Douglas Crockford Out as Keynote Speaker at Nodevember
twitter.com
twitter.com
> https://twitter.com/nexxylove/status/771503406716334080
> @nodevember one way you could show you actually care about community safety & diversity is by uninviting Douglas Crockford.
> @nodevember he has repeatedly shown himself to be actively hostile to fostering inclusivity and many will decline to speak if he is invited.
> https://twitter.com/nodebotanist/status/512891046192504832
> Did Doug Crockford seriously just say on stage that no one wants to use weak maps because weak isn't masculine? What? I don't even...
To which the twitter has reacted poorly and has escalated.
Here's a description from '08 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/aug/29/bullying.s... but that was just from a quick google, I first learned it in a university developmental psychology course 10 years earlier (which is to say my source is actually peer reviewed research)
Turns out, the way to "win" in bullying is to "disengage" and let it go.
Telling someone that presentations were "stupid" doesn't seem out of line.
> we became aware that based on private feedback - not simply the dialogue on Twitter - that his presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak.
What does the private feedback consist of, and did Crockford have a chance to respond to it?
It's scary that we are going down this path where you can now be kicked off an event with no publicly stated reasoning.
I can certainly imagine myself to be drawn to a conference where Douglas Crockford was speaking (in fact, I'd be likely to attend if he were the only speaker), but having "lightly googled" the other two I'm not sure their contributions to the community would be enough to draw me in to the talk.
Which is fine I guess. My opinion is worth what it cost and the conference organisers can do what they want.
I really hope this doesn't blow up into some sort of "DongleGate" or anything of the sort. I just don't fucking care and would very much prefer it if every interesting headline wasn't drowned out for the next two weeks by "My opinion on Crockford-gate"
I don't want to read about the visceral stalking reaction that the above people got in response to their SJW-ing, or how SJW-ists are ruining the world. I don't wnat to hear about how "we can do better" by not uttering threats to people who don't want to hang out with Crockford. A don't want them to be threatened.... none of the anything that happens every time any of these issues poke their head up.
I'd love it if we could all just say "OK" and move on.
I'll keep an eye out for a conference that will invite Crockford, I'll skip Nodevember (which being in tenessee I wasn't going to anyways, but the same theory applies to this stuff when it is in Toronto).
Anyways - obviously I'm already getting a bit "ranty" which I don't mean to but we've all seen this "outrage" thing so many times now. Are we smarter than the same old song and dance yet? Live and let live. They can uninvite him, the people who disagree can not go.
Everyone is happy and who knows? Maybe Crockford (if he cares) decides to moderate his behavior. Maybe he doesn't care. Up to him.
#2 is someone saying "me neither, because these reasons"
I guess we could consider it "a woozle" but it does boil down to two people who have publicly stated they don't like Crockford.
If I examine their relative contributions to JavaScript it does appear to be metaphorically like the deckhand on the Santa Maria refusing to share the conference stage with Galileo, or "Storm trooper #3" being fed up with Mark Hamill.
But maybe they're people who have specifically contributed to nodevember. I mean, one of them has been on the hansel-minutes podcast.
One of the complainants is from Austin tx, and the others list San Francisco. Which are both pretty far from Nashville.
Anyways, I'm not sure any of that matters, it looks a little like a case of long distance bullying against someone who the conference attendees likely could learn something from, by people from whom, I think they couldn't.
I mean, as professional programmers, we all know a few bright ones who have some aspects of socially awkward. We all know at least one grumpy old man (some of us are him!).
It really seems to me like a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water, but I didn't care about nodevember yesterday and I don't today. I would definitely go to a Crockford talk though.
I disagree with the decision to remove him as a speaker. Privately I'm annoyed, frustrated, angry, worried about things like the authoritarianism of it all. But ultimately, I respect nodevember's freedom to make their conference the way they want it.
We can all move on from this one I think.
Edit: Fscking called it (http://sli.mg/HqLVu2). Just like LambdaConf. (https://twitter.com/antispamuel/status/719907750097129473). War is peace, excluding people is inclusivity and stomping out wrongthink is welcoming.
When a post like this is flagged, it's most often because users who fall on both sides of the relevant issue feel that it doesn't belong on HN.
Either way, every time I've seen it happen, the thread is young and still rising, so this flagging mechanism cannot possibly represent a meaningful slice of the HN readership, who are prevented from finding out.
That sounds like plain old censorship and information control to me, and I'm pretty sure the moderators know it.