[shirtless_coder]

I am 100% with you, just on the basis that people aren't that obsessed with slander in general. I can see 1-2 people commenting multiple times in a malicious way, but if there are more than 2, it has to be 4chan. Normal professionals do not have the time to sit on tech crunch all day slandering former coworkers, even if they are scumbags.

With that said, I feel kind of bad for Madhu. Slander, is illegal under U.S. law. If the coward had not been anonymous he could have a court case against him.

Although I am sure he has learned his lesson about not being a flaming dick to people.

[jacquesm]

The lower boundary on the number of people that hate his guts can be safely pegged at 1.

Now if more than 1 would step forward and do it in a non-anonymous way it would amount to something. Especially since those left at Yahoo have nothing to fear from their bosses in this respect. But maybe Yahoo has a policy about not speaking publicly about ex-employees which extends to current employees, and maybe they're afraid that this guy would sue. He might even have a case.

TC should analyze their logs for that thread and put up a count of the number of IPs tied to known proxies and tor exit nodes and how many of the comments were made from the same IPs. That way they would not reveal any sensitive data but you'd get a much more reliable impression on how much of it is one guy with an axe to grind and how much of it is real.

That goes for both the attackers and the defenders.

Referrers would be nice as well, especially if they came from some 'call to action' somewhere.

[Jun8]

This should be irrelevant. I'm sure Skype didn't force him out just because these comments, they must have found extra information backing the claims. The comments just acted as the initial warning signal.

[jacquesm]

> The comments just acted as the initial warning signal.

I sincerely doubt it. If skype execs would use anonymous commenters on a blog as the input to their HR process they'd have a serious problem.

Assuming it's true the order is more likely that some people came forward and voiced their concern, and now the public makes the link with this article because they have no other knowledge. After all, would you start a fishing expedition against a new hire post-fact if you saw anonymous text of the kind posted in that article?

Personally I'd like something with a bit more substance before digging in.

Either way, substance or not, the guy will have a hard time finding another gig after this. Google doesn't forget, and whoever does a background on this guy at some later date is doing to find an awful lot of smoke, even if there was no fire.

[knome]

> I can see 1-2 people commenting multiple times in a malicious way, but if there are more than 2, it has to be 4chan.

This seems like an entirely bizarre accusation to make.