Comment by junon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by junon | Hacker News Reader

I don't really have a lot of sympathy for people who post links as "examples" causing readers to witch hunt people on social media (GitHub in this case) regardless of their conduct. The user mentioned in the article has now been harassed so much they have deleted most of their GitHub and is threatening suicide.

This letter reads hollow and I've seen a number of them before. If everyone operated this way OSS would be an apocalyptic nightmare.

I'm also not really sure what the author expected here. Having popular stuff garners unfair criticism. It's part of the gig. You can't control it. It feels like a rant - I understand, completely - but when you send people to a specific comment and tell them "see what this asshole said about me!" you're sending emotionally charged people behind the defense of their computer screen to gang up on that person. It's no longer an example, it's an abuse of power. And it feels like the author knows this, given they felt the need to write an announcement article.

This feels incredibly poor taste.

You have points here and I'm not discrediting them, but this still reads like you are blaming the maintainer.

They don't have any obligation to put up with improper conduct and pointing out improper conduct is a totally fair thing for them to do. I don't think they mean for internet users to go hunt that person down, but I also don't see why it's their obligation to try to protect them. If the user didn't want to be criticized back, or cannot handle the light and fair criticism that people posted in that issue, then they maybe should have not thrown the stone in the first place?

My the point is it feels out of place to blame the maintainer for this, in my opinion. If they want to say "hey this is unacceptable, and here is specifically what is unacceptable" that is totally fair game.

I feel like this type of calling out unacceptable actions is not done enough and we really should start to do it more to signal that it's not ok to be so rude to someone providing you free stuff.

There's a difference between "light and fair criticism" and a total witch hunt. If he truly wanted to make an example, there's lots of ways to include only the text from the issue in the blog post, while excluding personally identifying information. He purposefully and unecessarily linked the issue in the post because he felt spiteful towards this person and wanted his audience to give him hell.

I disagree with everything the author has to say. That being said the user here did something rude in a public place and deserves any backlash they get for doing so. If a little bit of internet condemnation causes someone to have a suicidal meltdown they shouldn't be online at all. We shouldn't all conform our behavior to be accommodating

Reply on news.ycombinator.com