And yet no thought is given to broadcasting a thought to thousands or millions of people simultaneously. You're right, by the way, nobody should be put on trial for minor transgressions like this, but in a humane world, they wouldn't happen either.
also, FTA, it appears they did ask for an apology, which they apparently didn't get. Another thing interactions on the internet make very hard, is that owning your transgressions when you're wrong has very little utility as the other person is easy to objectify.
I see that Steve Klabnik an Corey Haines apologized on their blogs, and you're right that I was wrong there. The reason I wrote that was in the article it says "I queried some tweeters for more information on why exactly it was so bothersome. I didn’t get apologies from these tweeters."
I do want to point out that if you complain about someone in a medium, it's reasonable to expect the apology or explanation there. If someone is a jerk in front of other people to you, they should clarify their behavior in front of everyone, not just a direct, personal apology.
This is kind of my point - I'm not a neurologist or social scientist, but, in my opinion, we humans don't seem well equipped to deal with the group sizes the internet makes available. I think it's totally valid to point out that the problem here isn't really the individual behavior per-se, it's the behavior in the context of 10k others. In the blink of an eye, we've made it possible for virtually everyone to reach an enormous amount of people, so easily, and with so little oversight, that it falls on those people to take responsibility for engaging with the platform in the first place.
also, FTA, it appears they did ask for an apology, which they apparently didn't get. Another thing interactions on the internet make very hard, is that owning your transgressions when you're wrong has very little utility as the other person is easy to objectify.