thank you
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Oct 28, 2011 2:29 AM EDT |
Thanks, Martin, this is a nice tribute to a good person. As you say, many more leave silently; it's a bigger problem than most folks realize, or want to admit. Ritchie and McCarthy never had to endure threats of rape and physical violence, of getting "special" treatment simply for being who they were. Good-bye Skud and best wishes! |
| skelband Oct 28, 2011 11:03 AM EDT |
I seriously can't believe that something can't be done about this. A community as big and as savvy as this can surely track down these induhviduals responsible and out them to the derision and disdain they deserve. |
| devnet Oct 28, 2011 12:30 PM EDT |
The problem is most likely cultural in nature...societal as a result. Women are not given equal rights in all countries and that reflects in behavior of some members of those countries...through actions, word, and deed. Really trying to address this issue in Open Source communities is like trying to stop a river from flowing when you should be repairing the dam upstream. Hopefully, womens rights will get better in those countries where women are oppressed. I think it's absolutely stupid that some cultures, societies and religions look at women in that way...but I absolutely know that this is where attitudes like MikeUSA, the catalyst of this departure, are born and bred. |
| skelband Oct 28, 2011 12:43 PM EDT |
@devnet I see what you are saying, (although I don't really understand your metaphor, what is the dam that we should fix instead?) but for these people to get away, publicly, with this kind of behaviour is harmful to progress in two ways: 1) Others seeing this issue where a woman has been hounded out of the community will see that it can be done with impunity and it potentially encourages others to do the same. 2) (Related) A community that actively turns on these people and exposes them for the saddos that they are will actively send a message that it will not be tolerated and that they stand a real chance of being discovered. |
| vainrveenr Oct 28, 2011 12:50 PM EDT |
Quoting:...but I absolutely know that this is where attitudes like MikeUSA, the catalyst of this departure, are born and bred.Agreed. That MikeUSA and those acquaintances of his continually hounding Alex Bayley are nothing more than babies, bullies, chicken-hearts, cowards, curs, dastards (probably bastards as well), fraidy-cats, jellyfish, lurkers, malingerers, pantywaists, poltroons, punks, recreants, saddos, scaramouchs, shirkers, sissies, sneaks, yellow-bellies, wheyfaces and wimps all rolled-up together!! |
| skelband Oct 28, 2011 1:04 PM EDT |
Interestingly, I've been trying to search for more information about this story on t'Internet and I'm coming up with a lot of blanks searching for "Alex Bayley mikeusa" and "Kirrily Roberts mikeusa". I would have thought that there would be much more open discussion about this issue but practically all I can find is this article on LXer. It's almost as if there has been a media blackout. I'm pretty sure I saw something on the the Register but I can't find it now. What gives? Anyone know? |
| albinard Oct 28, 2011 3:40 PM EDT |
Try searching "skud" - there are some links now. |
| number6x Oct 28, 2011 4:10 PM EDT |
mikeeusa well known troll on many blogs. |
| dinotrac Oct 29, 2011 6:34 AM EDT |
These nasty little creatures pretending to be men are simply the worst tip of an ugly iceberg. How often do free software folks celebrate anti-social up-yours behavior, whether it is RMS re Steve Jobs, or KDE4 re their user base? The good outweighs the bad, but there's a reason that the big news comes from places like Google and Apple and not from free software -- even when it's built on free software. |
| gus3 Oct 29, 2011 7:10 AM EDT |
Refusing to submit to our corporate masters, and being vocal about it, is not "anti-social". If it were, the situation at hand would be turned completely around. (OTOH, I've seen nobody celebrating the behavior of the KDE4 team, except the KDE4 team.) Hooray for Alex Bayley. |
| dinotrac Oct 29, 2011 7:57 AM EDT |
>Refusing to submit to our corporate masters, Yeah, there's a deep analysis. |
| Grishnakh Oct 29, 2011 4:52 PM EDT |
Personally, I think this "article" is rather lame; all I see is a diatribe about this alleged "Alex" person, some vagueness about how horrible her experience has been, and that's it. You want to be taken seriously? How about some more links to real articles, or to blogs where this alleged behavior occurred, etc.? As they frequently say on Slashdot: [citation needed] It's rather hard to say anything intelligent about something when there's no information presented about it. And no, "google for more news" isn't an answer, not on a news aggregator site like this. |
| mbaehrlxer Oct 30, 2011 12:29 AM EDT |
you are right. i could have added a link. it was posted on lxer just a day earlier:
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/157374/index.html
my apologies for being lazy. greetings, eMBee. |
| jezuch Oct 30, 2011 4:19 AM EDT |
Quoting:mikeeusa Yeah, I thought I heard this name before... What do we call trolls that are no longer mostly harmless and become truly harmful? |
| tracyanne Oct 30, 2011 4:42 AM EDT |
criminals |
| dinotrac Oct 30, 2011 7:42 AM EDT |
