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Hi there, raganwald, Annie here. I think this is a completely valid criticism, and it's one I largely expected. But for what it is worth, here are my thoughts.

Hi there, raganwald, Annie here. I think this is a completely valid criticism, and it's one I largely expected. But for what it is worth, here are my thoughts. As a journalist, I think it would have been irresponsible not to inform _why of the article and not to try to interview him. (As a general point, you don't write articles about public figures, and he was absolutely a public figure, without giving them the chance to respond.) I didn't expect him to get back to me, and certainly did not stalk him. And my hope is that the article approaches the infosuicide in the most humane way possible.

SoftwarePatent 15y ago
"As a journalist, I think it would have been irresponsible not to inform _why of the article and not to try to interview him. (As a general point, you don't write articles about public figures, and he was absolutely a public figure, without giving them the chance to respond.)" There's a difference between "giving them the chance to respond" and what happened here. Being a journalist doesn't give someone an excuse to act outside the bounds of polite society.
- goatforce5 15y ago
  "Being a journalist doesn't give someone an excuse to act outside the bounds of polite society." I thought we expected journalists to dig a bit deeper and not just take things at face value? Sometimes that means poking around when people might prefer you not to be.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    I think that's valid when there's a suspicion of a crime, or of an hypocrisy by a politician, because that's a damage to society and it's fair to have the person punished by it. Doing the same to a person because she did someone good is essentially punishing good deeds.
    - goatforce5 15y ago
      "Doing the same to a person because she did someone good is essentially punishing good deeds." I'm not sure a journalist trying to get in touch with you amounts to a punishment. The hypocritical politician probably doesn't find it much fun, but they're being given a chance to present their side of the story. Note that, for example, in Australia the very first point of the Code of Ethics that Journalists sign up to says: "1. Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost to give a fair opportunity for reply." Doing your utmost means not leaving one voicemail and hoping for the best. What if _why did have something to say, but his phone number had changed? I imagine that a reputable publication like Salon would have stopped trying to get in touch if he'd given a simple 'no comment' to any of their approaches. (Also, define 'good'. Did a protestor who stopped the logging company from cutting down some trees do good for saving the environment, or was it bad he cost some jobs?)
- jleader 15y ago
  I think there are 2 issues here: digging deep to try to get a response from _why, and publishing his real name and employer. The first is debatable; exactly how much effort should a journalist put in to getting the story, particularly in a case where the subject didn't do anything wrong? Reading about the effort expended in this piece made me a little uncomfortable, but I don't know for sure whether I'd say it crossed the line. The second issue, outing his identity, is more clear cut. The guy didn't want his identity revealed, hadn't done anything wrong, and is arguably not at this time a public figure; why not respect his wishes? Publishing his name struck me as a vindictive way of punishing him for not responding to the requests for a statement. I think the story would have been just as strong if the author hadn't mentioned his name or the exact city he lived in or the name of his employer. However, it would make the author's job harder next time she tries to get an interview if she doesn't have that punishment to hang over the next subject's head.
  - tripzilch 15y ago
    My thoughts exactly. I think the digging was okay though, for the simple reason that she backed off as soon as he said he wanted to be left alone. And I don't believe a journalist doing research has to interpret silence or no-response as such, but when he communicated this, she let him be. The second issue was absolutely over the line. It's not so much the name (which is sort-of public knowledge, although the Wikipedia citing issue makes it problematic), but publishing the other personal information really crossed the line, and the article would have been much better without it. I don't think it's vindictive though, rather a very stupid oversight. I also think it's too bad that the top comment conflates these two issues, because I think it's very useful to draw the distinction. Spending effort to reach a subject for comment strikes me as proper journalistic research--publishing the PI gathered in the process however, absolutely is not. Even tabloid journalists would simply just publish the comment, but not the addresses or names of employers used in acquiring said comment (be it for different, more competitive reasons, but still).
