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Instead of a learning opportunity, this has turned into an enormous fustercluck. It would have been better for Adria Richards to address the matter directly ra

Instead of a learning opportunity, this has turned into an enormous fustercluck. It would have been better for Adria Richards to address the matter directly rather than post a photo on twitter, but it was not wrong for her to address the matter. Similarly, nearly everyone can agree - including Richards - that the employer who allegedly fired one of the people involved in the incident clearly overreacted. There are learning opportunities in these incidents - opportunities to learn the best way to address a real issue when it comes up. The goal should be growing awareness and respect, apology and forgiveness, and reconciliation. But the extreme outburst of misogyny - the insults, abuse, and physical threats including threats of rape - is perhaps the biggest learning opportunity of all: the opportunity for an entire community to recognize that it is still dysfunctional in terms of gender equality. Edit - SendGrid just announced that they have fired Richards. Yet another instance in this cluster of reactive ugliness and missed opportunities.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jiggy2011 14y ago
It got crossposted on various places that have little/nothing to do with programming, so hopefully most of the nasty stuff was just from random dickheads rather than the python community.
- theorique 14y ago
  Bingo. The meanest reactions have been people with a particular axe to grind rather than Python community members.
  - Millennium 14y ago
    The problem with this is that it gets into dueling fallacies. Your opposition is arguing from induction (judging the whole based on the actions of a few), with a generous helping of Black Swan (deliberately ignoring counterexamples in favor of personal experience). But you're going on No True Scotsman (excluding people from a group based on factors that don't actually have anything to do with group membership) with a side of the Fallacy Fallacy (assuming that a fallacious argument must therefore be incorrect). Public shaming is a very powerful thing, and not inherently good or evil. Some people need to be shamed for what they've done, and others need the threat of shaming to keep them in line. But shaming's power makes it dangerous, and not to be used without very careful, independent verification that it's warranted: that wrongdoing was indeed committed, that it was committed by the target, and that shaming is both appropriate and necessary as a consequence of that wrongdoing. The "independent" part of that is important. Even if we discount the possibility of malice, there are too many ways for things to go wrong. Definitions can be unreasonable, identities can be mistaken, memories can be faulty, evaluations can be based on incomplete information, and so on. The involved parties are, in all but the most egregious cases, not qualified to make those decisions unilaterally: they're too close to the incident. In all but the most egregious cases, the involved parties are too close to the incident to be qualified to make these decisions unilaterally. Even in the most egregious cases, the very things that make one side qualified to make some of those decisions also disqualify that side from making the others, which is why we have courts in the first place. I think PyCon's actions here are quite appropriate, and a marked improvement from the earlier code of conduct. There's room to improve even further -there should be some basic outline of a process for reviewing and investigating incidents- but this is still a step in the right direction.
    - theorique 14y ago
      My comment was from empirical observation. A lot of the angriest comments are from 'manosphere' bloggers and tweeters whom I know are not programmers. They are leveraging this event to complain about women and feminists, but they don't have any skin in the Python community.
- obstacle1 14y ago
  The threats and lewdness is certainly coming from elsewhere, and that's not just a "no true scotsman" statement. It's run-of-the-mill Internet Hate Machine stuff, happens whenever a politically-motivated event occurs. /b/ filled multiple threads with battle cries last night.
smackfu 14y ago
This comment doesn't really seem to be replying to the post about the updated code of conduct at all.
ebbv 14y ago
There's some psychotic sociopaths on the internet. There always will be. That doesn't mean "the entire community is dysfunctional." On the contrary, I think the community as a whole has reacted quite rationally.
- Argorak 14y ago
  As long as the community hasn't found a way to root those out, our reaction was worthless, rational or not.
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    How do you "root" people out who are using random Twitter accounts to post garbage?
    - Argorak 14y ago
      Good question. But as long as this happens, no sane discussion is possible via an online medium.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - theorique 14y ago
    I think the most vitriolic reactions have been from non-community people.
    - fyi80 14y ago
      Yes, the "activists" who insert themselves to disrupt other communities to promote their own personal infamy.
      - YuriNiyazov 14y ago
        I hesitate to call a random teenager that reads reddit, 4chan and knows how to download LOIC an "activist", even with the quotes around it.
Zikes 14y ago
> It would have been better for Adria Richards to address the matter directly rather than post a photo on twitter This isn't a case of "it would have been better", it was a case of "what she did was clearly wrong". She overreacted as did the man's employer, and she has not shown any remorse. > But the extreme outburst of misogyny - the insults, abuse, and physical threats including threats of rape - is perhaps the biggest learning opportunity of all: the opportunity for an entire community to recognize that it is still dysfunctional in terms of gender equality. I haven't seen here on HN any of the insults, abuse, or threats you mentioned, nor have I made any myself. Do not blame all of us just because a vocal minority have gotten out of hand, and certainly do not use it as a tool to shame us into silence and shut down what is so far a reasoned discussion on the matter.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  This is very familiar to me, because it happens any time a woman complains about something at a convention, even if directly to officials (meaning not publicly): https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%40adriarichards&src=typd https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%40adriarichards&s... There are many level-headed comments in there on both sides, but also plenty of violent and hateful comments. It doesn't matter whether the report is private or public--the subject on both ends will come out on social media, and the attacks will come. I've seen it happen too many times to think it's isolated, or related to the approach.
  - obstacle1 14y ago
    >I've seen it happen too many times to think it's isolated, or related to the approach. Can you show us an example of another such time?
    - mkr-hn 14y ago
      The people involved usually come to an amicable solution, so there's no need to dredge examples up. It seems to happen any time there's a convention, so you can catch the next one as it happens. You can open a TweetDeck column (or search tab) with the Twitter handle and watch the abuse fly by when it does.
timothyahong 14y ago
Not to mention the spaz going on in the other thread about sendgrid's outage... It doesn't matter if its a DDOS attack or some other outage. A quick scan of the comments leads me to believe quite a few people are actually happy with sendgrid's outage.
scotty79 14y ago
> But the extreme outburst of misogyny - the insults, abuse, and physical threats including threats of rape [...] entire community to recognize that it is still dysfunctional in terms of gender equality. Do you mean community of internet trolls?
freehunter 14y ago
It wasn't wrong for her to address the matter, but she addressed the matter wrong regardless. Taking offense to a random conversation that you're not party to is one thing, but taking a picture of the people and calling up your significant number of followers and media presence in an attempt to ruin the offenders without so much as letting them have their side of the story surely is not in any way defensible. True, the backlash that ensued got very heated, very quickly. But here's the point: both sides are wrong. And as more discussions happen with the parties that were involved, it's seeming like Adria may have even misheard part of what she was taking offense to. So what's the fix? Understanding. Understanding that people will be people, and you can't fix people. If someone is making you feel uncomfortable, talk to them or an authority. What Adria did was just bound to cause more trouble, and she had to know that. I agree with you that there are opportunities to learn the best way to address a real issue when it comes up. The real issue is how a media figure plays off controversy to ruin the lives of people they don't agree with. We need to address that. This has absolutely nothing to do with gender equality.
imsofuture 14y ago
Yes! Thank you!
MartinCron 14y ago
Instead of a learning opportunity, this has turned into an enormous fustercluck I'm still holding some hope that after expending a lot of time and energy trying to distill an extremely gray situation into black and white, the communities involved will have something to learn from this.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jiggy2011 14y ago

