The standard practice for facing SJW lynch mob is to remove their ability to affect the project negatively, usually by making issues and comments contributor only (on github) and waiting for it to blow over because the Internet Hate Machine doesn't have long attention span.

It seems to me that the R maintainer just did this standard response.

Its all very fun to build pet theories about the reason for a lack of gender diversity, but doing it in official tools by casting attention on an individual for what is a really a random consequence of language that only a native speaker would even notice is the juvenile nonsense very similar to the problem to supposedly be weeded out. I would absolutely consider banning someone's access to official tools who did this with them, particularly when they clearly understood the actual situation.

If you aren't for a dedicated slang usage, then you also just let the proper usage stand when it accidentally still occurs or you at least don't make a fuss about your choice to change it. I don't even have kids, yet I know this very basic rule of not re-enforcing the power and humiliation of swears.

Note that we only know one side of the story. Maybe the author has a history of stirring up drama and coming up with topics not interesting to the rest of the community (i.e. anything other than programming). If so, preventing further impact on the community is exactly the right response.

http://www.examiner.com/article/wikimedia-foundation-s-olive...

EDIT: I mean, the author definitely knew that this is the thing that brings hate mobs on twitter, so by this blog post, he wanted to start a harassment campaign.

I can understand why they would kick out toxic people like that.

Some are very sensitive to sexism and political incorrectness and some just don't care/notice.

Regardless, a leader should encourage community members to voice their legitimate concerns. Duncan's actions were simply immature and unwelcoming. I don't blame Oliver for leaving and hope we see a public apology from Duncan.

In regards to 1, let me explain. First off, I've heard people use it more than once as a thing men do to/with women, as little sense as that makes to me, sort of like my female friends talking about 'ladyboners'. Second, giving head is also something men do to other men. And finally, nobody that I know considers 'giving head' in any way a degrading thing these days.

But...

That's just my interpretation, and I'm probably pretty atypical in this regard.

And regardless of how I personally feel about this, the response to this kind of thing, as a leader, should be sensitivity and willingness to make people feel 'safe', especially if there's no real cost to fixing it. It seems like common human decency to be inclusive in such a situation.

If there comes a point where this kind of inclusiveness and sensitivity actually causes problems, well then it's perhaps a more difficult situation. But this seems pretty simple and straightforward, even for someone like me who personally does not see any big harm in 'iGiveHead'

The R community should talk about data science, not be subjected to constant demands and debates because a single prude is having a fit about it.

I don't understand this