
In defence of Douglas Crockford - ramblerman
http://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford
======
BinaryIdiot
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)

~~~
pryce
Nodevember is offering refunds, so it's very hard to see how this could be a
scam, and difficult to imagine how Nodevember would stand to make anything but
a large loss by removing Crockford as a speaker. They chose to proceed with
this anyway, which is indicative of serious concerns.

Removing him as a speaker and remaining quiet about the exact reasons can mean
any number of things.

Suppose they have compelling reasons to believe having him speak would be
harmful, but that they do not have a firm enough basis that they are
comfortable publicising, in which case publishing their rationale could be
both unethical itself and could expose them to legal action.

Or perhaps they have received information in confidence, from sources they
trust, but believe that information received in confidence is not theirs to
publish without consent. Or perhaps their information is alarming and yet
primarily circumstantial from a constellation of different sources.

In essence, there is a fairly wide terrain where it is perfectly warranted to
have deal-breaking levels of concern about a prospective speaker _without_
being in a position to merit publishing accusations against them.

From the responses here, it seems that many struggle to imagine conference
organizers could be placed in such a position. This is exactly kind of bias we
might expect to find in an overly white and male subculture where navigating
these kinds of murky waters is at most a purely hypothetical exercise rather
than a day-to-day reality.

~~~
Corrado
Then again, if you don't have some solid evidence that a talk _will_ be
offensive, how can you ban it. Is this the Minority Report where you are
punished for things you haven't done yet? Mr. Crockford is a leading
Javascript expert, kicking him our of your Javascript conference should only
be done with some very compelling facts not just hearsay and conjecture that
you can't tell anyone about.

~~~
pryce
> Crockford is a leading Javascript expert,

How is this relevant? This idea that we should apply different standards to
"leading Javascript experts" than other people is far more troubling than the
idea that a speaker might be invited to and then disinvited from a conference
from time to time.

> should only be done with some very compelling facts not just hearsay and
> conjecture

I have already given several plausible examples of when a conference could
have grounds enough to rescind a speaker invitation without having the grounds
to make public accusations.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> a speaker might be invited to and then disinvited from a conference from
> time to time

Alright then, nobody ever talk to that offended person in any shape or form
again, ever. No biggie when that happens from time to time, right? And I can
make a good case for it, too, certainly a better one than then non-case we
were being presented with. You can invite her to anything, she can has any
job, just nobody be friends with her. When she asks you something, act deaf.
That's not too much too ask, correct? Totally fair, no biggie, we're not
wearing armbands over here at all.

------
rdtsc
> 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
I don't think they insinuated anything beyond that he apparently made others
uncomfortable.

~~~
iopq
"We have deleted eli's messages from HN because he made others felt
uncomfortable."

~~~
eli
If the HN moderators wanted to do that after reviewing complaints against me,
it's certainly within their rights.

~~~
calgoo
You are missing the point... It does not matter if you feel comfortable or
not. If you dont like something someone says, you dont have to attend. Instead
of ruining a conference for people who dont care that someone uses normal
language to describe things. Heck, I like speakers to be a bit raw, including
people like Linus etc. So what if they are a jerk, I value them on their work,
not their language. Of course I also have a personal limit of what i can
classify as "acceptable", but if someone goes over that limit, i just ignore
and move along. Why would i try to change the speaker or event to cater to me?
Even if it was a slur or comment directed at me, it would be so much easier to
just ignore it. I dont understand what gives these people the balls too try to
publicly shame someone who have produced so much more value to society and
tech then most of these guys combined.

------
bsder
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
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
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.

~~~
madeofpalk
Sorry - I put "private arbitration" in scare quotes because I didn't mean the
formal sense where you have an impartial third-party arbitrator to help
resolve the dispute - I just meant they can resolve whatever disputes there
might be privately.

It was probably a poor choice of words.

~~~
Inconel
Sorry for misunderstanding. Although hopefully the rest of my post still has
some value, particularly as I feel it would be rather hard to settle things
privately after one party has already made public accusations.