It got crossposted on various places that have little/nothing to do with programming, so hopefully most of the nasty stuff was just from random dickheads rather than the python community.

theorique 14y ago
Bingo. The meanest reactions have been people with a particular axe to grind rather than Python community members.
- Millennium 14y ago
  The problem with this is that it gets into dueling fallacies. Your opposition is arguing from induction (judging the whole based on the actions of a few), with a generous helping of Black Swan (deliberately ignoring counterexamples in favor of personal experience). But you're going on No True Scotsman (excluding people from a group based on factors that don't actually have anything to do with group membership) with a side of the Fallacy Fallacy (assuming that a fallacious argument must therefore be incorrect). Public shaming is a very powerful thing, and not inherently good or evil. Some people need to be shamed for what they've done, and others need the threat of shaming to keep them in line. But shaming's power makes it dangerous, and not to be used without very careful, independent verification that it's warranted: that wrongdoing was indeed committed, that it was committed by the target, and that shaming is both appropriate and necessary as a consequence of that wrongdoing. The "independent" part of that is important. Even if we discount the possibility of malice, there are too many ways for things to go wrong. Definitions can be unreasonable, identities can be mistaken, memories can be faulty, evaluations can be based on incomplete information, and so on. The involved parties are, in all but the most egregious cases, not qualified to make those decisions unilaterally: they're too close to the incident. In all but the most egregious cases, the involved parties are too close to the incident to be qualified to make these decisions unilaterally. Even in the most egregious cases, the very things that make one side qualified to make some of those decisions also disqualify that side from making the others, which is why we have courts in the first place. I think PyCon's actions here are quite appropriate, and a marked improvement from the earlier code of conduct. There's room to improve even further -there should be some basic outline of a process for reviewing and investigating incidents- but this is still a step in the right direction.
  - theorique 14y ago
    My comment was from empirical observation. A lot of the angriest comments are from 'manosphere' bloggers and tweeters whom I know are not programmers. They are leveraging this event to complain about women and feminists, but they don't have any skin in the Python community.
obstacle1 14y ago
The threats and lewdness is certainly coming from elsewhere, and that's not just a "no true scotsman" statement. It's run-of-the-mill Internet Hate Machine stuff, happens whenever a politically-motivated event occurs. /b/ filled multiple threads with battle cries last night.

