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Out of fairness, I urge everyone to give Kenneth a chance to respond before judging him. Separately: Humans do their best work when they are collaborating with

by kevmo 7y ago

Out of fairness, I urge everyone to give Kenneth a chance to respond before judging him. Separately: Humans do their best work when they are collaborating with one another. I have worked in many different organizational formats, but I have never worked in an organization where an excessively negative person did so much good work that it was worth team destruction. When everyone else is doing less work because of one person, you have to remove that person or you raise risk of mission failure.

throwaway7613 7y ago
(Throwaway account) This is not an isolated mistake. There is a consistent pattern of exploitation and toxicity from Kenneth that has been ongoing for many years. Many people in the community have known about this and worse. This post is courageous for finally calling it out. It's difficult to call out a person in a position of power like himself, especially one who obsessively engages in abusive tactics yet has an army of people who worship him and make excuses for him.
- neilv 7y ago
  Presumably you have good intentions, but I think it's dangerous for us to have criticisms of one person's name come from other people who won't stand behind it with their own names. Perhaps there is a whistleblower exception, such as when the person being criticized is powerful, and the whistleblower is vulnerable, but I'm not aware that's the situation here, and whistleblowing involves an investigation (by officials, journalists).
  - throwaway7613 7y ago
    You're comparing a hypothetical danger of society gone amok with the practical already-experienced danger of pissing off a systemic abuser with tens of thousands of followers. Even this very HN thread is full of people blindly defending him. If there is a functioning body of authority that is accepting confidential complaints, then I will happily use my real name. I am not eager to invite abuse just to help the HN community gain some awareness of what has been going on for years.
    - neilv 7y ago
      Not society gone amok -- we have institutions, which might be applicable. Is this within the purview of any of the Python organizations, open source funding organizations, donation payment processors, government authorities, etc.?
      - pseudalopex 7y ago
        Reitz controls the Requests project. He accepted donations through a money transfer service that disclaims any responsibility. Smith has no grounds to sue Reitz. Government authorities are unlikely to investigate an uninvolved party's concerns about a possible $30,000 fraud with no known victims in their jurisdiction.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Whistleblowing does not always involve an investigation, by officials or journalists or anyone else. As an example, here's a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower : "Most whistleblowers are internal whistleblowers, who report misconduct on a fellow employee or superior within their company through anonymous reporting mechanisms often called hotlines." That is, 1) no investigation, 2) anonymous, 3) internal. It's certainly dangerous if all the accusers are anonymous. However, in this case there are two who are not anonymous. How many are needed?
    - neilv 7y ago
      If we're talking about dangerous in general (not in this specific case), then anonymous accounts might be sockpuppets. And, indeed, we are seeing that very prominently in the last few years, in US/world news, as part of a major and unresolved threat. This general situation is one reason to adopt some practices. Getting practice with practices is good practice.
      - eesmith 7y ago
        Are you implying that throwaway7613 is a sockpuppet? While certainly a possibility, best practices in whistleblowing specifically reject always ignoring anonymous comments.
        neilv 7y ago