@ta - That, but more. Why do so many in our "community" fail to see the harmful effect they have on all of us? One of my particular bugaboos is women in tech, particularly in Ruby on Rails. I've helped with on Women in Rails workshop and, with my wife, am trying to organize another. The thing that impressed my about the women who came to the workshop -- and to other ostensibly "geek" events I've attended lately -- is what a diverse group they are when compared to guy geeks. Whole ranges of motivations, whole ranges of strengths and skills, whole ranges of inter-personal skills. WRT Rails, it hit me square in the face because "opinionated development" is one of Rails's central tenets, but... when you want to move into corporate environments instead of internet start-ups, there's a big difference between expounding and convincing, and, frankly, I'd put my money on a lot more of the women I encountered than the men. It just seems that (many) fewer guy geeks are blessed with the listening, communication, and political skills to do that effectively. |
| Grishnakh Oct 30, 2011 5:50 PM EDT |
@mbaehrlxer: Thanks for the follow-up! Now I can see what's going on.itwire article wrote:...MikeeUSA, whose real name is Mikhail Kvaratskhelia I'd like to point out that this is one of the bad side-effects of all these "diversity" initiatives. "Open-minded" people call for everyone to "embrace diversity", but what they always conveniently ignore is that many people from other "diverse" cultures don't share their values at all, and in fact most non-Western cultures do NOT hold women to be equals. Obviously, this "MikeeUSA" jerk, whose real name shows he's not a Westerner at all, is from one of these backwards cultures. (Note: this is not true for all non-Western cultures, just some. China for instance doesn't seem to have any big problems with women's rights these days, however Russia isn't exactly known for its leadership on the issue.) We have enough problems with poor treatment of women in Western cultures from homegrown idiots and misogynists, but trying to accept and embrace everyone from all other cultures is just making it worse. If you're a woman and you think it's bad here, try taking a trip to Afghanistan or someplace like that, and see how you're treated over there. I'm not saying you should shut up and be happy, I'm saying that any time you associate with non-Westerners, you need to be prepared for problems because they certainly don't share our values. Of course, it doesn't help that in many cultures (especially our own Western ones), computer-related jobs and activities tend to be a haven for men with poor social skills, so you really should be aware of that before jumping in. As for this Alex person, I think she needs to grow a slightly thicker skin, and realize that with the internet, you're going to get nasty comments and such from people all over the world due to its global, no-borders nature. If someone's actually living in your city and threatening you, that's one thing, but just because some jerk on another continent is making nasty comments or whatever isn't a reason to give up whatever you're doing. Moreover, while articles like I guess are good from shedding light on this kind of negative activity, we also have to realize there's really not much that can be done about it, without making giant changes that would reduce freedom. We can all sit around in a circle and hold hands and talk about "building awareness" or whatever, but that's not going to stop one or two jerks, who can be anywhere in the world, from carrying out attacks like this; they don't care about anything you say about "equality" or anything like that, that's why they're jerks and @ssholes. For instance, one paragraph in the article talks of an abusive email sent to a woman after some jerk at a conference was censured for his use of sexual images in a talk. Someone please tell me what real, concrete actions can be taken to stop this from happening? It's simple: none. There's no way to stop random people from emailing you; if there were, we wouldn't still be dealing with SPAM after all these years. The best you can do is keep your email address secret, but OSS-active people tend not to do that because they want collaborators to be able to contact them about their work. Well, if you're going to make your email address public, you have to expect that you're going to receive some cr@p in your inbox from time to time. I suppose you could set up a filter for certain foul language that abusers might email you, and have that email immediately deleted; that's about the best thing I can think of honestly. |
| mbaehrlxer Oct 30, 2011 11:47 PM EDT |
noone should have to grow a thick skin to be part of our society. we need to work to transform this society into one where everyone can participate without being harassed or even only looked down upon. harassment is a moral problem. the only way that i can see to stop it is either punishment or moral education. and i don't think punishment is effective. my favourite quote on this subject is: Quoting:Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures and allow mankind to benefit therefrom. 200 years ago most people didn't go to school. today education is a human right. i think we can achieve the same with moral education too. greetings, eMBee. |
| gus3 Oct 31, 2011 6:59 AM EDT |
200 years ago, people didn't go to public schools, yet somehow they managed to learn stuff. Like Greek, Latin, history, the basic philosophies (sciences), ciphers... |
| tracyanne Oct 31, 2011 7:42 AM EDT |
some people, the rest remained ignorant and uneducated, but they, fortunately, didn't count. |
