She's talking about some guy and his "campaign to legalize rape".
I thought she was exaggerating or maybe misunderstanding something. Sure, this guy is probably an asshole, but legalizing rape, come on!
I followed the link and... it is kind of almost entertaining. He means it. Literally. You can't stop reading that trainwreck of an argument, because it gets worse and worse.
And then you've lost all hope in mankind. I thought I knew what misogyny was about, but that is absolutely breathtaking.
A big problem is that many people won't believe a woman's complaints if it falls anything short of something as blatant as this. People like that guy are the easy cases.
I read an article the other day about devastating, long-term harassment that one person suffered. She had a dream where she was physically attacked by a harasser -- stabbed with a knife. In this dream her primary feeling was one of overwhelming relief. Why? Because the harasser had done something so obviously wrong that her complaints could now not possibly be ignored. She woke up disappointed.
> I followed the link and... it is kind of almost entertaining. He means it. Literally.
He means it in the same way Jonathan Swift meant that cannibalism should be legalized and the Irish should be allowed to sell their children as food in "A Modest Proposal" [1].
It's what one of the comments they quoted at the end said. Terrible, terrible attempt at satire, and he should be mocked for it. But come on, no one is actually for legalizing rape.
Randi talked about several different guys. Her main beef seems to be with the unnamed FreeBSD committer.
She refers to other people ("neo-nazi friends") with whom that person communicates on twitter / etc., one of whom is rooshv, who wrote that absurd "campaign to legalize rape" article.
He writes such extreme things to get a reaction (and a following of complete morons). Attention is oxygen in that business. Not that that makes it any better of course. Notice how you said it's "almost entertaining", well, that's what he's aiming for.
OK, so if that's true, then by treating him as a legitimate member of the community and not making any sort of statement against his views, the FreeBSD project is giving him attention, and they should stop doing that. Which is exactly what Randi asked for.
It's one thing if you keep your horrible-person persona separate from your technical one (as e.g. the Strange Loop thing earlier this year), although I still think it's legitimate to say that's too much. But when someone is deliberately tying their work in a project with their views that drive out other people from that same project, it's not giving them attention to kick them out. It's giving them attention to keep them in.
He should have been expelled the second he was harshly transphobic to me, e.g., calling me a "tranny." I'm the trans woman Randi talks about in that article. There were many times he should have been kicked out, but in the end nobody cared enough about women's issues, or there was no real recourse for such.
But since that didn't happen, Randi is trying to bring attention to the fact that the above isn't how things work.
EDIT TO CLARIFY: the man I'm referring to is the FreeBSD contributor Randi Harper speaks of in the article, not the voosh guy.
I have no feelings of transphobia whatsoever and it's only within the past year or so that I learned that "tranny" is offensive. This is not me saying that his comment wasn't transphobic (because how would I know? but you certainly would)
I don't understand how that could ever come up. How you being trans has any bearing whatsoever at all in your involvement with the community.
You don't have to like it(trans), or understand it; but you do have to accept it, and be accepting. And there's just no excuse or room for that kind of thing in a project. Maybe on 4chan and maybe on reddit, but not in an OSS project. Who the fuck acts like that? I just don't get it.
I would bet you that I've been called "jew" more times than you been called a "tranny" over the internet usually followed by about 20min of heil hitler spam and other funny jokes from various IRC bots, I just shrugged it off....
It seems weird to say "this shitty thing happens to me too" and instead of commiserating and saying "this shitty thing shouldn't happen to anyone" you essentially say "stop complaining."
"this shitty thing shouldn't happen to anyone" you are not going to abolish "harassment" (I intentionally used quotation marks I don't some one who uses slur or thinks you shouldn't exist as harassment just another idiot with an opinion...) from human cloture it's included in the price you pay for living in a free society where free speech is an actuality and not a slogan.
You won't cure the world of idiots, troll, or even simply cruel people and the price you'll pay in trying is way too high for my taste.
I'm not entirely sure that it's to the advantage of an operating system development project to have free speech as an ideal.
At the very least, there's the empirical argument that the major operating systems are overwhelmingly developed by private corporations, and you can be sure that if a developer said "hey, this new hire is getting his white supremacist followers on Twitter to attack me," the new hire wouldn't be working on that project very much more. And we generally don't find the price of this less-than-free speech too much to pay.
Can you explain why it helps develop a better net installer or Linux emulation layer to be able to use slurs against fellow developers?
What this has to do with software development? A COC has nothing to do with software development it's not enforcing anything related to actually committing code and collaborating.
A COC forces you to be compliant to it every where on social media, on regular media, in person, on private forums... everywhere - this is thought police.
A COC forces you to "hide" your personal beliefs, ideas, who you vote for who you donate money to etc. on the off chance they might be considered offensive to some one.
We already had a CEO who had to resign due to a political donation, COC's will have the same effect you post something offensive on facebook? you're out, you go to a political rally that some one finds offensive? well though luck.
If COC's only covered official project channels no one would care about them, and the people that want them would not push with such vigor because they could not be used for thought policing.
On a side note I find it ironic that people who had to hide who they are for most of history and maybe for most of their lives want to force the same thing on other people just because of their personal beliefs.
And on another side note the wworse of the humanity tends to fester in dark rooms when things are out in the open you know here everyone stands and you can ridicule them for that if you want.
> On a side note I find it ironic that people who had to hide who they are for most of history and maybe for most of their lives want to force the same thing on other people just because of their personal beliefs.
I love how you're comparing the choice of being a person who dehumanizes and threatens vulnerable people as like... a demographic to compare to being a woman, or being trans, etc.
This thread is the most depressing thing I've read on Hacker News in months. I completely agree with you, dogma1138. You and I appear to be only ones who don't view the world through justice-colored glasses and who understand that attempting to enforce strict ideological conformity is self-defeating.
You should read the news more. This is not the most depressing thing to happen in months by a long stretch. Maybe you'd have an easier time getting over simple disagreements with other people if you, you know, got some perspective.
Most people tend to stay away from such threads as they will quickly get downvoted and flagged and will either be buried like most comments on this post that or will be deleted like some of the early comments here that got stomped over.
People tend to downvote comments that they do not agree with (regardless of HN rules) which leads to either self censorship (not commenting in the first place or deletion of comments that get a few down-votes) or actual censorship as comments which get downvoted to -10 get buried by the HN system.
> I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.
> IIRC we first had this conversation about a month after launch. Downvotes have always been used to express disagreement. Or more precisely, a negative score has: users seem not to downvote something they disagree with if it already has a sufficiently negative score.
If someone mourns for a death do you just say "well everyone dies, suck it up?" — no, because that's ridiculous. So when someone is being harassed why say "it happens to everyone so get over it"? Why go out of your way to invalidate how someone feels about something?
where free speech is an actuality and not a slogan.
Harassment isn't protected speech, and that's beyond the point because this isn't an issue of free speech at all.
the price you'll pay in trying is way too high for my taste
Someone in an organized community was being harassed, and they're upset that leadership of that community didn't seem to think it was a problem. The price being paid is that someone harassing a community member isn't part of the community anymore. That's a high price?
"Someone in an organized community was being harassed"
Note that one of the twists & turns in this sorry saga was that the same freebsd developer submitted a documented harassment complaint against Randi. The freebsd CoC was in effect by this time, but it doesn't seem like it was helpful.
That's an american definition, all forms of speech should be protected even hate speech, when hate is being pushed to the sidelines it only festers and becomes worse, let it be in the open and let it be ridiculed.
>Someone in an organized community was being harassed
Some one claimed to be harassed (there's a very thick and really not one sided story behind all this), considering the authors day to day activities allot of the things she does are also harassment or is calling out some one all the time for their beliefs is only harassment if those beliefs are currently socially progressive?
>The price being paid is that someone harassing a community member isn't part of the community anymore. That's a high price?
Well the price in this case was that she wasn't in the community any more, mostly because of her doing I would guess but I really don't want to get into that.
Communities tend to cast out the ones that cause the most disturbance and disturbance is often not a person who aggravates some one but a person who gets aggravated allot, usually by many people and about many issues.
Most communities are self managing (and do it quite well) if you find your self out of place all the time and being constantly cast out and "harassed" even if you are in the right it might be worth the time to take a deep look at one self and understand how you can adapt better and what different actions you might be able to take to avoid that because clearly; dichotomy and my way or the high way doesn't work and even in cases when it does it won't work for long and at the end will might be your own undoing because there always will be a more progressive agenda that will just as easily hijack the current one as yours did before it.
I really miss the days when progressiveness was about open dialog, accepting others and most importantly being open to your own ideas being challenged as much as you challenge the ideas of others, today progressiveness especially in online communities boils down to some unholy checklist which gets updated every so often with the latest social fab being mandatory for maintaining membership privileges.
Every time you step out the door do you wonder if you'll be killed for who you are? Do you worry that you can't go to the police for who you are? Do you ever worry about fighting an entire legal and medical system to be who you are?
