zlacker

>>lordna+(OP)
“In April, when a story about Katie Bouman, an M.I.T. researcher who helped develop a technology that captured the first photo of a black hole, rose to the front page, users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to undermine the weight of her contributions.”

This is an odd statement as it implies the purpose was to undermine. Reading code and critiquing isn’t meant to “undermine” but to identify truth and constantly look for better ways.

>>prepen+R
The reason people were trawling through her Github contributions and comparing them to other members of the team she worked with, and then posting about lines of code as if that's a measure of the value of someone's contribution to a project, was absolutely to undermine her work and show that she wasn't deserving of credit (despite the fact she was repeatedly quoted saying it wasn't all her and that it was a team effort).

When that story was on the front page it was one of the few times I've thought about leaving HN. It was embarrassing.

>>onion2+n1
She was deserving of credit.

She did great work, and so did dozens (hundreds?) of others on that project.

She wasn't deserving of the level of credit that the media gave her when they cast her as the star, visionary, and quasi-leader of the whole enterprise.

Nobody was ever against Katie. They were against the way the media handled the story - by slanting the story to advance a political agenda that had nothing to do with the discovery itself, and then calling everyone who had a problem with that sexist while entirely eliding their own role in the controversy.

It was entirely a conflict between the media and the people calling out the media for obvious bias. As always, the media's response was to build a narrative where their critics were just trying to hurt [insert victim/victim group here].

>>jlawso+x5
'Nobody was ever against Katie' is a bold claim not at all backed up by the thread or the harassment she received which was addressed by her colleagues.

It seems like rather than own up to the fact that yes there were people that were remarkably awful to her and attempting to downplay her contributions it's easier to just blame the media.

It's frankly disgusting.

>>fzeror+Il1
Okay, I'll retract "Nobody was ever against Katie" since clearly some individuals, somewhere, were. Of course there were people who were awful to her. In any controversy, some Internet weirdos are awful to everyone involved. That's how the Internet works today. It means absolutely nothing; it's not significant.

99+% of the people who were critical of that situation, including me, never did anything against Katie. I don't have numbers but I suspect 99% also had nothing against Katie opinion-wise either. It's entirely against the notion that one person should be selected for media celebration entirely based on their genetics. That's wrong, wrong, wrong and I'll argue against it proudly any day.

What's disgusting is the media's taking this insignificant background noise 1% and making the entire story about it, specifically in order to distract from the criticisms leveled against them.

It's about the constant refusal to even address the media's choice when they elevated her. A refusal that is still going on in this thread.

Was it right to elevate her like that solely because of her gender? Or did the media do a wrong?