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I opened my comment by praising the exact same things you’re praising, so let’s be sure that we both understand I was criticizing just one or two small things t

I opened my comment by praising the exact same things you’re praising, so let’s be sure that we both understand I was criticizing just one or two small things that I care deeply about.

mbreese 15y ago
I think we agree about most things here... in my initial reading of your comment it seemed to paint the entire article negatively. You just criticized one particular aspect... a lot and perhaps that how I got that initial impression. I wanted to express that talking about _why's identity wasn't the central part of the story. Anyone just reading your comment might get that impression. I really just don't think the naming of names at this point is that big of a deal. Anyone who really wanted to know his name could have found him. Anyone who was in the public eye and who has decided to leave it has had to deal with the same issues. And while we don't discuss his name, out of courtesy and respect, I don't think she crossed the line.
davesims 15y ago
I care deeply about _why and his contributions as well, and I still cringe thinking about how I felt the moment I realized he and his work and his wit were gone from the community forever. The Poignant Guide was my intro to Ruby and still sets the whimsical, slightly surreal tone in the back of my mind for how I think about coding to this day. But, raganwald, upon reading and re-reading it, I didn't take one bit of "praise" from your comment. Perhaps you didn't mean to set the tone as strongly as you did, but my impression right of the bat with "Let's see now" and onward was that you were being harshly critical. I'm sorry to see yours as the top comment, because Annie did an extraordinary amount of work and I think you've completely distracted from the essence of the article. Not only that, I really think you've confused "stalking" with "research." Trying to reach someone for a comment about an article on them hardly qualifies as the former. This was simple journalistic persistence, entirely appropriate, and clearly she backed off "hunting a man down." Many if not most other journalists would have gone further to get the quote or create more drama, and Annie apparently got deep enough into the ethic and general tone of the Ruby community to know when enough was enough. It was an excellent article, very sympathetic to the Ruby community, well-informed and enlightening, and I'm sorry to see that your comments here have caused others "not to read" it. Annie Lowery did a lot of hard work -- she learned to program as part of the research for crying out loud! She deserves better recognition than this.
- raganwald 15y ago
  my impression right of the bat with "Let's see now" and onward was that you were being harshly critical. I was being harshly critical of calling the man at work and naming him. I also wrote: The article spends pages talking about _why and the author’s relationship with _why’s work. Great. It spends a page talking about _why’s desire for anonymity and reclusive nature. Good. It talks about _why’s “infosuicide” and notes that it happened shortly after he was “outed.” Fine. I mentioned the things I liked and said so. What you don’t seem to like is the lack of “balance,” as if given that I spent a few paragraphs talking about the stuff I didn’t like, I should spend ten or twenty paragraphs about the stuff I liked. But my feelings about the things that I liked were just that I liked them. You have stronger feelings about the things that you liked, so you write your comment in accordance with your feelings. I am not writing a book review for the NYT, and neither are you, that’s the beauty of the forum. I am obliged to be polite, to avoid name calling and other poisonous behaviour, but I am also obliged to—as the saying goes—sit down at the keyboard and open a vein.
  - davesims 15y ago
    Sure, not a book review for NYT, but it is the top comment on HN, which has the unfortunate consequence of being the first impression a lot of people had of an article that had a lot of hard, thoughtful work put into it. It also caused some to actually not read the article, and that's what drew me out. Annie's work here deserved a better first impression from the HN community, and I think anyone who has an interest in _why would benefit from reading it. The anonymity thing was a sidebar at best.
    - raganwald 15y ago
      I feel for you. I have felt the same way. Not so long ago, someone resubmitted an old essay of mine about coffee machines and open source. In that essay, I called myself a small-s socialist. What do you suppose was the top comment on the HN discussion? A long diatribe about someone’s pet subject, Libertarianism, which generated more than half of the ensuing comments. It seems that on Hacker News, one man’s signal is another man’s noise.

I opened my comment by praising the exact same things you’re praising, so let’s be sure that we both understand I was criticizing just one or two small things that I care deeply about.

mbreese 15y ago

I think we agree about most things here... in my initial reading of your comment it seemed to paint the entire article negatively. You just criticized one particular aspect... a lot and perhaps that how I got that initial impression. I wanted to express that talking about _why's identity wasn't the central part of the story. Anyone just reading your comment might get that impression. I really just don't think the naming of names at this point is that big of a deal. Anyone who really wanted to know his name could have found him. Anyone who was in the public eye and who has decided to leave it has had to deal with the same issues. And while we don't discuss his name, out of courtesy and respect, I don't think she crossed the line.

davesims 15y ago

I care deeply about _why and his contributions as well, and I still cringe thinking about how I felt the moment I realized he and his work and his wit were gone from the community forever. The Poignant Guide was my intro to Ruby and still sets the whimsical, slightly surreal tone in the back of my mind for how I think about coding to this day. But, raganwald, upon reading and re-reading it, I didn't take one bit of "praise" from your comment. Perhaps you didn't mean to set the tone as strongly as you did, but my impression right of the bat with "Let's see now" and onward was that you were being harshly critical. I'm sorry to see yours as the top comment, because Annie did an extraordinary amount of work and I think you've completely distracted from the essence of the article. Not only that, I really think you've confused "stalking" with "research." Trying to reach someone for a comment about an article on them hardly qualifies as the former. This was simple journalistic persistence, entirely appropriate, and clearly she backed off "hunting a man down." Many if not most other journalists would have gone further to get the quote or create more drama, and Annie apparently got deep enough into the ethic and general tone of the Ruby community to know when enough was enough. It was an excellent article, very sympathetic to the Ruby community, well-informed and enlightening, and I'm sorry to see that your comments here have caused others "not to read" it. Annie Lowery did a lot of hard work -- she learned to program as part of the research for crying out loud! She deserves better recognition than this.

raganwald 15y ago
my impression right of the bat with "Let's see now" and onward was that you were being harshly critical. I was being harshly critical of calling the man at work and naming him. I also wrote: The article spends pages talking about _why and the author’s relationship with _why’s work. Great. It spends a page talking about _why’s desire for anonymity and reclusive nature. Good. It talks about _why’s “infosuicide” and notes that it happened shortly after he was “outed.” Fine. I mentioned the things I liked and said so. What you don’t seem to like is the lack of “balance,” as if given that I spent a few paragraphs talking about the stuff I didn’t like, I should spend ten or twenty paragraphs about the stuff I liked. But my feelings about the things that I liked were just that I liked them. You have stronger feelings about the things that you liked, so you write your comment in accordance with your feelings. I am not writing a book review for the NYT, and neither are you, that’s the beauty of the forum. I am obliged to be polite, to avoid name calling and other poisonous behaviour, but I am also obliged to—as the saying goes—sit down at the keyboard and open a vein.
- davesims 15y ago
  Sure, not a book review for NYT, but it is the top comment on HN, which has the unfortunate consequence of being the first impression a lot of people had of an article that had a lot of hard, thoughtful work put into it. It also caused some to actually not read the article, and that's what drew me out. Annie's work here deserved a better first impression from the HN community, and I think anyone who has an interest in _why would benefit from reading it. The anonymity thing was a sidebar at best.
  - raganwald 15y ago
    I feel for you. I have felt the same way. Not so long ago, someone resubmitted an old essay of mine about coffee machines and open source. In that essay, I called myself a small-s socialist. What do you suppose was the top comment on the HN discussion? A long diatribe about someone’s pet subject, Libertarianism, which generated more than half of the ensuing comments. It seems that on Hacker News, one man’s signal is another man’s noise.