Gittip is a nice idea. But sadly, it has become a place for certain people to receive hefty monthly paychecks from anonymous patrons in exchange for incredibly aggressive and toxic trolling. Despite original intentions, this is not making an ecosystem of love and gratitude. So if its creator isn't even making money from it, it's probably better if it goes to sleep.
The only way you get money on gittip is by producing something others think is valuable and want to see more of. People are voting with their money, which is infinitely heavier than voting with HN comments.
I only plan on making this single response in this thread.
As someone mentioned directly below, you're damn right I'm a staunch feminist. But nobody has 'hijacked' anything: I've known Chad since before Gittip was even a thing, and have been in the top leaders list since when that meant I got less than a dollar. Because that's what happens when you've been using a platform longer than others. Naturally, this extended to my friends, as well. Furthermore, you only make Gittip money if you ask people to donate. The top getters are people who ask more.
My sibling presents a one-sided view of multi-faceted people: Shanley, for example, has her own bootstrapped media company that's already profitable, which is more to say than a large number of HN 'entrepreneurs.' (including myself).
Anyway, I'm not sure the 'leaderboards' are a good thing, exactly. But this kind of pettiness (from throwaway accounts, no less) is amusing.
has stuff on her profile that directly deprecates her husband. I don't anything about this case, but I'd say in general it makes me uncomfortable that somebody is bringing up a personal conflict on a platform like this.
You have no problem with her husband "bringing up a personal conflict" using a legal system that you are obliged to pay for, but a woman using a voluntary site to fund her defence makes you uncomfortable?
I'm glad that others are voicing their dissent. Gittip has went from an idea of giving open source developers a way to supplement their income via time spent writing software. Instead, it's been hijacked by toxic social justice warriors. One is even for someone supporting their legal issues (unrelated in any way whatsoever to tech). I'd love to see a statement by someone at Gittip responding to this.
The post that spawned this subthread amounts to "Since gittip's main beneficiaries are women I disagree with, gittip should be shut down".
In that context, do you see how your post is stoking the fire?
You didn't indicate what you think gittip is for, just that noirin's use of it is inappropriate. You also said she "deprecates her husband", when she lists 2 facts:
a) he was arrested
b) he is suing her for things she said about it
Plus, he's her ex-husband, and this is a situation where the distinction is important.
So in context, I don't think what you said was mild, I think it's somewhat hostile and inaccurate.
Since more recently published court documents have shown this to be a sexual assault / rape and domestic violence arrest, some statistics are in order.
There are plenty of crimes that don't leave particularly useful evidence. Pointing a gun at someone is illegal, but how do you prove it happened? Same issue in many rape cases.
I believe he was referring to the top two receivers, Shanley [1] and Ashe[2].
These two are a part of the group of very aggressive feminists; there's no official 'group' to speak of (AFAIK), just a network of people supporting each other.
Just to give a few names - Alex Gaynor (member of PSF board), Jacob Kaplan-Moss (yep, Django ex-BDFL), Coda Hale (HN/codahale, see his last messages here on HN [3], they're just about Shanley and Gittip), HN/steveklabnik, etc etc
A few highlights by Shanley:
"Men are rapists" [4]
HN's Sam Altman reaches out to women asking what he could do; Shanley reacts: "i'm not insulting you, i'm fucking EDUCATING you. so shut the fuck up and/or pay me, preferably both." [5], while refusing to do anything for HN, not even meeting anyone in person [6]
They've been either involved or voiced (shouted, actually) their support to whoever was involved in recent scandals with feminism - Adria Richards @ PyCon (I believe Alex Gaynor helped to make this event as public as possible), pronoun scandal (Alex Gaynor, again, was the author of RP that started the whole thing), Paul Graham misquote (Jacob KM speaks out [7])... I could go on.
But, basically, a bunch of very aggressive people, who claim to work on solving the problems women face, but actually (IMO) are just making the whole thing worse.
And, back to the subject, seeing them on top of gittip definitely doesn't help the project. Which is said, that's a great idea and I loved it when I saw it.