    - jleader 15y ago
      OK, maybe not intentionally vindictive (only the reporter really knows her motivations for publishing the personal information), but it still bothers me that there's an incentive for the reporter to punish a non-cooperative subject as a way to motivate future subjects to be more cooperative, even if the she wasn't aware of it.
raganwald 15y ago
As a journalist, I think it would have been irresponsible not to inform _why of the article and not to try to interview him. Your repeated emails and messages left for him obviously informed him. We’ll have to agree to disagree about what constitutes responsible journalism with respect to “trying to interview him.” Once he’s aware that you want to interview him and chooses not to respond, I’d say you tried. Your actions seem to suggest that “responsible journalism” consists of going further and pressing yourself on people who have already made their feelings about the matter clear. I don’t wish to single you out, so I will say the next thing in a general way. I have trouble with flinging the words “public figure” around. There was a man. He constructed a persona. That persona was public. The man was private. The man worked very hard to separate the two. Compare and contrast to hollywood stars of both sexes who practically invite the world into their bedrooms. I think reporting about _why is fair game, _why was a public figure. I think hunting down the man who created _why is intrusive and is at the level of a paparazzo, invading the privacy of a person who from the outset was clear about separating the two. I have a public persona, “raganwald.” I don’t try to hide the man Reg Braithwaite behind the persona. But I don’t think that blogging or speaking at conferences or commenting here somehow invites the world to call me at work if I don’t answer emails, or to hunt down my cellphone records or to waylay me in the street or to take pictures of my children. I am not a public figure in the way that a politician is a public figure. I likewise believe that the man behind _why is not a public figure. _why? Public. Pictures of _why in character? Public. The man who walked away from creating and maintaining _why? Entitled to privacy and to not worrying about people calling him when he chooses to ignore their emails and entitled to have his friends and associates left alone. p.s. As I noted, however, I liked almost everything I read in the article.
- davidw 15y ago
  A few phone calls do not a paparazzo make. _why, with virtually no effort, maintained his privacy. The upvotes demonstrate that people are interested in the person, and it's a journalist's job to probe. Sometimes more so than other people would be comfortable with. While that can be awkward, I think it's a good thing, although in this case it doesn't matter so much.
  - 15y ago
raganwald 15y ago
Thank you for responding. Now that I reflect on it, I guess it’s a little like sales. There are some salespeople whose persistence crosses deep into “intrusive” territory, and others who are polite to the point of deference, and every variation in between. Unless you’re at one end or the other, there will always be many people who agree with your choice and some number of people who disagree with your choice. If we look, we can probably find people who wish you would have done an ‘ambush interview' with a video camera. This time, I happen to be one of the people who didn’t agree. The next time I read an article of yours, I might be one of the ones who agrees or even wishes you were more forceful. But I did like the article and thank you for writing it. Also, thanks again for your polite reply.
- knowtheory 15y ago
  Hey Reg, I'm curious to what extent you believe that private citizens have a right not to be reported on. If Annie Lowrey had decided to interview Reg Braithwaite and couldn't get a hold of you, if she'd pursued a similar course of action, would it have been intrusive? I get that having made something public once does not necessarily mean that one opens their life up to scrutiny forever and ever, but to what extent does closing down one's works and leaving the public eye entitle one to a lack of scrutiny/inquiry? (As an entirely meta aside, I'd be curious to what extent the cultural divide over privacy ethos between Canadians and Americans is at play here. My impression, at least with my wife's Canadian family, and our collective friends, have different expectations from the Americans i grew up with.)
