[ghaff]

>People should be able to produce and publish content without being harassed.

I don't disagree. (Assuming the content isn't of a nature that deserves a lot of criticism though that's in the eye of the beholder and is a matter of degree of course.)

But there's also the real world where putting yourself out in public can have consequences, especially if you become particularly popular. You take the good with the bad and decide if the tradeoff is worth it.

[akerl_]

> Assuming the content isn't of a nature that deserves a lot of criticism though that's in the eye of the beholder of course

The fact that people think there are kinds of content that warrant harassment is kinda the root of this whole problem.

[ghaff]

Not to make this political but you don't think there's a lot of content being thrown around at the moment that warrants criticism? Generally speaking I'd draw the line at outright personal harassment although I suppose that's again in the eye of the beholder.

[akerl_]

I think there's tons of content that warrants criticism, but no content that warrants harassment.

[ghaff]

And I'd say that's a pretty gray line, especially to the degree it stays in an online context.

[akerl_]

> I have endured a sustained campaign of abuse from members of the VOGONS forum, been labelled a "clout-chaser", had threats sent to my personal email address, code been used in other projects without proper accreditation, my 3D print designs stolen and sold by faceless eBay/Etsy sellers, personal attacks made towards me when people don't get their feature request... the list goes on and on.

None of that sounds like a gray area to me.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

There's an argument to be made that whether that rises to the level of harassment is up to the recipient of the of behaviour in question.

Another person may well just see it as a cost of doing business, a cost of operating in the world. There will be detractors, some of those will be malevolent snakes. We can mostly just ignore those as they very rarely represent a real and immanent threat.

If you've got nothing better to do with your time than waste it trying to antagonise a situation, you're probably wasting your life. And maybe the recipient can come to understand they can choose to be flattered by the attention - if many people are exerting effort to put you down, more power to you - you might actually be doing something important, and people hate that.