Comment by nerdponx
4 years ago
> In June, Heather noticed that I was upset at a dinner after ScalaDays. I shared with her about what happened. She warned me to stay away from Jon Pretty. And she wasn’t the only person who told me that. Even though my experience in Berlin was awful, it was difficult for me to accept that someone, who seemed like a good friend, mentor, and ally, could be so selfish, manipulative, and cruel.
It sounds like people knew about him and didn't do anything. If the community is allowing it to happen, then the community is as much at fault as the sick individual doing the abuse.
> It sounds like people knew about him and didn't do anything. If the community is allowing it to happen, then the community is as much at fault as the sick individual doing the abuse.
well around 2017-2019 I was active in scala aswell (more on the playframework side tough) and I dind't even knew about him until I read the blog. you know just because there are members from scalacenter and lightbend does not mean that the community as a whole wanted to have something to do with somebody like him. You know there are thousands of people going to ScalaDays every year, it's highly unlikely that the majority of the scala community would be happy about the guys behavior and it's also highly unlikely that the majority of people in the scala community knew about the guys behavior.
I've felt for a while now that the way the tech world talks about "the $foo community" is just fundamentally wrong. You can only have real communities as long as the number of people is small enough. Once you cross Dunbar's number, it's no longer really a community but rather a cluster of partially overlapping communities. Maybe the more accurate term would be "society" instead of "community".
It's not just tech. This is how people talk about hobbies, academic fields, etc.
It's a bit vague. I'm not involved in the Scala community and if someone told me a story like that about someone in it I would also tell them to stay away from them.