There are some people that are so divergent from understanding and being able to perform or at least emulate normal social behaviour that they become harmful and problematic. I watched one, quite closely, develop through high school. I can still hear his smug “nah” any time you said something he didn’t agree with. Well, not “agree with” but “that he knew to be universally correct.”
Ultimately he ended up unemployable and bitter while his family tripled down on him being the victim because of an Asperger’s diagnosis. Moved to central Canada last time I heard.
I think what I learned from the experience is at some point you’ve got to compartmentalize harmful people from your groups and inevitably a growing number of segments of society, even if that feels wrong in some way. It’s more wrong to let them perpetually abuse people.
Edit: I’m not going to litigate this. If you don’t trust me or don’t want to accept that this person was truly abusive and harmful, or if you believe that victims should be made to tolerate abuse, I can’t help you.
It’s truly heartbreaking. The guy was one of my closest friends because we had a ton of hobbies in common. I loved when he would target fixate on some problem and his basement would turn into a mad scientist workshop. I remember him as “the person who would see through a ridiculous idea.”
But the abusive parts got worse and worse and became intolerable. I’m not sure what could have been done differently. Though as a teenager that was probably not my role to play.
>I think what I learned from the experience is at some point you’ve got to compartmentalize harmful people from your groups and inevitably a growing number of segments of society, even if that feels wrong in some way. It’s more wrong to let them perpetually abuse people.
You need to ban abusive people at the first possible time (after you have established that they are abusive and not, e.g just ESL who learned from an old TV show/book). The more moderation a community has, the better the community will be.
If somebody has Asbergers and can't adjust, ban them too. The why doesn't matter (unless it is easily correctable), the how does.
We had something like that go down between two of our children; we had to tell the one who got the worst of it "if the only way to feel safe is to never be in the same room as them again, that's okay"
Forgiveness is one thing, but deliberately putting yourself in position to be victimized again is another.
For some people, emulating “normal” social behaviour can be taxing on many levels and perhaps “normal” seems extremely odd to them.
I’d sleep on the idea of ostracising people with social issues because it can hasten a downward spiral.
In a lot of cases, people who don’t fit in are looking for love they don’t receive. Speaking from experience, if you can offer them that love in spite of challenging behaviour, you could be the key to them developing positive relationships that serve as models of how they can effectively fit in.
If you can muster the energy, instead of pushing these people away, as hard as it may seem, try drawing them closer - it’s not an exaggeration to say that you might be saving someone’s life.
>I think what I learned from the experience is at some point you’ve got to compartmentalize harmful people from your groups and inevitably a growing number of segments of society, even if that feels wrong in some way. It’s more wrong to let them perpetually abuse people.
this strikes me as similar to the concept of being for life imprisonment over the spending of resources towards rehabilitation.
To throw people to the wayside because YOU have determined them to be 'UN-fixable' IS wrong. It's useful for YOU to compartmentalize them out of your life because they represent a personal burden -- but this doesn't help them improve themselves or their conditions; it may not be your responsibility to help them improve -- but many of these people are hopeless without outsider intervention, they need help, not partitioning. If you can't help them then the next best thing is to make an effort to find them help, not to shut the door in their face.
>It’s more wrong to let them perpetually abuse people
what do you think happens when you make yourself lost contact with these people? Well, having been 'compartmentalized' earlier in life and never receiving any help or social training, they continue to perpetually abuse other people.
Ironically the strategy of isolating them from oneself likely increases or prolongs their time 'out of step' with society -- all it does is protects YOU from the damage the person might do.
All I can say is that i'm glad the entire world doesn't take your advice of 'compartmentalizing harmful people', otherwise this place would be a pretty brutal world to live in.
> what do you think happens when you make yourself lost contact with these people? Well, having been 'compartmentalized' earlier in life and never receiving any help or social training, they continue to perpetually abuse other people.
If someone slaps you in the face every time you meet them, how many times are you obligated to correct them before you decide you don't want to be slapped in the face anymore?
>this strikes me as similar to the concept of being for life imprisonment over the spending of resources towards rehabilitation.
Even societies "without" life imprisonment have legal ways of putting people away for life if they're deemed too incompatible with society. Take Norway; longest sentence is 21 years, but for especially vile crimes, that sentence can be extended at the end of the 21 years if the convict is found to not have been rehabilitated.
It seems that every big project attracts that one persistent weirdo who comes by from time to time and posts silly stuff. I've noticed this pattern for a while now. I don't want to give names but I've at least seen some... bizarre issues on the LLVM tracker, for example.
