<story><title>When Nerds Collide (2014)</title><url>https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dropit_sphere</author><text>Is the dongle thing even &lt;i&gt;remotely&lt;/i&gt; defensible?  She got a man fired over a private conversation.  One of the rules of civilized behavior is that you &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t do that&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>ZeroGravitas</author><text>&amp;gt; people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about &amp;quot;inappropriate behavior&amp;quot; (eg the dongle thing)&lt;p&gt;You seem very sure about when Adria Richards (the lady involved in &amp;quot;donglegate&amp;quot;) &amp;quot;tried&amp;quot; to join the nerd community. And yet you&amp;#x27;re wrong.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a partial bio from a recent article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;She was introverted, smart, and &amp;quot;weird&amp;quot; (according to the other kids)—a burgeoning nerd.&lt;p&gt;By age 17, she&amp;#x27;d fallen in love with computers. A year later, she was working at Geeksquad, employee #26, and she absorbed everything she could about hardware, operating systems, and networks. That summer, she registered her first domain name for a client for whom she was building a website, and learned about DNS. She buried herself in books and scoured websites, learning new things and trying them out, relying on friends whose parents had more resources to get access to hardware.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equivalencies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.shakesville.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;the-falsest-of-false-equi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>hyperion2010</author><text>This article is so spot on and covers many of the things that have bothered me for years about people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about &amp;quot;inappropriate behavior&amp;quot; (eg the dongle thing). Yes, there are cases where there is real inappropriate behavior surrounding positions of power in corporate or workplace settings, but in the community at large and in the communal and public spaces that we now interact no one individual should ever be allowed to determine what is appropriate (much less attack people for their supposed transgressions). We all left the world of &amp;quot;appropriate&amp;quot; because we found it a) useless and b) oppressive. The fact that our conversations are now public means that, if someone goes looking for something to be offended by they are going to find it, and then they play the primate power game and we&amp;#x27;re back to Cardinal Richelieu: &amp;quot;Give me 6 lines written in the hand of the most honest man and I will see him hanged.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That said, this does paint reality for those who do honestly want to see more women involved in tech etc. My take home is that if you keep trying to push on people who intentionally leave &amp;quot;appropriate&amp;quot; communities behind because they don&amp;#x27;t care about those things and find them oppressive, then you are simply going to drive them to leave again and you will have to start all over again.&lt;p&gt;edit: Actual take home. The only way forward is REAL tolerance for all kinds of behavior and a good faith attempt to see people in context.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>picks_at_nits</author><text>What exactly did she do? I recall she complained on Twitter, and exercised her freedom of speech to express her opinion. A number of people shared that opinion and also spoke freely about their opinion.&lt;p&gt;In the fullness of time, his employers acted like craven cowards and sacked him. Did she sack him? No.&lt;p&gt;Was he scarred for life? Ostracized? No, he found work again quickly. But what happened to her? A bunch of other people exercised their freedom of speech and shared their opinion of her choices, and she was also fired. Was she ostracized? Yes. People said things like, “She should never work in tech again.”&lt;p&gt;To anyone on the outside of that incident, it’s quite obvious that the treatment of the two persons involved was completely asymmetrical, especially considering that what she did was express an unpopular opinion.&lt;p&gt;Which is something that hackers, especially hackers here, often &lt;i&gt;say&lt;/i&gt; is something that ought to be protected. But there’s always the weasel words that “speech has consequences,” which mean that in reality, “privilege” is being insulated from those consequences, and lack of privilege is being exposed to the maximum consequences.&lt;p&gt;Getting back to your rules, she didn’t get anyone fired. She spoke out about something that was said in a public place loudly enough for her to hear it.&lt;p&gt;I’ll gladly defend that. There is nothing remotely civilized about saying that she shouldn’t be allowed to object to anything she hears, or express her opinion about how a civilized society should respond.&lt;p&gt;White males do that all the time. Why is a black, Jewish female not afforded the same option?</text></comment>
<story><title>When Nerds Collide (2014)</title><url>https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dropit_sphere</author><text>Is the dongle thing even &lt;i&gt;remotely&lt;/i&gt; defensible?  She got a man fired over a private conversation.  One of the rules of civilized behavior is that you &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t do that&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>ZeroGravitas</author><text>&amp;gt; people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about &amp;quot;inappropriate behavior&amp;quot; (eg the dongle thing)&lt;p&gt;You seem very sure about when Adria Richards (the lady involved in &amp;quot;donglegate&amp;quot;) &amp;quot;tried&amp;quot; to join the nerd community. And yet you&amp;#x27;re wrong.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a partial bio from a recent article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;She was introverted, smart, and &amp;quot;weird&amp;quot; (according to the other kids)—a burgeoning nerd.&lt;p&gt;By age 17, she&amp;#x27;d fallen in love with computers. A year later, she was working at Geeksquad, employee #26, and she absorbed everything she could about hardware, operating systems, and networks. That summer, she registered her first domain name for a client for whom she was building a website, and learned about DNS. She buried herself in books and scoured websites, learning new things and trying them out, relying on friends whose parents had more resources to get access to hardware.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equivalencies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.shakesville.com&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;the-falsest-of-false-equi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>hyperion2010</author><text>This article is so spot on and covers many of the things that have bothered me for years about people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about &amp;quot;inappropriate behavior&amp;quot; (eg the dongle thing). Yes, there are cases where there is real inappropriate behavior surrounding positions of power in corporate or workplace settings, but in the community at large and in the communal and public spaces that we now interact no one individual should ever be allowed to determine what is appropriate (much less attack people for their supposed transgressions). We all left the world of &amp;quot;appropriate&amp;quot; because we found it a) useless and b) oppressive. The fact that our conversations are now public means that, if someone goes looking for something to be offended by they are going to find it, and then they play the primate power game and we&amp;#x27;re back to Cardinal Richelieu: &amp;quot;Give me 6 lines written in the hand of the most honest man and I will see him hanged.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That said, this does paint reality for those who do honestly want to see more women involved in tech etc. My take home is that if you keep trying to push on people who intentionally leave &amp;quot;appropriate&amp;quot; communities behind because they don&amp;#x27;t care about those things and find them oppressive, then you are simply going to drive them to leave again and you will have to start all over again.&lt;p&gt;edit: Actual take home. The only way forward is REAL tolerance for all kinds of behavior and a good faith attempt to see people in context.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zorpner</author><text>&lt;i&gt;She got a man fired over a private conversation. One of the rules of civilized behavior is that you don&amp;#x27;t do that.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Briefly ignoring both that she did not &amp;quot;get [him] fired&amp;quot; and that your definition of &amp;quot;private conversation&amp;quot; apparently extends to &amp;quot;conversation in a public place that others can easily hear&amp;quot;, there are plenty of obvious situations in which a private conversation can and should result in consequences (sexual harassment and threats being clear examples).&lt;p&gt;Your position on the rules of civilized behavior is incoherent.</text></comment>