  - raganwald 15y ago
    I don’t have a track record of being reclusive, so I wouldn’t be offended by someone persisting a bit. But if it got around that I don’t want to talk to people about something I did, I guess I would be ill at ease if someone pursued me about it. I’m not saying it’s wrong in some grand or absolute sense, there are going to be some things where a person disapproves without necessarily thinking there should be a law or an absolute, iron-clad, airtight legal definition. Perhaps the word I should have used—and I apologize for being discourteous to Annie in my remarks—is “discourteous.” Having thought about it and considered the many thoughtful replies here, I think it was discourteous to persist, but not necessarily wrong.
shareme 15y ago
you remind me of an unwanted salesperson or recruiter invading someone else's space. Being an asshole is no excuse whatsoever whether you are covering a public figure or not in a story.. most on HN will not state this plainly but you are behaving like an asshole..please stop
Thoreandan 15y ago
Mentioning that you tracked him down and that he wants to be left alone, fine. Throwing in "HEY EVERYONE YES THIS IS HIS REAL NAME AND HERE'S WHERE HE WORKS" - valid reporting of facts, but unnecessary, and explicitly contrary to the wishes you state. He's not Steinbeck and doesn't have a millionaire Peter Norton to help him stay private, but you have the power to redact those bits from your article, and it would likely be a nice action on your part to talk to your editors at Slate and do so. You found him. Great. Take credit, report on that in your story. But you don't have to "drop docs" on him. If you enjoyed his work, please talk to your editor.
pygy_ 15y ago
This was probably unintended, but giving his real name in your article also marks a precedent. Even though it was well known in Ruby circles, it had never been published in the press. Now that it has been, his Wikipedia page has been updated accordingly (now that they have a "reliable source" in Wikipedia parlance), which exposes his identity much more than it used to. For that reason, I wouldn't mind if you redacted his name, the name of his employer and the way you found him out of the article. The same goes for the mirror of the infamous wordpress page. He made it clear that he wants to be left alone. This doesn't help. Edit: the mention of his sister was also completely out of place.
- pygy__ 15y ago
  Temp account, Noprocrast prevents me from editing and making my point more clear. Until today it was not possible to discover who he was without searching for it. Now you get to know it even if you didn't want to. The Wikipedia article is the first Google result for his pseudonym. Now his real name is in the SERP. Good job.
- AnnieLowrey 15y ago
  His sister figures prominently in the most popular Ruby guide!
  - pygy_ 15y ago
    From the book, it's hard to know where fiction ends, and where reality begins. It could have been about the imaginary sister of his persona, or not, but it wouldn't have mattered as long as he was anonymous.
ozten 15y ago
_why did nothing but good things for the public internet. It is beyond the pale to print his real name, city, and current employer.
thomaslangston 15y ago
If someone I didn't want to talk (and who knew it) to called me, emailed me, reached out through my friends, and called two of my employers I would consider that stalking. How can you have the gall to say you were 'humane' after publishing his real name and current employer?
thekevan 15y ago
You went far past his expectation of privacy, even naming where you think he works. Some would consider that stalking and it certainly was uncalled for.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
Sorry, you do not get a pass on this. You can try to sweep everything under the rug of interacting with a "public person" (as if such a distinction had meaning in the modern age) but it doesn't work. _why made it abundantly clear that he wanted to retreat from public life, and you went out of your way to violate his privacy. In microcosm this is an example of just the sort of behavior with respect to "public persons" that has so corroded our society over the past decades. Fame has become a life destroying curse because so many people take it on themselves to use the excuse of being a "public person" to pry into their personal life, to harass them and pursue them and deny them any shred of privacy or normalcy. And those problems are exactly the reason why a person such as _why chose to retreat from the public spotlight. It's also the reason why a