathy is needed on all sides. Please respect your elders. If you disagree with them or feel they are being disrespectful or sexist, how about kindly discussing it with them and maybe getting a feel for their perspective first before launching into public reputation annihilation?
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• cheez 10y ago
  Why is it always developer evangelists and never developers?
• radus 10y ago
  Missed title opportunity: Crockford: The Good Parts
• desireco42 10y ago
  I would prefer to work with someone with a solid stance and clear idea like Crockford, even if that is completely opposite to my own because this is something I will always respect. I think he is not conventional with his netbook if he still uses that and that pisses people off.
  • coev 10y ago
    He used a regular Dell laptop when I saw him speak about a year ago.
• vvdcect 10y ago
  This is a pastebin of a nodevember slack channel http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG .
  • kowdermeister 10y ago
    It was so painful to read. It's like they are marching toward the "Safe place" South Park episode with full thrust.
  • hyperdunc 10y ago
    So much cringe, especially the identity politics and weakness of character. It's disappointing to witness this kind of behavior in any community.
• jstewartmobile 10y ago
  What a cowardly, hateful thing to do! They have even gone so far as to make a static page to address the tweet, yet a concrete accusation is nowhere to be found on it: http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html A community that accepts a covert hit-job like that Tweet is a garbage community. Don't be a garbage community Nodevember.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• squall7 10y ago
  http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/offensensitivity.gif http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/... The pendulum ever swings, don't let it hit you on its way back.
• shruubi 10y ago
  I'm of two minds here. 1) I personally don't like Douglas Crockford at all, I find him all together arrogant and overly concerned with presenting himself as an infallible single source of truth. I respect the work the man has done, but I personally think the conference is better off without him. 2) It seems that the conference organisers are all too concerned with coming out and proudly parading there actions without bothering to see if Crockford would be amenable to other courses of action like an apology or retraction of those comments. To me, these kind of incidents feel more like the conference using the drama to boost their attendance numbers than acting in any kind of best interest of the attendee's. That's not to say that there haven't been serious incidents that need to be dealt with at conferences, but, an outright banning without any kind of negotiation where the speaker is offered to retract/apologise for their comments where the banning is done on a public forum seems designed more towards gaining attention rather than justice.
  • stockkid 10y ago
    > the drama to boost their attendance numbers I don't think the drama is very effective in boosting their attendance numbers. In my case, the whole situation makes me want to avoid attending Nodevember.
    • cheez 10y ago
      Yep, I consciously made an effort to avoid PyCon after Dongle-gate
  • ufmace 10y ago
    > using the drama to boost their attendance numbers If they are, then I have to wonder who is actually deciding to come to these conferences based on this? I would think that people with actual coding skills who want to discuss technical ideas are running away. If anybody is deciding to come, it's the type of people whose main skill seems to be finding things to get offended by.
    • curioussavage 10y ago
      They probably are already. I think their announcement mentioned changing their refund policy to allow refunds this late. Hmm.... I wonder why??
• DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  I don't want to comment on specifics. First off, there's not a lot here. Secondly, the general issue is more important. As part of being in a secular society, you have an obligation to put up with public speakers that you might find offensive or irritating. You don't have to attend their events, and you're free to climb on the rooftops and call them an asshole -- but you have an obligation to put up with them. If you run a conference with lots of people attending, and your speakers have any kind of interesting personality at all, you should be prepared for 1-3% of the attendees to be put-off by their history. That's good: it shows that you're doing a good job of bringing in interesting people to speak. Likewise, if you're a participant in a large conference, it shouldn't be surprising to you if the past history of somebody speaking is unpleasant to you in parts. You are, presumably, a grown-up. Get over it. In my mind, the only thing that should matter, assuming the speaker isn't a terrorist or criminal on the run from authorities, is whether or not the information they present is worth it to you as an attendee. That's what the conference is about. It's not about making every member feel safe and secure. Screw that. Even looking past the fact that it's an impossible goal, nobody wants to go to a conference that's dumbed down to only cool kids who think correctly. Nobody in their right mind would want to live in a world like that. "Don't hang around jerks" is a fine goal for your family, your team, or your personal social circle. It's a clusterfuck to try to implement at any scale beyond that. This bothers me because I could see at the extremes, there might be a case for excluding speakers, assuming there was something terrible in their past. Adolph Hitler, had he survived WWII, would have made a bad keynote speaker. People could never look beyond his history. But without a detailed argument over what the situation is here, both conference attendees and future speakers are getting screwed over, operating in the blind. And that's the final result: everybody affected here doesn't really know what's going on, how to prevent this from happening again in the future, or what they might have missed. This is not about Crockford. This is about nibbling away at the value of a group of people gathering together trying to learn by promoting impenetrable and unclear illiberal values. I'll never go to a Node conference. But I'll remember how this thing played out.
• BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  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 are calling out his behavior making people uncomfortable, publicly, but you won't say why only that it was private feedback? Wasn't he one of the early speakers who accepted anyway? You apologized for lacking nuance on Twitter with your "announcement" and yet continue to do so. Publicly claiming someone makes others uncomfortable and that someone is an older, white male, you know exactly what you are insinuating. Statements like this, especially against white males today, can be career ending even without proof as long as it simply goes viral. I think the only responsible thing to do is to release exactly why someone would be uncomfortable. If you can't or won't do that then you shouldn't have made the initial insinuation and, instead, simply state he's no longer coming. Stating he was "uninvited" due to making others uncomfortable without providing anything further is just irresponsible to the point where it appears you're trying to manufacture drama. Considering your event is $350 to hear some speakers who are yet to be defined this just speaks scam to me like many other talking events. [1] http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html
  • gnarbarian 10y ago
    I'm willing to bet that he didn't pose any danger to these people other than having the gall to publicly harbor opinions they are uncomfortable with. In other words, diversity does not extend to diversity of opinion.
    • rtpg 10y ago
      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.
• galfarragem 10y ago
  This is a schizofrenic community. Probably the same people that push for a free web, police the words used by others.
• ramblenode 10y ago
  Wow, an important talk was pulled because of this? There is a continuum of disagreeable statements and a corresponding continuum of appropriate responses. The response from the conference organizers was grossly disproportionate to Crockford's behavior which was clearly not malicious and probably not even deliberate. A reasonable alternative would have been to privately contact him and express concern about his past choice of words. Removing him outright is unfair to both Crockford and attendees who were looking forward to his talk.
• cel1ne 10y ago
  There is one thing I don't understand about the whole safe-space debate: People demand the environments they reside in to be friendly and comfortable according to their definition. In a way they are demanding that all "hostiles" stop being "hostile" towards them. The more sustainable way to not get hurt is to learn how to emotionally defend yourself and stand your ground. You just have to learn it once and are not dependent on others telling every attacker to stop attacking you for the rest of your life.
• cel1ne 10y ago
  We live in the post-descartes era. The principle now seems to be "I feel, therefore I am."
• brakmic 10y ago
  Such things could have a very negative effect on people whose native language isn't English. I mean, if even native speakers get into troubles so easily what should I, as a non-native speaker, expect? I maintain a tiny blog and because of possible language barriers I decided to write all of my texts in English. It could've been much easier for me to write in German, of course, but this would exclude so many people. And this was simply unacceptable from my point of view. My command of English isn't very strong but I'd like to paraphrase german philosopher Karl Homann: "The opposite of Moral isn't Immoral but to moralize". I know nothing about the events there but when I read things like "public shaming" or "slut shaming" or "trigger warnings" or "social justice warriors" then I can only follow the "pragmatic solutions" to solve problems of that kind: avoid conferences, avoid any kind of non-technical discussion in English, avoid the community as a whole. Stay on GitHub. Sure, it makes you a bit of a loner but at least you sleep more easily and don't get shocked in the morning when you open your twitter feed. Kind regards,
  • guitarbill 10y ago
    Similar story. I worked really hard on my English accent, something I regret now. If you have a German accent you can speak more directly. Because many know about this cultural difference, people are expecting you to be more direct, and can cope with it. If you have a British accent and you're direct, this doesn't work. Brits think you're rude, but here's the kicker, won't tell you this - they'll just ignore you. For me, luckily I met some Canadians (in the UK) that were nice enough to point this out so I could mitigate it a bit. Still wish I had a strong accent again.
    • RonanTheGrey 10y ago
      Interesting story, if you had fostered an American accent you'd have avoided the issue as well. They expect Americans to be abrasive. Behind you 100% on the Brits ignoring you thing. They're very responsible for the perception of what "polite" means and I blame them for so much passive aggression in what is considered "politically correct" speech. If you've ever watched their politics it's a damn joke. They fall all over each other attempting to "out-polite" each other while stabbing each other in the backs. Direct response is unheard of. Then they export this behavior to the rest of the English speaking world as a standard of acceptable behavior because so much of the world irrationally looks up to the UK for the "right" thing to do.