Not that it's worth a whole lot, but Mr. 'legalize rape' Roosh and the person being discussed in the OP are separate persons. The latter is explicit friends with the former.
Don't do this. It's implying that people should just "not be hurt by it and move on." ... That the problem is with the people reacting. Surely, I agree that giving attention to stuff often fuels the flames, but the answer isn't to place the burden on the victims. The answer is to actually DEAL with the issue and have shit HAPPEN to make people (women, trans, queer, minorities) safer!
Before googling Randi's name with some relevant keywords I had no idea about the amount of people past puberty that are behaving like this. I was about to say that I'm glad I've never met their kind, but then I remembered that I actually have: in highschool.
No idea what happened to them, I assumed they grew up and the few that didn't, found their place at the very bottom of society that is not good for anything.
To them usually it's not really about genre, race or any particular property, their disturbed mentality causes them to look for ways to attack and inconvenience anyone they don't like for any reason. I actually think they're even looking for an excuse to find a target, because they are amused by the whole thing and it makes them feel good and important.
I can see how many of them would make it as gamers, I'm just surprised that a person like this would also make it as a FreeBSD committer.
I wonder why they silently forced him to turn his commit bit off, but they don't want to update their CoC or condemn this behaviour in public.
The stealth editing of the Trademark Policy to include this particular case (even though they missed the exception for old uses, which made that change pointless) also deserves some explanation, it's wrong.
Wow, really disgusting to hear how FreeBSD core reacted to this. I've read through a lot of the source materials; she hasn't been perfect in every move; but that's she's been able to be so level headed and professional about it in the face of an onslaught of sexism, intimidation and smear campaigns is... nothing short of a miracle.
I don't care about any argument of if she's ever committed, or if her code is any good; that's bike shedding and irrelevant to the fact that no HUMAN BEING should be treated this way, let alone in a leading open source project.
> The next communication from core asked me to stop talking about this publicly. They told me to tell everyone it was being solved through private mediation, and that the problem committer was on vacation for a week, so they didn’t want to do anything about it until he got back.
WHAT
> I had talked to someone from the FreeBSD Foundation earlier on the phone about what was happening. During this same conversation, they actually said “maybe you should be nicer.”
THE
> A week later, I received an email from this person threatening to involve the FreeBSD Foundation lawyers if I didn’t change my username immediately. They tried to pass it off as a trademark infringement
ACTUAL
> The FreeBSD Foundation had stealth added ‘usernames’ just prior to her sending that email, adding the word but not updating the date at the top.
FUCK
The shit she's had to go through makes me lose hope for humanity. While the way she's handled it has restored it. We need more people in tech like this, and I'm glad she's putting up such a fight.
It would be easy for anyone to just be a loudspeaker for change; but she's actually getting her hands dirty, talking to people, and engaging about it, and learning and sharing along the way. I seriously doubt most of us would have the gumption and fortitude to handle this the way she has.
Sounds like they're a bunch of dude-nerds who want to handle every problem as if it were a technical problem. Their "process" seems tantamount to separating the two sides and telling them to sit down and shut up.
That's a not-unreasonable policy when we're talking about a technical debate that becomes acrimonious It's a terrible policy when we're talking about threats or threatening behavior by one party against another.
My experience is that most dude-nerds are oblivious by default to those sorts of non-technical, purely human issues. It's made all the worse because their behavior is more-or-less indistinguishable from genuinely malicious behavior. From the perspective of the person being threatened, it doesn't make much practical difference whether they're doing it out of ineptitude or malice.
I still, deep inside, hold a dwindling hope that all humans can one day learn to treat humans as humans. Basically, literally, to treat others as they themselves would like to be treated. As humans.
It saddens me to hear of times when that doesn't happen, particularly in such devastating ways that affect someone's life so fundamentally.
I just spent far too long reading both of those links, and I don't see anything there that contradicts anything Randi said in her post.
If someone is regularly and routinely attacked (and all the bullshit about "Randi can't code" / "Randi hasn't contributed" is just obnoxious), it's reasonable for them to be pissed off and get angry. That doesn't somehow negate the fact that they were badly mistreated.
In hindsight, it's telling that people making the above comments are posting links to longreads and not citing anything specific--just seems like more of the misogynistic campaign.
I think it's rather telling that this "exposé" Blogpost doesn't link to anything actually incriminating and tries to call someone a "rape apologist with neonazi friends" based on supposedly who they might have talked to once on Twitter, since there are links to RooshV who doesn't seem to have anything to do with the entire matter or FreeBSD in any way, but no links to what the accused supposedly did wrong. The links I posted indicate the moment these two people intersected, after Randi Harper was furious someone didn't like the idea of "safe spaces" and "Code of Conducts" and went after him, herself acting like a harasser on IRC and otherwise.
Not to say that this is not the only or first time Randi has behaved like this or done this to someone if you are aware of her larger Online presence, for instance she did it to Vivek Wadhwa: http://www.stopthegrbullies.com/2015/06/01/randi-harpers-bul...
What exposing someone who pretends to lead an "Online Abuse Prevention Initiative" while being one of the biggest abusers has to do with a "misogynistic campaign" you'll have to explain.
It's very basic DARVO. It's a pattern of pathological behaviour with this person of attacking/going after someone and calling everyone that calls it out "bullies" or "harassers".
Thanks for the more specific links. She's definitely a strong activist for what she believes, and can certainly dish it out. I don't think any of that necessarily negates bad things that have happened to her, nor does it validate the long list of bad behavior directed toward her after her post.
For me, I think it comes down to who's outnumbered. I'm willing to give her the overall benefit of the doubt because I've seen the misogyny consistently over the past fifteen years I've been in the industry. I can't judge how much PTSD I would have after dealing with the harassment I've read just around this post she's made.
No. Even if she has been victimized, that does not give her the right to engage in sustained harassment and blacklisting campaigns against third parties. If she is suffering from such terrible PTSD that she cannot keep herself from lashing out at undeserving victims, I feel for her but she needs psychiatric care, not enabling comments such as we are seeing on this post.
Incidentally, the original definition of the word "privilege" is "private law." I'll leave that to others to decide how that applies to granting one person the permission to engage in the same harassing behaviors she wants others punished for.
I never said that it "gave her the right" to do anything. I said that it did not negate the bad things that happened to her. I said that we should not ignore the very serious and legitimate issues she raises because she's gotten very angry at people.
And here's the fundamental issue I see in all of these debates: the majority (here, young white males) tries to invalidate completely legitimate concerns because the person raising those legitimate concerns has done things that one can criticize.
You can see this rampantly in links that are provided to somehow negate her claim. "She's not a real contributor to FreeBSD, so her claims are invalid." "She gets angry at people, so her claims are invalid."
Look, Rodney King was not innocent of all crimes when he was badly beaten by the LAPD. Does that excuse those cops? Of course not. The only germane "counter-evidence" to Randi's post would be evidence that the FreeBSD has actually be incredibly and consistently welcoming to her. Because fundamentally her claim is that the FreeBSD community has been decidedly unwelcome to her. And yet all the "counter-arguments" here are repeated and painful reminders of how nasty and awful the "counter-arguers" are to her. It's mind-boggling.
Vivek Wadhwa wrote a book that she didn't like and upon being "criticized" even offered a free copy of it, she declined and told him to go die in a fire.
Anne Rice called attention to an article about this and she was declared a "bully" and a "harasser".
Ted Neward never had any conversations with her when she asked for him to be "driven out of the industry" and Iris Classon pleaded to be left alone because Randi was trying to use her for her own purposes.
Roberto Rosario was put on a "list of harassers" by her because he followed the "wrong kind of people" on Twitter and got subsequently harassed and she tried to get him removed from speaking at conferences.
These people ARE HER VICTIMS, not the other way around. She initiates these things. Similar with the FreeBSD community, this is the first time Johannes Meixner has ever talked to her, his supposed wrongdoing previously was that he criticized "safe spaces" and "Code of Conducts" saying that he agrees with this: https://github.com/domgetter/NCoC
Again she attacked him privately telling him to "go fuck himself", that he is a "piece of shit", a "privileged dumbass" and that he is supposedly "giving the project a bad name" while all he did was remaining calm and saying that he has different opinions: https://archive.is/9KGyX
Randi is just trying to change cause and effect. Nobody was "beaten by the police" in this case and most of these people didn't even know of her existence before. SHE is the harasser/abuser in most of these situations, if you have any proof pointing out otherwise, please feel free to share.
Her post is about how she felt profoundly unwelcome in the FreeBSD community. Your response is not a counter-argument to her feeling unwelcome. As far as I can tell, your response is, "Randi did bad things." That's a non-sequitur. It's not a response to her feelings of being made to feel unwelcome.
If you had a germane response, I am guessing it would be, "Randi should feel unwelcome, because she is not a good person." If that's your response, you're not actually disagreeing with her. She said she felt unwelcome, you're basically saying, "Good. Yes. That's a good result."