smackfu 14y ago

This comment doesn't really seem to be replying to the post about the updated code of conduct at all.

ebbv 14y ago

There's some psychotic sociopaths on the internet. There always will be. That doesn't mean "the entire community is dysfunctional." On the contrary, I think the community as a whole has reacted quite rationally.

Argorak 14y ago
As long as the community hasn't found a way to root those out, our reaction was worthless, rational or not.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  How do you "root" people out who are using random Twitter accounts to post garbage?
  - Argorak 14y ago
    Good question. But as long as this happens, no sane discussion is possible via an online medium.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- theorique 14y ago
  I think the most vitriolic reactions have been from non-community people.
  - fyi80 14y ago
    Yes, the "activists" who insert themselves to disrupt other communities to promote their own personal infamy.
    - YuriNiyazov 14y ago
      I hesitate to call a random teenager that reads reddit, 4chan and knows how to download LOIC an "activist", even with the quotes around it.

Zikes 14y ago

> It would have been better for Adria Richards to address the matter directly rather than post a photo on twitter This isn't a case of "it would have been better", it was a case of "what she did was clearly wrong". She overreacted as did the man's employer, and she has not shown any remorse. > But the extreme outburst of misogyny - the insults, abuse, and physical threats including threats of rape - is perhaps the biggest learning opportunity of all: the opportunity for an entire community to recognize that it is still dysfunctional in terms of gender equality. I haven't seen here on HN any of the insults, abuse, or threats you mentioned, nor have I made any myself. Do not blame all of us just because a vocal minority have gotten out of hand, and certainly do not use it as a tool to shame us into silence and shut down what is so far a reasoned discussion on the matter.

mkr-hn 14y ago
This is very familiar to me, because it happens any time a woman complains about something at a convention, even if directly to officials (meaning not publicly): https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%40adriarichards&src=typd https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%40adriarichards&s... There are many level-headed comments in there on both sides, but also plenty of violent and hateful comments. It doesn't matter whether the report is private or public--the subject on both ends will come out on social media, and the attacks will come. I've seen it happen too many times to think it's isolated, or related to the approach.
- obstacle1 14y ago
  >I've seen it happen too many times to think it's isolated, or related to the approach. Can you show us an example of another such time?
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    The people involved usually come to an amicable solution, so there's no need to dredge examples up. It seems to happen any time there's a convention, so you can catch the next one as it happens. You can open a TweetDeck column (or search tab) with the Twitter handle and watch the abuse fly by when it does.

timothyahong 14y ago

Not to mention the spaz going on in the other thread about sendgrid's outage... It doesn't matter if its a DDOS attack or some other outage. A quick scan of the comments leads me to believe quite a few people are actually happy with sendgrid's outage.

scotty79 14y ago

> But the extreme outburst of misogyny - the insults, abuse, and physical threats including threats of rape [...] entire community to recognize that it is still dysfunctional in terms of gender equality. Do you mean community of internet trolls?

freehunter 14y ago

It wasn't wrong for her to address the matter, but she addressed the matter wrong regardless. Taking offense to a random conversation that you're not party to is one thing, but taking a picture of the people and calling up your significant number of followers and media presence in an attempt to ruin the offenders without so much as letting them have their side of the story surely is not in any way defensible. True, the backlash that ensued got very heated, very quickly. But here's the point: both sides are wrong. And as more discussions happen with the parties that were involved, it's seeming like Adria may have even misheard part of what she was taking offense to. So what's the fix? Understanding. Understanding that people will be people, and you can't fix people. If someone is making you feel uncomfortable, talk to them or an authority. What Adria did was just bound to cause more trouble, and she had to know that. I agree with you that there are opportunities to learn the best way to address a real issue when it comes up. The real issue is how a media figure plays off controversy to ruin the lives of people they don't agree with. We need to address that. This has absolutely nothing to do with gender equality.

imsofuture 14y ago

Yes! Thank you!

MartinCron 14y ago

Instead of a learning opportunity, this has turned into an enormous fustercluck I'm still holding some hope that after expending a lot of time and energy trying to distill an extremely gray situation into black and white, the communities involved will have something to learn from this.