lot of folks choose to avoid doing things in public. How many other potential _why's out there have shied away from making their work public because they are deathly afraid of toggling that "public person" bit that serves to some as a signal that it's no longer necessary to act with common decency and respect for privacy toward that person? Certainly more than one, perhaps many. And now with your article perhaps just that one more than otherwise would have been. You have acted rudely and inconsiderately. You walked into a crowd of people and ripped loose a loud and smelly fart. Some people might be amused by such antics but to me it just smells bad. Did you spend even the slightest amount of mental effort considering how your actions would impact _why personally? How they would affect his emotional well-being? You've made the world an incrementally worse place to live in. If you have even an ounce of conscience in your being then you should have problems sleeping at night.
- muyuu 15y ago
  Very well put. I bet you received many downvotes from people who felt the need to justify their morbid curiosity over respecting the innocent will of a person. Don't let a few downvotes silence you. Pretty sure we are not the only ones who think likewise and won't even make the effort to try to sound PC and complimentary.
comice 15y ago
It is very clear he wanted to be left alone. It is hugely egotistical to think that your article would be the one he'd need to know about. The one he'd be happy to comment on. I think that's what this is really about - getting some kind of quote from _why would have been killer for this article. Getting "word back-channeled" to you at all is pretty exciting in itself, if it's even true. Like I say, is it very clear he wanted to be left alone but there were eyeballs to show adverts to, so you persisted. Let's not pretend it's anything different.
earl 15y ago
Annie: _why was a public figure. The person behind _why was deliberately not. That person decided to kill _why, and the integrious thing to do is to respect his decision, particularly in light of the fact that he's not some criminal shunning reporters but someone known only for sharing his creations. I enjoyed the rest of your article, but everyone should respect the wishes of the person behind _why and leave him alone.
davesims 15y ago
Great job, Annie! And what a great way to introduce a lot of new people to Ruby, and _why's unique contributions to Ruby and the open source community in general. I thought your article was very well researched and treated _why with respect. Your appropriate level of persistence in attempting to contact him was just responsible journalism. No editor I know of worth their salt would have accepted any less from a writer.
jacoblyles 15y ago
Hi Annie, As a beginning programmer without many programmer friends, I suffered through many of the obstacles that you did when learning how to code - from figuring out which text editor to use to figuring out how to run a program. Most tutorials assume you know these things! You mentioned Zed Shaw in your article, and he addressed "the little coder's dilemma" in his own way, and I think in the best way. If you feel the urge to learn how to program again, you should check out "Learn Python the Hard Way" by Zed. Zed doesn't assume anything. LPTHW starts with installing a text editor and running a basic program. No shortcuts! He is undoubtably inspired by those who came before, but his sympathy for the novice coder is unmatched.
newman314 15y ago
This is a relatively easy litmus test. Let's say someone you decided to do an investigative piece on you Annie Lowrey (arbitrarily deciding because you write publicly that it fits his definition of a "public figure) and publicly states considering visiting you at home in order to learn more about you. Would you feel creeped out or "hey, come on in?" To me, _why by his actions has demonstrated that he wants his privacy and to be left alone. It is not for you to decide that he is a public figure. Prioritize the human aspect and respect his wishes before the advancement of your own career.
droithomme 15y ago
Annie, please do not call yourself a journalist. That is an insult to real journalists. You are not one. You are a hack, and a irresponsible one. You crossed the line. _why is not a dangerous pedophile who changed his name and went into hiding while secretly working as a school teacher and/or pediatrician/youth minister. He is a private individual who clearly wishes to maintain anonymity and privacy, and you published his contact details in your stalking article. For shame. Your actions are why we need to enact privacy laws in the US, to criminalize what you have done here and ensure that justice can prevail.

