Gossip is alright. The presumption of innocence is a legal principle.
As we are not in court, people can raise their opinions without hard evidence. Given balance of upvotes/agreements and downvotes/disagreement, community appreciated anonymous-7 decision to speak up. In certain situations, it’s the best we can reasonably hope to do. It’s also alright to voice these opinions anonymously, and anonymous-7 gave a reason why others (and probably them) are uncomfortable speaking about it:
I’ve also heard that Emerson can be retributive, and that some people around Nonlinear were scared about Emerson finding out they’d spoken badly about him.
As you misrepresented anonymous-7, and as you repeatedly applied pressure to make them retract accusations (by trying to move the conversation from subject matter to norms). I want to call you out on such blatant use of frame control and condemn it as “a bad community health norm.”
That’s not how a lot of justice systems work.
The widespread of gossip is one example.
Another example is that one can sue before establishing “guilt beyond reasonable doubt” as required by the presumption of innocence.
Readers can update their opinion of Nonlinear based on these accusations as they see fit including incorporating their understanding of the presumption of innocence.
This is a tradeoff. The higher the standards for accusations are, the less common knowledge about bad behaviour would be established. The laxer standards are, the more reputations would be damaged without proper reasons.
I believe that EA tends to give bad actors too much benefit of the doubt.
I don’t think EA Forum has a different cultural code. Upvotes indicate that anonymous-7′s decision to post was reasonably well received despite EA Forum readers, who probably share general skepticism about anonymous accusations.
Once again, this is a matter of tradeoff. Readers are aware that anonymous-7 hasn’t reached out to Nonlinear to hear their side of the story and can adjust their updates accordingly.