While it may not be appreciated by all, I’m all in favor of Barney having his say too, as bluntly as he likes.
Since Chris McDonough can’t post in this category, and was an unnamed subject of Glyph’s blog post, I want to pop up briefly again to point out some facts:
- Glyph stressed that cases should be addressed solely on the evidence. I mostly agree.
- Yet Glyph said nothing about the evidence here - his was a meta-discussion.
- Chris did, and addressed every one of the claimed violations, as best he could.
- Chris also said a bunch of nice things about me. Embarrassingly (to me) nice.
- And that’s what Glyph objected to. Meh. Chris’s blog, Chris’s choice what to say. I can relay, on Chris’s behalf, that he read Glyph’s post too, and disagrees that the character of the accused is irrelevant.
So Glyph’s post, while very well written, isn’t directly to the point here.
If you want to discuss the evidence, please do so (although I suggest that would be better done in Ethan’s related PSF topic, where everyone can post). Chris already analyzed the evidence, and I did too on my blog. Ethan did his own digging, with his own moderator’s eyes (he’s not a Discourse mod, but has been in other PSF spaces, and has imposed his own “corrective actions”), and was content to strongly endorse Chris’s analysis. I do too, although in one of my blog posts was far less civil about it (I won’t even link to it) than Chris was.
I already posted my own mea culpa, but it doesn’t apologize for claimed violations I also find baseless. Instead I’ve totally changed my posting style, which I agree was taken far too often in unintended ways, which I was oblivious to for reasons explained there.
So I too think the ban had some good outcomes. But they could have been achieved far more easily with far less community-damaging drama, and with no broadcasting of shrill, demonizing defamations. Those were raw assertions, with no links to supporting evidence at all. Like it or not, “just trust us” is broken now for a much larger share of the community.
Not my problem to solve, and I’ve already told the SC things that could be done to address it.