It seems pretty clear that this is more about a clique that is attacking Mr Crockford in order to obtain more power for themselves.
They can now say - "Hey - you have to listen to us! We Matter! Look at what we forced the Nodevember people to do. We're a moral authority!".
To go from complaining about a lack of diversity, to basically saying 'you screwed up and now need to prove your love to us by uninviting this JS superstar'. It's like the stereotypical abusive boy/girl friend requiring their lover to do something they normally wouldn't do to prove their love.
Sensitive subjects seem to be effective conduits by which manipulative people can control others.
What drives me to despair is that all too frequently it takes only a cursory glance at the Twitter feed of the person making the loudest complaints regarding inclusivity and diversity to find comments which compromise these values.
The individual in this instance goes by @nexxylove on Twitter, and has recently retweeted such statements as: "We love our freedom rhetoric in this country, but most white don't actually believe in true freedom. Removing choice is their default"[0] and "…I'm tired of the intellectual dishonesty of cis men. Disgusting."[1].
Thankfully I see significant effort by those around me to tackle these problems discreetly and in sobriety. Inclusivity isn't an extreme position, and discourse need not be monopolised by those who shout the loudest.
Totally agreed. Also feel this feeling of "moral superiority" is at play even when the complainers are not in a position to exert any power -- otherwise worthless people throwing mud just to feel worthy. That probably counts as practice for when they can get the upper hand.
In cases like these, it's worth thinking a bit about tolerance. Tolerance, simply put, is behaving politely and professionally towards people and organizations that you dislike. Note the "that you dislike" part.
Think you're tolerant because, say, you don't mind being around gay people? Well, do you hate gay people? If you say no to that, then you aren't being tolerant at all by being around them, you're just normal.
Do you hate, say, Neo-nazis? Then you can demonstrate your tolerance by engaging with them politely and professionally if you encounter any.
Apparently, at some point, we not only ran away from being proud of our tolerance, many people are wearing their level of intolerance as a badge of pride. In some circles, it seems to be a good thing to find anybody who disagrees with you in some way, and gather a virtual lynch mob to make sure that the worst thing you can arrange happens to them.
Personally, I don't think Crockford did anything wrong. But if you do, why don't you try demonstrating your tolerance by welcoming him at your conference anyways and listening to his views on technical subjects? If he says something that bothers you, you can calmly and politely explain to him how his statement hurt you, or maybe even just let it go. That's what tolerance looks like.
Can we please get back to making real tolerance something to be proud of?
One of my consulting projects includes doing programming for a relatively big millenials-dominated site. Users on that site know exactly what cards to play in what order to get people on staff and/or affiliates fired - it's Crybullying all the way. It doesn't even matter if the claims made are true or not, just the proclamation of being hurt or oppressed is sufficient. The site owners ultimately making these decisions do so because they live in absolute terror of what these people could do if they turned against the site itself or them personally.
We now live in a world where anything is done to appease you if you only cry loud enough. It always used to be the case in personal conflicts that whoever was better at mud slinging had a significant hand up as compared to someone who's less talented, but in combination with the new fad of Crybullying, this is a devastating tactic.
Agree. I ran a dating site for 7 years and had to deal with such inquiries on a daily basis ("Buhuu, that guy/girl sad mean things to me, close his/her account").
Most often it turned out the complaining person was the problem.
Worst cases were third parties who requested such actions on behalf of the "victim". They were loud, asked other members to complain too and even showed up in our offices to demand account closings - without any proof or valid reasoning.
I never understood how people handle their real lives without being able to argue or verbally discuss such issues. Even if these include occasional insults. IMHO these are just words - you don't need to cry for higher authorities (site admins, conference organizers or law authorities) all the time.
> I never understood how people handle their real lives without being able to argue or verbally discuss such issues
My guess is they handle it very well, because they're just using a strategy that works out perfectly for them. This only has to be learned or reinforced once, and it becomes a problem solving strategy for life because it's such an easy exploit to use with our social protocols. It can be used to solve pretty much every issue where they can win by exerting pressure.
Whoever happens to get in their way also often takes permanent damage by being labeled something bad that sticks and this hampers that person's ability to not only resolve the issue at hand but prevents them from being heard in the future as well. Either way, you either acquiesce or you get bulldozed.