| dinotrac Oct 31, 2011 8:28 AM EDT |
@mb - I disagree with the thick skin part. A thick skin is a marvelous asset, but... @grishnakh is way off base in suggesting that anybody should have to deal with the kind of incessant abuse we're talking about. That is well beyond thick skin territory. What should happen is that the little cretins spewing that crap should grow up and become something resembling men. |
| jdixon Oct 31, 2011 10:22 AM EDT |
> 200 years ago most people didn't go to school. today education is a human right. School and education are not synonyms. And anything which must be provided by another person cannot be considered a human right unless you advocate forcing someone to provide it. There's a word for such forced labor - it's called slavery. > ...some people, the rest remained ignorant and uneducated, The US literacy rate in the late 1700's apparently varied widely by location, but also apparently was at least 50% and may have been over 90% in certain areas. The US was probably not representative of the rest of the world, of course. Further details can be found at: http://www.chesapeake.edu/Library/EDU_101/eduhist_earlynat.a... and http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=361434 > ...What should happen is that the little cretins spewing that crap should grow up and become something resembling men. Or else be treated as the animals they demonstrate themselves to be. |
| patrokov Oct 31, 2011 11:52 AM EDT |
+3 jdixon |
| Grishnakh Oct 31, 2011 1:25 PM EDT |
mbaehrlxer wrote:noone should have to grow a thick skin to be part of our society. we need to work to transform this society into one where everyone can participate without being harassed or even only looked down upon. You're being too idealistic. Yes, it'd be nice if we had a global society where you didn't need a thick skin. The problem is that that is not the reality today. Luckily, in certain places, you don't need so much of a thick skin. For instance, suppose you were homosexual, and lived in San Francisco. You could probably go for a long time without any harassment or negative comments, no matter how obvious your orientation was, as long as you stayed in SF. However, travel to some less-tolerant parts of the USA and that would quickly change. Travel to certain countries in the mideast or Africa, and you'd be stoned to death. Moral education doesn't work when the entire population is against you, as it is in certain mideast countries. The only practical solution is to stay away from those cultures, and move to a place where the local culture is accepting of you. Quoting:200 years ago most people didn't go to school. today education is a human right. i think we can achieve the same with moral education too. Wrong. Universal education is NOT a human right, it's a privilege that those of us in more advanced cultures enjoy. Girls in Afghanistan that attempt to go to school are frequently abused or murdered. You can't call something a "human right" if entire cultures believe it is not. You can say that you believe it should be a human right, or you can say that it is a basic right in our culture, but obviously much of the world disagrees with you, and anyone who believes that all cultures are equally valid will tell you that you're practicing "cultural imperialism" by trying to tell people in other cultures that women should be treated equally and should be educated. dinotrac wrote:@grishnakh is way off base in suggesting that anybody should have to deal with the kind of incessant abuse we're talking about. That is well beyond thick skin territory. What should happen is that the little cretins spewing that crap should grow up and become something resembling men. Okay, and how exactly do you propose to force these cretins to "grow up"? This is what I'm talking about: a total lack of pragmatism and basic reality. Back to my homosexual example: a gay person living in SF probably doesn't have to worry about abuse much these days, as long as s/he stays in SF or other tolerant locales. But if he ventures out to less-tolerant places, he'll have a much different experience. On the internet, all bets are off: anyone, from anywhere, can go to any public forum and spew their bile (or "alternative viewpoint"), and there's not much you can do about it. There are some things you can do: you can stay away from public forums, and only frequent private forums, which are moderated or have closed membership. Indeed, many internet forums are this way now, precisely because of abuse; there's really no other way to prevent cretins from posting anonymously otherwise. You can go to a Slashdot-style comment moderation system, but that doesn't prevent cretins from posting (Slashdot is filled with cretin posts!), it just makes it easier for you to ignore them by changing the moderation level you read at (but this doesn't seem to, for instance, prevent Slashdot from emailing me every time some Anonymous Coward jerk posts a nasty response to a post I make). If you want to insulate yourself from jerks and cretins, then you have to withdraw from a certain amount of participation in society. I, for instance, don't want to have anything to do with people from certain middle-eastern cultures, so one thing I do is I simply don't travel to those countries. However, there's no way to change a setting on your browser so that I never see posts made by people from those backwards cultures, so I have to learn to just ignore them if I see them. We can all sit around and wish and hope for people in backwards cultures to become more like us, but it's not going to happen any time soon. |
