Re: [DIYbio] Help end harassment in hacking!

5:29 PM |

Hi everyone, Mac here. Wearing my community-member hat, not my moderator hat.

Firstly, I am proud of the community for the good manners and dignity that has generally characterized this conversation so far. On the whole, we seem to be a group of level-headed, open-minded, thoughtful folks with a deep abiding interest in biotech. That's pretty cool and the latter is somewhat rare on public forums (and I wonder what it is about diybio that draws such civil people together).

I believe it would have been detrimental to our community and to the personal development of each individual here if we, the mods, had unilaterally shut down this thread as originally requested by Martin Borch et al. I personally had never encountered a situation like this and it has helped me develop my own values and ethics in this area. I hope it has led to similar valuable development in each of you.

In my opinion, *in general*, when someone speaks up in public with a complaint and a cry for help, they are doing so as a last resort. While some fraction of these calls for help may be made in bad faith, I am confident most are legitimate. Occam's razor is a good principle to remember when imagining the motives of the person requesting help. Starting a big, public conversation is not the simplest way to deal with most, if not all, interpersonal problems. Therefore, one should assume most discussions that are started are the result of the other, simpler avenues of recourse already having been explored and seen to be dead-ends.

In particular, I don't think it's controversial to state that white, western, working men have historically comprised a privileged class compared to other groups, and members of said class are obliged today to empower members of historically- or contemporarily-disenfranchised groups to find the solution to the problems they face in as equitable a way as possible. So, in this situation, as a privileged white guy, I didn't just say, "Oh, Jen, sorry to hear about all this, let me fix everything for you." Or, "Oh, Jen, sorry to hear about this distressing situation, let me tell you how you are allowed to discuss it on the mailing list I control".

Instead, the conversation has developed from first principles, and my only goal has been to gently correct any instances of incivility, of which I have not seen any significant examples. Jen, the person asking for help, has been proceeding with the conversation as she thinks is proper, and I don't think there is a fairer way proceed with such a situation.

Jen: I'm glad you've led this discussion here, and I am more-than-glad that you are establishing opendiscrimination.org to explore ways in which it may operate as a support community and global "HR" group for hackerspace culture. By its very nature it will be a lightning rod for controversy. Your challenge will be to channel this into constructive outcomes for the culture at large.

Jen, you have asked the global community to boycott a local group and festival. Everyone is free to make their own decisions and act accordingly, but I personally prefer to contribute to a solution in ways that are positive and constructive, rather than negative and censuring.

Jen, you recently wrote that you were planning to take this discussion to some place at opendiscrimination.org. If so, I encourage you to summarize your position and what you, and we, have learned in a final post here, and include a link to the opendiscrimination mailing list for all who are interested in following future developments or contributing further.

Everyone else, I encourage you to write a "conclusion" post expressing your stance and aspirations for this issue if you feel so compelled.

I am not trying to terminate this discussion as some have called on me to do. Personally, if you don't want to read it, don't read it. The relative harm of forcing you to filter your inbox is far less than the potential harm caused by censoring the discussion.

Regards,
Mac


On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 2:47 PM, David Murphy <murphy.david@gmail.com> wrote:
Jen: First: this is nothing to do with tone, this is to do with shooting yourself in the foot.

If this topic had just been the initial post and the other sides replies I'd have assumed them creeps and left it there but it's your posts, not theirs, that are alienating me.

They're *wisely* saying little because the more they say the more likely they'll shoot themselves in the foot, contradict themselves and generally confirm any negative suspicions we have about them or negative impressions we may get from things they say.

indeed what little they did post would have been better omitted for that reason.

you are utterly free to keep talking but you are not coming across a good advocate for your own cause right now.

When you flat out declare that you feel *glad* that a 3rd party feels that you've been harassing them you don't come across in the most positive light.

Minor side note when did racism come into this?
It's not been mentioned anywhere in this topic but your website has added it to the list of sins.
They're racists now?



On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 12:16 AM, Alex <spider87@gmail.com> wrote:


On Jun 20, 2014 6:14 PM, "John Griessen" <john@industromatic.com> wrote:
>
> On 06/20/2014 02:06 PM, Shubham Goyal wrote:
>>
>> I disagree with
>>
>>>    You seem to be the one making claims of problems.  The accused say essentially,
>>>    "there is no problem."
>>
>>
>>
>> ​If the victim​
>> ​has been wronged and the intersection of the set of accused with the set of victims is null,
>> I do not think the accused will
>> ever claim that there are problems.
>
> OK.  Maybe so.  There's still not much way through this list, or any email list, to
> assess this kind of emotionally charged dispute.  We would do well to limit this
> discussion to general cases.  Jen has not been succinct.
> She has not offered general or specific law cases that are relevant, or concise
> descriptions of what happened, that I could tell.  

"She offered so much data I could not look at it all, so cannot say, really."

Absolutely this. She spends so much time talking about how offended she is that we're not all rioting that you have to skip through it to try to find the points.

Alex

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