Crockford did nothing wrong. Fuck Nodevember. If you have huevos or egos or whatever, don't support that conference. He is one of those guys that will email you back if you have a technical question. I know because he already did twice to me. Who can say that about someone so influential?
It's another conference scam anyway. They're charging $350 for tickets with unconfirmed speakers and they have an open call for speakers.
Considering the main value is out of the speakers selling before having much of anything confirmed or even finished just screams like yet another conference trying to cash in (they're even taking sponsors, too).
I don't mind conferences where you have to pay mind you but I've only seen the small, borderline scammy conferences where you have to pay before finding out the full line up of speakers.
This is standard. I don't really like it either but all conferences I've attended do this and they aren't scams. I'm not sure if there is a deliberate reason or if it's just the natural order of conference logistics.
You always have the option of not buying a ticket until seeing the speakers list, but you risk losing your early bird pricing or the conference selling out. I suppose that if attendees have so much confidence that they are willing to commit before seeing the speaker list and the conference sells out, one can't really argue against this model.
I mean sometimes they're good if you can interact with the speakers, ask questions and maybe even network / talk with the other folks interested in the same topics as you. But yeah in general I would imagine YouTube would be better with this.
Now if it's a free conference? Then I'm all for it almost always for it. YCombinator Start-up school comes to mind; I enjoyed it a lot the last time and I'm going to the upcoming one :)
That's a good point. I think because I have 3 young sons and am so busy outside of that type of stuff I have a different take on my personal time in terms of spending more if it with geeks than I have to. :)
This "X shaming" or "X gender inappropriate joke" is really getting out of hand. You can't say anything anymore. You may hurt someone's feelings, bla bla bla. I'm sick of this. I'm sick of this political correctness that is intoxicating our society. You cannot say anymore: "hey, grow a pair!" because this is sexist? Come on... this is insane! One thing is to respect everybody and another one is to apply censorship to everything. Even though people didn't meant to offend, harass or shame other people.
> Even though people didn't meant to offend, harass or shame other people.
That's the thing - people who shame others are not looking at intent behind actions; they're getting offended by shallow interpretations (a sign of insecurity). Any reasonable person looking at Crockford making his "weak" joke would not think his intention was to harass physically weak people.
This kind of shit is also why you see people like /r/the_donald aggressively provoking and fighting back against these so-called "SJW's" - the pendulum has swung way too far the opposite way.
There's the old idea of "you judge your actions by your intentions and others intentions by their actions."
I think culturally we've entered into this weird area where we're not even judging people so much by their actions but rather by how their actions make some people feel. There is nothing wrong with being mindful of how your statements and actions are perceived. Communication is always a two-way street where what is heard is sometimes more important than what is said. It's just too bad that we're shifting so far away from being able to understand the intentions of the speaker. Fear of saying the wrong thing never teaches someone why and what is wrong to say.
Absolutely. It's great that societal norms of what is acceptable in speech are progressing to be considerate of more and more out-groups. But we need to be mindful that news of these new norms do not reach everyone simultaneously, and we should not tar and feather people for not independently coming upon the insight that a certain element of speech can be hurtful. While we should all seek to understand and empathize with the rest of the world, it's a vast, complex world beyond any one person's direct experience. If someone gratuitously drops the N-word, ostracise them; but if there is good reason to believe the speaker is well-intentioned but perhaps ignorant on some point of concern, the proper response is to discreetly engage in a respectful, open dialogue, not to publicly shame anyone. If the speech is hurtful and dialogue fruitless, direct action may be required, but not before.
These aren't norms and they aren't new the subject has changed but this is exactly the level of thought policing that true liberals used to fight and even die for.
This is no different than the puritans or any other group that wish to enforce their own opinions at the expense of everyone else.
Asking that white men respect others is not hurting "everyone else." White men are the small group here. Norms of tolerance and mutual respect only ask that white men welcome everyone else to the table.
It seems like those calling for removing speakers are often trying to set identity contingencies. That is, a rule like, "if you are Douglas Crockford, then you can't speak at a conference". However, like identity contingencies against people based on gender, race, etc.. this kind of rule is disappointing because it assumes there is something inherently limited or bad about being Douglas Crockford.
