The many people who called for Hank to be fired and sent intimidation and threats and participated in the DDOS are all worse than both Hank and Adria.
Hank's joke was perhaps inappropriate (it's impossible for those of us that were not there to even apply our own personal standards, volume, tone, etc. all factor into such things, and they are impossible to describe objectively).
Adria's response is similarly hard to judge. I don't think the incident as she described it deserved much remediation. Certainly not beyond the resolution internal to the conference where he apologized. But I also think that there needs to be room to make mistakes. Sometimes people really are jerks, and they should be called on it, even if sometimes there is not wide agreement that they were jerks.
But somehow, instead of focusing on the bile and rage that many internet participants see as part an parcel of participation, which are clearly inappropriate and not in any way useful, here we have dozens of comments picking at the details of what happened at the conference.
HN is extremely supportive of the mob justice meted out on uppity black women, and there are numerous supportive comments in this story thread to that effect. Most HN readers don't even see a problem there, much less one that needs any attention or remedy.
Sure, any rational examination of the situation would suggest that Adria's "offense" (saying something she didn't like was "not cool" on her personal Twitter account) was just about the most minor thing a human could possibly do, but the more important thing to HN is that she was a black woman challenging a white man, and that simply cannot be allowed to stand.
> The many people who called for Hank to be fired
Did anyone, at all, call for "Hank" to be fired? His name isn't even publicly known.
Hank's joke was perhaps inappropriate (it's impossible for those of us that were not there to even apply our own personal standards, volume, tone, etc. all factor into such things, and they are impossible to describe objectively).
Adria's response is similarly hard to judge. I don't think the incident as she described it deserved much remediation. Certainly not beyond the resolution internal to the conference where he apologized. But I also think that there needs to be room to make mistakes. Sometimes people really are jerks, and they should be called on it, even if sometimes there is not wide agreement that they were jerks.
But somehow, instead of focusing on the bile and rage that many internet participants see as part an parcel of participation, which are clearly inappropriate and not in any way useful, here we have dozens of comments picking at the details of what happened at the conference.