------
Tehnix
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
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
> 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?

~~~
MichaelGG
"I removed comments from JSON because I saw people were using them to hold
parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability. I
know that the lack of comments makes some people sad, but it shouldn't.

Suppose you are using JSON to keep configuration files, which you would like
to annotate. Go ahead and insert all the comments you like. Then pipe it
through JSMin before handing it to your JSON parser.﻿"

[https://plus.google.com/+DouglasCrockfordEsq/posts/RK8qyGVaG...](https://plus.google.com/+DouglasCrockfordEsq/posts/RK8qyGVaGSr)

~~~
MaulingMonkey
I'm now significantly less salty about the lack of comments in JSON.

------
whorleater
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)

~~~
Natsu
That said, from your very link I find this:

" douglascrockford commented on Feb 21, 2011

I am sorry I hurt your feelings."

I'll take someone who realizes they made a mistake and apologizes for it any
day over someone who seeks to get rid of all the people they don't like.

~~~
tempestn
Perhaps. In a vacuum I could see reading "I am sorry I hurt your feelings" as
pretty condescending. That's not apologizing for what you said; it's more like
pitying the person for their irrational reaction to it. (Or that's how it
could feel to that person.)

(I'm not saying that's how it was intended or anything. I have no idea. Just
saying this could just as easily be evidence for abrasiveness as against it.
I'll also just note that I don't think someone should be removed from a
conference for mild abrasiveness regardless.)

~~~
angry_octet
You may be thinking of when politicians say "I'm sorry if you found what I
said offensive", or "sorry for an offence your feel", which is a classic anti-
apology.

Normally without the nuance of speech it might be impossible to tell if it was
meant in a genuine way. In this case however the context makes it clear he is
being arrogant and egotistical in a manner quite consistent with techie
internet forum behavior.

The idea of a javascript developer feeling intellectual superiority is of
course absurd.*

* Joke

------
BadassFractal
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
> 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.

~~~
gedy
"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

------
aikah
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
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
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
Whatever was said to the conference organizers was apparently persuasive
enough for them. I'm not in a position to judge.

------
EdSharkey
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?

------
brakmic
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
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
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.

~~~
mrbester
I take issue with that. What you see with UK politicians is a bizarre mix of
the reserve coupled with imported behaviour, sometimes based on the first four
chapters of Machiavelli's The Prince but also the confrontational "I'm right
you're wrong" superority when talking down to the plebs of the electorate.
Most those in Britain who aren't politicians are appalled by this behaviour
and see it as rude, which is why we despise them. As it is also rude to go up
to someone and say "I despise you" we don't and there is a reliance that they
should bloody well know it by our not engaging them, plus we know they
wouldn't listen or care anyway, so why bother?

The expectation that Americans are abrasive is neatly illustrated by your
blaming of a 66 million people in a foreign country for the behaviour of over
300 million people in your own. We also think you're needlessly awkward for
writing dates in the wrong order like the rest of the planet, but the tendency
is to sigh and cope with your eccentric idiosyncrasies instead of calling you
out on it.

Perhaps you were hoping a Brit wouldn't respond as you believe we don't do
"direct response". We most certainly do, but prefer not to as we find it
tedious.

------
throwway1111
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.

~~~
scrollaway
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.

~~~
nhaehnle
It's not related to liberal or left _logically_ , but it _is_ related to the
liberal left _socially_ , because these SJW movements mostly arose from the
liberal left (specifically, IMHO, from the part that somehow lost track of the
scope of real problems - kind of ironic, since it means they're generally a
pretty "privileged" bunch themselves!).

As someone who considers himself to be liberal left, I'm annoyed by that but I
do feel that it's fair to point it out. We shouldn't just bury our head in the
sand in the face of an inconvenient reality.

But yes, let's please point out again and again that large parts of the SJW
movements have lost track of what being liberal and left is all about, even if
that's where they originally started out from.

~~~
stuaxo
It's annoying as they are obscuring the real issues that they purport to be
for, with all this froth and nonsense.

------
robert_tweed
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
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-...](https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-
conferences-with-douglas-crockford-anymore-61bc29f028c8#.fpymdqsnr)

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)

~~~
olalonde
> 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-...](https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-
> conferences-with-douglas-crockford-anymore-61bc29f028c8)

That passive-aggressive "update" is quite telling of his/her personality:
"I’ve switched comments to ‘not visible.’ I won’t be reading them. I don’t
feel the need to justify this, either. Thanks <3."