SoftwarePatent 15y ago

"As a journalist, I think it would have been irresponsible not to inform _why of the article and not to try to interview him. (As a general point, you don't write articles about public figures, and he was absolutely a public figure, without giving them the chance to respond.)" There's a difference between "giving them the chance to respond" and what happened here. Being a journalist doesn't give someone an excuse to act outside the bounds of polite society.

goatforce5 15y ago
"Being a journalist doesn't give someone an excuse to act outside the bounds of polite society." I thought we expected journalists to dig a bit deeper and not just take things at face value? Sometimes that means poking around when people might prefer you not to be.
- icebraining 15y ago
  I think that's valid when there's a suspicion of a crime, or of an hypocrisy by a politician, because that's a damage to society and it's fair to have the person punished by it. Doing the same to a person because she did someone good is essentially punishing good deeds.
  - goatforce5 15y ago
    "Doing the same to a person because she did someone good is essentially punishing good deeds." I'm not sure a journalist trying to get in touch with you amounts to a punishment. The hypocritical politician probably doesn't find it much fun, but they're being given a chance to present their side of the story. Note that, for example, in Australia the very first point of the Code of Ethics that Journalists sign up to says: "1. Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost to give a fair opportunity for reply." Doing your utmost means not leaving one voicemail and hoping for the best. What if _why did have something to say, but his phone number had changed? I imagine that a reputable publication like Salon would have stopped trying to get in touch if he'd given a simple 'no comment' to any of their approaches. (Also, define 'good'. Did a protestor who stopped the logging company from cutting down some trees do good for saving the environment, or was it bad he cost some jobs?)
jleader 15y ago
I think there are 2 issues here: digging deep to try to get a response from _why, and publishing his real name and employer. The first is debatable; exactly how much effort should a journalist put in to getting the story, particularly in a case where the subject didn't do anything wrong? Reading about the effort expended in this piece made me a little uncomfortable, but I don't know for sure whether I'd say it crossed the line. The second issue, outing his identity, is more clear cut. The guy didn't want his identity revealed, hadn't done anything wrong, and is arguably not at this time a public figure; why not respect his wishes? Publishing his name struck me as a vindictive way of punishing him for not responding to the requests for a statement. I think the story would have been just as strong if the author hadn't mentioned his name or the exact city he lived in or the name of his employer. However, it would make the author's job harder next time she tries to get an interview if she doesn't have that punishment to hang over the next subject's head.
- tripzilch 15y ago
  My thoughts exactly. I think the digging was okay though, for the simple reason that she backed off as soon as he said he wanted to be left alone. And I don't believe a journalist doing research has to interpret silence or no-response as such, but when he communicated this, she let him be. The second issue was absolutely over the line. It's not so much the name (which is sort-of public knowledge, although the Wikipedia citing issue makes it problematic), but publishing the other personal information really crossed the line, and the article would have been much better without it. I don't think it's vindictive though, rather a very stupid oversight. I also think it's too bad that the top comment conflates these two issues, because I think it's very useful to draw the distinction. Spending effort to reach a subject for comment strikes me as proper journalistic research--publishing the PI gathered in the process however, absolutely is not. Even tabloid journalists would simply just publish the comment, but not the addresses or names of employers used in acquiring said comment (be it for different, more competitive reasons, but still).
  - jleader 15y ago
    OK, maybe not intentionally vindictive (only the reporter really knows her motivations for publishing the personal information), but it still bothers me that there's an incentive for the reporter to punish a non-cooperative subject as a way to motivate future subjects to be more cooperative, even if the she wasn't aware of it.

raganwald 15y ago

As a journalist, I think it would have been irresponsible not to inform _why of the article and not to try to interview him. Your repeated emails and messages left for him obviously informed him. We’ll have to agree to disagree about what constitutes responsible journalism with respect to “trying to interview him.” Once he’s aware that you want to interview him and chooses not to respond, I’d say you tried. Your actions seem to suggest that “responsible journalism” consists of going further and pressing yourself on people who have already made their feelings about the matter clear. I don’t wish to single you out, so I will say the next thing in a general way. I have trouble with flinging the words “public figure” around. There was a man. He constructed a persona. That persona was public. The man was private. The man worked very hard to separate the two. Compare and contrast to hollywood stars of both sexes who practically invite the world into their bedrooms. I think reporting about _why is fair game, _why was a public figure. I think hunting down the man who created _why is intrusive and is at the level of a paparazzo, invading the privacy of a person who from the outset was clear about separating the two. I have a public persona, “raganwald.” I don’t try to hide the man Reg Braithwaite behind the persona. But I don’t think that blogging or speaking at conferences or commenting here somehow invites the world to call me at work if I don’t answer emails, or to hunt down my cellphone records or to waylay me in the street or to take pictures of my children. I am not a public figure in the way that a politician is a public figure. I likewise believe that the man behind _why is not a public figure. _why? Public. Pictures of _why in character? Public. The man who walked away from creating and maintaining _why? Entitled to privacy and to not worrying about people calling him when he chooses to ignore their emails and entitled to have his friends and associates left alone. p.s. As I noted, however, I liked almost everything I read in the article.

davidw 15y ago
A few phone calls do not a paparazzo make. _why, with virtually no effort, maintained his privacy. The upvotes demonstrate that people are interested in the person, and it's a journalist's job to probe. Sometimes more so than other people would be comfortable with. While that can be awkward, I think it's a good thing, although in this case it doesn't matter so much.
- 15y ago

raganwald 15y ago

Thank you for responding. Now that I reflect on it, I guess it’s a little like sales. There are some salespeople whose persistence crosses deep into “intrusive” territory, and others who are polite to the point of deference, and every variation in between. Unless you’re at one end or the other, there will always be many people who agree with your choice and some number of people who disagree with your choice. If we look, we can probably find people who wish you would have done an ‘ambush interview' with a video camera. This time, I happen to be one of the people who didn’t agree. The next time I read an article of yours, I might be one of the ones who agrees or even wishes you were more forceful. But I did like the article and thank you for writing it. Also, thanks again for your polite reply.

