I only plan on making this single response in this thread.
As someone mentioned directly below, you're damn right I'm a staunch feminist. But nobody has 'hijacked' anything: I've known Chad since before Gittip was even a thing, and have been in the top leaders list since when that meant I got less than a dollar. Because that's what happens when you've been using a platform longer than others. Naturally, this extended to my friends, as well. Furthermore, you only make Gittip money if you ask people to donate. The top getters are people who ask more.
My sibling presents a one-sided view of multi-faceted people: Shanley, for example, has her own bootstrapped media company that's already profitable, which is more to say than a large number of HN 'entrepreneurs.' (including myself).
Anyway, I'm not sure the 'leaderboards' are a good thing, exactly. But this kind of pettiness (from throwaway accounts, no less) is amusing.
has stuff on her profile that directly deprecates her husband. I don't anything about this case, but I'd say in general it makes me uncomfortable that somebody is bringing up a personal conflict on a platform like this.
You have no problem with her husband "bringing up a personal conflict" using a legal system that you are obliged to pay for, but a woman using a voluntary site to fund her defence makes you uncomfortable?
I'm glad that others are voicing their dissent. Gittip has went from an idea of giving open source developers a way to supplement their income via time spent writing software. Instead, it's been hijacked by toxic social justice warriors. One is even for someone supporting their legal issues (unrelated in any way whatsoever to tech). I'd love to see a statement by someone at Gittip responding to this.
The post that spawned this subthread amounts to "Since gittip's main beneficiaries are women I disagree with, gittip should be shut down".
In that context, do you see how your post is stoking the fire?
You didn't indicate what you think gittip is for, just that noirin's use of it is inappropriate. You also said she "deprecates her husband", when she lists 2 facts:
a) he was arrested
b) he is suing her for things she said about it
Plus, he's her ex-husband, and this is a situation where the distinction is important.
So in context, I don't think what you said was mild, I think it's somewhat hostile and inaccurate.
Since more recently published court documents have shown this to be a sexual assault / rape and domestic violence arrest, some statistics are in order.
There are plenty of crimes that don't leave particularly useful evidence. Pointing a gun at someone is illegal, but how do you prove it happened? Same issue in many rape cases.
I believe he was referring to the top two receivers, Shanley [1] and Ashe[2].
These two are a part of the group of very aggressive feminists; there's no official 'group' to speak of (AFAIK), just a network of people supporting each other.
Just to give a few names - Alex Gaynor (member of PSF board), Jacob Kaplan-Moss (yep, Django ex-BDFL), Coda Hale (HN/codahale, see his last messages here on HN [3], they're just about Shanley and Gittip), HN/steveklabnik, etc etc
A few highlights by Shanley:
"Men are rapists" [4]
HN's Sam Altman reaches out to women asking what he could do; Shanley reacts: "i'm not insulting you, i'm fucking EDUCATING you. so shut the fuck up and/or pay me, preferably both." [5], while refusing to do anything for HN, not even meeting anyone in person [6]
They've been either involved or voiced (shouted, actually) their support to whoever was involved in recent scandals with feminism - Adria Richards @ PyCon (I believe Alex Gaynor helped to make this event as public as possible), pronoun scandal (Alex Gaynor, again, was the author of RP that started the whole thing), Paul Graham misquote (Jacob KM speaks out [7])... I could go on.
But, basically, a bunch of very aggressive people, who claim to work on solving the problems women face, but actually (IMO) are just making the whole thing worse.
And, back to the subject, seeing them on top of gittip definitely doesn't help the project. Which is said, that's a great idea and I loved it when I saw it.
PS Oh, this just in. Shanley on how companies can increase diversity: "Hire me to be your diversity consultant I will help you quickly close down your business to make room for better ones"
First, I think that last tweet is actually pretty funny. What's wrong with a little black humor?
Also, because of the Torvalds mention earlier in this thread, I thought it'd be interesting to compare the people you mention here to him. Almost all of them look quite tame when you compare their behavior to Torvalds's. Kane's online persona does run toward being a jerk, and is probably the only one that could stand toe-to-toe with Torvalds in terms of brashness and hostility.
So why do these "very aggressive" people bother you so much, when Torvalds is generally seen as something of a hero? Are you willing to rate Torvalds's behavior as being just as "toxic" as theirs? The fictional QA report you describe in a later post actually sounds quite a lot like some stuff Torvalds has written. Do you have a similarly dutifully-annotated post in storage that details all of Torvalds's sins? Does his behavior set OSS back in the same way you claim these people set their communities back?