Oh man, yeah there has been some absolute dogshit ones on LLVM. The Docker one has also seen some pretty freaky weirdos.
It’s a bit sad, we’re all on the same OSS team in the end. I’ve never found it that difficult to keep it cut and dry on software repos, I don’t know why people don’t just save the venom for forums and social media like the good ol days.
While we are sharing eye rollers.. I had this person plonk into our issues once with a “revolutionary” encryption technique. I wish I could remember the concoction he described.. Now that I’m trying to find it, it seems they deleted the github account. Seems like he saw the light, or got banned. Either way SNR increased and I’m all for that.
Two longstanding projects, two different weirdos I've had to deal with. At this point I've gotten unfortunately good at spotting a certain type of crazy.
Luckily, most projects seem to have a few supporters who want to help the project but don't have the technical skills yet to do so. For these people, managing the forums and bug reports is a valuable way contribute.
They can keep the noise and disruption of the craziest spammers to a minimum.
I had an embedded project once that was a personal one, but a few dozen people seemed to have used parts of it in their own stuff (it was MIT licensed). Then along came "Henry" (made up to protect the not so innocent). He had some ideas on the architecture. They weren't bad but I didn't care to change the core of my project and told him I would be happy if he forked my stuff and reused whatever he liked and I'd put an "alternatives" section in the github readme and that would be that. Henry was having -none- of that, he wanted to "work with me", etc, etc. Somehow he eventually got my phone number and was actually calling me out of the blue. Luckily it was a google voice number that I could easily drop. I just shut down the project, sent the people I knew who were actively using it notice and final git checkin of my RC changes, put a notice on the page I was shutting it down and to get it before I deleted my repo and account. The other stuff I had on there was private so I just created a new github moved it out and then closed out the other account after a month. It's quite scary how far people will go to troll and interfere in your life over something so unimportant as a small github side project.
It's fascinating how reading the post makes me think, "well, it's one person's side of the story, and I don't really know how bad the behavior is," but then this HN comment thread, when compared to typical HN discourse, appears to be solid evidence for the claims in the post. (turn on showdead and read some flagged messages to see what I mean)
This accusation of “doxxing” by a few people seems a bit unjustified to me. As a drive by viewer of this internet spat, you’ve probably got zero idea how much this person implicates their real-life identity in their online presence. If you want to both-sides this, there was much more credible arguments to make.
But also, doxxing is totally acceptable to protect people from threats including harassment.
We are well past the era where we maintained the fantasy that the internet was separate from real life. People who are acting out online sometimes also act dangerous IRL and it is therefore prudent to figure out who they are IRL if they've proven to be bad actors online.
yeah, this whole idea that "doxxing" is a universal harm needs to be corrected. not exposing people's real-world identities is a courtesy we obey to protect each other from harassment. if it becomes a way to protect the harassers, then we've lost the point.
nobody has a natural right to anonymity, and if your actions are causing real harm then you should expect some of the real-world consequences that come from having your identity exposed.
no, this is not acceptable. If you have an issue with someone online, ban their email, ban their IP and move on. It is not appropriate to go hunting this person in real life. you yourself have then become the creep, the person acting inappropriately. you've become the very person you have issue with.
to anyone reading this, DO NOT listen to the person I am replying to. Even if this extreme case seems "justified", its all too easy to fall down a slippery slope, where you start doxxing anyone that slights you. I have been the victim of this, its NOT OK.
They buried the lede. At the bottom they say they are working on a lawsuit against Kirk and want other people who have been harassed to share their story. How could they do that without saying who they are preparing to sue?
I have mixed feelings on calling him out by name. It sounds like the person is going through tough times. This obsessive behaviour doesn't describe someone who's living a happy, fulfilling life. The bug reports might be his flawed way to reach out and be part of the community. I'm not arguing for people to enable his negative behaviour. I just wish there was another solution than the nuclear option: this public warning might severely affect his mental state and career prospects. If he lacks any support network, this could mean years of downward spiral and isolation. Would you consider adding a sort of "way out" clause to soften the blow? Something along the lines of waiting for an apology and his public promise not to harrass other people?
This person has had a way out for aa long as the behavior has been going on. They simply need to stop doing it! Literally just stop and never interact with the ReactOS project again. After that, nobody from said project will need to worry about them ever again, and they won't have to go public about this sort of thing.
The way out has always been there: said person just disengages. People like this refuse to use it.
Continued harassment and stalker-like behavior over years with obviously no intention of stopping his behavior.