PS Oh, this just in. Shanley on how companies can increase diversity: "Hire me to be your diversity consultant I will help you quickly close down your business to make room for better ones"
First, I think that last tweet is actually pretty funny. What's wrong with a little black humor?
Also, because of the Torvalds mention earlier in this thread, I thought it'd be interesting to compare the people you mention here to him. Almost all of them look quite tame when you compare their behavior to Torvalds's. Kane's online persona does run toward being a jerk, and is probably the only one that could stand toe-to-toe with Torvalds in terms of brashness and hostility.
So why do these "very aggressive" people bother you so much, when Torvalds is generally seen as something of a hero? Are you willing to rate Torvalds's behavior as being just as "toxic" as theirs? The fictional QA report you describe in a later post actually sounds quite a lot like some stuff Torvalds has written. Do you have a similarly dutifully-annotated post in storage that details all of Torvalds's sins? Does his behavior set OSS back in the same way you claim these people set their communities back?
Maybe we should start referring to Torvalds as a "very aggressive programmer" ...
Note: I realize this post relies quite a bit on things I can't know. "ta140604" may very well think Torvalds is just as problematic as the people he discusses here. The point is to add a little context, and give you something to chew on the next time you see a post like this, where "a wild pseudonym appears!" expressly to smear a group of people that question the status quo. Yes, it's entirely likely that these people are all huge jerks. Most of us are jerks. But why are we so concerned with the fact that they, specifically, are jerks, when we don't give a shit about it in most everyone else?
Agreed. The problem is, they exaggerate and twist the truth, spread hate, unnecessarily antagonizing people, and actively push away those who try to reach out to them trying to do something.
Exactly: people like @shanley and @ashedryden make money by polarizing and then profiting from the resulting flames of their gender argument, and so vigorously resist even talking to those that they accuse and condemn. It's the type of narcissistic intolerance that is rarely seen in such pure form.
The logic here is rather straightforward: to a 'stage4' narcissist, their opinions are the functional equivalent of absolute truths, and therefore it is sacrilegious to even imply that they be 'open for debate'. So if anyone persists in challenging one of their sermons,that person is either grossly ignorant (solution => RTFM) OR is intentionally 'attacking' or 'harassing' (because there is no gray area to debate for the histrionically 'self-deified' -- it's impossible to debate across parallel 'Absolutes' -"God does not play dice";)
Heck, at this stage of ferment, she is all but accusing (the almost freakishly fair minded) Chad of misogyny :D
My advice to GitTip: 'if it's not broke, don't fix it'. You had a great year, so proceed cautiously with any systemic changes, and error on the side of transparency. Keep conversations as open as possible because the real solution to 'Bad' Speech -- is more speech.
The only exception to that rule is personally threatening language, which should not be tolerated at all. And only a coward would resort to that low level of action.
But with that being said lets not construe honest disagreements that are substantiated with reasons -- as a personal attack or a cause to feel 'threatened'.
And as far as funding goes: except for clear cases of fraud, let people decide for themselves where they want their money to go -- and let transparency take care of the rest :)
P.S. They are using flame throwers on twitter about this thread -- when they should be replying here :D (twitter is a better place to polarize with out of context 'headlines')
I don't agree that any of that is a problem. It's not their responsibility to help you do the right thing any more than it's a (again with the theme) QA person's job to teach the programmer proper coding practice. Separation of concerns, if you will.
If we go on with your analogy, QA report would look as follows: "Your piece of shit program burned down the whole fucking server farm, you useless assclown! You belong in jail!", where the real bug was maybe a crash. That's not a good, or even acceptable QA report, I'd say.
Look, if you think saying "men are rapists" is not a problem, there's not much to discuss here. Before that point I had my doubts - okay, they're self-righteous hateful hypocrites, but maybe they're right? I DO know there are problems that women face - maybe they know something I don't, and I should try harder and listen to them?
After that I just noped out.
