Wow, such vitriol in some of these comments. Y'all are kind of proving his point...
Yeah, sadly true, and sadly also what I expected, given my experiences in this community.
Thanks for speaking up though :)
But what community is the author talking about? I only skimmed but I still have no clue whom this article concerns. There must be some context I'm missing, but then it would have more sense for the author to give some links, now this just reads like some rambling that has nothing to do with programming
I think the point it to raise awareness that those issues are real and people suffer gravely from them. The idea is that we as members of a community, any community really, show a level of awareness and actually speak out against abuse and toxic behavior in the spaces we participate in.
Oh I definitely agree, and it is a problem virtually everywhere unfortunately. But that's also why I was wondering why this article here, specifically. I looked at the other article of yours, it's even worse than I thought
But that's also why I was wondering why this article here, specifically
Generally because it's worth sharing, but also because I had some not very pleasant encounters in this community, so I think there are people participating here that need to read more of this.
You could say this is an attempt to gauge the depth of this community. Platforms like Lemmy (or Reddit, HN, etc.) make it easy to be toxic in anonymity through the option to just downvote things, but some of the comments on here show that it was warranted I'd say.
The forbidden topics are rape and assault? By "hacker" does the person mean white hats and black hats? Or "hacker = somebody who writes code"?
It refers to the hacker subculture in a rather broad sense I'd say, as in "People who enjoy fiddling and building stuff with computers / electronics adjacent".
🤔 IMO they aren't forbidden, just off-topic. Most of the time they are allegations. Allegations are just that, allegations. Until a court has decided whether they are true or not, they should be taken as just that, allegations. It is undeniable that rape and assault allegations have more impact than most allegations.
If a court verdict were shared, then it would be much more substantial, but even then, to most people, they are of little impact. What do I care if some person I don't know is convicted or not convicted of a crime? It's hard enough to remember the names of all my cousins, let alone some stranger on the web.
What do I care if some person I don't know is convicted or not convicted of a crime?
That one is totally up to you. What you should care about is whether innocent people are suffering because or your action or inaction.
The article talks about rape specifically, but many forms of abuse exist in communities, both online and offline. Only a fraction of them are prosecuted, but many of them cause real harm nonetheless.
The thing is, you don't have to remember the people or their stories, all you need to remeber is what is right and what is wrong, or what qualifies as a bad actor vsa good one, and then speak out in support of the good ones. So just two things to remember, way fewer than you have cousins I assume.
If we have insufficient information, how do we know that innocent people are actually being harmed, or if we do take action (the minimum action you seem to be advocating for is ostracism) against the accused how do we know that they are not the innocent ones?
Are we really supposed to resort to broad statistics when making intimate decisions?
Nothing Drew DeVault writes is worth reading, and this is no exception.