What seems better to me would be asking for an explicit behavioral contingency on being a conference speaker. For example, "if you are going to make sexist remarks, then you cannot speak at the conference".
This makes clear that if you think Douglas Crockford is not fundamentally broken as a human, but could learn and become better at following the contingencies set by the conference, then he is fine to speak. It also opens room to work with Crockford to create a plan for him to speak at the conference, such as going over his speech beforehand, or sitting down with him afterward to discuss ways in which he may have violated the conference's standards.
He can't stop being Douglas Crockford, but I don't think that means he can't stop producing behaviors conference organizers find offensive or harmful (if he wants to).
P.s. check out the book Whistling Vivaldi for an interesting introduction to some potentially harmful (or beneficial) effects of identity contingencies.
That concept won't work for these people. Making rules like "don't be sexist" means that to prevent someone coming, you have to show that the person was in fact being sexist.
The homepage for Nodevember has a big "code of conduct" section. No idea if it's new or not, but one bit is:
> Do not insult or put down other attendees.
Insult is taken, not given. You can't decide what insults me, the same as I can't decide what insults you. By that token, anyone can claim that anything anyone says is insulting to them.
I find plenty of common nodejs community 'norms' to be insulting to my eyes to read, never mind to my brain having to deal with the mental shenanigans required to try to make sense of the decisions made.
Does that mean I have the ability to say "NPM's dependency management is so poor quality it's insulting" and have any talk about NPM banned?
> Insult is taken, not given. You can't decide what insults me, the same as I can't decide what insults you. By that token, anyone can claim that anything anyone says is insulting to them.
Agreed, and because the conference organizers wield the power to decide who speaks (or to implement deciding in some fashion), they can choose how the insult they're referring to is measured and responded to. For example, it could be by committee, etc..
I'm disappointed if, regardless of their belief on what constitutes insulting behavior, they didn't put forth at least some effort to see if Crockford could meet their standards.
> Does that mean I have the ability to say "NPM's dependency management is so poor quality it's insulting" and have any talk about NPM banned?
You can say that, and organize a conference that bans talk about NPM. As long as your were upfront about it, I'd be fine with it--just sounds like the trappings of a bad conference. If you invited a speaker, only to realize that they were planning to talk about NPM (say you hadn't made your contingency clear), then hopefully you would check if they would drop talk about NPM. If you found out that someone had talked about NPM at a previous conference, and so removed them from your conference without doing the above, I would be disappointed in you, too ;).
> Making rules like "don't be sexist" means that to prevent someone coming, you have to show that the person was in fact being sexist.
I'm not sure if you're saying that, to you, nothing in his behavior appears sexist. I was trying to think of the issue of what to do after / assuming they believed he had acted inappropriately in the past.
I'm trying to imagine an alternative timeline in which Nodevember, after having announced Crockford as a speaker and then receiving pushback on Twitter, privately discusses things with Crockford and mutually agree that they should part ways, but come up with a plausible explanation that would minimize the loss of face for both parties.
(for the sake of argument, let's say we agree that conferences have the unilateral right to invite and reject whomever they want for any reason that doesn't violate current federal laws)
1) What would that public and plausible explanation be? e.g. "Due to scheduling conflicts, we regret to say that Mr. Crockford cannot give the keynote speech but will be attending etc.etc."
2) How much time would it take (in days) to plan and then move on this?
3) Is Crockford the type to take this graciously and quietly and, even though he's justified in feeling wronged, doesn't feel the need to retaliate now or in the future?
edit: I think that Nodevember can do what it wants, but that it seriously fucked up for not vetting Mr. Crockford before inviting him and then really fucked up by throwing him under the bus. But that's been thoroughly discussed in last night's thread
"it seriously fucked up for not vetting Mr. Crockford before inviting him"
What exactly does Mr. Crockford need to be "vetted" for, with whom, and how exactly did those people gain the authority to decide who gets to speak and who doesn't?
Whose authority? The same authority that allows them to create Nodevember: their own. I've never run a conference so I'm only speculating here: when people decide to organize a conference, they have an idea of what ideas and environment and discussion they want to promote, whether it's Nodevember or the American Neo-Nazi Party. I don't know what Nodevember's standards are but they clearly don't allow for Crockford, and as long as it's not for reasons that might violate civil rights, e.g. if Crockford were to rely on a wheelchair and Nodevember wanted to convene at a place without elevators or ramps, they can have whatever standards they want, just like they're free to write and uphold a code of conduct they believe in.