Why would I respond to "her feelings" when the facts of the matter is that SHE actually attacked and insulted/harassed the person she portrays as an evil harasser, and not the other way around? My response is that her account of what happened is wholly inaccurate and tries to reverse victim and perpetrator e.g. DARVO or "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender"
Not to say that she hasn't provided any proof for many of the claims made.
How do "her feelings" in any way matter over the facts of the situation? This doesn't make sense, I can't discuss anything based on "other people's feelings".
That's crossing the line of civility and you are actively making derogatory remarks of another HN member. who are you to judge her mental state? are you a doctor? Do you have a degree in psychology? No you don't.
You might read what happened and come to a different conclusion than what others have. That's fine. But you are making personal attacks with statements like that, and that has no place in this discussion. at all.
It's the commenter above me who was insinuating that someone was so mentally traumatized that they couldn't help but lash out at innocent parties; if you find that insinuation uncivil, perhaps you should direct your remarks in that commenter's direction, not mine.
I have zero problem with everything you've listed here that she's said and done. You link to these things like they are incriminating evidence; I just see someone pushing back against an onslaught on bullshit.
Your first example is literally a bad amazon book review. Did you see what she said?
> The author Vivek Wadhwa spends his time harassing women on twitter when they try to call him out on his approaches to feminism. He's not interested in inviting conversation, but instead thinks it's acceptable to intimidate and silence women from his book's twitter account when criticism is directed at his personal account. He's using feminism to profit, and not because he actually believes in empowering women. This is despicable behavior, and it's been confirmed by multiple women at this point.
> If you want to read about how to empower women, actually buy a book that has a woman listed first on the cover, at the very least. Even the highlighted review on his website is by a man. Men that are actually trying to help feminism don't profit off of it, financially or with cred. They empower women's voices and amplify them. While this may be a collection of contributions by women, Vivek's behavior online casts doubt on his intentions.
> No, thanks. I already know what it's like to be an empowered woman in tech, and to have men like Vivek Wadhwa speaking down to me.
Yeah she's REALLY going after someone with that kinda language. You know want that is? that's her OPINIONS. She's not attacking him, calling him names, trying to intimidate him.
At no point did she say he was fat, ugly, should go join ISIS, that she's rape his ass with a dildo at his next book signing, or leave a project he's been involved with for years.
She's attacking his behavior, not his personhood. That's called being mature, and civil.
That you had all these links ready to go... leads me to question your bias towards the matter.
But nothing you posted is of any actual merit or counterpoint to what she's said in her post.
"I have zero problem with everything you've listed here that she's said and done."
Then you might want to rethink your convictions regarding harassment and abuse, seeing as she's engaged in these things unrepentingly and repeatedly over time periods of years. As I've pointed out in the other comment above, none of these people had anything to do with her before she decided to attack them. Vivek Wadhwa among them least of all, he even offered her a copy of his book for free, which had many testimonials of "women in tech": https://twitter.com/randileeharper/status/522547854477246464
"You link to these things like they are incriminating evidence; I just see someone pushing back against an onslaught on bullshit."
No. You are depersonalizing her actions as "pushing back" against some impersonal force. What she actually did was engage in sustained harassment, bullying, and blacklisting campaigns against specific individual human beings.
You can, and lots of people will, wave their hands and ignore/belittle FreeBSDGirl's account. Certainly the trolls will.
But, it is just another example that the larger tech community has a problem. GamerGate et al, they are not fantasies. Women who want to create, same as any developer, getting SWAT teams sent to their homes, this stuff is real, and indicates a real problem.
Ask yourself, are you helping fix this behavior? Because if not, then you are part of the problem.
As someone who didn't really follow the whole controversy the past years, this was an eye-opener for me. Did it really get that bad?
Stop tolerating the intolerant! Also, I don't understand the point of GamerGate. As an outsider, all I see is two groups making themselves look really bad and everyone else loosing. You don't convince others by threatening and harassing them, something the extremes at both sides seem to do. Why?
By the way, note how she did not mention the harasser's username in her post.
I don't follow you on that last bit, about noticing how she didn't mention the username. I feel like you mean to imply something, but maybe I'm not following?
I like that she didn't, since it emphasizes that this is not about that particular conflict, but the way it has been handled. She could have mentioned his name in an effort to make him look bad (this post will probably get a lot of attention), but she didn't.
ahh, thanks for clarifying, wasn't sure if you were implying something else.
In regards to your question, yes things got bad, unfortunately what is hard to see from the outside, is that the vast majority of the harassment was originally done by outside third parties who just wanted to troll two groups. They harassed some people (mostly women) then said they were part of GamerGate. This wasn't even remotely true, and they admitted to this. Unfortunately the other side got caught up in the harassment and the claim that was done by GamerGate to ever actually think, "Why would this person who is harassing me (which is illegal) mention they were part of GamerGate (which was originally about Games Media, and had literally nothing to do with women in tech)?"
Follow that up with lots of mudslinging on both sides, and neither side being that willing to 'dig-deep' into the facts, and you get a year long 'cyber-war' between two groups of people who probably have much more in common than they think.
They criticized Nathan Grayson of Kotaku for supposedly having relationships with people GamerGate didn't like and writing about them without disclosing said relationships.
Depending on the site you read, it's either a violation of journalism ethics, or GamerGate blowing something out of proportion again. In lieu of a citation, you can google it if you really want.
How the hell is gamergate about the "right" to threaten?
No one who isn't a troll will argue that anyone has that right.
What do games have to do with the right to threaten?
No This is about maintaining the productivity and integrity of projects against regressive groups that feel the need to force ridiculous code's of conduct on communities in order to pander to a group of people trying to politicize open source projects and use them to further their own "harassment" fueled agendas.
For all the hate in GG, it's a anonymous/pseudo anonymous mob on the internet. It seems hate is the default language of the louder minority. Somehow, not surprising really, the loudest people are also the worst.
On the pro-GG side, look at the supposedly pro-gg websites that have sprung up that sell things or review things basically do everything that they are saying the current status quo is doing wrongly or unethically.
On the anti-GG side, look at how much the leaders are charging for talks related to inclusion issues, something that they want to help spread. I am not saying they should run a charity (which they actually do from what I remember, literally run a NPO), but at some points it just looks like they are doing it for the money. The talks are weird, after seeing them, they looked like more about the person giving the talk and less about the actual issue at hand.
Every Time things quiet down another shitshow start from nowhere. It's like a massive online bait. If things keep going, the people making money keep making money.
If you look at it from an outside perspective, both sides are right. There are huge inclusion issues in gaming. Actually there are huge inclusion issue in almost everything, not sure what makes computer games special. On the other side, there are certainly ethics issue in game media. But then there are ethics issue in every media. Not sure what makes game media special. So now the question why all the fight, especially when both sides are fighting for different things. Both sides are obviously right. The only reason I can think of it is, and it's actually pretty evident, that people have found ways to make money out of it and they rile up the crowd every time things calm down to ensure the money keeps coming in.
If both the sides worked on this together both of their problems can be solved mutually, but I am not sure why that is not happening. It's like they don't want to work together. I am sure the people smart enough to figure out how to control this also know that neither side is the picture they have painted, so if they actually wanted to solve this, they can easily do it.
Well, here's the thing - while both groups are right if you take them at face value, there's no reason to take GamerGate at face value anymore. It's feminism vs. anti-feminism now.
The anti-GG crowd, as a whole, complains about GG and calls them misogynists. They can be annoying.
The GG crowd peppers anti-GG people with with threats, doxxes them, and sends SWAT teams to their homes and the homes of their relatives. They can be terrifying.
There may be opposing viewpoints, but when it comes to opposing behaviors, there's no contest. One side is a lot more embarrassing for the gaming community than the other.
GG has become a hive mind with an enemies list. As a group, it lashes out at anyone who criticizes it or disagrees with it.
This is why they come up in this particular mess - Randi got called out to the GG groups as a feminist or whatever. Once she got on the list, she became as much of a target as anyone else they don't like.
There are plenty of good people who want to address ethics in gaming journalism, but they aren't going to do it with GG. It's too far gone. They'd do better to form a new group that isn't driven by hate and doesn't make decisions in an echo chamber.
Death threats, doxxes, and SWATing has been done against people who are anti-GG, pro-GG, and third-parties who simply makes comments about both sides. There is no clean hands anywhere in this, and both anti-GG and pro-GG are constantly claiming that people who commit such acts are not part of their movements.
Mobs don't take responsibility for their actions, which is why we always see people talk about one side being made from evil and one side being made from good (if annoying).
Citation needed. The behavior you describe is much more prevalent in today's left-authoritarian communities than it is among cultural libertarian ones (of which one example is GamerGate). The anti-SJW side has never gotten a CEO of a tech company fired.
"Anti-GamerGate" people didn't get Brendan Eich fired, but pro-GamerGate people did indeed send SWAT teams to people's houses. What you're doing here is employing a sleight of hand to try to score points. If you'd been a little more creative with your terms, you probably could have swept the Khmer Rouge into your opposing side, and blamed Randi Harper for genocide as well.
