Because people are flagging it. This happens every single time a story about sexism appears on HN.
The best explanation I've ever got from a flagger is that the topic "isn't relevant". Funny how it's only topics that require self-examination of the industry's perception of gender that aren't relevant.
Don't jump to conclusions. I'm flagging these threads too, and I'm extremely jumpy about gender/privilege issues. The reason I'm flagging the threads is that they're a message board version of a TLC reality show; they're unproductive and horrible. They aren't animated by a drive to hash out an important issue; they're animated by our love for drama.
To what extent is that counter-productive, though? The OP lists 5 other submissions on the topic. At a certain point isn't it just simpler to contain it all in one thread? If you don't want to read it (and I certainly don't blame you) you can just skip that thread and move on.
Because the threads are, in the parlance of our times, embarrassing shitshows. It was clear to me that they needed to be torched off the site as soon as we got to the comment about the hetero guy in the gay bar.
That is what the flag button is for. To scorch the shit off the site. More people need to use it. These threads are horrible and they need to go.
I both agree and disagree. The threads are utter shitshows (and yes, the hetero guy in a gay bar comment was the lowest point in a very low thread) but at the same time I think that flagging the content off the site means that a lot of people are never aware of the (excuse me if this sounds dramatic) true nature of many in Hacker News.
I suppose I think of it as painting over the cracks in the community here. I'd prefer everyone sees the shitshow for what it is, and then maybe has a think about what HN is, or should be.
This site would be better if we could get over the idea that all issues related to technology demand comprehensive litigation in comment threads. Sometimes issues that are relevant to us can't be resolved in comment threads. And then all those comment threads do is degrade the community.
What if leaving the embarassing shit shows hanging around is necessary to show people the extent of the problem?
In much the same way that sometimes in a parent's life they need to stop doing the laundry and let their teenager head out to town with smelly, mouldy, crusty garments until the teenager learns that dirty clothes are horrible and that perhaps it might be worth helping parents with housework without the need for bribes.
I normally agree with you, but in this case I find it quite relevant. All Hackers should be all notice now that the things they say in public or put on Twitter could cost them their jobs.
>Funny how it's only topics that require self-examination of the industry's perception of gender that aren't relevant.
I don't see any "self-examinination" happening on the other side: that this is taken too far, that women maybe don't chose CompSci careers for other reasons besides "sexism" (the least of which are bloody crazy expectations of overtime and having to do rather mundane programming chores 90% of the time), and that not every field has to have a 50-50 men/women representation (nobody fights for more women coal miners. Why is that?).
Looks like "rampant sexism in tech" is the gospel, and only everybody disagreeing must "self-examine his perception".
Are you sure you're not mistaking the reason behind the flagging?
This story deserves to be flagged for the same reason the half dozen other posts related to this dramatic internet drama need to be flagged. Because it's drama.
Were there actionable advice in the linked article that one could use to improve one's business, it would be a reasonable thing to submit to this site. Were there anything whatsoever to do with technology or computer programming in the linked article, it might deserve to be submitted here.
But there's none of that. So it goes someplace else.
Are you suggesting that every non-flagged article on Hacker News contains actionable advice one could use to improve their business? Because I think we all know that is not true.
Articles of all kinds are popular on HN- some tech, some business, some lifestyle, some that have absolutely nothing to do with tech. But mysteriously, gender seems to be about the only topic not permitted.
It's 100% definitely not what the guidelines state. In what to submit, it clearly states:
"anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"
Discussions about gender would fulfill that criteria, no? There's a post on the front page right now entitled "Dating with Graph Search". Another called "Love for Makers".
By your criteria we should have all flagged the posts about Steve Jobs' death, right?
" We're assuming these are fake, and that someone just got hold of their Facebook and Twitter passwords.
On the other hand, I notice the same statement has appeared on their blog. So maybe it's real. "
It's hard to know which company acted in a less respectable way: PlayHaven, which fired the accused dongle-joker after a 1-2 day "thorough investigation" (http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/). Or SendGrid, which fired someone only after they suffered a huge DDOS.
If you can ignore the actual content of the fired employees' speech, they were both fired for speech that was only tangentially connected to their official duties. Both the joke and the accusation was made on company time (as representatives at PyCon), but not in a direct manner (i.e. not "At PlayHaven, we all have huge dongles").
