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Comment by gabemart | Hacker News Reader

I commend your call to sympathy.

I don't like taking a drive-by, salacious interest in a story that doesn't affect me in the least, but will probably have serious, perhaps devastating consequences for the person involved for a long time professionally.

I also think it's worth pointing out that the original article, while using photos of the person involved, never uses their full name, so is to some extent not google-able. However, the full name is used in the comments, and then extensively in other media coverage of this story, so this is a moot point.

As with the parent, I'm not defending cheating in a competitive race, especially if sponsorship is involved. But ultimately, I can't take any pleasure in a worldwide glee-fuelled shame-fest over what is ultimately a relatively trivial, presumably non-criminal misdeed.

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Maybe it's only me, but I don't see any "shame-fest" here. The article is facts based and points to concrete wrongdoings, not simply taking some moral stand.

"what is ultimately a relatively trivial, presumably non-criminal misdeed."

While it's not criminal behavior, it must be discouraged and punished as it does tremendous damage to competitive sports and other sportsmen by discouraging them ("What's the point? Everyone cheats anyway") or forcing them cutting corners themselves to stay competitive (see recent doping scandal).

> but I don't see any "shame-fest" here.

Did you read all the comments? Did you see she's closed her social media accounts?

I was talking about the article itself. I don't usually read comments bar selected few sites (HN included), because there are always trolls and haters. It's not the article's fault that we have such dire situation on the whole Internet.

I think you're missing the big picture. As said in the parent, other news are covering also the story with her real name and pictures.

It's a shame fest with media trying to give as much info on the woman they can. Not this article in particular, but the coverage of the story is borderline hateful. The Internet don't like cheater.

> other news are covering also the story with her real name and pictures

Should they blur her face and not use her name?

This is a good question. It's easy to ask people to be reasonable and not take it too far. But there will always be writers online who don't have that filter.

Social media loves a good witch hunt.

At most we can only really be directly critical on a case by case basis. And try to push back generally.

Should this particular blog post have blurred her face? If it's certain she will be identified in other races regardless if her pic is spread around then I agree, it would probably be wise to blur it to at least temper the hivemind.

This is more about personal responsibility than unrealistically expecting everyone to follow your world view.

> It's not the article's fault that we have such dire situation on the whole Internet.

On a related note, Milo Yiannopoulos got banned from Twitter for the actions of his followers. It's commonly cited throughout the media that he was banned for racism but he was actually blamed for some of his followers who jumped into the thread. At most from his 4-5 tweets during the incident you could say that he was insensitive, but he never crossed the line into racism or said anything particularly heinous.

This brings up good questions about the responsibility of people for their followers online. At what level are you responsible for drawing out this behaviour? Should they be regulating random people who comment on their blog post?

Note: not debating Milo in general, just the rationale for this one case of permanently banning a person from Twitter

It doesn't take a million strong Internet mob to punish an individual behavior. This bandwagon/mob/piling-on instinct may have served us well in the wild west or in small villages of a few dozen to few hundred people, but is highly inappropriate in the digital realm where the "village" consists of billions of people worldwide.

I stand by this statement despite the single (possibly accidental) downvote. Mob justice is not justice.

The drive-by internet mob can be awful. A just & fair society is one where punishments fit the crime, and internet mobs deliver outsized punishment for all sorts of minor and often illusory things. I worry about how this woman is dealing with this situation, right now, in realtime - perhaps her past behaviors are a sign of some issues she's dealing with. I'm heartened by many of the comments in the blog who advocate for sympathy, as the punishment has already been meted.

I think people don't realize how the little things add up.

Any one member of an Internet mob doesn't hurt an alleged wrongdoer much, but together they do deliver outsized punishment for all sorts of minor and often illusory things.

Social feedback mechanisms appropriate for small tribes of 100-150 people become overwhelming when used by 100,000-150,000 people, to say nothing of what happens if you add three more zeros.

You can see modern celebrity as the flip side of this problem, too. 100,000,000 people giving just a bit of respect and thumbs up to someone becomes quite a torrent of social currency.

> while using photos of the person involved, never uses their full name, so is to some extent not google-able

Wat?

Clearly her name is exposed in the Strava screenshot. Took me exactly 2mins to find significant details about her in the blog post (also: if not, you can easily reverse-image-search her runner photos).

It's great to have her disqualified from the race, she clearly cheated.

Putting the whole story on the internet without worrying about her identity being exposed. Why? Is this really what you deserve when you cheat at a half-marathon?

She has cheated in public event and took 2nd place, so yes, due to respect for other participants, it's alright cheating fact to be made public.

The podium is all about attention. She put her face and name out into the public before the blogger did.

Yes but the comment's assertion is valid. Because the screenshots clearly reveal her name and social media handles even if the article refers to her as "the runner".

I'm not so sure I agree with this line of reasoning. I'm betting she'd have had no problem with her face/name being plastered up for all to see that she had won 2nd place in the race, and promoting that on social media.

This outcome is the same magnitude, just with the sign bit flipped.

> Wat?