knowtheory 15y ago
Hey Reg, I'm curious to what extent you believe that private citizens have a right not to be reported on. If Annie Lowrey had decided to interview Reg Braithwaite and couldn't get a hold of you, if she'd pursued a similar course of action, would it have been intrusive? I get that having made something public once does not necessarily mean that one opens their life up to scrutiny forever and ever, but to what extent does closing down one's works and leaving the public eye entitle one to a lack of scrutiny/inquiry? (As an entirely meta aside, I'd be curious to what extent the cultural divide over privacy ethos between Canadians and Americans is at play here. My impression, at least with my wife's Canadian family, and our collective friends, have different expectations from the Americans i grew up with.)
- raganwald 15y ago
  I don’t have a track record of being reclusive, so I wouldn’t be offended by someone persisting a bit. But if it got around that I don’t want to talk to people about something I did, I guess I would be ill at ease if someone pursued me about it. I’m not saying it’s wrong in some grand or absolute sense, there are going to be some things where a person disapproves without necessarily thinking there should be a law or an absolute, iron-clad, airtight legal definition. Perhaps the word I should have used—and I apologize for being discourteous to Annie in my remarks—is “discourteous.” Having thought about it and considered the many thoughtful replies here, I think it was discourteous to persist, but not necessarily wrong.

shareme 15y ago

you remind me of an unwanted salesperson or recruiter invading someone else's space. Being an asshole is no excuse whatsoever whether you are covering a public figure or not in a story.. most on HN will not state this plainly but you are behaving like an asshole..please stop

Thoreandan 15y ago

Mentioning that you tracked him down and that he wants to be left alone, fine. Throwing in "HEY EVERYONE YES THIS IS HIS REAL NAME AND HERE'S WHERE HE WORKS" - valid reporting of facts, but unnecessary, and explicitly contrary to the wishes you state. He's not Steinbeck and doesn't have a millionaire Peter Norton to help him stay private, but you have the power to redact those bits from your article, and it would likely be a nice action on your part to talk to your editors at Slate and do so. You found him. Great. Take credit, report on that in your story. But you don't have to "drop docs" on him. If you enjoyed his work, please talk to your editor.

pygy_ 15y ago

This was probably unintended, but giving his real name in your article also marks a precedent. Even though it was well known in Ruby circles, it had never been published in the press. Now that it has been, his Wikipedia page has been updated accordingly (now that they have a "reliable source" in Wikipedia parlance), which exposes his identity much more than it used to. For that reason, I wouldn't mind if you redacted his name, the name of his employer and the way you found him out of the article. The same goes for the mirror of the infamous wordpress page. He made it clear that he wants to be left alone. This doesn't help. Edit: the mention of his sister was also completely out of place.

pygy__ 15y ago
Temp account, Noprocrast prevents me from editing and making my point more clear. Until today it was not possible to discover who he was without searching for it. Now you get to know it even if you didn't want to. The Wikipedia article is the first Google result for his pseudonym. Now his real name is in the SERP. Good job.
AnnieLowrey 15y ago
His sister figures prominently in the most popular Ruby guide!
- pygy_ 15y ago
  From the book, it's hard to know where fiction ends, and where reality begins. It could have been about the imaginary sister of his persona, or not, but it wouldn't have mattered as long as he was anonymous.

ozten 15y ago

_why did nothing but good things for the public internet. It is beyond the pale to print his real name, city, and current employer.

thomaslangston 15y ago

If someone I didn't want to talk (and who knew it) to called me, emailed me, reached out through my friends, and called two of my employers I would consider that stalking. How can you have the gall to say you were 'humane' after publishing his real name and current employer?

thekevan 15y ago

You went far past his expectation of privacy, even naming where you think he works. Some would consider that stalking and it certainly was uncalled for.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

