I think pg is very influential in tech and he has missed several opportunities to speak out for the powerless being abused.
I think this is made worse when he runs Hacker News, and lets that platform be used in a very similar case to defend himself.
My original post references "First They Came" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...) That's not to suggest feminist bullying is anything close to Nazi Germany, but to suggest we all have moral duties to speak out for the powerless and abused.
If PG spent his time addressing each injustice in the world individually, he would not have enough time for anything else in his life. He has however kindly provided the world with essays on honest discourse, and provided us with a platform that we can use to discuss various injustices in our industry.
PG 'throwing in' during "Donglegate" would not have done anything to improve the situation.
Is pg also to blame for not immediately hopping on a plane to feed starving children in Africa? Just because someone is silent about an issue you personally care about doesn't give you cause to criticize them for their morals.
1. Paul is not influential in African Politics. Paul is influential in tech.
2. Paul runs a press that specializes in topics in tech
3. Paul and his mods goes out of their way to kill threads that discuss this topic when it deals with other people, people who are almost entirely powerless to defend themselves and so rely on the crowdsourced power of others to defend them and discuss the topic
4. Paul then uses the same press to complain how he was treated.
Draw your own conclusions regarding Paul's relative complicity in what happened to others and himself.
And there are of course far more incidents than the three I mention.
>In fact what he did apparently was to take these sorts of threads down and encourage moderators to kill them.
Do you have evidence for this claim?
My understanding is that HN attempts to automatically detect all controversial topics and remove them from the front page. From what I saw, PronounGate got fair attention on HN, and so did CPlusEqaulityGate (relative to how much traction it got anywhere else).
Anything about DongleGate
Anything about PronounGate
Anything about CPlusEqualityGate
But when They Came for Paul, then he wanted us to know what he said.
Sadly, I was already gone.
In fact what he did apparently was to take these sorts of threads down and encourage moderators to kill them.
Now of course, he abuses his power as publisher to host this thread where we can deify him, thank him, and and apologize to him.