But generally, and again I've never run a conference, if you have standards, you should have them at the time of planning the conference, including when inviting keynote speakers.
Sorry, when I said "whose authority" I wasn't referring to the conference runners -- obviously they can choose to invite and disinvite anyone they want. I was referring to these Twitter randos the conference runners are apparently required to "vet" their speakers with.
Yeah, I don't get it either. FWIW, and why I'm commenting, "promiscuity" with regards to computer communications isn't even new with Crockford. It's the exact correct term used in the industry to refer to a mode you can put network cards into if you want to inspect all traffic that reaches it, rather than just traffic indented for your workstation [0]. It goes back at least to the early 1990s when I first encountered it, probably earlier.
Cute. However conflating or equating what Douglas Crockford has done with Brendan Eich is in my estimation unreasonable.
As far as anyone can tell, at worst Crockford has a conversational style that isn't excessively concerned with political correctness or charm. He used words like "gonads" and "promiscuous" in a way that can be misconstrued.
At worst, Brendan Eich can be accused of working to actively work against the aspirations of a community because they are different to him, even though these aspirations don't materially affect him.
Gay marriage was illegal in the US until last year. His position was not a fringe position. I am glad marriage equality comes to the US but if we start prosecuting people for their political beliefs, things are going to get ugly real quick. The tide of political direction can turn on a dime.
How about marijuana legalization? It's coming to all of the US states sooner or later. Let's start making a list of people who are against it so we can start a revenge hit later.
I don't understand how the word promiscuous become such a toxic word even in the context of human relationship. We are several years into the era of Tinder and other hookup apps and people are still freaking out with the concept.
It disappoints me to see how many folks on Hacker News have responded to this incident by condemning the entire concept of standards of conduct and the idea that the developer community should take the goal of inclusivity and sensitivity seriously. There is no question that our community too often can feel hostile to those who aren't white hetero men, and that is a real problem.
On the other hand, there is no question that advocates for inclusivity are sometimes overzealous and careless, and no doubt, some people have even exploited the issue in bad faith for their own aims. These mistakes confuse and alienate would-be allies in the community. While no doubt well-intentioned, Nodevember has hurt the cause.
My plea to those who are tempted to dismiss the whole project of inclusivity in response to this incident is this:
The program needs debugging, but that doesn't mean the program is unworkable or the goals are undesirable. Perhaps we forgot a semicolon somewhere, or maybe we need to do a complete rewrite. But creating a community that is comfortable for everyone is an inherently valuable goal. And it doesn't need to be uncomfortable for cisgendered hetero white men, either. Please don't abandon this goal. Instead, let's engage in a constructive dialogue to figure out how to do better.
> It disappoints me to see how many folks on Hacker News have responded to this incident by condemning the entire concept of standards of conduct
Because they are consistently abused by manipulative sociopaths.
> While no doubt well-intentioned, Nodevember has hurt the cause.
It isn't well-intentioned at all.
In every large group/community there are those who will try and take advantage of others. You need checks and balances if you want to limit abuse.
In this case there clearly are no checks and balances.
As a brown man it isn't the "white hetro men" who are making me afraid to attend conferences.....
A "white hetro man" might make a comment or tell a joke that makes me feel a little uncomfortable. A power mad "SJW" will publicly shame me and hurt my career.
> But creating a community that is comfortable for everyone is an inherently valuable goal.
Well, I can never be comfortable in a community where I might have my reputation and/or career destroyed over a reference to testicles that some might deem inappropriate.
The people doing this are vicious and hateful, and they need to be given a taste of their own medicine.
Maybe the idea of communities in tech should just go away. People who share similar ideas on tech should just get together to share those ideas without having to setup a bunch of arbitrary rules and gatekeepers.
Some brilliant people might also have offensive ideas. Why not have a system that allows that brilliance to shine through?
The larger problem here is that these are not communities of hobbyists. Saying something silly or having someone misinterpret what you are saying within the community could cost you your living. Crockford will be okay because he is already well established, but what if he wasn't as well established?
