I continue to think that something went wrong for people to come away with takes that lump together Alice and Chloe in these ways.
Not because I’m convinced that Alice is as bad as Nonlinear makes it sound, but because, even based on Nonlinear’s portrayal, Chloe is portrayed as having had a poor reaction to the specific employment situation, and (unlike Alice) not as having a general pattern/history of making false/misleading claims. That difference matters immensely regarding whether it’s appropriate to warn future potential employers. (Besides, when I directly compare Chloe’s writings to Nonlinear’s, I find it more likely that they’re unfair towards her than vice versa.)
FWIW, I’m not saying that coming away with this interpretation is all your fault. If someone is only skim-reading Nonlinear’s post, then I can see why they might form similarly negative views about both Alice and Chloe (though, on close reading, it’s apparent that also Nonlinear would agree that there’s a difference). My point is that this is more a feature of their black-and-white counterattack narrative and not so much appropriate for what I think most likely happened.
Lukas—I guess one disadvantage of pseudonyms like ‘Alice’ and ‘Chloe’ is that it’s quite difficult for outsiders who don’t know their real identities to distinguish between them very clearly—especially if their stories get very intertwined.
If we can’t attach real faces and names to the allegations, and we can’t connect their pseudonyms to any other real-world information about them, such as LinkedIn profiles, web pages, EA Forum posts, etc., then it’s much harder to remember who’s who, and to assess their relatively degrees of reliability or culpability.
That’s just how the psychology of ‘person perception’ works. The richer the information we have about people (eg real names, faces, profiles, backgrounds), the easier it is to remember them accurately, distinguish between their actions, and differentiate their stories.
You’re right about the effort involved, but when these are real people who you are discussing deanonymizing in order to try to stop them from getting jobs, you should make the effort.
Well all three key figures at Nonlinear are also real people, and they got deanonymized by Ben Pace’s highly critical post, which had the likely effect (unless challenged) of stopping Nonlinear from doing its work, and of stigmatizing its leaders.
So, I don’t understand the double standard, where those subject to false allegations don’t enjoy anonymity, and those making the false allegations do get to enjoy anonymity.
So, I don’t understand the double standard, where those subject to false allegations don’t enjoy anonymity, and those making the false allegations do get to enjoy anonymity.
I don’t think all people in the replies were arguing that Ben’s initial post was okay and deanonymizing Alice and or Chloe would be bad (which I think you would call a double standard, which I’m not commenting on right now). Some probably do but some probably think that Ben’s initial post was bad and that deanonymizing Alice and or Chloe would also be bad and that we shouldn’t try to correct one bad with another bad, which doesn’t look like a double standard to me.
I continue to think that something went wrong for people to come away with takes that lump together Alice and Chloe in these ways.
Not because I’m convinced that Alice is as bad as Nonlinear makes it sound, but because, even based on Nonlinear’s portrayal, Chloe is portrayed as having had a poor reaction to the specific employment situation, and (unlike Alice) not as having a general pattern/history of making false/misleading claims. That difference matters immensely regarding whether it’s appropriate to warn future potential employers. (Besides, when I directly compare Chloe’s writings to Nonlinear’s, I find it more likely that they’re unfair towards her than vice versa.)
FWIW, I’m not saying that coming away with this interpretation is all your fault. If someone is only skim-reading Nonlinear’s post, then I can see why they might form similarly negative views about both Alice and Chloe (though, on close reading, it’s apparent that also Nonlinear would agree that there’s a difference). My point is that this is more a feature of their black-and-white counterattack narrative and not so much appropriate for what I think most likely happened.
Lukas—I guess one disadvantage of pseudonyms like ‘Alice’ and ‘Chloe’ is that it’s quite difficult for outsiders who don’t know their real identities to distinguish between them very clearly—especially if their stories get very intertwined.
If we can’t attach real faces and names to the allegations, and we can’t connect their pseudonyms to any other real-world information about them, such as LinkedIn profiles, web pages, EA Forum posts, etc., then it’s much harder to remember who’s who, and to assess their relatively degrees of reliability or culpability.
That’s just how the psychology of ‘person perception’ works. The richer the information we have about people (eg real names, faces, profiles, backgrounds), the easier it is to remember them accurately, distinguish between their actions, and differentiate their stories.
You’re right about the effort involved, but when these are real people who you are discussing deanonymizing in order to try to stop them from getting jobs, you should make the effort.
Well all three key figures at Nonlinear are also real people, and they got deanonymized by Ben Pace’s highly critical post, which had the likely effect (unless challenged) of stopping Nonlinear from doing its work, and of stigmatizing its leaders.
So, I don’t understand the double standard, where those subject to false allegations don’t enjoy anonymity, and those making the false allegations do get to enjoy anonymity.
I don’t think all people in the replies were arguing that Ben’s initial post was okay and deanonymizing Alice and or Chloe would be bad (which I think you would call a double standard, which I’m not commenting on right now). Some probably do but some probably think that Ben’s initial post was bad and that deanonymizing Alice and or Chloe would also be bad and that we shouldn’t try to correct one bad with another bad, which doesn’t look like a double standard to me.