Maybe we should start referring to Torvalds as a "very aggressive programmer" ...
Note: I realize this post relies quite a bit on things I can't know. "ta140604" may very well think Torvalds is just as problematic as the people he discusses here. The point is to add a little context, and give you something to chew on the next time you see a post like this, where "a wild pseudonym appears!" expressly to smear a group of people that question the status quo. Yes, it's entirely likely that these people are all huge jerks. Most of us are jerks. But why are we so concerned with the fact that they, specifically, are jerks, when we don't give a shit about it in most everyone else?
Agreed. The problem is, they exaggerate and twist the truth, spread hate, unnecessarily antagonizing people, and actively push away those who try to reach out to them trying to do something.
Exactly: people like @shanley and @ashedryden make money by polarizing and then profiting from the resulting flames of their gender argument, and so vigorously resist even talking to those that they accuse and condemn. It's the type of narcissistic intolerance that is rarely seen in such pure form.
The logic here is rather straightforward: to a 'stage4' narcissist, their opinions are the functional equivalent of absolute truths, and therefore it is sacrilegious to even imply that they be 'open for debate'. So if anyone persists in challenging one of their sermons,that person is either grossly ignorant (solution => RTFM) OR is intentionally 'attacking' or 'harassing' (because there is no gray area to debate for the histrionically 'self-deified' -- it's impossible to debate across parallel 'Absolutes' -"God does not play dice";)
Heck, at this stage of ferment, she is all but accusing (the almost freakishly fair minded) Chad of misogyny :D
My advice to GitTip: 'if it's not broke, don't fix it'. You had a great year, so proceed cautiously with any systemic changes, and error on the side of transparency. Keep conversations as open as possible because the real solution to 'Bad' Speech -- is more speech.
The only exception to that rule is personally threatening language, which should not be tolerated at all. And only a coward would resort to that low level of action.
But with that being said lets not construe honest disagreements that are substantiated with reasons -- as a personal attack or a cause to feel 'threatened'.
And as far as funding goes: except for clear cases of fraud, let people decide for themselves where they want their money to go -- and let transparency take care of the rest :)
P.S. They are using flame throwers on twitter about this thread -- when they should be replying here :D (twitter is a better place to polarize with out of context 'headlines')
I don't agree that any of that is a problem. It's not their responsibility to help you do the right thing any more than it's a (again with the theme) QA person's job to teach the programmer proper coding practice. Separation of concerns, if you will.
If we go on with your analogy, QA report would look as follows: "Your piece of shit program burned down the whole fucking server farm, you useless assclown! You belong in jail!", where the real bug was maybe a crash. That's not a good, or even acceptable QA report, I'd say.
Look, if you think saying "men are rapists" is not a problem, there's not much to discuss here. Before that point I had my doubts - okay, they're self-righteous hateful hypocrites, but maybe they're right? I DO know there are problems that women face - maybe they know something I don't, and I should try harder and listen to them?
After that I just noped out.
And, BTW, their inability to reflect on their action, admit mistakes and apologize is another huge red flag. (I haven't seen any examples, at least - please let me know if you have any, I'd be very glad to see them)
Repeated errors have certainly received bug reports of a similar tone. In the context of QA I'd say that saying someone belongs in jail would be seen as humor and sarcasm, so that part doesn't really hold for me.
That said, I really don't see any nuance or indication that you were an ally before someone said "men are rapists," tbh. "Men are rapists" is an extreme statement, but "hateful hypocrites" isn't. Gotcha.
If you're going to "nope out" that easily, maybe you don't have much to offer. I don't know, you just sound like you're lecturing people in absentia. "Admit your mistake!" the principal says. Reading some Foucault might help here.
Your digging deep if you grab a github documentation PR as an example of how these people are making problems facing women in technology worse.
It's doubtful that you understand the issues women face and it's even more doubtful that you are able to measure the impact of anyone's efforts towards addressing those problems. Most importantly, it's clear you do not care in the slightest about helping women so your motivation in taking this thread about gittip off-topic is about attacking women.
You are a spineless coward hiding behind an anonymous ID tearing down a couple of women who are at least trying to make the world a better place. There is no way that your efforts could be construed as anything close to helping anyone. For some reason, they threaten you. Sort it out.
Unless you have anything to actually prove that Shanley, Ashe, whomever else you named in this thread, are "making the whole things worse", please be so kind and keep your hate to yourself.
PS. The only thing the tweets you quoted prove is that Shanley, on top of everything, has a sense of humor.