~~~
IsaacL
"I’ve switched comments to ‘not visible.’ I won’t be reading them. I don’t
feel the need to justify this, either. Thanks <3."

Ironically, that language "triggered" very bad memories of an extremely
dishonest and passive-aggressive person I once worked with.

------
tptacek
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
> 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.

~~~
tptacek
Virtually every code of conduct will prohibit misogyny. But that's part of
what Crockford seems to have been accused of. The problem isn't judging the
underlying issues; the problem is judging whether they're really manifest in a
particular speaker, or whether (instead) that speaker just happened to piss
someone off with a grudge.

Again: there could be stuff going on here that we don't get to know about.

~~~
ajamesm
"misogyny" meaning... being a misogynist? being labeled a misogynist? a
documented history of sexual harassment? being a man raised in Western
society? using misogynist language? the "B-word" or the "C-word"? talking over
another panelist? forcible rape? eating miso soup? being socially awkward?
getting called out on Twitter? having pictures of half-naked women in your
slide deck, as a build-up to a joke? trying to pick up women?

I would hope that we all agree on "no misogyny" as an ideal, but that means a
lot of different things to a lot of different people. What is the actionable
threshold? Both personally, and for your community? (Rhetorical question.)

The reader might say "now you're infantilizing convention attendees" and I
don't disagree. Over-specifying behavioral standards is indeed infantilizing.
But I would say that, to the degree you refuse to specify acceptable behavior,
you waive your right to criticize arbitrary action taken by the management.

~~~
tptacek
I can't tell whether we agree or not. The idea that misogyny is such a third-
rail issue that anything you can six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon connect to it is
lethal? That's (to me) repellant, and if Crockford is being uninvited from
this conference because of his "strong stuff in programs" bit, that's
ridiculous --- in the sense of, "worthy of ridicule".

That's my point: these things are judgement calls. There aren't simple rules.
To me, sound judgement suggests that making allusions to physical strength as
part of a metaphor about code is perfectly all right (you might not like the
metaphor, but you might not like lots of things Crockford says).

~~~
ajamesm
I didn't mean that it's a third-rail issue, but rather that different
communities (and the individuals within) can have completely different
standards of what constitutes "misogyny" and it's better to have discussion
about it beforehand rather than after an incident, and it's a mistake to
assume judgment calls are obvious. If they were, this thread wouldn't exist,
right?

Fundamentally, I'm wary of any argument that relies upon "sound judgment" when
we see time and again that there is no consensus on what that is. It's like
when you see "clearly" in a math paper. OBVIOUSLY it isn't clear to me,
otherwise I wouldn't be reading it.

Online communities have values re: misogyny that range in permissiveness from
"ban men entirely" (your 'safe space') to the 4chan /b/ model. You can see
that there is indeed a spectrum of opinion and that the entire spectrum is
dense with examples, and surely everyone thinks theirs is the most reasonable
in that given circumstance.

In the extreme 'safe space' model, someone like Crockford would be right out
for (e.g.) the implicit misogyny in reflexively valuing masculine physical
strength over more typically feminine attributes. You could counter "but the
community is not that kind of safe space and doesn't require that level of
metaphorical precision" (and I would agree with you entirely) but then we're
having a discussion about our common expectations around a community's values.

You can decide, in your experience, that your particular set of biases reflect
the zeitgeist. You can conclude "my ruling will alienate the least amount of
people" or "this action will give people the sense that justice has been done"
with whatever ethical or societal minmaxing strategy you choose. The core task
is this: we live in a world that includes all of white nationalists,
misogynists, deeply traumatized people who feel pain simply from reading
certain words, and all manner of non-normative people; who are you going to
exclude, and will you do it implicitly or explicitly? "Just the shitty,
grudge-holding radical feminists on Twitter" is a low-hanging fruit, there are
plenty other groups to consider.

~~~
tptacek
That is not my counter regarding Crockford. Rather, my judgement tells me that
the notion that physical strength is inherently "masculine" in some way that
excludes non-masculine people is nonsensical. I don't accept it, and so the
whole argument falls apart.

------
tootie
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.