| dinotrac Oct 31, 2011 1:40 PM EDT |
@grishnakhQuoting:This is what I'm talking about: a total lack of pragmatism and basic reality. Nothing of the sort. The first step, however, is to stop apologizing for little dickless wonders like MikeUSA and placing blame at the feet of the victims. That's the first step in dealing with such head cases -- make them unacceptable. It's true that the targets of their childish venom need to deal with the current reality, just as we all need to move on when a loved one dies. That may or may not be a "thick skin" as you call it. It may be dropping out of sight -- likely to the diminishment of us all. The fact remains that the MikeUSAs of this world are the problem, not the people they spew on. So long as you apologize for the former, you will be part of the problem. |
| tuxchick Oct 31, 2011 2:10 PM EDT |
We are the backwards culture. |
| dinotrac Oct 31, 2011 3:11 PM EDT |
@tc - Sadly, we are not. We have a way to go yet, but are far ahead of many. |
| Grishnakh Oct 31, 2011 9:25 PM EDT |
@dinotrac: Who's blaming the victims? I'm not. I'm just saying that you can "blame" people like "MikeeUSA" all you want, but this isn't going to do anything productive. These people are going to continue to exist and spew their bile for a long time to come, no matter how much you try to blame them, call them names, etc. The pragmatic thing to do is to figure out how to deal with the reality of their existence.Quoting:The fact remains that the MikeUSAs of this world are the problem, not the people they spew on. So long as you apologize for the former, you will be part of the problem. I'm not apologizing for those jerks at all, but how are you going to "make them unacceptable"? You can't. Not any place where people have the freedom to, for instance, post anonymous messages, send anonymous emails, etc. If you don't ever want to see anything from these jerks, your only choice is to drop out of society altogether and live in a cave. Obviously, that is not a practical solution. @tuxchick: Where on earth do you get that idea? What other cultures have actually recognized and advanced causes such as women's rights, equality for all, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.? Not many. This is definitely something that Western cultures lead in (American, Canadian, various western European cultures, etc.). No, we're not perfect and we certainly haven't fully realized these goals yet in all parts of all these cultures, but we're doing far better than most other non-western cultures. In most cultures, these things are ridiculed, called "works of the devil", or similar, and people who try to push for these ideals are imprisoned, beaten, and executed. |
| dinotrac Nov 01, 2011 2:18 AM EDT |
@grish... Yes you are. So long as you throw up your hands and disclaim any responsibility, that is exactly what you are doing. Of course we can make things unacceptable. I don't know what country you are from, but here in the US we have a great example of that. It's called "the N-word". I mean the phrase, by the way, not the word to which it refers. Ten years ago, that phrase, for all intents and purposes, didn't exist. Does it mean that nobody uses the word? Of course not. But, man oh man, there are a lot of places you won't hear it now. The MikeUSAs of this world want to assert their manhood. Apologists like you give them cover. Step one is to rip away the cover. |
| skelband Nov 01, 2011 12:28 PM EDT |
There was another article referred to by Alex Bayley here: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310 I actually have difficulty in disagreeing with a lot of what is in that article although Alex clearly does not agree. I find myself sitting on the fence a bit (seem to be doing that quite a bit recently). The real solution to combating this kind of thing is to strip away anonymity. I fully suspect that a lot of these flame baiters get up to their tricks because there is no comeback, no consequence. Let them face the glare of public opinion and the derision of their peers. In this modern age though, I just don't know how we can solve this problem. In years gone by, people with shameful opinions were shamed by their community or ignored and pitied for the paucity of their intellect. However, in many ways, I agree with Grishnakh in that the source of a lot of this bile is a community where most people share those views. It will take many generations for that to change. I see in Libya in the news, Sharia law will be imposed and all the requisitely shameful oppression which comes with it. With that kind of backdrop, I despair of the human race's capacity to ever lift itself from its self-destructive and deceitful tendencies. But these things are ingrained in the culture of these places passed from parents to children like a religious mantra. How on earth do you break that cycle? By education. Not the indoctrination of Western dogma kind of education, but by encouraging people to think objectively about their actions. So I guess in a sense I agree with dinotrac. Relentless outing of these people and derision of their ideas is the way forward, as long as it doesn't become dogma and as long as Westerner's don't become as closed-minded as those they criticise. Anyway, I ramble on. |
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