• justaaron 10y ago
  having wasted 20 minutes of my morning on this, I figure I'll waste 4 more... I read the pastebin of the slack feed, and was nauseated by the SMARM and privilege. They imagine that folks will feel COMFORTABLE with such side-of-the-mouth backstabbing nasty smarmy behavior emanating from such a conference? Such sanctimony. Such self-righteousness. This isn't about Crockford anymore, but about highly privileged people (like this Katye Russell deeming to speak for all womyn-kind or "minorities" and such, all the while blissfully unaware of her privileged Murcan boot capriciously placed upon the neck of any peasant her handlers wish her to besmirch the name of) I'm 100% in favor of social justice, fairness, decency, and the end of abusing the 99%, the end of gender pay gaps, the end of racism, sexism, etc, but THIS agenda we see here is NOT in service to anything decent and good: this is "throw xyz under a bus because some influential people told us to" and the real powerbroker here appears to be this William Golden... Nodevember is just another groupthinktank and their actions have only brought dishonor and shame upon themselves! (even assuming one wishes to distance oneself from a horrible speaker, claiming that one is speaking for all and creating a safe-space for all just mocks any concepts of safe spaces. what a load of sanctimonious drivel!)
• fahrradflucht 10y ago
  I don't have a clear opinion on the Crockford discussion but this post would be more convincing if it didn't put the lambda conf issue into the mix. I hope for Douglas Crockford that he doesn't want to get compared with Curtis Yarvin...
  • mzw_mzw 10y ago
    Why should someone's unrelated political views get him uninvited from a conference?
• nnq 10y ago
  Am I the only person here who would be 100% A-OK to, hypothetically, even inviting Adolf Hitler as a JS conference, as long he/she would be great at what he/she does, had enlightening things to say about the topic, and at least 50% of attendants would learn a lot from what he says or at least be entertained?! Heck, I wouldn't even care even if he/she wasted 5 mins or so blabbering about his political ideology, if his/hers advice on, let's say, JS programming, would be as valuable as Douglas Corckford's! Imho, it would be even acceptable if he/she would crack a few very politically incorrect jokes during the social event smalltalks if the jokes had good enough humor to compensate for their content. Let's grow some thicker skin for fuck's sake! MDs, physicists, chemists etc. are all pretty comfortable with even cracking bad sex jokes at a party or conference from time to time and they get away with it pretty well. Or maybe it's the fact that 90% of what most software developers is so meaningless and useless, especially those that have the time to speak at conferences and "evangelize", that they need to find meaning in some other shit and they gravitate to this uber-PC crap... Even a banning everyone which titles himself "developer evangelist" from speaking at a conference could probably raise the average talk quality for that event, event if that would a bit too un-PC even for my taste ...imagine the emotional damage inflicted by such a need for personal rebranding in order to still be able to attend.
• justinlardinois 10y ago
  A couple thoughts here: I'm not familiar with this particular conference, but excluding someone from a conference for a history of making bigoted comments seems totally reasonable in principle. The particular comments this post offers don't seem at all sexist to me though, so I don't think this situation makes a whole lot of sense. Granted, it would be better if the conference organizers cited the comments themselves; all we have here is what Morgan thinks are the offensive comments, so we're unfortunately not getting the whole picture. I will say that, having read a lot of Crockford, the guy is a dick. And hey, if you rub a lot of people the wrong way by being a jerk, maybe a conference might think that outweighs the value you could add with your skill and knowledge. But if that's the real reason in this case, I wish they would say it.
• douche 10y ago
  Flying Spaghetti Monster, this is Douglas Crockford. I dunno what it is about Javascript, but the community seems to have a habit of trying to grind up their founders and luminaries. Brendan Eich was crucified and driven out of a job by the mob for a small political contribution more than a half decade before that went against the grain of political correctness. Meanwhile, Linus has been a dick from square one, and the Linux kernel keeps chugging along.
