Firing was over-reaction [LWN.net]

Firing was over-reaction

Posted Mar 22, 2013 21:32 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: Firing was over-reaction by zonker
Parent article: Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

I'll stand by my statement. There are appropriate ways to deal with issues and inappropriate ways. I have met enough people and dealt with enough personal conflicts to know what I am talking about. People that instigate drama for drama's sake are usually not healthy and they should be left alone and ignored when they are behaving inappropriately. I don't know or care about this lady spefically. It is a general statement.

She should of been ignored, period. Right from the get-go. It was a mistake to assign a twitter post any credibility, period. It is a mistake to respond to it. It should of been let go.

The only person with a real grievance would be the guy she purportedly falsely accused.

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Firing was over-reaction

Posted Mar 23, 2013 4:45 UTC (Sat) by sjj (subscriber, #2020) [Link]

With due respect, if you are absolutely convinced that your snap judgment is always correct, period, you haven't met enough people and dealt with enough personal conflicts.

This is why organizations need processes and procedures to deal with this shit. You can't rely on a single person's snap judgment.

Ignoring somebody who makes a complaint will just escalate the situation - even if the original complaint was done in a wrong way.

Firing was over-reaction

Posted Apr 4, 2013 18:29 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

I don't see that drag said it had to be *his* judgement that controlled the issue.

But my overarching reaction to this incident, and others like it, is to quote the Fidonet slogan, now nearly three decades old:

Be ye not overly annoying...
nor *too easily annoyed*.

Certainly there are some people who fail on the first point.

But it's pretty clear that there are also people who are, in my best friend's lyrical phrasing, "spring-loaded to the pissed off position", thus failing rather theatrically at the second.

Just as the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the target for the Internet and the content thereon cannot reasonably be limited to that which is considered Suitable for Children by the Most Conservative Observer, interpersonal behavior cannot reasonably be limited that hard either -- there will *always* be someone who can contrive to be offended by any single thing you or I say. People will always game the system, no matter what the rules are; anyone who's a parent understands this.

Zero tolerance has been proven pretty effectively not to work in education; it's not going to work in public conference rules, either.

If you want to interview NFL players in the locker room, you really do have to take on the possibility that you're gonna see some nudity.

Certainly, there are people who go beyond the pale.

But the pale isn't anywhere near a sotto-voce quip about a "dongle", from a different row, not directed at you. If I were the fired gent from the other row, you can be certain that I'd be investigating civil action against Adria Richards.