If you know of a better way to check the growing power of these vicious hateful busybodies, I'd like to hear it.
They're like Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority when it was at the peak of its power, probably back in the 1980's. But they're more frightening, because they're able to accomplish with a few tweets and blog posts what took them many millions of dollars and a membership-based organization.
You really need to grow up. Our community was founded on being different. It wasn't that long ago that nerd and geek were pejorative terms. Geeks didn't get the girls form a reason.
My entry to the tech industry was playing games. All of the work I have done online involved dealing with nicknames and aliases. Nobody cared if you were black, white, pink, gay, straight or female. All anyone ever cared about was that you contributed well.
Now everyone has to walk over eggshells to be 'inclusive'. I think its important that we enable all people who want to work in this industry to be able to and to support and mentor others. But this doesn't mean we have to lose ourselves in the process.
If someone finds a joke about floppy disks, or the terms promiscuous or slave/master so offensive that they can't be a member of the tech community. They really need to eat some concrete and harden up.
There are people who put down women and exclude others based upon certain characteristics within the tech community and frankly that is appalling and we should all be working to get rid of them. But incidents like this do nothing to help deal with those people and often make it harder.
> There is no question that our community too often can feel hostile to those who aren't white hetero men.
Why this assumption? All the information about programming is on websites that are accessible to everyone independently on their gender and race. I've witnessed very inclusive initiatives by most people, white or not. If we mostly get white males, does it make our websites racist? Is StackOverflow, Eclipse, SublimeText or Chrome racist? Is selling software online only available to white people?
I'd argue if we mostly get white males, it's a coincidence. Most people I talk with about a well-paying, international, career in IT tell me "I could never do that, it's too nerdy". Maybe they didn't have the support by their parents, maybe they didn't have enough Legos when they were children, maybe they identify as girls-who-don't-belong-in-front-of-a-computer. Say what you want, programming is hard and proportions don't make us guilty by default: Other people just chose not to do it.
Also, I've personally tried. I've brought my goddaughter into fablabs, industries, research centers, showed her Mythbusters, bought her a cubic meter of Legos, talked with passion about science in general, it cost me hundreds. She still identifies as a prince-charming girl. My sister on the other hand got into engineering, and she regrets having made this choice "based on people who told her they need more women in engineering", "because she would have preferred organizing cultural events". I've also taught a 15-year-old arabic immigrant person on how to program. He touched said goddaughter sexually.
Proportions don't make white males guilty. Programming was welcoming to diversity until diversity media made it a minefield. People just rarely had a preference for programming.
You don't need to look far to find women who've had bad experiences in tech culture. Of course it's not all bad. It's natural for groups to value their common qualities and tend to devalue those of people outside their group. Techies aren't monsters. But we surely can still do better.
> It disappoints me to see how many folks on Hacker News have responded to this incident by condemning the entire concept of standards of conduct and the idea that the developer community should take the goal of inclusivity and sensitivity seriously.
Who. Who has responded that way?
Have you read the article?
There is:
- no official message on exactly why he was shit-canned.
- references in his previous talks to:
- "gonads" (literally, a reproductive organ, i.e. testicles or ovaries);
- "huevos" (eggs, in Spanish);
- something "standing out like dogs balls"; and
- commenting that drunk people were giving stupid talks at a conference.
If you claim that referring to having gonads is "exclusionary", because some people may have neither, then fuck it, you can't ever present anything that references the concept of seeing or hearing, because thats exclusionary to people with vision/hearing issues.
I know some people don't like eating eggs, but its hardly reason to complain about a presenter at a conference.
Dogs balls do stand out. Have you seen a male dog that hasn't been de-sexed? Who is attending these conferences, 5 year olds? If someone is so offended by a reference to dogs testicles being very obvious, how on earth did they even make it to the conference? Most modern tv advertising is more explicit than that.
I can't even begin to comprehend how the last one is offensive. Oh wait. I know. We have to be inclusive. So presenters should be allowed (nay, ENCOURAGED!) to present drunk.
> Instead, let's engage in a constructive dialogue to figure out how to do better.
Given that no one that actually made the complaint seems willing to publicly identify specifically what they believe Crockford did wrong, how would you imagine that is even possible?
Oh wait, let me guess.