• labrador 10y ago
  I wonder how many people complaining about Crockford have posted or support the statement "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best." Nodevember doesn't deserve Douglas Crockford. And Lipscomb, where the event is being held, is a religiously oppressive institution where "All full-time, undergraduate students are required to take Bible classes and attend chapel twice a week. [1]" Sounds like Nodevember is a lose-lose situation for all involved. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipscomb_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipscomb_University
• nnq 10y ago
  also, this indirectly reminded me of what I thought to be one of DC's greatest talks: Monads and Gonads (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0EF0VTs9Dc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0EF0VTs9Dc)
• finishingmove 10y ago
  2016, ladies and gents. Everyone is hypersensitive. Nobody thinks or researches anything past a Google search. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone is on the internet. Everyone yells everything they think on social media.
• zimbatm 10y ago
  As an occasional speaker I am a bit worried. It seems very likely that I would say something that could offend someone, given enough time (even if it wasn't my intent). What is the best way to react when faced with that kind of event?
• jondubois 10y ago
  I think this is stupid. Crockford would be a centerpiece of any JavaScript conference. There is no sexism in his remarks at all. By attacking Crockford, that specific activist group is advocating discrimination against older generations. The kind of humour which Crockford used is totally normal for people of his generation. He comes from an era where the software industry was run almost entirely by men - You have to forgive him for these harmless comments. I would feel uncomfortable going to Nodevember knowing that members of this hypocritical intolerant group are among us. I think even if Crockford was sexist (which he is clearly not), he should still be invited to talk - What happened to freedom of speech? The real world is tough, sometimes people are mean. People should just grow up and toughen up.
• xwvvvvwx 10y ago
  This whole article seems pretty disingenuous. It would clearly be a huge overreaction for someone to lose a speakers role at a conference for the two comments highlighted in the article. The sourcing for this claim is incredibly weak, two tweets from people unaffiliated with Nodevember. Nodevember have stated that they took this decision based on private feedback. It could be that having Crockford on the speaker list meant that booking multiple other speakers became significantly harder, in which case uninviting him is an (arguably) justifiable logistical tradeoff, but without knowing the specifics its impossible to make any kind of real judgment of the merits of this decision.
  • curioussavage 10y ago
    Their slack channel transcript where they made the decision was posted. They literally took those two twitter users opinions at face value. Thats right, the people who were so offended by his weak map joke. Its so incredibly stupid.
• tomohawk 10y ago
  Who's doing more damage to the community - Crockford or Kas? The intolerance that Kas is selling is not something that we should value.
  • justaaron 10y ago
    THIS! +1million
• prance 10y ago
  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 his opinions. [1] http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html [2] https://modelviewculture.com/news/lambda-conf-fuckery-white-supremacy-under-the-guise-of-inclusion https://modelviewculture.com/news/lambda-conf-fuckery-white-...
  • atom-morgan 10y ago
    Nodevember's statement was released after my blog post. In fact, I believe my blog post helped in leading them to releasing their statement.
  • mzw_mzw 10y ago
    "Well, there might be something else bad he did!" is a mighty thin reed to balance your argument on.
• forgottenacc56 10y ago
  Defamation. That's the word I've been looking for.
  • ino 10y ago
    Marketing strategy: raising awareness to their conference by means of defamation of a fairly known person in the JS programming circle.
• Fifer82 10y ago
  Who gives a fuck about Nodevember??
• discordianfish 10y ago
  I don't know about the reasons either, but if there are multiple, yet hard-to-proof claims (like harassment or just being a jerk), it's something they need to take serious while not being able to talk about the specifics without really doing Crockford wrong.
• jgalt212 10y ago
  Their code of conduct is sort of stupid in its consistency. i.e. vendor booths have largely the same restrictions as attendees and speakers. For the most part, you really can't avoid a both, while it's pretty easy to avoid a person or talk.
• caseymarquis 10y ago
  I'm gathering: 1. Based on the article, Crockford makes fun of the less technical speakers for their subjects being trivial and unrelated to real programming. 2. Logically, he's probably been uninvited for this? 3. HN comments go on unrelated tangents that make me not want to live on this planet.
  • curioussavage 10y ago
    Actually what happened is instead of acting like professionals and adults and just stating that Crockford was no longer in the lineup, the organizers kindly let us know that some people wouldn't be 'comfortable' if he was there. I mean he makes jokes about 'weak maps' ooooh scary. And thus people are rightly angry, the conference organizers also apologized and rightly so but they still deserve to be called out themselves for total incompetence.
• qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  This is utter nonsense. Unless there's some evidence of wrongdoing, pushing people out of your conference isn't acceptable. Especially if it's somebody with Crockford's reputation, who has influence, and both technical and social credit. This isn't an incident where people have come forward saying that somebody sexually or physically assulted them, and then they were banned (that's happened in some communities), it's somebody getting kicked from a conference for unknown reasons, when all the complaints about him boil down to, "some of the things he says can be rude or politically incorrect." That shouldn't be good enough. Especially if, like Crockford, the speaker has a reputation for providing valuable and relevant technical material. Besides, if being rude was a reason to get banned from a conference, Linus, RMS, and countless others would have gotten lifetime bans from every conference out there years ago.
• sigmaml 10y ago
  This subject of "inclusiveness" is getting out of hand, evidently. We should probably look into using "no exclusiveness" as a principle, than this hairy construct of "inclusiveness".
• tptacek 10y ago
  Unlike the controversies about Strangeloop (which uninvited Curtis Yarvin) and Lambdaconf (which lost the overwhelming majority of its sponsors due to accepting Yarvin), this --- based on the evidence at hand --- seems entirely stupid. Unfortunately, there's no rulebook conference organizers (or their Greek choruses on message boards) can consult to say when rejecting a speaker is a good idea or not. It's a judgement call. So when you've got a speaker with a reputation as a overt, 1950s-style racist in person, and a miles-long online track record of obscurantist racism, the kind of person who when accepted to talk at a technical conference about programming languages will write many paragraphs suggesting that science has established white people are smarter than black people (but maybe that shouldn't matter to us so much!) in his post announcing his talk, then yes, maybe you should avoid inviting that person. On the other hand, you've got a speaker who used the word "promiscuous" as a pejorative in describing technology, and who spoke disrespectfully about someone else's favorite conference. If you accept the irrepressibly racist speaker to your conference, you're going to lose most of your sponsors. But if you reject the person who implied promiscuity might be problematic in a metaphor, you're going to fail too, because anyone will be able to get any talk punted from that conference. Maybe there's something else going on that we're not entitled to hear about. Those kinds of things also exist. By the way: the implication that flexing and talking about "strength" is sexist is itself sexist, and not in the bullshit "it penalizes men and they have rights too" way, but in the "it reinforces stereotypes about women" way. There are women out there who can kick your ass.
  • ajamesm 10y ago
    > Unfortunately, there's no rulebook conference organizers (or their Greek choruses on message boards) can consult to say when rejecting a speaker is a good idea or not. It's a judgement call. There is! if they bothered to write one. I know, I know, everyone gets up in arms about Codes of Conduct, because they're oppressive SJW tools used to silence men, or whatever. But this, right here, is their use case. If you want definitive standards, by which we can semi-objectively measure whether someone should be dis-invited from a conference, then consider a community statement of what constitutes [un]acceptable behavior.
    • 10y ago
• Naracion 10y ago
  A Pastebin of a Nodevember Slack channel, should provide more context: http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG There is some discussion about the reason, and whether Nodevember should disclose a reason or make a public statement. For instance: "Josh Crews [9:57 AM] Maybe Nodevember could make a public statement along these lines, "After announcing Crockford as a keynote speaker, we learned from others of things he's done and said at previous conferences that are against our Code of Conduct" HermitPy [9:57 AM] why do we need to do that [9:57] what does that do other than add more fuel to a fire? Andrew Albright [9:57 AM] It would save people time for trying to find the answer themselves [9:58] 'cause I burned at least ten minutes this morning to satiate my curiosity HermitPy [9:58 AM] I personally hope people will do some research and form their own opinion Andrew Albright [9:58 AM] ^ good point Josh Crews [9:58 AM] you are reputation tarnishing somebody if you are not clear about the disinvitation Andrew Albright [9:58 AM] opinion and reason for the decision are two different things though HermitPy [9:58 AM] no doubt Russ Anderson [9:58 AM] I will say that it’s difficult to do the research. I don’t think the twitter trail is very edifying. This chat has been much more helpful. HermitPy [9:59 AM] We're dismissing a keynoter without context other than they didn't fit our view of the community (edited) Russ Anderson [9:59 AM] however, I agree that you don’t owe anyone anything HermitPy [10:00 AM] All this whole thing has done is ensure that I won't do one more fucking thing for the community, so next year other people can run their own conference and pick their own shit and deal with it (edited)"
• setheron 10y ago
  People are so overly sensitive. It is the events loss.