And, BTW, their inability to reflect on their action, admit mistakes and apologize is another huge red flag. (I haven't seen any examples, at least - please let me know if you have any, I'd be very glad to see them)
Repeated errors have certainly received bug reports of a similar tone. In the context of QA I'd say that saying someone belongs in jail would be seen as humor and sarcasm, so that part doesn't really hold for me.
That said, I really don't see any nuance or indication that you were an ally before someone said "men are rapists," tbh. "Men are rapists" is an extreme statement, but "hateful hypocrites" isn't. Gotcha.
If you're going to "nope out" that easily, maybe you don't have much to offer. I don't know, you just sound like you're lecturing people in absentia. "Admit your mistake!" the principal says. Reading some Foucault might help here.
Your digging deep if you grab a github documentation PR as an example of how these people are making problems facing women in technology worse.
It's doubtful that you understand the issues women face and it's even more doubtful that you are able to measure the impact of anyone's efforts towards addressing those problems. Most importantly, it's clear you do not care in the slightest about helping women so your motivation in taking this thread about gittip off-topic is about attacking women.
You are a spineless coward hiding behind an anonymous ID tearing down a couple of women who are at least trying to make the world a better place. There is no way that your efforts could be construed as anything close to helping anyone. For some reason, they threaten you. Sort it out.
Unless you have anything to actually prove that Shanley, Ashe, whomever else you named in this thread, are "making the whole things worse", please be so kind and keep your hate to yourself.
PS. The only thing the tweets you quoted prove is that Shanley, on top of everything, has a sense of humor.
No, that wasn't a jab at feminism in tech! Feminism is great and there are some big problems to address in tech. But paying people to stir up heated conflicts and throw Tumblr-style tantrums isn't fixing anything, it is actually misrepresenting women in tech and doing harm to their cause.
Women in tech certainly aren't a problem! Feminism isn't a problem. Pointing out problems isn't a problem. Affirmative action isn't a problem. Even being angry isn't a problem.
Another poster made a useful comparison to QA. One imagines an otherwise mild-mannered QA Engineer becoming righteously angry about a very scummy feature, or a software defect which threatens lives. But this QA Engineer has better and worse ways to channel that anger into buy-in for a fix. The anger in itself may be useful by leading to useful things, but it may also be harmful if it leads to harmful things. Anyone can understand this if they want to.
Okay, I'll compare "You are hurting your cause by being angry" and "[stirring] up heated conflicts and [throwing] Tumblr-style tantrums."
The former is perfectly fine in many situations, and I don't see many people saying that being angry is inherently counterproductive or bad. The latter is widely accepted to be immature and counterproductive.
I never liked Gittip because of how it advertises its top earners and givers... it stops being about rewarding good work and starts to become a game of who can score the most validation points and use them for political gain.
Yelling on Twitter and demonizing men for existing is not "promoting empathy and equality". Begging for legal money for your civil lawsuit is not "sustainable crowd funding" (hint: what is she being sued for? it doesn't say.).
Sorry Gittip, but your site has turned into a joke dominated by professional victims.
God, it disgusts me to put my money through your system. (Due to either your incompetence or malice towards Gittip's top earners.) Can't wait when a decent alternative to you pops up.
But thanks for reminding me that I neglected to end my private Github account!
Yes, and what in the world does such nonsense have to do with rewarding open source developers? I feel like its a hobby business but everyone makes their own decisions.
Nice straw man. Most of those actually produce something useful, and there is a direct relationship between money given and product delivered.
I mean Jesus, earlier I saw Ashe Dryden complain that Gittip "doesn't care about her safety" and that she's now in a precarious position because she's "locked in" to it. Pretty sure she's the one who asked people to give her all that money. If she doesn't like it, she can go back to actually working for a living, like the rest of us. I took one look at Gittip when it opened up and said "Nope".
> If she doesn't like it, she can go back to actually working for a living, like the rest of us.
The rest of us turn up for 8 hours on a good day, turn in shitty code on our horrifically-factored, monolithic Rails app that some other poor shlub will have to maintain, break off at 2pm on a Friday for craft beer and convince ourselves we're changing the goddamn world with our latest social widget.
