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Comment by llimllib | Hacker News Reader

Again I would like to point out that to slander somebody, you must tell lies about them. Nobody is claiming that Adria is lying, even the person she's talking about.

She is clearly not slandering anyone.

(Please note: this does not mean that I'm taking a position in any way on this issue)

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> Nobody is claiming that Adria is lying

The linked pastebin says "the "forking" reference turned out to be a fabrication".

If this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

is indeed a comment by the person who lost his job, then it does not seem to be.

> While I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male, no sexual jokes were made about forking. My friends and I had decided forking someone's repo is a new form of flattery (the highest form being implementation) and we were excited about one of the presenters projects; a friend said "I would fork that guys repo" The sexual context was applied by Adria, and not us.

That is my reading too. Still misunderstanding does not make something a lie.

I don't recall exactly, but did she actually claim they said that, or just implicitly link the two guys with "other people" who make forking jokes?

Except that the person most prominently featured in the photo (with his legible name badge) was not involved according to person who was fired. I haven't seen Adria, either on twitter or her blog, clarify which attendees in the photo were the ones making inappropriate comments.

I would say Alex Reid may have been libeled by Adria.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403250

I drew the same conclusion from reading the tweet and looking at the photograph, and reading her blog post reinforced that conclusion for me. Raising the issue with organizers is fine, putting it out onto Twitter, definitely not.

Pretty sure she fabricated the "forking"-joke.

In light of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 I'd be interested to hear why you are pretty sure she fabricated the forking joke. I'm not agreeing with taking offense to what was said, but she didn't make up that someone said "I would fork that guys repo"

If we take the linked post at face value, it sounds to me like they had made 'forking a repo' a running non-sexual joke. When Adria overheard an instance of it, she wasn't aware of their context, and it sounded like innuendo.

With hindsight, taking it up with them in person, or leaving it to the conference staff, would probably have worked out better than going on a Twitter crusade.

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