Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost [LWN.net]

Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

Posted Mar 23, 2013 5:09 UTC (Sat) by nevets (subscriber, #11875)
Parent article: Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

CBS News has an article on the incident. It contains a comment from the CEO of SendGrid, Jim Franklin:

"Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line," Franklin wrote in a blog post on the site. "Publicly shaming the offenders - and bystanders - was not the appropriate way to handle the situation."

As well as a statement that the Associated Press was able to reach Richards, where she couldn't comment but did confirm the tweets and that she was fired.

It also confirms that one of the guys involved was fired from PlayHaven.

(Log in to post comments)

Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

Posted Mar 23, 2013 5:32 UTC (Sat) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]

I suggest you read the article if you haven't. She's a PR rep whose job was to evangelize developers and sell her companies ability to help developers interact. I'd say she did a darn good job of damaging her job by ensuring that other developers are afraid to socialize, joke or relax around her. She also potentially damaged her employer in the process and IMO they were justified in letting her go.

"Twitter shaming" is something that you should absolutely only do in situations where you are dealing with a public figure who you are unable to approach. It's nothing more than a call for mob justice and it's a Bullying tactic right out of the standard Bully playbook when used against ordinary people. Calling for the pitchforks and torches against an ordinary person is borderline criminal harassment IMO.

Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

Posted Mar 23, 2013 5:48 UTC (Sat) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]

Yes I've read the article. I read her tweets before it got as big as it got. I've been debating this for the last couple of days. I even stated I felt she should be fired before she was fired, and I called her actions being that of a cowardly bully.

But Corbet asked for something new to add. This was the first I read of the CEO of SendGrid posting on his blog, and I decided to share that. Nothing more. I've been up too late discussing this that I need to get some sleep.

Blum: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

Posted Mar 24, 2013 0:56 UTC (Sun) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

"Twitter shaming" is something that you should absolutely only do in situations where you are dealing with a public figure who you are unable to approach.

I'm not sure that I would go quite that far. It certainly shouldn't be the first response to bad behavior, but I can see it as a viable approach when other social methods have failed and there's no official recourse. For example, if you asked people politely to stop and they laughed at you, I could imagine using "name and shame" as a backup plan. That certainly doesn't apply in this case, though, because there is official recourse; you can report them to the conference organizers for violating the code of conduct. And if a report for violating the code of conduct doesn't work, it's the conference organizers who deserve the biggest criticism for failing to enforce it, not the people you reported.