[davidw]

A few phone calls do not a paparazzo make. _why, with virtually no effort, maintained his privacy.

The upvotes demonstrate that people are interested in the person, and it's a journalist's job to probe. Sometimes more so than other people would be comfortable with. While that can be awkward, I think it's a good thing, although in this case it doesn't matter so much.

[thaumaturgy]

It may be a journalist's job to probe, but it is a fellow human's job to have empathy. raganwald is perfectly correct in distinguishing between _why as a public figure, and the man behind _why as a private one. The man behind _why clearly wished to remain private; why are his wishes not being respected?

I think that you are being dismissive when you say, "a few phone calls". From the article, the author tried: asking RubyConf attendees, asking people he had been known to have a working relationship with, wrote him a letter, called his home phone, contacted a former employer, searched patent records to discover his current employer, and contacted his current employer, not to mention in the process naming his wife's Twitter account, publishing his real name, and publishing the name of his current employer.

That's pretty poor form, and I don't think that "journalism" is an appropriate excuse.

Like raganwald, I really liked every other aspect of the article. It's well written and I enjoyed taking the time to sit down and read it with a cup of hot chocolate. But -- and this is a big "but", one that eclipses everything in the article that I enjoyed -- I was tremendously disappointed at seeing the private man behind _why outed as he was in the article.

[AnnieLowrey]

Hi thaumaturgy, Annie here.

I'm completely receptive to the criticism of my treatment of the public persona / private person question -- as I wrote before, I expected it and appreciate everyone's insightful comments here.

But I'd just like to push back on the idea that my reporting somehow constituted harassment, rather than straightforward reporting on a public figure – and one who had unfortunately already been outed and whose offline identity was widely known.

We're talking about a phone message, an email forwarded from his office's receptionist, and a note, spaced over the course of a few months. I don’t think that constitutes harassment. My central objective was just making sure he had the opportunity to respond, if he wanted to, and would not be surprised when the piece came out.

I did extensive interviewing among Rubyists and other programmers for the piece, and would often ask them about _why's work, his guide's influence, his work's influence on them, etc. A bunch delightedly brought up old war stories about him, some of which made it into the piece. The back channeling about his offline identity came, unsolicited actually, from those conversations.

At any rate, I do appreciate all of the comments and criticisms of how I treat it in the piece. And am very appreciative of everyone’s compliments of the article as well.

[thaumaturgy]

Hi Annie,

I think it's really neat that you're taking the time to respond to comments here. Thank you for that.

I avoided the word "harassment" because I don't really think that what you did was harassment. But, I don't think I can agree to describe it as straightforward reporting, either. Straightforward reporting would have been statements like, "but the person behind _why remains a mystery to many after his infosuicide, having chosen for unknown reasons to remain as anonymous as possible..."

It's true that his identity was known in some circles, but Slate isn't exclusive to those circles; regardless of how you or I want to describe it, in the end, you published the identity (and other personal information) of a person who wished to remain anonymous.

Sometimes that can make for great journalism, but in this case, I think your article would have been even better if you hadn't done that.

Thanks again for participating.

[davidw]

It's pretty obvious from the style of the story that it's more than just straight reporting. It's not a news piece.

[MatthewPhillips]

I'm pretty sure _why is aware that people wonder about him. He'd be in touch if he wanted to.

[redthrowaway]

Being aware that people are curious about you is not the same thing as being given an opportunity to contribute and respond to an article in which you play a central role.

Annie was entirely right to seek his input, and did nothing untoward in trying to track him down. I suspect the indignation here is a result more of the mythology surrounding _why and his place in the community than any actions on Annie's part. Were it some random person, an author perhaps, with whom HNers felt no bond, we wouldn't be seeing this issue as the dominant response to the piece.

[thaumaturgy]

I find it hard to imagine that people would have been as stirred up if she had tracked him down and given him the opportunity to respond to or contribute to the article, and then written only that the person behind _why wished to remain anonymous.

I think the indignation here is that _why's real name and past and current places of employment have now been published on Slate.