So I voted your comment down for its lack of style.
> If you look at it from an outside perspective, both sides are right.
That's kinda how it feels to me. In most of the conflicts I've read about, one side is right (look at this - if what she writes is true - and there's no reason for me to believe otherwise, how would you reasonably argue against that?, but then I read about "safe spaces" at universities and can only think how dumb of an idea this is), but instead of a civilized discussion which might actually change people's opinions, a shirtstorm ensues.
Please disagree with me if you think that I'm wrong on this - I'm really just an outsider who occasionally reads about this on Twitter and shakes his head.
Please trust me when I say safe spaces are crucial, especially to trans survival.
I wish you knew how... devastatingly lonely it can be as an outcast in society. How everyone treats you. Solidarity is really important.
Can you also imagine who you are constantly being criticized? Your problems constantly being made out to be false? That you have the burden of proof with everyone because nobody knows your struggle?
I feel like the most important takehome is that we need recourse for ensuring the safety of the less represented of people, e.g., trans.
This may be unpopular opinion, but the fact is that there is just a perspective that you cannot understand through anecdotes or research.
The experience of being trans, queer, female, etc., today is not summed up by text. It is the adrenaline and vomit from death threats, it's falling behind at work because of harassment, I could go on and on.
Safe places are a way to ensure that everyone at least can truly empathize with each others' experiences, and as such, a place where they don't have to worry about that.
It's a counter, a reaction to all spaces practically being for (white) men. Who's voices are heard? Who's narratives are enforced? Safe places are the only places we have.
Unquestionably, threats should absolutely be forbidden, and they are. Threatening another person is already a federal crime and anyone receiving threats online should report it to law enforcement so the person making those threats can be dealt with and so that person can't continue to terrorize other people online.
We should feel secure for our lives. Indeed it's one of the inalienable rights defined in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
What many people now know as safe places, however, overreach their stated goal of providing security for minorities. They sacrifice liberty for life. You can put someone in jail for threatening your life, but you can't put someone in jail (or fire them or ruin their livelihood otherwise) for saying something you don't agree with. If you force someoen to empathize, they aren't truly empathizing, they are remaining quiet for fear of being called a bigot and getting their reputation ruined. They shouldn't have the right to make you fall behind at work because of harassment. Then again, no one should have the right to do that on anyone, no exceptions based on arbitrary classes/categories.
> anyone receiving threats online should report it to law enforcement
The fact that you suggest this is proof that you've never had to do so. This is literally part of what I do for a living. I work with people going to law enforcement, sometimes as an advocate. Your local police have no idea what their laws are regarding online stalking/harassment, nor do they have interest in prosecuting it without a significant amount of external prodding, usually from reporters. You're welcome to look up anything I've written on the subject about this for reference.
It's a little after the fact, but there's a lot going on in here that I feel compelled to correct.
> anyone receiving threats online should report it to law enforcement so the person making those threats can be dealt with and so that person can't continue to terrorize other people online.
I can see how you'd think that's a good response, but calling the cops isn't a no brainer for minorities, indeed crimes against minorities are drastically underreported. There's some good information in this thread about why (freebsdgirl's reply, for instance), but there are other reasons. Dealing with law enforcement can make a problem much, much worse; google around for the experiences that victims of sexual assault have when dealing with police and the courts. Reporting crimes like this can also get you blacklisted as an "HR problem". Victims sometimes blame themselves. Reporting a crime is a huge time and money sink. Statements, testimony, attorney's fees... it all piles up (and don't forget about the wage gap!). Again I'm only scratching the surface, but there are fundamental problems with the criminal justice system that need to be resolved before "just call the cops" is an adequate recourse.
> What many people now know as safe places, however, overreach their stated goal of providing security for minorities.
But what I think you mean is that you think it's too easy to experience disproportionate consequences for violating a safe space, for example Brendan Eich was forced to resign after his donations to an anti-same-sex-marriage campaign came to light. I'm guessing you feel like that was unjust: Eich was exercising his right to free speech, and he lost his job (one could argue it was more than just a job for him).
It's not unjust. Besides the fact that everyone who pressured Eich to step down was exercising their own free speech (blog posts, board resignations, public opinion campaigns, browser boycotts), all opinions are not valid political views, and not all political views are equal or even acceptable. For example, some people believe that all first-born children should be male, and all female fetuses should be aborted until a male child is born. If any CEO donated to a campaign supporting this cause, they'd likely lose their position, as it's pretty reprehensible.
Being racist, or homophobic, or transphobic, or misogynistic, or bigoted in general, is also reprehensible. It always has been. The friction here is that these attitudes are deeply entrenched in our culture; it takes time to clean them up, and people who are slow to change their attitudes are experiencing serious consequences for things that used to be completely acceptable (yet, importantly, still reprehensible). Victims of these attitudes rightly have no patience with this effort: their whole lives they've been oppressed for who they are, and their oppressors hide behind "free speech", and "well that's just my opinion" while minorities labor under the disparate impact caused by large numbers of relatively powerful people holding these beliefs. For example, 40% of managers admit to avoiding hiring women of childbearing age because they might use maternity benefits. That creates a bias against women that goes far beyond free speech and opinion.
The state constantly has to balance everyone's rights. There are tons of examples: free speech vs. harassment; freedom of religion vs. freedom from religion; liberty vs. safety (you have to get a license to own a gun or drive a car, etc.). You're arguing that, along the free speech vs. harassment continuum, safe spaces go too far to protect minorities from harassment, balancing the right to be bigoted against the right to feel safe and not be discriminated or prejudiced against. You need to take a closer look at the current state of things, because we're far, far away from "overreach" on this issue. Minorities continue to experience wildly disproportionate levels of harassment, physical violence and injustice. Over 80% of sexual harassment claims are made by women. African-American men are far overrepresented in our prisons. The wage gap between white men and white women, men of color and women of color is real. LGBT people face the threat of violence and discrimination every day.
> If you force someoen to empathize, they aren't truly empathizing, they are remaining quiet for fear of being called a bigot and getting their reputation ruined.
If someone does not empathize with the minority experience in the US, they're either ignorant or a bigot. You can dislike the facts, but you can't disagree with them.
I don't know how to put this, but as leftist I've followed the discussion about safe spaces, GamerGate, "SJWs", minorities in tech, etc. with utter bewilderment. There is so much toxic language on both sides that I'm really at a loss here.
Most of the 'Anti-SJW' crowd seem to believe that a conservative, propagandist mouth-piece like Breitbart is a shining example of unbiased journalism. Ayn Rand seems to their demi-god and fat-shaming and victim blaming seems to be the norm. But this is not what really bothers me, because frankly, it's just the same-old stuff in new packaging. I expect nothing less from that crowd.
What bothers me is that the same techniques are being used on the side I identify myself with.
A lot of white men suffer. To me this is not just a question of race, color or gender, but of class and social dynamics. I find that a lot of the language used on the progressive side simply ignores this fact or even tries to deny it.
Sorry, but if you took any minority or underpriv'd person (trans, female, black, etc.), and "made" them a CIS white male, their life would be easier and they'd face less problems.
Also privilege isn't about who's life is harder, it's about the abilities afforded/predisposed to you by society because of how you're labeled.
Also nobody doubts that poverty is a huge issue. Imagine being a poor man. Now imagine being a poor trans woman. Do you have any idea?
Hmm. I see your point. I've first heard about safe spaces by reading about the "Halloween incident" at Yale which left me with the impression that they're a bad idea since it appeared to me that they not only discourage harassment and violence (and seriously, how can one disagree with this?), but also critical discourse, which I believe is very important to our society.
But I also see how "safe spaces" would be useful and how critical discourse could be used for bullying. I've not read enough about this to make up my mind on this. Was the Yale thing an unexpected outcome?
I absolutely agree that every society should be able to provide a welcoming and safe environment for every person. But do you think that a safe space is the best way to do it? I may be wrong, but it looks like a exclusionary step that most societies have fought hard to remove.
The way I understand it, safe space is not only a place where people can a particular group of people are "protected" but also a place where idea can grow without any challenge or even merit. Do you think that is a good idea? I may be totally wrong about what a safe space is, but this is the impression I have got till now.
Honestly, the complaints about "safe spaces" at universities are largely bullshit. From what I've seen, most of the people who were supposedly "silencing" those they disagree with were actually trying to get as many people to read their opponents' views in full, because they think it can only help them. On the other hand, the articles complaining about "safe spaces" and "silencing" carefully avoid repeating what the person supposedly being silenced actually said, because they know it'll hurt their argument if - for example - they admit that a particular feminist wasn't welcome because she'd successfully campaigned for trans women to be denied access to rape counselling and domestic violence services.
I'm more worried about articles like this one. To give some context, the author of this article has a lovely habit of telling anyone she disagrees with to go kill themselves over on Twitter. She also thinks that complaining about this is harassment and has got Twitter support to force people to delete Tweets that do so in the past. For obvious reasons, some people thought this made her unsuitable to speak about online harassment. This article is her attempt to lump everyone who did so in with a literal rape supporter.
