Haha, hi, thanks for showing up on the thread. Not that I have any real justification in having opinions on something you said to someone else while I was in third grade (... although I think I was using Solaris then), but as a random member of the open-source community, I do appreciate you saying this clearly. :)
I did see it brought up first by some obvious single-purpose-troll account on Twitter in the midst of the pronoun incident. And just to make sure I'm being totally clear, I'm not bringing it up because I want to dog you with it, but because I think it's a great example of how everyone's fallible, even the people that I most look up to for how they push a community to be better. The standard isn't perfection and it's not about individuals per se; it's about improvement, as a community. We ought to criticize so we can build a better community, not so that we can knock each other down at the first mistake.
I was actually glad you brought it up. When I saw the New York Times story, I naturally thought back to my own episode(s) -- and it's been on my mind anyway because it came up on HN as recently as yesterday.[1]
Part of the peril of social media is that everyone becomes a public figure -- whether they want to be one or not. Those who are more traditional public figures (e.g., politicians, actors, athletes, business leaders) often have the personality attributes that make it easier to deal with scathing public criticism (though I don't think anyone particularly likes being excoriated) -- but most normal people actually don't. As a culture, I hope that we will be both more tolerant of mistakes made on social media -- but also more aware that (at some level) we all need to act as public figures when in public. Certainly, it's a thorny, complicated issue -- and one that is decidedly (if not canonically) modern.
I did see it brought up first by some obvious single-purpose-troll account on Twitter in the midst of the pronoun incident. And just to make sure I'm being totally clear, I'm not bringing it up because I want to dog you with it, but because I think it's a great example of how everyone's fallible, even the people that I most look up to for how they push a community to be better. The standard isn't perfection and it's not about individuals per se; it's about improvement, as a community. We ought to criticize so we can build a better community, not so that we can knock each other down at the first mistake.