Complainant: "<Person> is non-inclusive, let's un-invite/ban him"
Moderator: "Well, hang on now, what exactly did he say or do?"
Complainant: "The moderator is being non-inclusive, let's ban him!"
Sponsor-Suckling-Controversy-Allergic-Organisers: "ok, we've banned all presenters except you and your hand-picked list of friends. we've also gone ahead and implemented the attendee filter you requested, and anyone who questions this process will of course be denied entry"
I'm all for women in tech, I'm all for equality and people not being attacked for who they are. I'm not for people using ridiculous mis-representation of a person to have that person removed from an event.
> I'm all for women in tech, I'm all for equality and people not being attacked for who they are. I'm not for people using ridiculous mis-representation of a person to have that person removed from an event.
Then we don't disagree. I see too many people in this thread who seem to think the entire project of taking inclusivity seriously is either silly or actually offensive. Terms like Social Justice Warrior have been used to disparage inclusivity broadly instead of narrowly addressing ways we can do better.
I think the only way to oppose this tidal wave of bullying and shaming and witch hunting is to employ all of the same tactics the cry-bullies employ. People and organizations cave to these bullies because, in their cost-benefit calculations, they see little or no downside to caving, and possible upside. In order to stop this, it has to made costly to cave to them. If everyone who thinks it was ridiculous and cowardly for Nodevember to uninvite Crockford were to make it known that they would boycott Nodevember and their corporate sponsors in the future, they might see things differently.
Also, people who routinely seek to destroy the reputations and careers of people who don't speak and behave according to their strict standard should run the risk of having their own careers and reputations destroyed in response. This form of sweet justice happens once in a while, but not nearly enough.
I'm a liberal with three daughters and I'm certainly pro-inclusion but this repulses me. We've grown as a society to over-indulge people with fragile personalities. Yuk.
I disagree about the notion that the attack on Crockford comes from "people with fragile personalities", this look to me more like advanced identity politics manipulated at a high level, definitely would take me 10'000 hours to master.
Given the context, chicharrones was clearly a mistake or a play on the word cojones. The earnest parsers of speech for fatal psychological landmines would not in a million years be able to make this tiny mental leap, as it requires a sense of humor.
A key pillar of today's identity politics is a default state of victimhood in a zero-sum world where a crass rubric of privilege is the only determinant of one's outcome.
Sadly, when people (are made to) believe they are victims, almost any amount of egregious behavior opens up for them.
We should not quietly tolerate puritanical bullying behavior from the far left any more than we did that from the far right.
A point i didn't see mentioned is that the talk about "having the balls" is all about the fear-of-monads being overblown and unjustified, and in this context making unfunny jokes about overblown and unjustified bravado conveys a point -- and does so in a way that no amount of explaining that "it's not so bad really" would. I actually think saying he was being exclusionary in this instance is downright bad faith.
As for Mr Straw, glad to hear he made the decision to think for himself, rather than buying into all the BS that the conservatives or liberals / Republicans or Democrats are selling.
All things in moderation, I suppose, and don't be afraid to look at the historical facts and likely consequences of decisions.
Not that facts help you make a values decision about what to do when there is a "zero sum", conflict of interest type situation...
There's a lawful vs chaotic dichotomy going on - Mr. Straw started out lawful conservative, but then found out about a different set of laws he could leverage into a position of power.
It's a similar but different power leverage being exercised elsewhere by a new generation. Feeling excluded by more usual measures like achievement or talent, they've taken to using social taboos and bullying to gain power.
It's vaguely annoying to watch, but it's best ignored. The very lack of talent that people who use social manoeuvres to get to the top means the groups they dominate won't be very important or effective, unless it's law making directly. I'll get worried then. I'm fairly sanguine about node.js conferences.
People who self identify as busybodies creating rules of conduct etc. seem to me to be more interested in rules than opinions. Setting the rules, especially when it's around social norms - rules almost for the sake of rules - is a cheap power tactic pursued in organisations all over the world for decades. Thought police / religious fundamentalists exist in every political shade. It's the zealousness of the policing that I have a problem with, not the particular shade.
Just my opinion. I don't care much about the politics. I don't think either side of US politics is wrong or right per se, for example. I'm just very wary of people who have strong opinions that they want to turn into rules.
