Who is Kathy Sierra and why do meankids want to "kill" her?

[BurtWorm]

For background:

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/as_i_type_this_.html

But who is she? Why do these geeks feel so strongly about her? Anyone know?

[knitter4democracy]

1. That is massively disturbing.

I'm glad I stick to knitbloggers. The nastiest we get is "You Knit What?!", which seems awfully tame next to that. She needs help from some hackers to track down who did all of that.

[LiberalHeart]

2. Saw this a few days ago....

http://newsgrinder.blogspot.com/2007/03/death-threats-may-cause-prominent.html

Does seem like pretty tame thing to cause such an uproar.

[BurtWorm]

3. I just don't understand what it is about what she's doing that would provoke such hatred.

Someone like Ann Coulter or Cindy Sheehan, who is high-profile and engaged in button-pushing issues--I can sort of understand getting reactions like these. I know the tech world has a slightly higher than average population of developmentally arrested misogynist Libertarians, compared to other populations, but, these threats are truly vile. This Rev Ed character in particular must be a real winner.

[cally]

4. MUST READ--salon article on this controversy

Men who hate women on the Web
And the women (like me) who try to ignore them. Or at least I did -- until the Kathy Sierra affair.

By Joan Walsh

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Photo by James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media

Kathy Sierra at the 2006 OSCON conference July 24-28 in Portland, Ore.

March 31, 2007 | Is there really any doubt that women writing on the Web are subject to more abuse than men, simply because they're women? Really? I've been following the Kathy Sierra blog storm, thinking I had nothing new to say, but the continued insistence that Sierra, and those who defend her, are somehow overreacting, or charging sexism where none exists, makes it hard for a mouthy woman to stay silent.

I say this as a mouthy woman who has tried for a long time to pretend otherwise: that Web misogyny isn't especially rampant -- but even if it is, it has no effect on me, or any other strong, sane woman doing her job. But I wasn't being honest. My own reactions and those of others to the Sierra mess served to wrestle the truth out of me, and it wasn't what I hoped.

The facts are these: Sierra, a software programmer who runs the site Creating Passionate Users -- or ran it; she seems to have put it on hiatus, with no new posts since last Monday -- was subjected to verbal abuse in the comments section of her own blog as well as other blogs. It ranged from banal putdowns to crude sexual garbage, and then, Sierra says, the sexual garbage turned violent, including posts like this: "fuck off you boring slut ... i hope someone slits your throat and cums down your gob." On a now-shuttered blog established at least partly to make fun of Sierra and others who complained about viciousness on another blog, someone posted a photo of a noose next to Sierra's head, and someone else commented: "the only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her neck size."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/03/31/sierra/

[lisby]

5. It reminds me of a lot of high school, actually.

You give people a route to self-publishing and this is bound to happen. Most adults stopped maturing sometime around 11th grade.

HMO, of course.

Lisby