~~~
tzs
> 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.

~~~
IsaacL
Dude, dude, dude, you've almost identified the real issue here (interpreting
everything as harassment for the sake of an agenda), and then gone off onto
wild elaborate tangents about social status and evolutionary biology.

Look at the actual people who incite these campaigns (e.g.,
[https://twitter.com/nexxylove/status/771503661956501504](https://twitter.com/nexxylove/status/771503661956501504)).

"Don't bother to examine a folly, ask yourself only what it accomplishes".
These people have a laser-focused sensitivity on actions which make certain
groups _feel unwelcome_. They can't be unaware of the messages they themselves
are sending. Who are they trying to make _feel unwelcome_?

~~~
PavlovsCat
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBRGMcdAKzs&t=13m15s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBRGMcdAKzs&t=13m15s)

"I have a theory, feel free to prove me wrong by "kicking out" "toxic actors",
I dare you".

The sad part is, I think she does have a point. People who treat each other
decently might soon enough LEARN to be great coders, while being good at
something is really no excuse to be a dick. Not that I think Crockford is one,
but generally speaking; the better you are, the more polite you ought to be
towards "little ones", or you're an asshole. But the whole logic of let's
prove it by assuming it's true, with ZERO thought given to what to do if it
turns out wrong, is just one gaping wound of a brainfart, I'm just astonished.
I'm not not just saying that to be snarky: it does remind me of things Hannah
Arendt wrote about totalitarian propaganda, e.g. someone is declared as unfit
to live and then killed, proving the theory correct, with some pseudo-
scientific, pseudo-compassionate babble on the side. Oh, but they're "just"
declaring people as non-existing for them and any decent person, so that's
different, right? Well, not different enough to be acceptable. One way in
which it is the SAME is that the words are just a bunch of hot air and
sophistry, the standards are all double - it's all about the action, the
movement, the in-group. You don't have to build concentration camps for there
to be something deeply wrong with that.

> They can't be unaware of the messages they themselves are sending.

Oh, as foot soldiers of course they can be unaware. Between
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)
there isn't anything anyone cannot get themselves to believe.

------
labrador
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)

------
shruubi
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
> 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
Yep, I consciously made an effort to avoid PyCon after Dongle-gate

------
thomasfoster96
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
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
Yeah that's called bullying, or blackmail, from one side and cowardly
appeasement from the other.

------
aidenn0
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
"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
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.

------
Naracion
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)"

------
aaron695
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
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.

------
qwertyuiop924
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.

------
cel1ne
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.

------
tomohawk
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
THIS! +1million

------
vvdcect
This is a pastebin of a nodevember slack channel
[http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG](http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG) .

~~~
kowdermeister
It was so painful to read. It's like they are marching toward the "Safe place"
South Park episode with full thrust.

------
empressplay
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.

------
voidr
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
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.

------
DanielBMarkham
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.

------
danso
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_1463e54...](http://original.livestream.com/etsy/video?clipId=pla_1463e546-47ed-4a93-b59a-bd52b236e8b8)

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
_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_\(China\)).

~~~
danso
I think the hypothetical argument would be that "whore", in our current time
period, is not only primarily used as an insult, but it's one that seems to be
disproportionately directed against women. Not just today, but in our very
recent history (on a sidenote, I wonder how easy the gender association of
"whore" could be quantified by looking at Google's n-gram dataset).

Sure, you could argue that "whore" is used against men, e.g. "He's such a
manwhore". Just like someone could persuadively argue that their habit of
wearing Confederate flag t-shirts has nothing to do with 19th-century American
thinking about slavery. But we make judgments based on a spectrum of
pragmatism and likelihoods, and we can make our own decisions to attend or
avoid events that invite or disinvite such folks.

In the case of Crockford, I fully support the right for Nodevember to have its
own threshold for what makes someone too much of a jerk to be a fit for their
audience. And I personally wouldn't be inclined to go to such a conference,
because I think that that threshold would likely exclude too many people
besides Crockford, such that the event doesn't seem worth my time or travel
expenses

~~~
kedean
He didn't say 'whore', though, that's the point. This person inferred 'whore'
from 'promiscuous'.