Most arguments are I support A, and the opposition is I oppose A. Somehow GG is different, it's I support A, and the other side is fuck your A, I support B ,when they don't actually have any problem with A. The first side then responds with, no fuck your B, A all the way. It's mind boggling, it can just as easily be we support A & B.
And that bring us to this post, it has nothing to do with GG. Its simple harassment and the core community handled it poorly. It looks like a good case of lack of precedent on how to handle it.
Earlier harassment used to of the "your mother is fat type" or "shut up you fukin brit" because people didn't have much to go on. Now as diversity increases people have more difference that can be attacked and those differences are very personal and hence affects a person on a deeper level. It's a classical case of school bullying, just that no one here is in school anymore, some people just don't grow up.
Once self regulating communities (those without HR departments) figure out how to handle these cases the right way, which I believe they will, these events should have a quick end.
There is a thread on KiA where references to the original materials (transcripts of Randi's dispute with the freebsd developer) are available. The raw materials paint a rather less flattering portrait of who was attacking / harassing / abusing whom. This may be one of those cases where discretion (withholding names / evidence) does a disservice to the truth.
I know most of the people involved in this and it's just a shit sandwich. Randi wanted a person crucified, that's not how companies and foundations function, and thankfully so. I hope she finds success in new endeavors and am sad she had to leave under gross circumstance.
A woman wanted recourse for feeling unsafe because of the horribleness someone was spewing. Any real recourse. I outline this in my other comments. I was there for the entire ordeal. They tolerated every infraction with no consequence.
You don't get to have people punished simply because you feel unsafe. That's absurd. What if your post makes me feel unsafe? Peoples feelings are subjective, people are different, some people have a hair-trigger and others don't care, some people read a lot into words and other people take them at face value.
The only reason this individual should have been punished by FreeBSD folks for this alleged harassment is if it was against FreeBSD rules, it occurred in FreeBSD channels or forums, and there was a consensus among other people that it actually constituted harassment.
Otherwise, you just have a weapon you can wield to silence all civil discourse (because everyone has a job or a hobby somewhere they don't want to lose) you don't like by claiming you feel unsafe or harassed.
And after reading the sources mentioned in this thread, your and Randi's description of events is, to put it very mildly, one-sided. You may win some support from the people who don't dig down, but you're alienating allies with these tactics. I was a proud supporter and ally for about ten years, but over the past year or so I've grown more and more disillusioned. More and more it seems like there's nothing worth fighting for. I would certainly not want to appear to support the hatefulness and bullying Randi has engaged in publicly over this and other issues.
FreeBSD is, frankly, better off without the politics and drama.
My impression of you: Being dehumanized, threatened with death, rape, is a totally subjective experience and vaguely defined, so we shouldn't stop those things. I offered my conditional support to you people, but now I'm revoking it because I want people to be able to dehumanize and threaten you and ultimately do not care what happens to anyone else. BTW, being picked on and trolling cis men poses the exact scenario as threatening women, minorities, with death, rape, etc.
FreeBSD is, frankly, better off making these people feel threatened and dehumanized.
> ultimately do not care what happens to anyone else.
It is ironic that you would make this argument. Identity politics as they have now become represent a kind of second coming of Nietzschean nihilism, where our sacred civic religion of human rights has self-overcome and transformed into the supremacy of the unbridled ego: all things must be seen through the interpretative framework of the subjective ego, and all things must be fully supportive of the ego or regarded as an enemy that must be totally and utterly destroyed. No logical argument is acceptable because any argument per se represents not rhetoric but a personal attack on the ego itself that must be responded to with overwhelming force. The ego must always answer "why am I unhappy" with "because of someone else - not because of me! Never because of me!" Inevitably every ally, supporter, and friend over time becomes an enemy, because even the closest and best of friends cannot (and should not) be continuously supportive of every thought, word, and action. That is, the natural consequence of this type of thinking is that it is impermissible, verboten, for anyone to speak for, let alone stand against, the ego.
The fact of the matter is you do not care the slightest whit for my feelings. That is why it is acceptable in your mind for you and Randi to slur, bully, and insult people, and render them into sociopathic strawmen (or neo-nazis) but not for anyone to respond in kind. You will be fighting a war that never, never ends, because part of your fundamental identity is that of an oppressed victim. No matter how the people in your external environment change, you will never feel differently, you will never not feel oppressed.
> FreeBSD is, frankly, better off making these people feel threatened and dehumanized.
This is an example of you scurrying to turn my post into a personal attack against you, because you cannot see outside of that interpretive lens.
What I said was this: FreeBSD should be in the business of enforcing their rules on their developers, which should apply only to FreeBSD venues and not outside of them. The rules should not be a hammer for people to wield against each other, but something reasonable people agree on. Just because you feel threatened and dehumanized, which could be caused by literally anything, depending on the person, and both of which are weasel words to start with, is no reason for anyone to take action. None whatsoever. If a majority of reasonable people see that an abuser is using specific language that credibly, physically threatens you, then there would certainly be grounds for real action by FreeBSD such as immediate excommunication from everything to do with FreeBSD, and actively assisting with the law enforcement side of the case.
More concretely, Randi herself violated (and violates) the FreeBSD Code of Conduct regularly. If CoCs are to mean anything at all, they should apply to everyone equally. FreeBSD did treat her in a very weaselly way with the trademark deal, but the real story is most likely that FreeBSD did not want to be associated with Randi and they believed that draping the request in legal trademark terms was more likely to be successful than telling her either privately or publicly they did not want to be associated with her behavior.
> BTW, being picked on and trolling cis men poses the exact scenario as threatening women, minorities, with death, rape, etc.
Nobody said this. This is just another attempt to turn this discussion into an us vs them battle. It is strange to me that you appear to hold in such high consideration people's feelings, but you seem utterly unable to understand my thoughts and feelings.
You can be yourself and fight for your rights without making the world a worse and more hateful place. That's not what is happening here. If someone calling you a "tranny" is dehumanizing (which is absurd on any objective level, since there are people such a the woman who lives across the street who prefers to be referred to as a tranny when the subject of transgendered people comes up), that does not make it OK for Randi to tell people to "go set yourself on fire", it makes her just as awful.
If a co-worker started disparaging me on Facebook and sharing private chat logs publicly... they'd be reprimanded at the very least, and if the behavior continued they'd be gone.
No, out here in the real world they'd be terminated immediately for gross misconduct, and feel lucky if they exited the building on foot instead of head-first.
You're wrong, enterprises aren't in the business of vengeance. Instaterm == quietly letting go. Anything else is a liability nightmare and distraction to the enterprise's goals. That's just the way it is, and it would be terrifying otherwise.
"Crucified" is an obvious exaggeration, but the article does contain "Last, I wanted this developer removed from the project and the IRC channel."
I don't know anything about what happened here more than what's public, but it's totally imaginable to me that if you make that an ultimatum, and the project leadership hasn't given itself a reasonable way to do that, it's difficult for them to respond usefully.
Maybe the lesson here is that good projects should give their leadership the explicit ability and the political authority to do that, including for forums like IRC. There are many examples of projects / communities that are wonderful places until things go wrong. (This is, essentially, the argument for having a written code of conduct even though nobody would be violating it.)
I'm sorry, but this post (yours) and the original post (kev009's) seem like unreasonable exaggerations. Emphasis on the "unreasonable". Unreasonable exaggerations of other people's viewpoints fosters low-quality discussion, which is why I don't like it.
Banning is a common response to harassment. Hacker News uses it, we even have multiple types of banning, including the shadowban and hellban. We know that "crucifixion" is hyperbolical language, and we can ordinarily forgive someone for being hyperbolical, but in this case it's simply an unreasonable exaggeration.
The same applies to your use of the term "ultimatum". That's an unreasonable exaggeration. It depicts the contents of the original article inaccurately. She detailed no consequences nor threatened retaliation in her request that a user be banned. You can call it a "demand" instead of a "request", but "ultimatum" is simply incorrect.
Honestly, I can understand and relate to both her request and the core developers' response, but I'm not convinced that a code of conduct is a prerequisite for banning abusive community members. Explicit political authority is great, but we shouldn't be automatically afraid to use implicit political authority.
Yeah, "ultimatum" is a somewhat strong word. I do want to be clear that I don't mean that it was in any way an ridiculous request/demand/ultimatum: expelling them from the community would in my opinion have been the right thing to do, and in my opinion is an entirely fair thing to insist on and not be willing to compromise on.
What I mean to convey is that, if someone makes a demand that they're unwilling to compromise on or discuss, and you're are unable to satisfy the demand as stated, regardless of whether you want to seek a resolution along those lines, you have no good options. Of course in a healthy project there wouldn't be much need to discuss banning people who are harassing other community members. But mechanically it still has the downside of an ultimatum, even if the connotation of the term is wrong.
That is why I chose that word, and I apologize for not having been clearer about what I meant with it.