It seems to me issuing a public warning about this persons "paper trail" is probably the only real option to shut down this behavior that these OSS projects can see.
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Ultimately he ended up unemployable and bitter while his family tripled down on him being the victim because of an Asperger’s diagnosis. Moved to central Canada last time I heard.
I think what I learned from the experience is at some point you’ve got to compartmentalize harmful people from your groups and inevitably a growing number of segments of society, even if that feels wrong in some way. It’s more wrong to let them perpetually abuse people.
Edit: I’m not going to litigate this. If you don’t trust me or don’t want to accept that this person was truly abusive and harmful, or if you believe that victims should be made to tolerate abuse, I can’t help you.
This a real thing, mild forms are socially inhibiting, extreme forms can mean social skills are completely crippled.
I feel sorry for these people (although I’m probably in the mild category), but I’m not sure what we could do to help without getting hurt ourselves?
I just hope my kid is normal socially with a good sense of empathy.
But the abusive parts got worse and worse and became intolerable. I’m not sure what could have been done differently. Though as a teenager that was probably not my role to play.
You need to ban abusive people at the first possible time (after you have established that they are abusive and not, e.g just ESL who learned from an old TV show/book). The more moderation a community has, the better the community will be.
If somebody has Asbergers and can't adjust, ban them too. The why doesn't matter (unless it is easily correctable), the how does.
Forgiveness is one thing, but deliberately putting yourself in position to be victimized again is another.
I’d sleep on the idea of ostracising people with social issues because it can hasten a downward spiral.
In a lot of cases, people who don’t fit in are looking for love they don’t receive. Speaking from experience, if you can offer them that love in spite of challenging behaviour, you could be the key to them developing positive relationships that serve as models of how they can effectively fit in.
If you can muster the energy, instead of pushing these people away, as hard as it may seem, try drawing them closer - it’s not an exaggeration to say that you might be saving someone’s life.
this strikes me as similar to the concept of being for life imprisonment over the spending of resources towards rehabilitation.
To throw people to the wayside because YOU have determined them to be 'UN-fixable' IS wrong. It's useful for YOU to compartmentalize them out of your life because they represent a personal burden -- but this doesn't help them improve themselves or their conditions; it may not be your responsibility to help them improve -- but many of these people are hopeless without outsider intervention, they need help, not partitioning. If you can't help them then the next best thing is to make an effort to find them help, not to shut the door in their face.
>It’s more wrong to let them perpetually abuse people
what do you think happens when you make yourself lost contact with these people? Well, having been 'compartmentalized' earlier in life and never receiving any help or social training, they continue to perpetually abuse other people.
Ironically the strategy of isolating them from oneself likely increases or prolongs their time 'out of step' with society -- all it does is protects YOU from the damage the person might do.
All I can say is that i'm glad the entire world doesn't take your advice of 'compartmentalizing harmful people', otherwise this place would be a pretty brutal world to live in.
It's really not his or her job to fix abusers.
Even societies "without" life imprisonment have legal ways of putting people away for life if they're deemed too incompatible with society. Take Norway; longest sentence is 21 years, but for especially vile crimes, that sentence can be extended at the end of the 21 years if the convict is found to not have been rehabilitated.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
It’s a bit sad, we’re all on the same OSS team in the end. I’ve never found it that difficult to keep it cut and dry on software repos, I don’t know why people don’t just save the venom for forums and social media like the good ol days.
It went down in 2014 and the guy vanished never to be heard of again.
They can keep the noise and disruption of the craziest spammers to a minimum.
Deleted Comment
Anywhere they’re mentioned: https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-17499?jql=comment%20~%2...
Issues created by them: https://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-17492?jql=reporter%20in...
I guess the original account was banned somewhere in March 2021? But at a quick glance I can’t quite see what the problem is.
We are well past the era where we maintained the fantasy that the internet was separate from real life. People who are acting out online sometimes also act dangerous IRL and it is therefore prudent to figure out who they are IRL if they've proven to be bad actors online.
nobody has a natural right to anonymity, and if your actions are causing real harm then you should expect some of the real-world consequences that come from having your identity exposed.
to anyone reading this, DO NOT listen to the person I am replying to. Even if this extreme case seems "justified", its all too easy to fall down a slippery slope, where you start doxxing anyone that slights you. I have been the victim of this, its NOT OK.
The way out has always been there: said person just disengages. People like this refuse to use it.
It seems to me issuing a public warning about this persons "paper trail" is probably the only real option to shut down this behavior that these OSS projects can see.