        I'm sorry I failed to be clear that I wasn't questioning in this specific case, but am referring to general practices that I suggest are good to observe by default. I think we have evidence elsewhere that such practices are needed in public discourse right now. That said, I understand that this specific case is complicated, iff someone feels intimidated, and iff and there is no authority to whom to appeal, so maybe it's an exception to general best practices.
        eesmith 7y ago
        Okay, I understand now that you were not making that implication. Thanks for cleaning that up. Since general practices explicitly allow anonymous complaints for whistleblowing, including for anonymous complaints in public fora, I don't see how your appeal to general best practices affects anything - this already is part of general best practices. Perhaps you could describe what practices you are thinking of?
- bklaasen 7y ago
  There is a similar dynamic originating from outspoken members of the "Context-Driven Testing" community. There are ways to deal with this behaviour, but unfortunately communities tend to close ranks around toxic leaders, exposing newcomers to harm exactly as described in the article. Insiders are aware of how to protect themselves, but fail to signal problematic behaviour to outsiders. For those interested in understanding this better, I urge you to read "Narcissists and Blood Bags" by Marlena Compton and Valerie Aurora: https://medium.com/@marlenac/the-blood-bag-co-narcissists-and-narcissists-in-tech-b6c78ae2aa5e https://medium.com/@marlenac/the-blood-bag-co-narcissists-an...
  - 0815test 7y ago
    The blogpost series you link is actually quite good overall, however the whole "social justice in tech" framing the authors are taking is unhelpful in the extreme wrt. this issue, to the point of being reckless and perhaps actively dangerous. It seems to flow out of a sort of fallacy of composition, wherein it is assumed that every single instance of individual abusive behavior will be flowing along commonly-acknowledged "structural oppression" lines, almost as a matter of logical necessity. Not so!
guitarbill 7y ago
> you have to remove that person or you raise risk of mission failure. it isn't the only option, and actual malice is quite rare. sometimes all it takes is a frank and honest conversation, and maybe some mentorship. it's far too easy not to see the impact of your behaviour or words, especially if communication is mostly remote and you don't get a real chance to read people. while it is harder to teach soft skills than a new technical skill, it isn't impossible to help a person grow. hopefully, this proves to be such a situation, or is simply a honest mistake.
tyingq 7y ago
Looks like he responded: "FYI, Requests3 will be shipping with its own low-level http library, and isn't going to be using urllib3. @_tomchristie & I are hard at work on the parts, and all (upcoming) donations are going to be split between him & I. We aren't actively seeking out any donations, though." https://twitter.com/kennethreitz/status/1124736204434497542 https://twitter.com/kennethreitz/status/1124736204434497542
- toyg 7y ago
  He actually responded on his blog: http://journal.kennethreitz.org/entry/conspiracy http://journal.kennethreitz.org/entry/conspiracy Some of the statements are pretty hard to believe (nobody wants to work on the future of one the most popular Python libraries ever? Uh... more likely nobody wants to sit in a (virtual) room with him, now they’ve effectively managed to remove him from Requests 2...). And it confirms the 30k have been spent, with Requests 3 still not appearing even in half-done status.
  - mcguire 7y ago
    Whoo. That's a rather aggressive response. "I appear to be the target of a personal character attack piece, that's been making it's rounds on social media today, expertly timed to ruin my weekend at PyCon US 2019. "I got nothing but strange signals from njs since I first interacted with him, which is why I didn't answer his threatening-sounding emails. What was the threat I was perceving? That he'd do basically do exactly this."