I do agree that greater willingness to use implicit political authority is generally a good thing for healthy projects. (Though maybe there is something complicated like not actually having technical control of the relevant IRC channels or something annoying like that, I don't know. In some open-source projects I'm active in, the core teams' ability to respond to harassment is somewhat weakened or at least rate-limited by using IRC servers, code-review forums, etc. run by unrelated teams, and I've seen people be hurt by abusers taking advantage of this technical limitation.)
I simply didn't get the idea that she was unwilling to compromise or discuss the matter, apparently you got a different impression.
And I think it is—unfortunately—normal for a healthy community to discuss banning users who harass others, because users who harass others are everywhere, until they are kicked out.
I agree with you, but I think they were talking about past events maybe? Their is a history between FreeBSDGirl and the roosh guy. (By history, I mean going back and forth online, not a personal history).
If you aren't a part of FreeBSD core or the FreeBSD Foundation, then you don't know much about what's been happening at all. They haven't released any information about this publicly, and it wasn't talked about much at all on the core reports.
That's a nice trap there. If I don't mention anything, you'll claim (or at least there will be a tacit implication) that you've "won" any argument here.
However if I do provide sources (articles written by you and/or rooshv), tweets, whatever, then there is the implication I'm "stalking" you or him. I'd rather not get involved in any such drama.
To be clear, by history I meant that the two of you have both written/talked/tweeted about each other (in generally negative ways). My intent there was to agree with the person who commented about how this whole situation is a "shit sandwich".
Here's what confuses me. What actually happened to her? Without any context, all this can really be is her word against someone else's. She says she forwarded on relevant harassment incidents, but without context, the actual truth of what happened to her is unknown.
>Don’t tell people to stay quiet about abuse. This removes them from their support network of friends and family.
Didn't they just tell her to stop talking about it in public, though? And really what mechanism does anyone have to force her to do this?
>If you’re a dude, don’t reach out to women leaving other open source projects saying “join us here!”
On the surface, that sounds like she wants men to...not be welcoming? This is, perhaps, poorly worded.
>You have no idea if women in the community have problems or not. Women will talk to other women about the quality of the community. But it’s also just really bad taste. Instead, find someone in your community that is also part of that minority group to reach out. They’ll know more about potential issues than you will.
Not sure how this follows from the previous sentence. How is it in bad taste to reach out to someone in a welcoming way? Does this mean that I, as a straight white male, should only communicate with other straight white males?
She probably doesn't mean it this way, but boy, am I confused.
>Publicly stand behind the women in your community, or eventually they will leave and write a post just like this.
I find it amusing that someone who has written a tool that allows you to filter out a specific block of individuals (as trollish as they may be) can write this post at all. The cynical side of me thinks the attitude shown here is, "Hear me, but here's a way you can systematically ignore people that I fundamentally disagree with".
I often feel like tolerance and progressivism has wrapped all the way around to discrimination. Am I wrong to feel that is part of what's happening here?
EDIT: I'd like to make it clear that I'm genuinely not trying to troll. If I'm being wrongheaded, then please show me how my thinking is wrong.
> I find it amusing that someone who has written a tool that allows you to filter out a specific block of individuals (as trollish as they may be) can write this post at all. The cynical side of me thinks the attitude shown here is, "Hear me, but here's a way you can systematically ignore people that I fundamentally disagree with".
Give me your twitter handle, and your employer's email address, and I'll send 800 death threat tweets and I'll spend weeks bombarding your employer with stuff.
One thing that is often said to the victims of trolls is "just ignore it" (we see that in this thread), so she wrote a tool that allows her to just ignore it and you're telling her that she's wrong.
Her blocking tool is idiotic. It blocks people whose only offense it to follow more than one account on Twitter from a small list of accounts that she considers to be GG leaders. It ends up blocking many anti-GG people who are following those accounts because they want to know what their opponents are up to.
> It ends up blocking many anti-GG people who are following those accounts because they want to know what their opponents are up to.
Sad to hear that some Twitter users are not making the best use of its features. It's very easy to create a list of Nero and his flying monkeys, and you can add people to a list without following them.
You can keep the list private so nobody knows you're even doing it.
It's also much more efficient. In the normal use of Twitter (dipping into a stream), you are highly unlikely to see most of any account's tweets. With a list, you can see all the tweets you want whenever you want.
(Sorry this is off-topic, but it might help someone who hasn't used the Lists feature, which Twitter hides away.)
You people sure take Twitter block lists seriously. There are people I like who I have blocked on Twitter, just to keep me from getting engaged in vituperative bullshit in the middle of my workdays.
I should apologize to them for poisoning them with fire (is I think the metaphor you're using, right?).
But you curate your block list. What you do with your blocking is your own business. That is a little different than using blocking software that you do not create/maintain.
Her software, according to the readme [0]:
> Good Game Auto Blocker compares the follower lists for a given set of Twitter accounts. If anyone is found to be following more than one of these accounts, they are added to a list and blocked.
Most discussions of ggautoblocker are referencing the GamerGate-specific block list. The GamerGate block list filters the majority of Twitter interactions by GamerGate supporters. This list is maintained and shared by the author, Randi Harper, as well as a number of volunteers.
Are you curious about this whole (debacle? flamewar? never-ending argumet?) and want to follow notable people on both sides of the argument? Well, her software just blocked you. Gamergate is perceived by some people to be a hate group [1]. So now, by association, this software has categorized a potentially innocent use of twitter as being representative of membership in a potential hate group.
There is an appeals process [2] for being removed from the list, I should note. I would love to hear from anyone who has experience with the appeals process.
How would you (not just you, tptacek, but the general you) feel if you were on the blocked list? I wouldn't want to be associated with this whole mess at all.
As always, if I'm misunderstanding how this software works, please let me know.
If it's important to you to hear all sides of a debate as tedious as GamerGate, don't use the blocklist software. Despite the length of your response, I'm not seeing the complexity of this situation.
Not using the blocklist software is fine, but that doesn't really address the other concerns I raised. I wouldn't want to be inadvertently identified as a member of a hate group.
It sounds like you're saying what I do with my block list is my own business as long as I don't use that block list to mirror someone else's block list.
Yes, I really don't understand the simplistic view of "she wrote a tool to protect herself from harassment". What she created goes far beyond that. It does not seem to be congruent with inclusiveness and reasoned conversation.
I believe Ms. Harper to be both abuser and abused. And it should be noted that she now has a financial interest in keeping these kind of things active.
Do you do any analysis of use and abuse of flags? It certainly seems like there's a phenomenon of stories pointing out issues in open-source communities being flagged off the front page very quickly. Given that the subject seems on-topic for HN and there's good discussion (and bad discussion, too, but you've been on top of it), it seems some consideration should be given to whether the flags are abusive.
(In particular, is there any correlation between people who flag stories and people who get downvoted / get their own comments flagged? What sorts of stories get flagged after hitting the front page and getting relevant comments? Are the flagging users constructively contributing to HN otherwise?)
It's not a phenomenon; users are not out to oppress or censor anyone. These types of stories are terrible in terms of quality of discussion, and provide almost nothing to satisfy one's intellectual curiosity. This whole thread is he said / she said feces-flinging, and many people would rather have interesting articles on the front page. It's essentially tabloid gossip, and has been discussed to death on reddit / twitter already.
I'm not taking sides here, I could care less about GG or a dev who gets into twitter fights. Here's what would be useful to post instead:
- Github link to a crowd-sourced code of conduct anyone can help improve
- A compilation of useful tips for interacting with / contributing to open source projects
I lost braincells reading this thread, and that's not why I visit HN.
Yeah, I do agree that HN could handle the discussion more productively. But preemptively flagging stories as categorically unacceptable for HN seems like a way to make that never happen.
There is a good discussion to be had about, say, whether an open-source project should welcome someone whose views make existing members uncomfortable, how much voice an inactive member should still have, how to handle trademarks in a spirit of community while still making names meaningful, what authority a core team should have and when they should feel comfortable removing active contributors, etc. Discussing them in the context of this incident would inform those two discussions you suggested; otherwise we have people constructing codes of conduct from intuition and first principles, which seems most likely to be counterproductive.
It is somewhat unfortunate that we don't have a response from core or the Foundation about how they saw things from their end and what their pressures were. But admittedly it's a fairly large cultural shift to be willing to talk about these things openly.
Agreed! I think part of the problem could be that the first, say 10-20, comments on a controversial story won't be very good. This makes people flag it before (hopefully) a lot of genuine thought and effort goes into the comments. I'm not familiar with how flags affect a post's rank on the front page. Thinking out loud, a system where the first user flag has minimal impact and the impact grows very slowly with each additional flag could work.
Even though I find it uninteresting, it's arguably necessary in the same way people post here when they can't reach someone at a large company they're having issues with in the hopes that an employee will come to their aid.
Hm, there's a meta-question of whether the purpose of HN is stories or comments. I think the story itself is worth the hacker community reading, regardless of the quality of the comments.
