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That said, from your very link I find this:

" douglascrockford commented on Feb 21, 2011

I am sorry I hurt your feelings."

I'll take someone who realizes they made a mistake and apologizes for it any day over someone who seeks to get rid of all the people they don't like.

Perhaps. In a vacuum I could see reading "I am sorry I hurt your feelings" as pretty condescending. That's not apologizing for what you said; it's more like pitying the person for their irrational reaction to it. (Or that's how it could feel to that person.)

(I'm not saying that's how it was intended or anything. I have no idea. Just saying this could just as easily be evidence for abrasiveness as against it. I'll also just note that I don't think someone should be removed from a conference for mild abrasiveness regardless.)

Condescension is not always regarded as bad. Readers of Pride and Prejudice will recall that Mr Collins, for one, was highly appreciative of Lady Catherine de Bourgh's 'affability and condescension'!

That is a different meaning i.e. dignity with inferiors rather than being patronising.

You may be thinking of when politicians say "I'm sorry if you found what I said offensive", or "sorry for an offence your feel", which is a classic anti-apology.

Normally without the nuance of speech it might be impossible to tell if it was meant in a genuine way. In this case however the context makes it clear he is being arrogant and egotistical in a manner quite consistent with techie internet forum behavior.

The idea of a javascript developer feeling intellectual superiority is of course absurd.*

* Joke

That's pretty clearly ironic, though.

I disagree. I can only read it that way if I make bad assumptions about him, which is circular reasoning.

In my experience, you should always give people the benefit of the doubt in such things. I've honestly thought otherwise in many other occasions, only to be proven wrong.

I read that as being 50% sarcastic.

I understand the need to give the benefit of the doubt to someone, but going out of your ways to not recognize the higher probability of this comment being irony seems kind of naive to me. Im my opinion, this looks like a 90% probability of irony and only 10% sincerity. The commentator never made the claim of being butt hurt and kept the conversation technical, but Crockford's comment comes out of nowhere and seems to want to achieve some degree of infantalization that was clearly unnecessary. Given the context of this exchange it's really difficult to me to see it otherwise than a sly middle-finger. I think people trying to see it otherwise are clinging a bit too much to their principles. This is not a court of law folks, it's real life.

I've had people do this sort of gaslighting to me before in discussions of a technical nature. Implying my disagreement with them was somehow emotional. Which is particularly annoying in online discussions where emotion can be inferred or not at the readers discretion.

The problem with doing otherwise is that you give people very little opportunity to ever be sincere. They're locked into a confirmation bias trap with no way out unless you allow it.

And one can read just as easily that the other party seems hurt by the rejection. I would not readily assume that he can't read that either.

This may not be a court of law, but I always try to think twice before I judge people. It's almost always the wrong approach, at least in my experience, and I certainly haven't always been on the right side of that.

In the end, you don't win anything by being right about this kind of thing and I know it's way too easy for me to do all the things I hate seeing others do :(

> it's important to note that Douglas Crockford can definitely be abrasive [1]. The issue at hand is that whether this abrasiveness is a bad thing, when compared to the contributions he's made and whether it leads to constructive discussions.

I'm not sure what bearing, if any, one's contributions should have on how individuals or communities respond to behaviour and "abrasiveness". Good deeds should obviously be respected and appreciated, however they should not shelter one from criticism.

> automatically associating Douglas's personality with being a jerk.

Being a jerk is usually associated with one's personality.

> By allowing certain viewpoints to dominate and silence a subset of speakers, we're ultimately limiting our views and building an echo chamber,

One could argue that by enabling abrasive and overpowering personalities and cults of celebrity to dominate these events we were already doing that.

> If we're going to dismiss speakers, it should be on merit of their talk and previous talks, not their speaking style.

I would think speaking style matters at least somewhat if one is planning on speaking.

All of that is besides the point. It was unprofessional and petty to make a public announcement out of that. All you have to say is that so and so is not coming anymore. Is this conference ran by a bunch of high school kids?

To be fair, if you catch me on a bad day I will be a jerk to you if you ask me what I think is a stupid question.

Everyone has bad days, everyone can be an arsehole to others due to the emotions swirling around in their heads. It doesn't mean they are a jerk. It may just mean you asked your question when they were going through a difficult time. If you asked the same question on a different day you got a pleasant answer.

I think this kind of bias is often overlooked

I disagree with his position on that issue (var at the top) but somehow I'm not hurt by him calling "my" position stupid. People are allowed to have strong opinions on things, especially if they have spent a great deal of time studying them. And I do want to hear his opinion spoken loud and clear because the conviction is a signal that I should not ignore the opinion lightly.

I think it's fair game to call ideas stupid, and that's what he did. It's his assessment, your opinion may be different, but in this case I'd personally say his judgement was correct.