~~~
nkurz
_He didn 't say 'whore', though, that's the point_

Sorry to be snippy, but no, that's not the point. That's your point, and one
possible counter argument. The worry is that while true, it's weak and
specific, and leaves the way open to further attacks. By concentrating on the
counterfactual I'm trying to address a broader issue.

 _This person inferred 'whore' from 'promiscuous'._

Who is "this person"? I don't think anyone inferred this -- it's a
counterfactual. In particular, Perch did not use the term 'whore':
[https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-
at-...](https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-
conferences-with-douglas-crockford-anymore-61bc29f028c)

 _I think it 's also worth noting that the word 'promiscuous' already has a
history in computers._

Both I and 'danso' know the meaning of 'promiscuous' with regard to packet
snooping. We didn't mention it here because it's amply discussed elsewhere,
and because it's not relevant to the discussion we are having. The real
question, as with "daemon processes" and "master and slave relationships" is
whether this usage is appropriate today, not whether the usage has precedent.

------
cel1ne
We live in the post-descartes era. The principle now seems to be _" I feel,
therefore I am."_

------
justaaron
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!)

------
zimbatm
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?

------
AzzieElbab
Douglas Crockford is an adult and has no business attending gatherings run by
bickering children

------
Garbage
Official statement from Nodevember -
[http://nodevember.org/statement.html](http://nodevember.org/statement.html)

------
jondubois
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.

------
desireco42
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
He used a regular Dell laptop when I saw him speak about a year ago.

------
georgemcbay
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.

------
prance
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-...](https://modelviewculture.com/news/lambda-conf-fuckery-white-
supremacy-under-the-guise-of-inclusion)

~~~
atom-morgan
Nodevember's statement was released after my blog post. In fact, I believe my
blog post helped in leading them to releasing their statement.

------
squall7
[http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/...](http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/offensensitivity.gif)

The pendulum ever swings, don't let it hit you on its way back.

------
sigmaml
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".

------
jstewartmobile
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.

------
fahrradflucht
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
Why should someone's unrelated political views get him uninvited from a
conference?

------
shripadk
This is ridiculous. How in the world can those statements amount to
sexism/slut-shaming?

~~~
sjwright
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.

------
cheez
Why is it always developer evangelists and never developers?

------
csanch4
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
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
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.

~~~
aikah
What do you think happened in Lambda Conf this year? no community is safe from
this warfare.

------
nopit
Why is crybullying so rampant in the tech community?

~~~
oldmanjay
Because there is a lot of money and power, which attracts politics, of which
"crybullying" is a tactical maneuver.

Also, it's a terrible word in an aesthetic sense. People don't try to bring
much elegance to neologisms these days. Such a pity.

~~~
cgcardona
I'm generally interested in why you think it's a terrible word in the
aesthetic sense? thx.

~~~
oldmanjay
Because it conflicts with my sense of English aesthetics. Sorry for not
supplying anything more interesting than that but it is what it is.

Edit: I thought a little further about it, and I can expand a bit. It's in the
unhappy valley between too clever and not clever enough. Sort of like
referring to Comcast as comcrap.

------
borplk
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.

------
mgkimsal
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
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
"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.

------
joeevans1000
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'.

------
fsaneq2
Is HN being censored? Why is this not on the front page, with 611 votes as of
right now?

------
galfarragem
This is a schizofrenic community. Probably the same people that push for a
free web, police the words used by others.

------
ramblenode
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.

------
throwawayspon
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.

------
discordianfish
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
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.

------
jhummel
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.

~~~
mcantelon
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.

------
finishingmove
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.

------
colordrops
This whole story seems like a joke or a social experiment.

------
hasteur
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."

------
fstopzero
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.

------
xwvvvvwx
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
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.

------
setheron
People are so overly sensitive. It is the events loss.

------
forgottenacc56
We smash people for this and don't blink an eyelid to the violence and privacy
violations of our government.

------
ben_jones
Of note is that one of Crockford's accusers is a "developer evangelist" at
Salesforce.

------
nnq
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))

------
caseymarquis
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
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.

------
meddlepal
This is fucking rediculous. Slut shaming? How about opinion shaming?

------
Fifer82
Who gives a fuck about Nodevember??

------
GirlsCanCode
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.