by kevmo 7y ago

throwaway7613 7y ago

(Throwaway account) This is not an isolated mistake. There is a consistent pattern of exploitation and toxicity from Kenneth that has been ongoing for many years. Many people in the community have known about this and worse. This post is courageous for finally calling it out. It's difficult to call out a person in a position of power like himself, especially one who obsessively engages in abusive tactics yet has an army of people who worship him and make excuses for him.

neilv 7y ago
Presumably you have good intentions, but I think it's dangerous for us to have criticisms of one person's name come from other people who won't stand behind it with their own names. Perhaps there is a whistleblower exception, such as when the person being criticized is powerful, and the whistleblower is vulnerable, but I'm not aware that's the situation here, and whistleblowing involves an investigation (by officials, journalists).
- throwaway7613 7y ago
  You're comparing a hypothetical danger of society gone amok with the practical already-experienced danger of pissing off a systemic abuser with tens of thousands of followers. Even this very HN thread is full of people blindly defending him. If there is a functioning body of authority that is accepting confidential complaints, then I will happily use my real name. I am not eager to invite abuse just to help the HN community gain some awareness of what has been going on for years.
  - neilv 7y ago
    Not society gone amok -- we have institutions, which might be applicable. Is this within the purview of any of the Python organizations, open source funding organizations, donation payment processors, government authorities, etc.?
    - pseudalopex 7y ago
      Reitz controls the Requests project. He accepted donations through a money transfer service that disclaims any responsibility. Smith has no grounds to sue Reitz. Government authorities are unlikely to investigate an uninvolved party's concerns about a possible $30,000 fraud with no known victims in their jurisdiction.
- eesmith 7y ago
  Whistleblowing does not always involve an investigation, by officials or journalists or anyone else. As an example, here's a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower : "Most whistleblowers are internal whistleblowers, who report misconduct on a fellow employee or superior within their company through anonymous reporting mechanisms often called hotlines." That is, 1) no investigation, 2) anonymous, 3) internal. It's certainly dangerous if all the accusers are anonymous. However, in this case there are two who are not anonymous. How many are needed?
  - neilv 7y ago
    If we're talking about dangerous in general (not in this specific case), then anonymous accounts might be sockpuppets. And, indeed, we are seeing that very prominently in the last few years, in US/world news, as part of a major and unresolved threat. This general situation is one reason to adopt some practices. Getting practice with practices is good practice.
    - eesmith 7y ago
      Are you implying that throwaway7613 is a sockpuppet? While certainly a possibility, best practices in whistleblowing specifically reject always ignoring anonymous comments.
      - neilv 7y ago
        I'm sorry I failed to be clear that I wasn't questioning in this specific case, but am referring to general practices that I suggest are good to observe by default. I think we have evidence elsewhere that such practices are needed in public discourse right now. That said, I understand that this specific case is complicated, iff someone feels intimidated, and iff and there is no authority to whom to appeal, so maybe it's an exception to general best practices.
        eesmith 7y ago
        Okay, I understand now that you were not making that implication. Thanks for cleaning that up. Since general practices explicitly allow anonymous complaints for whistleblowing, including for anonymous complaints in public fora, I don't see how your appeal to general best practices affects anything - this already is part of general best practices. Perhaps you could describe what practices you are thinking of?
bklaasen 7y ago
There is a similar dynamic originating from outspoken members of the "Context-Driven Testing" community. There are ways to deal with this behaviour, but unfortunately communities tend to close ranks around toxic leaders, exposing newcomers to harm exactly as described in the article. Insiders are aware of how to protect themselves, but fail to signal problematic behaviour to outsiders. For those interested in understanding this better, I urge you to read "Narcissists and Blood Bags" by Marlena Compton and Valerie Aurora: https://medium.com/@marlenac/the-blood-bag-co-narcissists-and-narcissists-in-tech-b6c78ae2aa5e https://medium.com/@marlenac/the-blood-bag-co-narcissists-an...
- 0815test 7y ago
  The blogpost series you link is actually quite good overall, however the whole "social justice in tech" framing the authors are taking is unhelpful in the extreme wrt. this issue, to the point of being reckless and perhaps actively dangerous. It seems to flow out of a sort of fallacy of composition, wherein it is assumed that every single instance of individual abusive behavior will be flowing along commonly-acknowledged "structural oppression" lines, almost as a matter of logical necessity. Not so!

guitarbill 7y ago

> you have to remove that person or you raise risk of mission failure. it isn't the only option, and actual malice is quite rare. sometimes all it takes is a frank and honest conversation, and maybe some mentorship. it's far too easy not to see the impact of your behaviour or words, especially if communication is mostly remote and you don't get a real chance to read people. while it is harder to teach soft skills than a new technical skill, it isn't impossible to help a person grow. hopefully, this proves to be such a situation, or is simply a honest mistake.

tyingq 7y ago

Looks like he responded: "FYI, Requests3 will be shipping with its own low-level http library, and isn't going to be using urllib3. @_tomchristie & I are hard at work on the parts, and all (upcoming) donations are going to be split between him & I. We aren't actively seeking out any donations, though." https://twitter.com/kennethreitz/status/1124736204434497542 https://twitter.com/kennethreitz/status/1124736204434497542

toyg 7y ago
He actually responded on his blog: http://journal.kennethreitz.org/entry/conspiracy http://journal.kennethreitz.org/entry/conspiracy Some of the statements are pretty hard to believe (nobody wants to work on the future of one the most popular Python libraries ever? Uh... more likely nobody wants to sit in a (virtual) room with him, now they’ve effectively managed to remove him from Requests 2...). And it confirms the 30k have been spent, with Requests 3 still not appearing even in half-done status.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Whoo. That's a rather aggressive response. "I appear to be the target of a personal character attack piece, that's been making it's rounds on social media today, expertly timed to ruin my weekend at PyCon US 2019. "I got nothing but strange signals from njs since I first interacted with him, which is why I didn't answer his threatening-sounding emails. What was the threat I was perceving? That he'd do basically do exactly this."