[tseabrooks]

I disagree. This isn't interesting. This is tantamount to the trashy gossip rags at the cash register. It's just negativity that doesn't really add to the community. This should've stayed dead. I've flagged it to do my part.

Let's stay classy HN.

[zedshaw]

Stay classy? My friend, the H.S.S. HN Classy ship sailed away many years ago.

[rbanffy]

Let's then bring it back to where it should be.

This was a very ugly moment of what seems to be a very ugly story. We should learn from it and try to avoid situations like this in the future. I'm sorry things like this happened and that they continue happening all over the place with people less vocal and with blogs less popular than Zed.

Zed... After reading this a long time ago, I was afraid when you approached the Python community. I feared something like this would happen again and I expressed my concern publicly. I am happy you proved my fears unfounded.

[zedshaw]

Oh there's similar crap going on in the Python community, but none of it involves me directly so I ignore it. However, if I find out about similar backroom deals and cons I'm going to tell everyone about it. I cannot stand abusive communities that con their members to make a quick buck.

[tseabrooks]

I'm not a member of the community in question. However, I guess I'm just in the mind that if you have problems with a person you take it up with them directly and privately (including only the people that must be involved).

This was obviously a long time ago but things like this "public shaming" just seem like a one sided mud sling designed to call people out and make people feel bad (or give other people bad feelings about them) rather than a method to fix the problem.

I don't want to make assumptions regarding values. Maybe we have different ideas on how to combat things like these. Maybe, our views or very similar and you thought this was the only way to make your point. Either way, bringing it back this far from the actual event (Not that your did this) only serves to dredge up old animosity instead of burying the hatchet and "Getting Shit Done".

I think I'm more of the mid that the OP shouldn't be submitting what amounts to old gossip-y mud slinging articles 5 years later.

[zedshaw]

I think a major thing you're not admitting to is that most of these people and organizations were fucking people over, including me, and then using other's unwillingness to speak the truth to keep it all quiet. If more people outed these community leaders when they screwed people over you might not have this kind of thing happening.

What your sentiment does is simply perpetuate the situation by allowing bad actors in a community to use their popularity to harm individuals, and the individuals then feel like they can't tell anyone for fear of being a "gossip" or "tattle tale".

So, if my problem with someone is between me and them, then I do keep it quiet. But in this case, no it was not kept between us, many of these people actively slandered me, and until I spoke up they did it to many other people as well.

[teffen]

I really did enjoy your rant. It's very cathartic to read; I imagine it was even more cathartic to write.

[rbanffy]

I must disagree. The discussions here on HN must be civil, of course, but posts like this and the community problems they are about still exist. We're not a big happy family and we have our differences and our own bad days. I've been less than the gentleman my family taught me to be more often than I would be proud of.

But, still, we can apologize, try to understand each other and learn from our experiences.