"Working for a living, like the rest of us"? Don't make me laugh.
The most half-assed Ruby dev, and oh my goodness there's some competition for that title, would easily be earning an integer multiple of what Ashe gets on gittip. You quite clearly know absolutely zilch about how much work Ashe does, and you so very obviously have no idea whatsoever how to value it, so how about you quieten down and go take a look at yourself, eh?
For Christ's sake, are you incapable of making a coherent argument? Your own list is inconsistent, lumping together ineffectual platitude salesmen and corrupt politicians with product developers.
If you'd manage to extract your head from your ass for 5 seconds, you'd realize these spoiled princesses have set back the cause of "marginalized tech professionals" more than a dozen titstares combined.
And as a guy not on the margins, who has been repeatedly educated and informed by these "spoiled princesses", I can't say I agree with him either. I find their work incredibly valuable, so I'd be interested to hear why joaren believes they're setting back their own cause.
Well, maybe "interested" is overstating it a bit. "Morbidly curious"?
> I find their work incredibly valuable, so I'd be interested to hear why joaren believes they're setting back their own cause.
I don't have any data or guesses, but it's conceivable that for every person like yourself who are educated toward their cause, a dozen others are turned away, in which case their actions would hurt the cause.
Right, "educated", on their false statistics? Like Shanley Kane's claim that men have a much easier time getting a 6 figure job out of college... except that unemployment among male college graduates is 50% higher than women's, and women already earn 60% of all college degrees. Let's ignore all that, tell guys to "shut the fuck up and listen", because the patriarchy is propagating systemic inequality.
Or how about Ashe Dryden's ignorance of the Norwegian Gender Paradox which shows that the more gender equal the opportunity, the less equal the outcome? See Richard Lippa of Fullerton's research, which shows this trend applies worldwide with an enormous sample size (i.e. gender is not a societal construct) and shows that the countries where there are more women in IT are the ones where it is a disproportionately lucrative career. I could also point to her hypocritical call to get people fired for starring the satirical Feminist Software Foundation github repo, a tweet so low even she eventually deleted it.
How about Noirin Plunkett's defamation lawsuit, for which she is soliciting money on Gittip? I'll just quote from the legal documents shall I:
> Plaintiff Michael G. Schwern was a leader for gender equity and a campaigner against sexual misconduct in the open-source software community. Complaint ¶2, Schwern Decl. ¶9. When plaintiff and his ex-wife, defendant Nóirín Plunkett, divorced, defendant — for reasons best known to her — chose to salt the earth by deliberately and maliciously spreading the lie that plaintiff had raped defendant. Complaint ¶¶8, 9, 13-23; Schwern Decl. ¶¶2-4, 8, 9; Exhibits 1-3. The criminal justice system rejected defendant’s allegations.
Yeah, these are the people who are "educating" the wider tech world with their informed opinions. Also, remember, false rape accusations never happen, no matter what Charles McDowell (1985) and Eugene Kanin (1994) found.
> Like Shanley Kane's claim that men have a much easier time getting a 6 figure job out of college... except that unemployment among male college graduates is 50% higher than women's
"A study of more than 400,000 graduates who left university last summer showed that 9% of males were unemployed six months after quitting compared with just 6% of women.
However, when it came to salaries, those men who had found their way into work were earning higher salaries than women with 32% earning more than £25,000 a year - compared with just 18% of women." [1]
Men are more likely than women to be unemployed or employed full time, while women are more likely than men to work part time at one or more jobs. [2]
Your statement is accurate, but so is hers.
> I'll just quote from the legal documents shall I
You quoted Schwern's accusation, which you seem to think bears more weight than Plunkett's accusation, despite neither being legally substantiated.
I have no time for someone who claims to be quoting "the legal documents" when he is in fact parroting one side's case in a domestic violence dispute to which he is not a party. Thanks for clarifying what you are, though; that's useful, albeit hardly surprising.