>he very lack of talent that people who use social manoeuvres to get to the top means the groups they dominate won't be very important or effective
You'd be surprised. I grew up in the USSR. People you've just described were everywhere where there was a slight resemblance of power. You don't need to be very effective when you can just stomp your competition into the ground and if you can do this then you are very important.
I'm really starting to think that flags need to be severely gimped in the front-page algorithm. Lately all the interesting stuff that generates discussion gets bounced after an hour or two, whereas relatively boring, non-controversial stuff that no one comments on remains sometimes for days on the front page.
I don't think "worthwhile" had anything to do with their motivation for flagging it. They're probably afraid that the conversation might spark a backlash against Nodevember and their corporate sponsors.
Political correctness stifles upward mobility and promotes the maintenance of the current 'status quo'.
We're trending towards a future where people can do anything they want as long as they have enough power and don't say anything offensive while doing it.
It's horse shit to be honest; most humans don't really give a fuck about a gendered presentation slide and removing all gender references from everything isn't how you magically gain 'equality'.
Some of the worst humans I know are the ones who love this garbage because it's essentially the current way to bully and silence the people you don't like.
Sometimes people encourage me to get into speaking at conferences. There are a number of reasons I don't want to, and shit like this isn't the main one, but it certainly doesn't help.
Everything just feels very tense (to be clear, I think the reasons for this are understandable) but it also just seems kind of thankless.
Well, I think Crockford is a standup guy and probably went to far with the Trump thing and the name calling but whatever. Sometimes you get passionate about a topic, it is what it is.
Consider backing up your denigration with facts next time; people aren't stupid, we can rationally analyze things.
Also 'the trump thing' and 'the name calling' are the same thing. You called him a retard because you find him offensive; don't try to rewrite history.
You changing your story now doesn't change the fact that you've insulted the mentally handicapped by painting them as something you perceive as negative; should I contact your previous/future employers about this?(I see you're a founder I guess I'd contact you :))
All of the above is why people are fed up with the 'left'.
You can cross the line and say, 'lel I just went too far'; people with the opposite viewpoint? 'Racist bigot white male fire them now'
cool but me taking that down was because that word itself probably is the wrong one to use, not rewriting history, i tend to agree with Lewis CK in how he says things as its not taken offensively when in context. I hope people start thinking more like him when it comes to dialog.
Sure, I agree with him too(one of my favorites), changes nothing though.
Rewriting what you wrote isn't Rewriting history? Did you not write it? Please explain how you calling Trump a retard was the wrong word? Did you not mean it? How so?
Please believe me when I say I will follow up on this. I believe you are socially responsible for your beliefs and you clearly believe being retarded is a bad thing. Please illucidate me, is retardation bad? Would you prefer not to be retarded?
You said what you said. If Republicans can't say offensive words you can't say retard without repercussion. That's the future you're working towards, one where your intent doesn't matter, the perceived meaning does.
I personally believe we should all be able to be offensive, I think that's how natural growth occurs.
Really curious how you defend insulting the mentally handicapped though. Or was that not your intent?
Would you find yourself annoyed if people called you a bigot when you're just trying to convey honest belief?
He said a few things that feel like promoting a non inclusive environment. Which is bad, especially from someone like him, because many people look up to him and probably think it is okay to say such things.
Edit: Also interesting that the HN crowd always confirms the accusations they receive.
monads sound like gonads, its elementary humor but there's nothing offensive about it. If assholes were only attached to men, some dumb fuck would complain if he made fart jokes.
> He said a few things that feel like promoting a non inclusive environment.
source ? because I was unable to find anything that promotes "a non inclusive environment" in what Mr CrockFord said. Can you tell us exactly what CrockFord said that feels "non inclusive". Can you also precisely define what you mean by "non inclusive".
So to be inclusive they excluded him for a few very mild but borderline comments he made that have been taken out of context. Could have been worse I guess - he could have used a gendered pronoun!
They can now say - "Hey - you have to listen to us! We Matter! Look at what we forced the Nodevember people to do. We're a moral authority!".
To go from complaining about a lack of diversity, to basically saying 'you screwed up and now need to prove your love to us by uninviting this JS superstar'. It's like the stereotypical abusive boy/girl friend requiring their lover to do something they normally wouldn't do to prove their love.
It's simple bullying, really.