It's a little disturbing that a firing over he-said/she-said in such an expedited manner, during a time when the facts and intent are still in dispute (arguably moreso, given the fog and noise created by the outburst of discussion and tweets).
It is quite possible that both companies acted in a respectable way.
PlayHaven chose to fire one of the two, and publicly states that the other is a valued employee. None of us know what went into that decision, and there may well be a back story. My guess is that the PyCon incident was more likely a final straw than the full cause. But none of us know.
SendGrid had little choice about firing her. Clearly she is unable to effectively do her job at this point, and is drawing huge negative attention. No matter how well she's done her job until now, or how much the company might believe her side of the story, she's a huge liability.
All of that said, I would bet money that he'll get hired by someone before she does.
Okay, this is clearly interesting news, and an official statement from SendGrid. If this gets deleted too, can we at the very least get confirmation that this is mod action and not a flagging ring?
Edit: Confirmed mod action (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416908). I think it's reasonable, but this blog post seems to confirm that the development is real. I agree with pg that reporter confirmation would be nice. Presumably that's on its way.
If you wouldn't mind sharing, could you please elaborate on your reasoning for flagging them? I'd like some further insight into which elements of the coverage of the story (rather than the story itself) you find objectionable.
While I'm not flagging anything (I didn't even realize there was anything going on until about 10 minutes ago), I can see how people wouldn't want to hear about all this drama on HN. Regardless of where the incident started, HN isn't really the place for this. Can't we just get back to talking about X's new API and leave the gossip to twitter?
It seems like if you didn't want to discuss it on HN the easiest way would be to just let one story sit on the page where others who do want to discuss it can do so and ignore that one story. If people are flagging these because they don't want to see it discussed on HN they're just making the problem worse and ensuring that it's an even bigger story since it adds another layer of controversy.
The articles are intensely, but shallowly, interesting.
They're exactly the kind of thing that is a bad fit for HN. No one is going to change their mind after reading the posts. And, after the fifth thread, everything that has been said has been said and there's nothing new.
The post I replied to suggested 2 options - a flagging ring or official moderator action. There is a 3rd option: enough people think the articles fucking suck and are independently flagging that the articles are dropping position.
Is that an abuse of the feature? I seem to recall that after enough upvotes, flags don't really have an effect. DanBC alone isn't going to bury anything that enough HNers want to see.
While I'm against what Adria Richards did, I would normally be sad by these news, because it's a pity for anyone to lose his job over something that he did outside of it.
But -- I've read her blog post on the incident, and it comes off as so unapologetic, self-entitled and arrogant, while never saying that she is at least sorry for getting the guy fired, that I think that in this case she got what she deserved.
This is what I'm against:
-- She eavesdropped on a private conversation ("it was loud enough" is no excuse: two people talking are TWO people talking).
-- She took a picture and exposed said private conversation on Twitter.
-- She got a guy fired and publicly shamed two people for making a joke in private.
-- She never asked the guys to stop (if they were talking loudly), or complained to the conference organizers.
-- She presented a joke as a "thought crime" to be shamed off.
-- After the guy was fired, she never showed any sympathy or empathy. A guy that SHE got fired, and that hasn't done ANYTHING to her personally.
-- She took advantage of the whole incident to promote herself and her job.
Still, I wouldn't want anyone to lose his job over something like this. Asked to offer a public apology would be enough.
The joke, while violating the terms of the python convention, was PG-13 at best. It was the equivalent of a "that's what she said joke". It's a joke a 12 year old would make. It wasn't violent, it wasn't oppressive, it was just off-color. It wasn't a reason for anyone to get fired over.
Yes, it was immature. It was no reason to get up in arms over. Her blog post, with the "Think of the Children" aspect was equally immature in a different way.
The reason I'm sure Adria was fired was because she continued to handle the situation poorly and unprofessionally.
I think both parties should have been reprimanded, and apologized, and that should have been that. Instead there's a few people without jobs and a public disgrace.
I really don't like this idea of internet vigilantism via twitter or DDOS threatening people's jobs.