A specific flag for "the comments will turn into a flamewar, but we shouldn't let the threat of a flamewar silence the story itself" might be useful. And in this case, 'dang manually did take action to curb low-quality comments. Having a user-initiated flag that restricts posting by users postdating the story, increases the waiting period on replies, etc. (and alerts moderators) might be more useful than simply removing the story from the front page (but allowing people to come in via external links).
I wonder if the downranking flagged-but-not-dead submissions is actually helpful. It often creates misunderstandings if an active discussion get "vanishes". To me it seems like things that should be removed get completely killed relatively quickly.
Maybe removing the rank penalty of flags, or massively weakening it if there are already some comments present would be useful. On the other hand, controversial submissions staying on the front page leads to more activity, "heating" it up. Still, I think that might be something worth looking into, if you haven't already.
That's probably because the flame detector triggered (maybe lots of downvotes and upvotes, indicating a highly polarized discussion). I doubt it's been a manual intervention and wouldn't be surprised if a moderator manually reinstated the story on the front page, instead of having buried it in the first place.
Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about how HN really works.
A mod has said that user flags caused the post to vanish. And it hasn't vanished, it's just dropped off the front page. It hasn't been closed or deleted.
It's not clear what the difference between mod and user flagging is. It's not clear that it matters. If the users are flagging it, then they are taking sides.
If you enable showdead: in your user profile settings, you can see everything that was [flagged]-killed by users, marked as [dupe]licate (which can be done by users or mods) or marked [dead] (which is the automated spam filter). You can't see if something was flagged but not often enough to be killed by it. The number of flags necessary depends on activity on the submission (upvotes, comments) and possibly it's age.
Have a look at the new queue with that on every now and then and you'll see that tools like this are needed. HN choose to put them mostly in the hands of the users instead of only a small number of mods (probably to get by with fewer mods).
But of course giving everybody these tools means they are misused in drama-laden cases. HN is changing these things (e.g. relatively recently introducing the ability for users to "revive" killed posts by "vouching" for them. But that only works when something is really killed, so it doesn't remove the down-ranking from flags that haven't succeded in removing something).
I'm sure that has been there from the first day on HN for me, so it would be odd if it didn't for you.
EDIT: and you can always reply from an individual comments page, I think the reply-link shows only up after a while for nested links (I guess the theory is to avoid getting to deeply nested comment trees to quickly?)
Please don't. Also, it seems to me that you're taking this thread off-topic and violating the HN guideline that asks you to avoid classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them. (Even if you did, this is probably a bad place for it.)
Or people can have a reasonable conversation about harassment and shady legal maneuvers by open source projects. Even if you're not concerned with harassment as a subject, seeing an open source project fib to attempt to illegaly enforce trademark issues is something we should all care about.
You see behaviour you dislike and don't understand and you can say either "they are unpleasant people" or "they are unpleasant people and they have a mental illness".
Probability tells us the first is more probable.
This is the conjunction fallacy, and you need to address it because stigmatising people with mental illness causes those people harm, and doesn't help address the actual problem (which is that some people are arseholes).
A lot of people who are assholes aren't actually assholes, but suffer from a mental disorder such as asperger's syndrome. By lumping all of them under the offensive label "asshole" I'd posit that you are the one stigmatizing them.
Regardless, I think the question we need to ask ourselves is this: what is it about the gamer community, and specifically the "GamerGate" sub-community, that attracts such people? And what can we do about it?
I used to volunteer for an organization that helped people with mental disabilities. One of the primary symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome is a demonstrated lack of empathy for other people, which makes social interactions very difficult.
This is one common reason why someone with Asperger's can come across as an asshole: they are literally incapable of understanding how their behavior will hurt other people's feelings. For example, 15-year-old suffering from Asperger's can come to you and say, "that shirt makes you look really fat" and in their mind they're just making an innocent, normal statement that they think is helpful (i.e. you should wear something else tomorrow), but from your perspective they're being a total dick.
So when you come across an asshole, you should ask yourself: are they willingly hurting other people's feelings (i.e. intentional disregard) or are they totally unaware? After having worked with people with mental disorders, I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
I don't have any hard evidence that the GamerGate community has a disproportional number of people with Asperger's (or similar disorders) compared to the rest of the population, but it does seem to have a disproportionate number of people who come across as total assholes. That's how I connected the dots.
As someone who has been diagnosed with aspergers syndrome before:
The problem with this line of thought is that it's quite possible for us to atomize and quantify the causes of assholery. That doesn't make the people involved any less jerky.
For any human flaw we can probably put the person in question under a microscope and diagnose the exact causes, but the behavior is still hurtful and offensive. I guess the point of your comment is that the people doing the hurting might be innocent in the mens rea sense, but I think that's a fairly high bar of charity towards people who use tactics like SWATing and obviously enjoy the pain of their victims.
Moreover if improvement is possible, you won't get it by not holding people accountable for the things they say and do.
You see assholes, and you say they are probably people with Asperger's, even though of the two statements:
"this person is an asshole" and
"this person is an asshole, and also has Asperger's"
the first is more likely.
It's nice that you give people the benefit of the doubt. It's not nice that you slur people with Asperger's by saying that assholes are likely to be people with Asperger's.
EDIT: Specifically, there are many people with Asperger's who are appalled by the hateful idiots in GamerGate or the worst bits of 4chan, and who really dislike being associated with them.
I'm not saying that assholes are "probably" people with Asperger's, or that assholes are "likely" to be people with Asperger's.
I'm just saying that, before we lash out at people we perceive as assholes, we should ask ourselves whether they are willfully being assholes, or simply can't help it.
edit: apparently this is a controversial statement. Consider this: our justice system distinguishes between criminals who commit crimes willfully, and those who do so due to a mental illness. The two are treated differently. I'm saying we need to do the same in our social interactions.
I understand how you were just trying to make a point, but it just doesn't make any sense.
You say that "people who are assholes, aren't assholes". Well... are they or aren't they?
Then you say that they may be suffering from Asperger's and that the commenter above is lumping them together.
The issue with this argument is that the commenter above took problem with the other commenter about saying these perceived assholes have a mental illness, and how that negatively impacts those who actually have a mental illness. Your argument (metaphor?) is that by saying someone is an asshole is lumping those with Asperger's in, when Asperger's wasn't even mentioned.
Regardless of how your metaphor didn't actually make any sense, you then go on to say that "GamerGate" sub-community (what does that honestly even really mean???) attracts 'such people', implying that GamerGate is full of people with Asperger's. Then imply that something needs to 'be done about it'.
What is wrong with people with Asperger's? Why are you picking on them?
Additionally, what's wrong with FreeBSD? I'd like to hear their take on this.
Because while I'm generally highly sceptic of this "everyone needs a CoC now!", the alleged reaction by Core goes much much further and is simply astonishing.
Maybe someone needs to explain to them that freedom of association includes freedom not to associate. "His harassment was outside our mailing list" is not a good reason to decline any action.
I love FreeBSD! I have a GitHub record to show that! :3 It's my sweet little darling angel. But it's sick. :<
We need routes to ensure safety and respect for everyone. If someone makes others feel endangered, it is not unreasonable for there to be immediate recourse and resolution. That's what a Code of Conduct is all about.
My problem with Codes of Conduct is mostly how to write them.
The Swing dancing scene had a big scandal this year, and everywhere CoCs are popping up.
But do you really need to write down that an adult (quite old, in that case) dance teacher is not allowed to sleep with just-teenage dance students? Or that racist remarks are not welcome?
No, so you adopt very broad language. Usually something like "harassing", "making uncomfortable" etc.
If your community needs those two sentences to police such behaviour, you've got a much bigger problem.
I simply don't believe that you can convince anybody to take action because some very broadly written CoC authorizes them to do so. They either see that the behaviour is a problem, and are willing to act, or they will just start to debate whether the CoC's specific wording is really covering the behaviour in question.
Then again, I have zero practical experience with policing a community.
I mean, we do, evidently, have a much bigger problem in the open-source community. It would be nice if we didn't, but there's no easy way around it.
So there are really two options: one, hope the community stops existing or stops having influence (unlikely), or two, accept that, yes, we do need to spell out every little detail about behavior as if people don't know appropriate behavior on their own.
Nobody advocating detailed codes of conduct particularly likes the fact that they are necessary. But how you feel about the situation that led up to them doesn't really affect whether they are in fact necessary.
There is no community, just a mob, if there are no shared values WRT behavior. On the other side there is no justice system if the system is defined based on one persons feelings while ignoring the survival or existence or basic human rights of the other participants. Two sides of the same coin of lack of a community. You can't just sweep up a mob, an almost randomly selected jury, call it a community, and assume it'll work like an actual community. You'll just get anarchy, some will provide intimidation, some will provide legalistic supremacist totalitarianism, most will watch the drama from the sidelines and shake their heads and hope neither side rises to power.
No, my answer is to have a community where you ban those people without discussing the semantics of some sentence.
In the end, it's probably equivalent to your answer. Because when the people in your organization feel someone is harassing people and you decide to kick him out, you're probably simply describing his behaviour and referencing your CoC, but not doing some detailed analysis how and why he did so.