• AzzieElbab 10y ago
  Douglas Crockford is an adult and has no business attending gatherings run by bickering children
• mgkimsal 10y ago
  From nodevember CoC: "Be careful in the words that you choose. Remember that sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes can be offensive to those around you. Excessive swearing and offensive jokes are not appropriate for Nodevember." Now... I'm no expert in humor, but aren't nearly all jokes partly "exclusionary" by definition? Maybe not - maybe I'm thinking of just a certain type of 'joke', but almost every sort of humorous observation I can think of could be "exclusionary" at some level, because there's some sort of external 'thing' which is the object of the joke. But I may be way off base here.
  • wglb 10y ago
    Consider self-deprecating humor. Or jokes about the perversity of the universe. Jokes about the weather. So I don't think that all jokes are exclusionary (with reference to those around us).
    • mgkimsal 10y ago
      "self-deprecating" was the one I was thinking of right after I hit 'post'. "weather" jokes can take on a regional-aspect, potentially insulting or offending people in a particular region. And... I don't think I'm being too reaching in that reading, especially if (as we're lead to believe) "the web used to be promiscuous" is somehow 'slut shaming'. People can really find anything to be offended about. I'm sort of wondering if people have always been 'offended' by many things, and we've only just grown the communication platforms to really expose the victims, or if we've really just found more things to be offended about.
• fstopzero 10y ago
  Is it possible that there have been harassment allegations against Crockford that have not come to light? I think it is completely acceptable for people who have been harassed by prominent individuals to not want to come forward publicly with their stories for a host of obvious reasons.
• throwawayspon 10y ago
  I'd be willing to place a small wager that the people who were uncomfortable were also connected to one of the conference sponsors. And that the sponsor threatened to pull out if this person wasn't removed. I'd place an smaller wager that the sponsor is Auth0.
• voidr 10y ago
  The same way we have 'mercury free', it would be great to have a 'social justice warrior free' label. A conference has the right to hand pick the speakers, however I also have the right to vote with my wallet and boycott them. Conferences should be required to disclose if they actively support a political alignment(which is what SJW movements are), so that I as a consumer know to avoid them. A vocal minority of women are offended because white males used some phrases that can be interpreted as sexist in their view. Let's ban white males, problem solved. Now a religious group is offended that most of the women are not wearing a hijab. Well, we can't have that, so let's ban women who are not dressed "properly". Bottom line is: whatever you do, you can always find a vocal minority who are offended by that. When I go to a tech event, I want it to be about tech, what I don't want it to be about is: politics.
  • curioussavage 10y ago
    Exactly! The first conference I find that publicly rejects this insanity has my money no questions asked. PLEASE can somebody do this. There are a ton of people that would support it. If this trend continues those of us with common sense will need to organize to oppose it.
• fsaneq2 10y ago
  Is HN being censored? Why is this not on the front page, with 611 votes as of right now?
• rhapsodic 10y ago
  Organizations will not stop caving to these vicious, hateful cry-bullies until caving becomes more costly than not caving. It wouldn't take very many complaints and boycott threats against their corporate sponsors to make Nodevember radioactive. Next year, there would be no sponsors. And if everyone who has had a bellyful of this cry-bullying would boycott the Nodevember conference, there would be no more Nodevember conference. That would serve as an example for other organizations, when they choose how to respond to the demands of future cry-bullies.
• joeevans1000 10y ago
  This whole incident really highlights the likely challenges facing luminaries like Crockford. On the one hand, they probably want to support unestablished up and coming conferences. On the other, they expose themselves to total amateurs, with potentially dire outcomes professionally. His presence at such an apparently backwoods event (as evidenced by the transcript of their inane slack discussion) was a great honor for them, but, as the saying goes, 'no good deed goes unpunished'.
• ben_jones 10y ago
  Of note is that one of Crockford's accusers is a "developer evangelist" at Salesforce.
• hasteur 10y ago
  It's overreactions to marginally risque content that strip humor from talks. I'd hate to think what the "PC police" would say to the very tenured college abstract calculas professor who accidentally asked us to derive the tangent to secant z. He paused after writing sec(z) and made the comment in front of the entire lecture hall "I'm sure we all would like to be sexy."