[RigelKentaurus]

Man, this was hard to read. Irrespective of what actually happened, this found-guilty-by-popular-opinion mentality is a corrosive evil, and it's been worsened by social media. Hard to believe that this community just ignored "innocent until proven guilty" so casually.

I used to naively believe that people are generally good. I still believe that but with a major qualifier. There are some truly toxic people out there who are seriously mentally fucked up and don't hesitate to screw with others' lives. They seem normal and nice at first, but if you look closely enough, you see the trail they have left behind.

[sho_hn]

I think one of the reasons communities like Scala's are susceptible to this pattern is that they have some characteristics of a movement and compete for attention with other movements, so there's a knee-jerk response to protect the movement and all the effort put into it from being associated with bad stuff. Most signatories to this letter were likely erring on the side of protecting their community, at the risk of an individuals' fate.

(I'm also discussing this neutral to the actual issue, which I don't know much about and haven't made my mind up on.)

[HDThoreaun]

Jon didn’t actually deny the claims though. The accusation is that someone had sex with him and then regretted it and tried to end the relationship but he creeped on her. He said he didn’t think his actions were creepy but that doesn’t mean they weren’t and it certainly doesn’t mean they didn’t make the accusers uncomfortable. Losing his job over this is a bit much but after reading all the evidence I would not invite him to conferences either. He clearly has awful social skills and habitually makes people uncomfortable. The lack of anyone standing up for him points in that direction as well although there are many other possible explanations so I won’t hold that against him.

[myko]

Jon comes off pretty skeezy in the entire situation. I'm shocked to see such full throated defense of his actions here.

I think his posts are written to confuse people into thinking he won some settlement with his accusers, which is not the case, he reached an agreement with folks who amplified his accusers claims. He did not refute the claims by the women at all.