I would certainly not feel great if somebody who disliked me decided to get back at me by sending a message to my employer threatening to smash up their premesis if they didn't fire me, which is basically what this amounts to.
I wonder if the lady in question and the guys making the dick jokes could get together and make a collective apology to the python community and salvage something from this clusterfuck?
I assume Sendgrid management tried to unweave whole issue by asking their employee to publicly apologize and ask for PlayHaven to rehire their employee. This would have been the best situation for everyone. Could have resulted with no one losing their jobs and everything blowing over after a couple weeks. I think someone's ego got in the way which resulted in the termination of the employee. Really saddens me that how a small incident can spiral out control. People need to be aware of other people's sensitivity in public areas and on the opposite side, people need to have a little bit thicker skin and shrug minor things off. Failure on both sides combined with knee jerk reactions from companies.
It's all but official now. There was a possibility the earlier facebook and twitter posts were the actions of a hack, but the company blog too?
PS: I really wish the mods would deign to respons when stuff is getting mass deleted like this. This is quite possibly the most intensely debated story right now, and not letting us talk about it has rather unfortunate implications.
What if the same passwords were used for all there? I think if FB and Twitter were hacked, it's possible the blog was compromised in the same way. Presumably you get access to someone's email, and through the email you get their passwords to various systems. I'm not saying it's what I think happened, or that it's likely, just that you still can't rule out that all three mediums were hacked.
The reason this is important, to me as a business owner who is looking to hire our first few developers, is I have to learn how to deal with these situations. You may call it drama, but I consider it a lesson in how I should behave when forced to deal with these sorts of difficult decisions.
Is there a right or wrong answer? Probably not. To borrow the title of an absurdly sexual book referenced a thousand times in this argument, it's fifty shades of gray.
I'd like to at least see what the community thinks on these topics, so I can make better informed decisions later on. Not to mention understanding even how to communicate those decisions to the public.
Stop. Just stop. Its not nice to make fun of someone who got fired. Doesn't matter why or how. The person is going through a very hard time right now, and you should, at the very least, feel sorry for the situation.
What they need to do is hire someone who will simply take care of the situation by assuring their whole base that this sort of thing will: not happen again, and will be dealt in private. Everything blew up because they chose to handle it publicly.
> The person is going through a very hard time right now
Hey, at least she doesn't have three kids to take care of.
Seriously though, what about everyone else at SendGrid who is suffering through this ordeal because of this one bad employee? They're going through a hard time, too, and they really do need a good PR person. Badly.
I don't approve what ms. Richards did, but I still think it's a bit hypocritical from SendGrid to post the message of firing her on facebook, because it's essentially the same thing: public lynch.
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.
My understanding is that the publicity of the reported issue was the cause of the lay-off.
This is really the best thing for her even if it doesn't seem like it now. She can focus on the issues she cares about and get better at promoting those.
Being someone who's made a big mistake in the past and very nearly lost my job, I think the best thing is for an employer to care about an employee and try to help them work through what are often temporary problems.
That being said, I don't know what happened behind the doors of SendGrid. I'm not happy to hear anyone lose their job over this and I hope, for the sake of morale at SendGrid, it wasn't the company being scared of the internet.
Perhaps they had second thoughts about this person being the extremely public face of their business. They weren't major players before this, and now the incident threatens to forever associate their brand with 'internet drama shitstorm.'
"Have you ever used SendGrid?"
"Oh you mean the people with the crazy vindictive developer evangelist?"
You're right of course. In retrospect, if both of these companies had had some adults in charge, the CEOs would have reached out to each other, apologized, and agreed to table the issue for two weeks. The employees involved would have been admonished not to say a fucking thing, and to delete all the crap they'd posted so far. After two weeks, we jibbering morons of the internet would have moved on, and the two CEOs could then jointly announce an amicable settlement, and joint corporate donation of $X to the PSF by way of apology to that august body for all the bullshit. (Seriously, I feel more sorry for the PSF than anyone else: they actually have attempted to do the right thing and this is what it gets them. What is the motivation for any other conference to get inclusive policies in place?)
Everyone would have come out of that scenario smelling better than they smell now.
Why are all the posts related to Aria Richards getting deleted? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416578
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416514
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416422
SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416312
SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416021