As far as feedback on ideas goes, this is a harsh criticism, but it hasn't really crossed the line into abrasiveness because it's not a personal attack. It's just a given that even smart people can and do have stupid ideas. At no point did he say or imply anything about the person raising the idea.

My goodness, a respected dev dares to defend his philosophy and implementation and is vilified for being "abrasive" ? JSLint has never not been pedantic, that is why you use it.

"You can write all the crappy code you want. I don't care, because you don't work for me. The purpose of JSLint is not to make you feel good about your bad choices. It is to help you conform to a more reliable subset of the language."

As someone that has very little involvement in the JS community, Crockford definitely comes off as abrasive in that issue. He could've just as easily said "scope confusion is an issue in JS, I don't see a reason to implement this" instead of calling someone's decision stupid. Is it bad he's abrasive? Not particularly, any undergrad worth their salt would've come across a professor who's abrasive in college. Abrasiveness is a personality artifact, and I'm not belittling him for that matter, just pointing out how someone can interpret his personality.

I've read some of his stuff, watched a presentation. He is direct and opinionated. It's part of his charm. Sometimes it's quite funny.

I've met many people who are "dicks without knowing it". Sometimes it's because they are that far up their own arse. Sometimes it's raw abrasion. It's common in the private healthcare industry.

Seems like throwing of the dummy out the pram. I'd prefer Crockford's direct approach to sugar-coat. It's how I like to work.

That and if someone's focus is on inclusion, perhaps it's an ill-thought marketing campaign where the result is exclusion.

But that seems to still assume this "abrasiveness" is a bad thing.

I find it much nicer and respectful than the passive-aggressive weasel-wordishness so common now.

> But that seems to still assume this "abrasiveness" is a bad thing.

The commenter literally says "it's important to note that Douglas Crockford can definitely be abrasive [1]. The issue at hand is that whether this abrasiveness is a bad thing..."

Exactly, but the part after that pretty much presumes that it is, which is why I was puzzled.

EDIT: And I should have made that more clear, thanks for pointing it out.

The consequences of one's own interpretation, if deleterious, are one's own loss. When they include the disinvitation of a brilliant and deeply knowledgeable speaker from a conference in his field, they become everyone's loss.

> Discourse and disagreement with speakers is natural and should be encouraged, as it oftentimes leads to enlightening discussions for bystanders and conference attendees, which was the entire point of the conference in the first place.

I agree with this, but we should tease “disagreement about the ideas that are the purpose of the conference” apart from “disagreement about things not relevant to the conference.”

If I go to a JavaScript conference, I am more than happy to see two speakers in a monkey-knife fight over whether the class keyword is taking two steps backwards. Those are the core ideas relevant to the conference.

Making jokes or metaphors that touch on contentious social topics like gender roles and so forth can touch of disagreement that may be valuable in a larger social context--like on HN and a whole or the internet as a whole, but it is off-topic for most technology conferences.

It’s a lot like discussing a programming problem on HN, and then someone mentions IQ, and someone else mentions how terrible it is that we can’t give interviewees IQ tests, and then we’re discussing racism, the right and wrong way to interview programmers, and on and on and on with something that si no longer the original programming problem.

None of what I am saying implies that I agree that Mr. Crockford should have been uninvited, and nor is it an endorsement of his choices as a speaker. But in a general sense, I totally get why its ideal that when I give a talk, I avoid jokes and metaphors that invite off-topic debate.

And likewise, I get why conferences ought to attempt to moderate the talks such that they have the highest probability of leading to on-topic debate. It’s much the same as moderating Hacker News threads to stay roughly on-topic and with high quality.

Well since the person who seems to hate him so much gave a talk at that conference same conference a year before that had nothing to do with Javascript or node (something about community/inclusivity big surprise) I would say that "on topic" covers just about anything for these circus events.

I would say he is one of the more likely speakers to stay on topic.

To be fair, the hostility he uses there isn't the type of "Discourse and disagreement" that fosters "enlightening discussions for bystanders and conference attendees".

It's just being abrasive for the sake of being abrasive.

Not that I think that thread is grounds to kick out a speaker

People and organizations can be justified in shunning Crockford's allegedly level of abrasiveness, so I don't agree that Kas took it too far in opining that Crockford, by Kas's standards, is a jerk (I do, however, disagree with the purported evidence of Crockford's "slut-shaming). My tolerance for what is jerk-like behavior is probably not a good one, and I think I've definitely made people feel unwelcome at times, even if inadvertently.

If you want to post on the net that someone is a jerk in your professional forum, you don't NEED evidence, but if you offer it and its complete flim-flam then we all assume you are an idiot.

If someone has to be so careful as to not use normal network terminology around people who are clearly ignorant and use their ignorance as a weapon against you instead of take the time to learn what the hell they are talking about, that's not a community you want to participate in anyway.