[redthrowaway]

Had he communicated to her that he prefer his information not be published, I think it likely she would have acquiesced. Simply asking to "be left alone" does not imply not having anyone write about you, but rather that he didn't want to participate in the article. That's his prerogative, but I think people around here are holding Annie to a higher standard than they would for a journalist writing about a figure not so uniquely revered round these parts.

[al2]

It is harassment because it's not up to YOU to decide if a) he is a public figure and b) if he cares for such information to be shared.

You can couch it in different terms but I view this as much more self-serving than any else.

[MaysonL]

Suppose you were writing about a rape? Would naming the victim, their current employee, partner's name, along with a picture, constitute harassment? You have no idea why _why needs privacy: destroying it was a somewhat evil act.

[wpietri]

So just running with your analogy, you're saying that _why is like the victim of a shocking, horrible crime. One that thrust him unfairly in the public eye. And that evildoer was who? Apparently it was _why: he's the one who chose to create a very public persona.

It really dumbfounds me when people make idiotic rape analogies. Rape is a violent crime that can leave victims emotionally scarred (and sometimes physically scarred) for life. And it's incredibly common; odds are that some woman in your not-too-distant family was raped.

Please put your rape analogies on the same shelf with Hitler analogies. Rape victims, like holocaust victims, deserve more respect than being used as part of your polemical point-scoring.

[MaysonL]

No, I'm saying that _why was the victim of an assault and an unwarranted and offensive invasion of his privacy.

[wpietri]

An assault victim! Oh my goodness! When exactly did he begin to fear violence? Was it when he received an email he ignored? Or a phone message he didn't return?

Given your standards, apparently I've been assaulted about 15 times this week. Do you think I should call the police?

[muyuu]

You outed him, there is no two ways about it.

You can be appreciative of the comments, receptive to criticism blah-dee-blah but you outed him and you know why.

As far as I'm concerned that defines you as a person above anything else.

[AnnieLowrey]

I didn't out him. That had already happened.

The debate -- a debate about journalistic ethics I consider really interesting, by the way -- is about whether I should have publicized the outing, whether I overstepped boundaries in reporting, and whether I should have published additional details that were not common knowledge.

[lusr]

Fact is the guy created a persona that many people found themselves intellectually and emotionally invested in, and it doesn't appear as though he ever made a clear statement about wanting to be left alone. Disappearing doesn't count as a clear statement because there's obviously much contention about the situation. His actions had consequences, whether he likes it or not.

While people here can theorize and debate about what should and shouldn't happen with respect to those consequences, the most straightforward thing to do is just to ask him for a definitive statement - which is precisely what you did. And now that his response and statement is on record the matter should never be an issue again. I really don't see a problem with your actions.

Great article by the way. Your experience attempting to create a program in a Word document made me laugh and reminded me of when I started teaching myself how computers worked. 20 years ago when I was 8 and disk space was expensive, I thought I was very clever when I found a program that could change the size of files on my computer. It didn't make any sense how it could possibly work, but I went ahead any way and "shrunk" a bunch of files down to zero size, effectively deleting everything important on the computer. Nowadays banks and other financial institutions trust me to program for them; little do they know! ;)

[kragen]

Although I'm peripherally connected to the Ruby world (I spent much of today programming in Ruby for money, occasionally go to the local Ruby user group, etc.), and I saw _why perform a punk rock song about the grammar of Ruby at OSCON one year, I didn't know his name until you outed him in this article.

[wyclif]

Just because you didn't know about it, or didn't care to find out, doesn't mean that she outed him. In a similar manner, if a tree falls in the forest and you didn't hear it crashing down, that does not indicate that the tree is still standing. I find your logic problematic.

[wyclif]

Let's be clear about something: she did not out _why. Some other people did that years ago, and I've known his true identity for longer than that but the people who were his real fans never outed him even though they knew, too. _why was a little like Santa Claus in that way.

[tptacek]

The concern isn't with the probing; the concern is (eg) with documenting the specific firm for which he worked.