Sorry, you do not get a pass on this. You can try to sweep everything under the rug of interacting with a "public person" (as if such a distinction had meaning in the modern age) but it doesn't work. _why made it abundantly clear that he wanted to retreat from public life, and you went out of your way to violate his privacy. In microcosm this is an example of just the sort of behavior with respect to "public persons" that has so corroded our society over the past decades. Fame has become a life destroying curse because so many people take it on themselves to use the excuse of being a "public person" to pry into their personal life, to harass them and pursue them and deny them any shred of privacy or normalcy. And those problems are exactly the reason why a person such as _why chose to retreat from the public spotlight. It's also the reason why a lot of folks choose to avoid doing things in public. How many other potential _why's out there have shied away from making their work public because they are deathly afraid of toggling that "public person" bit that serves to some as a signal that it's no longer necessary to act with common decency and respect for privacy toward that person? Certainly more than one, perhaps many. And now with your article perhaps just that one more than otherwise would have been. You have acted rudely and inconsiderately. You walked into a crowd of people and ripped loose a loud and smelly fart. Some people might be amused by such antics but to me it just smells bad. Did you spend even the slightest amount of mental effort considering how your actions would impact _why personally? How they would affect his emotional well-being? You've made the world an incrementally worse place to live in. If you have even an ounce of conscience in your being then you should have problems sleeping at night.

muyuu 15y ago
Very well put. I bet you received many downvotes from people who felt the need to justify their morbid curiosity over respecting the innocent will of a person. Don't let a few downvotes silence you. Pretty sure we are not the only ones who think likewise and won't even make the effort to try to sound PC and complimentary.

comice 15y ago

It is very clear he wanted to be left alone. It is hugely egotistical to think that your article would be the one he'd need to know about. The one he'd be happy to comment on. I think that's what this is really about - getting some kind of quote from _why would have been killer for this article. Getting "word back-channeled" to you at all is pretty exciting in itself, if it's even true. Like I say, is it very clear he wanted to be left alone but there were eyeballs to show adverts to, so you persisted. Let's not pretend it's anything different.

earl 15y ago

Annie: _why was a public figure. The person behind _why was deliberately not. That person decided to kill _why, and the integrious thing to do is to respect his decision, particularly in light of the fact that he's not some criminal shunning reporters but someone known only for sharing his creations. I enjoyed the rest of your article, but everyone should respect the wishes of the person behind _why and leave him alone.

davesims 15y ago

Great job, Annie! And what a great way to introduce a lot of new people to Ruby, and _why's unique contributions to Ruby and the open source community in general. I thought your article was very well researched and treated _why with respect. Your appropriate level of persistence in attempting to contact him was just responsible journalism. No editor I know of worth their salt would have accepted any less from a writer.

jacoblyles 15y ago

Hi Annie, As a beginning programmer without many programmer friends, I suffered through many of the obstacles that you did when learning how to code - from figuring out which text editor to use to figuring out how to run a program. Most tutorials assume you know these things! You mentioned Zed Shaw in your article, and he addressed "the little coder's dilemma" in his own way, and I think in the best way. If you feel the urge to learn how to program again, you should check out "Learn Python the Hard Way" by Zed. Zed doesn't assume anything. LPTHW starts with installing a text editor and running a basic program. No shortcuts! He is undoubtably inspired by those who came before, but his sympathy for the novice coder is unmatched.

newman314 15y ago

This is a relatively easy litmus test. Let's say someone you decided to do an investigative piece on you Annie Lowrey (arbitrarily deciding because you write publicly that it fits his definition of a "public figure) and publicly states considering visiting you at home in order to learn more about you. Would you feel creeped out or "hey, come on in?" To me, _why by his actions has demonstrated that he wants his privacy and to be left alone. It is not for you to decide that he is a public figure. Prioritize the human aspect and respect his wishes before the advancement of your own career.

droithomme 15y ago

Annie, please do not call yourself a journalist. That is an insult to real journalists. You are not one. You are a hack, and a irresponsible one. You crossed the line. _why is not a dangerous pedophile who changed his name and went into hiding while secretly working as a school teacher and/or pediatrician/youth minister. He is a private individual who clearly wishes to maintain anonymity and privacy, and you published his contact details in your stalking article. For shame. Your actions are why we need to enact privacy laws in the US, to criminalize what you have done here and ensure that justice can prevail.