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I once criticized Sarah on twitter while agreeing with Robert Hoekman when he wrote a blog post about another person in the UX speaking circuit who did not have

I once criticized Sarah on twitter while agreeing with Robert Hoekman when he wrote a blog post about another person in the UX speaking circuit who did not have a huge amount of work behind them to back up the fact that they are up in front of people, teaching them. I since regretted my comments on Sarah's success. I believe I apologized on twitter (after being called out). I was embarrassed, but have not contacted her since, I just see her on rosters for speaking at various conferences. Now, when I read this post of hers my heart sank. Not only because it is utterly sickening someone could do this to another person, but that at one stage I was unkind to her online. What if she suspected me because of my remarks 2 years ago? What if she called my name out as a suspect. My web development career and reputation would be shattered. Now what if someone decides to play detective and look through twitter history and sees my comments and accuse me publicly. Ruined. Its not that public shaming is childish, its that that such accusations have huge ramifications if false. It's "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"[0] This does not mean I hope the person/people involved are not held accountable, it just needs to be handled outside a public internet witch hunt. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstones_formulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstones_formulation edit: grammar

newhouseb 14y ago
Thanks, you helped clarify what I was looking to leave as an open question: How do we hold individuals accountable without encouraging a witch hunt? The larger developer community is open and unmoderated and as a result we have no organizational "justice system" to fall back on in order to correct behavior (not that I am proposing this).
tedks 14y ago
(Proper link is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation ) And from that same page, "better for whom?" It takes great care to attempt to apply knowledge from one domain to another domain. Humans are great at seeing patterns and making analogies, but no matter how many times you say "technology is evolving," that won't make it adhere to the Hardy-Weinberg principle[0]. Attempts to actually implement these analogies tend to be problematic[1]. The US justice system, on the federal and state level, has a wide array of checks against it that (nominally) protect people from state abuse. This is necessary because of the vast power imbalance between a nation-state and a private individual. In this case, it's probably far better to have a 10:1 false negative:false positive ratio. The more false positives, the more potential for abuse. Conventions and the hacker community do not have the power of nation-states. There's no reason to apply the same very stringent and very necessary restrictions that we apply on nation-states to DefCon. DefCon cannot hurt you the same way the US government can. So, who is this better for? Certainly not the women attacked: they're left with few options, little sympathy, and copious amounts of victim blaming and denial (as the current top comment indicates). It's far better for the abusers -- especially when the potential for system abuse is far less, because conventions and other hacker/tech events are not nation-states. If we're going to solve this (or any) problem, we need to look past platitudes and into quantified, measured thought towards a solution. This might very well be naming and shaming likely perpetrators, especially when the evidence is more convincing than a few twitter posts two years ago. We might get more false positives, but we have to contrast this with the current status quo of simply denying any justice to the people actually being harassed for their gender. Personally, I think the cost-benefit is overwhelmingly in favor of excluding more maybe/maybe-not abusive men from our communities, if it results in half the human population being allowed to add their talent to the collective pool. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_princip... [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20070818124133/http://www.greythumb.org/blog/index.php?/archives/80-Eugenics-doesnt-work.-Ask-why,-asshole..html http://web.archive.org/web/20070818124133/http://www.greythu...

newhouseb 14y ago

Thanks, you helped clarify what I was looking to leave as an open question: How do we hold individuals accountable without encouraging a witch hunt? The larger developer community is open and unmoderated and as a result we have no organizational "justice system" to fall back on in order to correct behavior (not that I am proposing this).

tedks 14y ago

(Proper link is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation ) And from that same page, "better for whom?" It takes great care to attempt to apply knowledge from one domain to another domain. Humans are great at seeing patterns and making analogies, but no matter how many times you say "technology is evolving," that won't make it adhere to the Hardy-Weinberg principle[0]. Attempts to actually implement these analogies tend to be problematic[1]. The US justice system, on the federal and state level, has a wide array of checks against it that (nominally) protect people from state abuse. This is necessary because of the vast power imbalance between a nation-state and a private individual. In this case, it's probably far better to have a 10:1 false negative:false positive ratio. The more false positives, the more potential for abuse. Conventions and the hacker community do not have the power of nation-states. There's no reason to apply the same very stringent and very necessary restrictions that we apply on nation-states to DefCon. DefCon cannot hurt you the same way the US government can. So, who is this better for? Certainly not the women attacked: they're left with few options, little sympathy, and copious amounts of victim blaming and denial (as the current top comment indicates). It's far better for the abusers -- especially when the potential for system abuse is far less, because conventions and other hacker/tech events are not nation-states. If we're going to solve this (or any) problem, we need to look past platitudes and into quantified, measured thought towards a solution. This might very well be naming and shaming likely perpetrators, especially when the evidence is more convincing than a few twitter posts two years ago. We might get more false positives, but we have to contrast this with the current status quo of simply denying any justice to the people actually being harassed for their gender. Personally, I think the cost-benefit is overwhelmingly in favor of excluding more maybe/maybe-not abusive men from our communities, if it results in half the human population being allowed to add their talent to the collective pool. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_princip... [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20070818124133/http://www.greythumb.org/blog/index.php?/archives/80-Eugenics-doesnt-work.-Ask-why,-asshole..html http://web.archive.org/web/20070818124133/http://www.greythu...