It seems to me like numerous advocacy organizations nowadays have run out of genuine grievances and are now attacking largely innocent things, possibly in turn harming their cause.
If you love reading "I found a UFO!" blogs, pretty soon you're going to see something weird in the sky and think it's a UFO.
If you love reading "I found a misogynist!" blogs...
That's a really comfortable environment, indeed.
> The fact that they don't somehow tells me there is not much there to go on.
FWIW organizations will often refuse to disclose the precise nature of these kinds of accusations, because it would (a) impinge on the privacy of a victim, (b) start a circus trial in the Court of Public Opinion (which this thread is already becoming) or even (c) further shame the accused, and it's a favor to everyone involved to stay mum.
As external parties whose involvement probably extends no further than commenting on HN, we're not entitled to an explanation nor should we expect one. It could all be a big screen of plausible deniability, or there could be serious accusations at the heart of this.
Use your own intuition to decide if their behavior is in earnest, but speculating what happened is useless (and distasteful besides).
Given the terrible track record of the JS community with regards to basic behavior, I really have to wonder what is wrong and why anyone should risk their personal reputation by doing public activities in JS.
Perhaps transpiling purely to avoid interacting with caustic elements of the JS community will be the new normal.
Their whole handling of the situation was incredibly unprofessional. Really makes the whole conference sound like utter crap if they can't even handle something like that like adults.
Imagine saying that about anyone, to any group (here it was to the whole world).
Let's say the invite you to a gathering publicly then wrote a tweet about "We will also be removing eli from list of invited guests, to help make the venue a comfortable environment for all".
That is just insulting, because it insinuates something terrible has happened, or you did some shameful unspeakable thing and they are just being considerate and not disclosing it publicly.
Or they might prefer their pal to come speak at the last few open entries, and Douglas got invited instead.
Or they might be idiots.
Or insane.
Or "professional" touchy-feelers....
"We have asked John Doe not to attend the party as we have heard word that many parents would not be comfortable having him around their children".
Claims nothing, insinuates obvious reputation destroying behavior.
The insinuation made in the actual example with Douglas Crawford isn't exactly this clear cut, but it is still very damaging while lacking documented basis in reality.
Clearer now?
Imagine your child was expelled from your local school and the reason given was "she made others feel uncomfortable". And that was the end of the discussion.
What's legal/within one's rights and what's right is not the same thing.
To be also right, those HN moderators should also have thoroughly investigated (reviewed) those complaints, not just knee-jerk reacted to them (as seems to be the case here).
And even then, they should publicly state the reasons, not just leave an insinuation open.
And if this did had happened to you personally, with all the possible implications in your reputation, job etc, you'll be also demanding this of them too.
you'll have gotten better treatment than Mr. Crockford did, because clearly there wasn't much reviewing done by Nodevember. Otherwise, they could surely fill us in on what they reviewed?
If they are going to insinuate things about what he said, they should mention exactly what he said or did.
The fact that they don't somehow tells me there is not much there to go on.
To put it another way, if they have the guts to remove Crockford that should have enough guts to clearly explain why.
I've been saying this before, and maybe it is just me, but it seems Node.js community somehow attracts a disproportionate number of immature people but with big egos. Because, let's call this for what it is -- childish immature behavior. That's at best, at worst it is getting attention and hurting someone's reputation just for a power trip. "Look how important I am, I kicked Crockford out of a conference with a single tweet".
Well the lesson is when you pick some open source technology, the community comes with it. Maybe even if technology has good merits, it makes sense not to pick it because the community behind it is not compatible with what you think a community should be.