Yeah, it's just that it is sad that it is practically required to be spelled out. But even bigger yet, is that we have to find ways to enforce it and its purpose.
As somebody who has experience moderating groups without explicit rules - the result of this in a group of more than a dozen people is inevitably that some of them will feel that (a) the banning is unfair, no matter how egregious the behaviour, and (b) there should be a set of written rules for the leaders/moderators to follow, so that people understand clearly what is expected of them. You really can't win.
Personally, I tend to steer on the side of a broadly defined CoC backed up with a very clear dispute resolution policy (there's plenty of examples of both of these - Debian has a pretty decent set for large projects). In a functioning community, reaching for this should only be required very rarely, so they shouldn't affect anyone most of the time - and they quite obviously don't in the case of open-source projects, or we'd hear about actual cases where people have been kicked out of projects for very little a lot more than we do.
Can you give some references to problems that existed in your organization before the CoC, and to what extent the CoC procedures have demonstrably helped?
That's a bit stretching it basic threat, management is to judge each threat agent by the level of intent and the ability to act on that intent for the most part the usually aholes don't pose any actual threat.
I also don't understand why some one being an ahole for a specific reason is worse than some one being an ahole just for sake of being an ahole, we all had our nemeses over the years people that you just don't click with that do everything in their power to get to you - outplay them, ignore them or move on.
If there was a priest who was homosexual, and involved himself with gay-pride rallies on his own time, would you say it is acceptable for the church to excommunicate him since he had "freedom not to associate" with the group?
If don't feel that disallowing personal thinking is good for society.
I also feel that it is possible for people to agree on some topics while disagree on others. Guilt by association should not be the measure we use to judge people. I'd say it is very unlikely that the person who "attacked" Harper also supports the "legalize rape" comment from RooshV.
In my opinion, attempting to draw a connection between RooshV's legalize rape comment and the person the article is about is a slanderous tactic to automatically make him "the enemy" with no evidence. This seems evident when you notice there is no source for any of the tweets made to Harper. This is contrasted with the readily available links provided to support deplorable comments made by RooshV.
Harper makes statements like "He started enlisting the support of his neo-nazi friends." which are obviously being used to create an us/them dichotomy for the reader. "I'm not a horrible racist like the Nazi's, that means I must hate this person who must be a Nazi." the readers would think to themselves.
I have no doubt that some of the content in this article is correct. I am just taken aback by the lack of sources provided, the attempts to slander the "opposition" and the wording of the piece. Being well read on the past of Harper, I would say that the claims have merit, but were blown entirely out of proportion.
I'll happily, and publicly, eat my own words if someone can source proof for her claims. I have no objection to recanting any of this.
Sources are: emails between myself, core, and the FreeBSD Foundation. I'm not providing those. A phone call with the FreeBSD Foundation, which I did not record and will not provide.
I could mention the names of the people I spoke with in FreeBSD, but why? I could provide the tweets of the guy I spoke about, but to what end?
I'm not going to name names. People can find a way to dig it all up if they really want to, but I don't want this to turn into a "this person is terrible" type thing. It's not about him, and I don't want a mob going after him or any individuals inside FreeBSD. That wouldn't be right, and it would detract from the point in writing about this at all.
Instead, I hope people talk about the issues of harassment and legal shadiness regarding trademark claims.
> I could provide the tweets of the guy I spoke about, but to what end?
To provide credit to your claims, otherwise what you are doing is defamatory.
>Sources are: emails between myself, core, and the FreeBSD Foundation. I'm not providing those. A phone call with the FreeBSD Foundation, which I did not record and will not provide.
Sadly, none of that is verifiable from an outsider perspective.
>Instead, I hope people talk about the issues of harassment and legal shadiness regarding trademark claims.
This is the only thing I can claim to have an educated opinion on. Any entity who owns a trademark has the rights to ask you to stop representing their likeness. By using "freebsd" in your name and actively participating in politics surrounding the open source/FreeBSD community, you are representing their likeness and in this case you are not protected by fair use.
For example, I can't make a twitter called TacoBellGuy and post about food related politics. If Taco Bell got upset with me, I'd have to change my name. Very clear cut.
Basically, any women in tech who can be targeted will be targeted by Gamergate because that's what they do. GamerGate is basically a rentamob of misogynistic thugs. It's toxic.
(Whether it's just misogynistic thugs exploiting the GamerGate label doesn't really matter. To all intents are purposes, they are GamerGate now.)
There was quite a good BuzzFeed story on the larger picture of what's going on.
"She's been viciously attacked in Breitbart, a far right-wing site that championed GamerGate's hounding of women in tech."
How about you give links to these "vicious attacks" so people can actually look at them and make up their own opinions, it's not like they contain any proof that anyone is a serial harasser:
I went back and counted, there are 6 mentions of GamerGate (not including the tag) and all of them are anecdotal references by FreeBSDGirl. In fact, the primary article in question (the guy that wants to legalize rape) doesn't mention GamerGate at all, or even remotely allude to it.
P.S. Thanks for the downvote rather than a reply. It really shows your willingness to talk about issues and not just jump to conclusions...
Maybe I need to read a bit better. I don't deny that they are different people, but I guess I thought the linked article was more important than just a side comment.
This is why no one will ever take them seriously, by spamming this thread out to their followings in this way they are attempting to create outside focus on the HN community not within it.
A lot of my followers are in the tech community and part of HN. My apologies, and if people find it to be a problem, I'll gladly delete the tweet.
I think it's interesting watching how HN responds to posts like this, because they are kind of political, and HN is a good representation of how a lot of people in tech feel. I'll get a lot of support on Twitter (because I've blocked most of the trolls), and 140 characters isn't very much to leave a detailed response, anyways.
I like seeing thoughtful criticism, and the HN community is (mostly) good at that. It's why I don't excessively comment in these discussions, except maybe to clear up a point here and there. HN brings up points I haven't thought about, and I don't want necessarily to be part of the discussion about things I've written except as an observer.
You can ignore the person you replied to. Do you have "showdead" turned on in your profile? They've written an abusive post about you in this thread, but it got flagged.
I saw. But it didn't make this comment necessarily invalid. If there's a policy against putting an HN post on social media when said post involves the person publicizing it, I'm not aware, and I'm happy to fix it if it's a problem. I knew when I posted it that this made the post more likely to attract trolls (sorry, dang), but I know I'm not the only one that watches how HN responds to this kind of topic.
In spite of that, I saw several anti-freebsdgirl trolls in the first couple of minutes, leading dang to close the thread to new accounts. Maybe there are people who follow freebsdgirl on twitter who are just here because she tweeted, but I can't tell who they are.
In short: you're worried about the wrong people.
Edit: I enabled 'showdead':
I see I made a mistake. You're not worried about the wrong people. You are them!
In fact you are illustrating my point, by doing that she increased the chances of outsiders "trolls" appearing, then we see a follow up article pointing all the death threats/harassment that those new accounts saying "look at how problematic HN is". I am grateful the mods stopped new accounts from posting before this could happen.
EDIT: Someone else having a counter opinion to yours shouldn't make you feel so threatened, lighten up.
If outside trolls appeared, I'd blame the trolls, not HN. It's fairly easy to see what accounts are new. There have been controversial posts of mine on HN before where new accounts did show up to try to stir up trouble. I challenge you to find any post where I decried HN because of that happening.
Did you read the article? She says she was a committer.
> Eventually, with the help of the dev community answering some of my basic questions and with Colin reviewing my code, I finally found my place in the project. I was still a senior sysadmin, but I got really angry because I couldn’t install FreeBSD from a usb thumbdrive. This seemed so easy. So, I drank some scotch (probably too much scotch) and started digging through sysinstall code. I didn’t really know C at that point. I learned C just so I could fix that. Then I started working on a few other things with sysinstall, like autodetection of network devices that have an active link.
Its unfortunate the question was flagged. For example lets say Don Armstrong from Debian retired; he's done an excellent job at a stressful job but all jobs eventually end of course. You could look at the Debian wiki and say, OK we need to recruit qty one listmaster team member and you can use DDPO to look up a list of packages he maintained and someone needs to look after his former pkgs X Y and Z, etc. Debian carefully documents all delegations on the wiki and there's a bazillion automated tools to track. Presumably freebsd has something... something containing whatever Randi had ongoing responsibility over or was currently in process. That would certainly provide a measurable documentable level of damage (... X and Y will be delayed by an unknown period and Z is now not being looked at)
Notice that this blog post provides zero in the way of evidence. Before assuming everything written here is true, it would be worthwhile to fact check.
"Zero" seems like a bit much! There's a link to trademark policy as archived by the Wayback Machine. It indeed seems correct that they added "usernames" to the policy without updating the date on it.
The rest of it is generally consistent with what's been reported about this elsewhere, including on /r/KotakuInAction. But I'm not going to point you at each individual piece of evidence when there are things literally linked in the article that you didn't see.
If you have a new account and want to comment here, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.