| > Rape is a real thing, and when it happens, thats bad. Lying and spinning and smearing are also real things that happen. That's what upset me the most. We saw accusations of abusive behaviour used to justify abusive behaviour. And we saw accusations of abusive behaviour used to slip in claims about plagiarism without even attempting to back those up. Regardless of the plausibility of the accusations against Appelbaum, since two wrongs don't make a right, that (and the unwillingness or inability to address it) made the assumption of good faith impossible. And that's not even mentioning the "totally unrelated" Twitter account. The whole "conspiracy" stuff is a red herring to me. That is, people can speculate about that until the cows come home -- but not to dismiss the obvious, the whole campaign as well as the shaming people who spoke out against the process, and the attempt to excuse bypassing the legal system with how bad it is, then being so much worse. The list of WTFs is long. https://twitter.com/Shidash/status/741259721756319744 Does that say it all, yet? How far does it have to go? It was really fun getting ignored and downvoted or mocked by a throwaway just for actually asking hard questions and not just patting some "respected whoevers" on the back, by the way. The difference between peer pressure and peer review is that with peer review, the more peers you have, the more eyes on the problem you have. With peer pressure, you still only have one set of eyes, but more peers make it squint harder, until it's completely shut. And this was a great demonstration of that, of the total absence of that free thinking hacker spirit that's so easy to print on the label of a tin, but so hard to keep alive in one. No hard feelings, but know this: seeing someone with a torch and pitchfork, or seeing someone close their curtains as if they haven't seen anything when a lynch mob is out and about, is not really better than seeing someone be abusive to a person, sexually or otherwise. Until you see that person repent and make fantastic changes, it changes something irrevocably. You cannot unsee it. Same goes for "communities". |