I believe the idea is that, given the runner's name doesn't appear in the text, googling said name from cold should not produce that article.

I think that counts as "to some extent not google-able".

Long before the Internet showed up, what you describe was why you don't do such things. Is the punishment disproportionate to the crime? Yeah, could be. But whether it's pre-internet community gossip or the whole world knows, you don't such things because it could ruin your reputation if found out. Right or wrong, that's always been reality.

"Devastating consequences...professionally", as it should be. If she'll cheat in a race to make herself look good, what will she do in your business when real money is on the line? Cook your books? Lie about results (already has a track record for that one)? As long as she comes out looking good.

Its a common theme on HN to scoff at the trivial fines for companies caught cheating when the profits gained through cheating are much larger. In the case of this runner, I think a global calling-out is appropriate given that she'd sure accept the accolades were she not found out.

The problem with this argument in this case is that she put herself out in front of ‘the mob’. She actively promoted her ‘achievement’ to a public audience. Presumably she would have been happy for any level of adulation from the public. So when it turns around to public revulsion, that's just the other side of the sword, which she first actively employed.

I would have more sympathy for your argument if this story was about some form of private cheating. But this was cheating on a public stage, one that she particularly sought out.

don't have sympathy, these people are always awful.

Thirded.

It can be really easy to make navigational errors in amateur races, especially with turnaround points. Usually there is no crowd lining the whole course, signage is bad, and the marshalling can be spotty.

Yes, this person is a bit narcissistic and a tad dishonest, but it might just have been easier to go along with the misunderstanding rather than fess up to messing up.

EDIT: OK, OK, "very dishonest" then. My point being that this stuff sometimes happens, people deal with it in different ways, and that witch-hunts can be just as damaging as the transgression itself. But yes, a lot of you (rightly) care about the integrity of amateur sportspeople who are also in the public sphere.

The author has another blog post to explain who s/he writes about: http://www.marathoninvestigation.com/2016/05/the-differerenc...

> The overall feedback I have received from the public regarding my work on the blog and the Boston reviews has been positive. (At some point I will try to clarify the review and filtering process - but runners that just had a bad day in Boston, or paced a friend, or just took their time, are not going to be singled out. They have nothing to worry about).

In this case she cut part of the course; she sought out officials to reassure them of her time; she accepted the medal; she faked data after the race; she only came clean after she was confronted with this information.

I agree that now she's come clean any identifying information should be removed. And I hate some of the comments that are clearly piling on. And it should be obvious but any attacks on social media are unacceptable.

> I agree that now she's come clean any identifying information should be removed.

How?

Ah, yes, that's a good point. Once it's on the internet it's there forever.

Not just that - race records like this are public. Even a piece which said only "second place runner in this marathon cheated" would be easy to connect to her name.

> would be easy to connect to her name.

It would be - if people actually cared to check. Most don't, though. We know this.

> I agree that now she's come clean any identifying information should be removed.

The media is running this story with full personal information included, this stuff is the first google hit for her name and several more on the first page of results. Google's "summary" of her on the right side when you google her name describes this event and contains nothing else.

The point at which she could have prevented this is when she was caught the first time, now it's too late.

It is not possible to prove a person who got second place in a public event was a cheater and prevent their identity from coming out. Even if the blogger hadn't posted her pictures, she would have been identified quickly.

>tad dishonest

I agree that the internet mob can be unduly cruel, and as a larger issue I'm uncomfortable with the notion than a single mistake a person makes is now often immortalized on the internet for eternity, but does what this runner did really count merely as a tad dishonest?

Honest navigational errors can indeed occur. I made one such mistake in high school during a cross country race that took place in an unfamiliar wooded course. I didn't even realize I had made a mistake until I reached the finish line. The giveaway for me was that I finished in front of a number of runners whom I knew throughout the season to be faster than me, and I didn't remember passing them. It was a pretty simple mistake to rectify, I told my couch and teammates and we retraced the course to the place I went off course, no big deal.

I particularly enjoyed the part of this story where the runner retraced the course later that day, on bicycle and despite feeling ill earlier, so she could spoof the GPS data. I hope that labeling something like this as being only a tad dishonest isn't emblematic of the way SV and HN in generally view the topic of honesty.

This..

Reading the parent comments felt like they are making cheating acceptable. This did not seem like a little mistake, it seemed more like systematic cheating. She had multiple chances to apologize, but she went on until she was faced with the facts.

No way. I've missed turnarounds in races multiple times (although this usually results in running farther than intended) and it would NEVER occur to me to just go with it and grab a podium spot. This goes way beyond "a tad dishonest".

Tangential question: do runners get disqualified for overruns? I can't imagine many people running too far reach the podium, but I'm curious whether accidentally adding a half mile is still a disqualifying error.

"A tad" dishonest?

1) She was disqualified immediately, but she complained to the person in charge and actually convinced them that they made a mistake and that she didn't cheat. If she had accepted being disqualified, this wouldn't have ended up on the internet.

2) She biked the course later in the day in an attempt to fake the data, but failed because the data is timestamped. I am not sure how she could have possibly been more dishonest than that.

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