Bill Blogs in C#

Me on .NET Rocks, Community, and death threats

I was interviewed on .NET Rocks this week (http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=223).  I enjoyed chatting with Carl and Richard about technology, community, The Grateful Dead, and business' attitude to technology, to the world in general.

Now, onto the negative portion of this post.

One of the references on the show was Kathy Sierra's blog (http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/).  She's the brains behind the O'Reilly 'Head First series: http://www.oreilly.com/store/series/headfirst.html. 

I highly recommend her posts on learning theory, presentations, and creating a use community.

Her last post is quite disturbing.  Some  of the internet's worst inhabitants have been responding to some of her posts with death threats, and posting similar threats in other online locations. (Warning: this post has some rather explicit content, but for a very important reason) http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/as_i_type_this_.html

The incident has reached a level where the BBC has picked up the story (You can get the details here without the explicit text and graphics):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6499095.stm

I urge you to take a side in this debate.  This is not representative of the commuity I am part of, nor is it behavior that our community shold condone, or even tolerate. 

Kathy says it better than I could:

"If you want to do something about it, do not tolerate the kind of abuse that includes threats or even suggestions of violence (especially sexual violence). Do not put these people on a pedestal. Do not let them get away with calling this "social commentary", "protected speech", or simply "criticism".

Do whatever works for you:  blog, post, discuss, debate. Just make sure you use your brains, and your intelligence. Don't enter the same sewer as these low lifes.