~~~
jacalata
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-
par...](https://sendgrid.com/blog/explained-developer-evangelism-parents/)

~~~
labrador
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.

------
justinlardinois
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.

------
radus
Missed title opportunity: Crockford: The Good Parts

------
rhapsodic
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.

------
douche
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.

------
ebbv
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.

------
forgottenacc56
Defamation. That's the word I've been looking for.

~~~
ino
Marketing strategy: raising awareness to their conference by means of
defamation of a fairly known person in the JS programming circle.

------
DonHopkins
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
"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
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.

~~~
inopinatus
Maybe it depends on your origins or age, but I'm over forty and attended a
conservative religious school, and it boggles even me that anyone considers
"he" the current generic/default pronoun.

~~~
iopq
I learned English in my teens and I use "he" as the default pronoun because
that's what everyone uses.

~~~
scbrg
Indeed. It would be great if everyone who claims that gender neutral pronouns
should be used could give a few examples, at least for us non native speakers.
I get strange looks whenever I refer to people (hypothetical, or not) as "it",
which would be the obvious gender neutral pronoun.

~~~
niftich
Currently it's 'they'. Yes, there's some confusion about whether it refers to
one person or more, but that confusion already exists with 'you', in all
except regional usages.

~~~
mpweiher
The difference is that "you" can be grammatically singular or plural, whereas
"they" is definitely grammatically plural.

"they gives me the shivers"

~~~
hermanhermitage
In, "they give me the shivers", they is singular.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they)

~~~
mpweiher
You did see that I made a distinction between _grammatically_ and
_semantically_ , right?

Grammatically, the "they" is clearly plural, as it is used with the plural
verb form "give" and not the singular "gives".

Look up "subject verb agreement".

~~~
Dylan16807
"they" and "you" act exactly the same way. Which is no surprise, because both
are originally plural. What difference are you referring to?

------
laser
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
> 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
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
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.

~~~
prance
I meant "owe" more like as in "you owe me one". If contractual obligations for
ticket holders exist, I guess they'd have to offer a refund.

Regarding the other meaning, I could only repeat myself: they state that some
other speakers have big problems with Crockford, and that they chose them over
him. I think it's totally ok for them to do that, even without providing more
information.

In fact, it's totally conceivable that revealing more information could hurt
more people, or the same people more, or Crockford himself, or all of this. I
fail to see how it would "advance humanity" if they did such a thing.

~~~
justaaron
it's conceivable, and that's the issue...

innuendo ALSO says something...

it says: these charges are big enough and serious enough to grant anonomity to
said "other speakers" and grant secrecy to the stated charges.

Bottom line: they are a private entity and can do whatever they wish to, more
or less, however, I don't consider their petty behavior reasonable in any way,
especially given the context and further info released, inadvertently or
otherwise...(pastebin of Slack conversation)

"The correct thing for the organization to do" is also not really a matter of
our public concern. They have already made their move, and it's shameful and
wrong, IMO.

Our public concern (that which WILL advance humanity) lies in crucifying such
behavior as this conference organizer has displayed, to discourage further
disgusting displays of intellectual cowardice and perversion of REAL social
justice issues.

Once you let privileged bullies grasp a bit of power, they don't tend to let
go. It's really quite oppressive, and makes me uncomfortable. (and yes, the
ability to get a keynote speaker thrown-off in a public and last minute
fashion is a kind of power and privilege wielded like a true oppressor.)

It's certainly not an environment conducive to the safe spaces they seem to be
verbally wishing to achieve...

(censorship via an insulting combo of an invitation and then rescinding it in
order to no-platform said speaker based upon flimsy evidence of flimsy charges
that don't hold-up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. Were "everyones" comfort
actually considered in the slightest, the organizers would already have
developed a tactic for dealing with troublemakers as such.)

~~~
prance
Your arguments only make sense if you assume that the people refusing to speak
if Crockford is there are the bullies, while they and the organisers seem to
say that Crockford is the bully. Who is right? We cannot know from the
available facts.

If you believe the organisers' reasons to disinvite him were not "good enough"
(whatever that is), well, then just don't go there or get a refund.

