[pfortuny]

When you are a geek and attend a conference, you are certainly going to tweet everything relevant about it. Well, Adria Richards decided that silly joke was worth tweeting.

I am sad for the person evicted from his job, but then again: f you do not know your environment, you should not work in it. And tweeter is as strong as it gets.

It is hard, but these are real life jobs and real life conferences and real life education and real life people. Deal with it: the only way not to appear on tweeter the way you would not like to is to... behave VERY CAREFULLY.

You do not want to look dumb? Do not act dumbly.

Silly jokes during a talk are like using a public wifi at RSA...

[mnicole]

> [i]f you do not know your environment, you should not work in it.

I think part of the issue is that Adria's been in this industry for long enough to know that these situations are not new and we've all seen examples of how it should be handled. Furthermore, dick jokes are not exclusive to any gender or any industry. Despite that, she did something extraordinarily and knowingly cruel. Cruel because she has so many followers. Cruel because she was representing her (now former) employer. Cruel because she was trying to use the situation as a talking point for women's issues and claimed to be fighting on behalf of women in this industry - so far as to call herself a modern day Joan of Arc - when it wasn't a women's issue at all. It was irresponsible all around.

What you said about the men here knowing their environment applies just as much to her as it does them. You gotta know when to fold, and it has nothing to do with silencing victims (as some people are claiming) and more to do with common sense and picking the right battles in the right ways. Not public battles intended to humiliate that actually end up hurting your gender and get you just as publicly, and humiliatingly, fired.

[obviouslygreen]

Silly jokes at a conference are like using a public wifi at RSA...

This is a terrible analogy, and your point is incomprehensible: If you don't know your environment, you should not work in it? Then we should never, ever attempt to enter a new field (including the first time), as there's no way you can ever know what you're getting into until you're in it, and we're all still learning about each other. Permanently.

[pfortuny]

I said environment. You do not start a job 'out of the blue' (as a matter of fact, it is impossible). Environment, just the environment. Please, please.

I know my words are hard but...

The analogy is terrible why? Running risks is risky whatever the risk.

[jdmichal]

One of the riskiest thing, probably by an order of magnitude, the average American does every day is get in their car and drive to work. In fact, it's probably the most dangerous thing they do all year.

The problem with your statement is that it's impossible to know what every single person around you will find offensive. It's not a solution, because it's assuming the impossible. And when you go reductio ad absurdum, it basically boils down to everyone never saying anything to anyone for fear of offense, which is clearly not the desired goal.

[drivebyacct2]

I don't think you were worthy of being downvoted, but I your last sentence is terribly redunctionary. Breathing carries a risk, I could breathe in a fly and choke and die. Should I private conversation be a public affair, I think is the question. It's regrettable that anyone make a joke that offends someone or turns away a minority from the tech community, but where does one draw the line.

At least, I hope that's what we're discussing, I think I might be aiming a bit high.

[X-Istence]

Try the public wifi at DefCon... and even then the wall of sheep will be nice enough to blank out most of your password for your safety.

[pfortuny]

Have I said anything wrong?

[Nursie]

You seem to say that publicly calling these guys out on twitter was OK and to be expected. Some people will disagree with that. I'm not sure downvoting is strictly supposed to be for registering disagreement though.

Also not everyone tweets all the time. I don't know anyone technical that does, only non-tech folks.

[mtrimpe]

When supporting women's right on Hacker News you tend to get a disproportionate number of downvotes compared to 'normal' topics.

That means that if your comment usually would just not get any upvotes (which yours wouldn't since it wasn't terribly well written) you'll suddenly get into negative point territory on these issues.

If you look you'll be able to find other comments as well which easily pass the 'constructive discussion' criteria of HN comments but are deeply in the gray nonetheless.

[freehunter]

Good god this is so false. I cannot even begin to comprehend that someone would make the statement that anyone supporting women's rights will be automatically downvoted on Hacker News. You can't imagine any other reason the post would be downvoted? How about the statement that you shouldn't say anything you wouldn't want tweeted out of context? How about calling Twitter "tweeter"? Or the implication that this guy had it coming because he should have known better than to try to have a private conversation without it being plastered on the Internet?

There are a number of reasons someone could have downvoted this post, and the first one that jumps to your mind is that a great number of people on HN inherently hate women and don't believe in equal rights. Seriously, I can't even fathom...

[mtrimpe]

If you take a look at my comment history you'll see that I tend to comment on womens rights issues quite frequently, since I'm LGBT myself so their cause is quite close to my heart.

I can tell you from experience that I've seen my votes go up and down 5 or 10 points easily when I comment on topics like these. I've never noticed that for any other comments I make.

[eropple]

I post not infrequently on these issues (this is an aversion for me as this is a case where the female party is unambiguously wrong and behaved in a manner no better and arguably worse than the two guys) and I never see what you claim. So I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am skeptical of it being endemic to the topic.

The post whose downvotes you are ascribing to misogyny can also just be called a poor post. Which, FWIW, I do.

[freehunter]

I could understand your statement if the post in question was a worthwhile contribution to a discussion, was well formatted, and had a reasonable writing style (grammar and spelling). But with as many flaws as the post had, attributing the downvotes purely to an apparently large population of misogynists on HN seems to be a strawman designed to further the already controversial discussion at hand.

[mtrimpe]

He seemed genuinely confused as to why he received these downvotes and I just tried to inform him that, apart from his comment not being particularly good, he was probably also the victim of excessive downvoting due to the polarizing nature of the topic.

[cobrausn]

Your first statement is an unprovable assertion. He might get an equal number of upvotes from Adriana-supporting hardliners, but perhaps they are just outnumbered.

You are trying to frame this conversation in terms of 'you support women in tech if you make apologist comments for Adriana, you are a hardliner if you think she overreacted and should be brought to account'. It's a bit of a false dichotomy.

I think this is a particularly polarizing event that is causing a lot more downvoting than normally happens on HN.

[mtrimpe]

I've adjusted my first statement to be more neutral.

As for your last sentence, I can tell from experience that threads on womens rights topics tend to be more polarized in general and cause a lot more downvoting in general which is exactly the point I was trying to make initially.

[laichzeit0]

"When supporting women's right on Hacker News you tend to get a disproportionate number of downvotes compared to 'normal' topics."

Slightly off topic, but if that is the case, then so what? I'm pretty sure it could be scripted (go through all HN topics, check downvotes etc. you could make this reasonably scientific). The point is still, should we even care? Why must we feel like there is a need to shape this fact or alter it according to some PC dogma? Let's be tolerant and leave the community to downvote/upvote as it wants. If it reaches a critical mass then those taking offense will find a way of reacting appropriately (downvoting anti-feminist posts, stop posting on HN, etc.) If HN posters are for the majority anti-feminist, then it is. There will be some people that take offense to this, other's not. The assumption that we can't offend or be offended needs to be questioned.

[pfortuny]

Thanks for the pointer and for the details. Yes, when in a rush my English gets really awful.

[pfortuny]

By the way, the dumbest thing to me is the firing of someone just for that, I did not make this clear in my previous posts.