2009年10月21日

Stop making a fuss on things you don't know the context

OK, Chris Yeh of Yahoo! openly apologized about having "Hack Girls" in the Yahoo! Open Hack Day in Taiwan. I understand that there were waves of complaints in the English-speaking part of the world that drove Yahoo! to apologize. But since none of the English-speaking complainers were in the event, the complaints were based on pictures and/or a video that has been taken down.


If you are not there and haven't heard first-hand from any attendees, you are out of context and shouldn't make a fuss.

I myself wasn't there, so I'm not jumping into conclusions. Instead I'm trying to find out what attendees think.

ZDNet has a report on this, I'd suggest that you either read it if you know Chinese, or get it translated to your language.

Beyond the report, I've chatted with some attendees, including one female developer (let's call her X) and a friend of another female developer (let's call her Y). But let's establish some facts first.

First of all, it was only a 3 minute dance to entertain the developers in an otherwise exhausting 24 hour hacking event. It was not an all night dance party.

Second, some bloggers think these girls are strippers. No, that's totally wrong. They are girls that are good at dancing and are invited to exhibitions, trade shows or other events to dance with clothes ON to attract customers. Strip dancing is illegal in Taiwan according to this Q&A page of Hsinchu District Prosecutor Office. If having dance girls in technology events gives you a bitter taste in your mouth, don't blame it on Yahoo!. That practice has been there for for than 5 years.

Third, it has been dubbed "lap dancing", but is it really that intimate? I can't tell from the pictures on Simon Willison's blog. It seems the dance girls touched developer's shoulders with their hands. But there were no other apparent physical contacts. Does this constitute lap dancing? I'm not sure.

Now on to my attendee friends. My summary of the responses to the 3 minute dance are as follows.
  • X, being in the Open Hack Day for both 2008 and 2009, complained about 2 things last year on her blog (in Chinese):
    1. the loud music distracted her and her team from coding;
    2. the dance girls pulled attendees to stage, interfering with developers' hacking work.
    She did not write about the dancing itself, and hasn't written any blog about the event this year.
  • Y's friend said Y didn't care.
  • A male friend wrote on his plurk microblog that he enjoyed the Open Hack Day event overall, but felt uncomfortable in those few dancing minutes. He also thought that dance girls pulling attendees to stage is over the line.
  • Several others view that "it was a distraction", pointing to the loud music, but not the dance because
    • some of them were trying to keep coding;
    • the rest didn't bother to watch.
  • Some didn't even bother to comment on it, instead complained that some teams came with a half-baked project and the competition wasn't fair.

Today, finally there is an English blog entry by a male attendee. Similarly, he complains about the distraction, not the dancing.

So far I haven't seen a single participant, male or female, feel offended by the dance.

So, no matter who you are, which philosophy you believe in, or how many subscribers your blog enjoys, stop making a fuss unless you were in the event, or until an attendee writes that he/she is offended by such an arrangement.

3 則留言 :

  1. Appreciated your point on finding what really happened before making comments. You are not implying people shouldn't comment unless they were there right?

    I weren't there, but as a F/OSS developer/promoter myself, I would definitely offended if anyone trying to link the image of the industry with stripers. I do not know does YDN did that last weekend, but I do thing they were careless on the image they want to represent.

    Tim

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  2. Thanks for providing more factual background.

    It's a sad thing that people only focus on a couple of minutes of a 24 hour non-stop event, but who should be responsible for this?

    And I tend to disagree on your point of view that only attendees could have a say. We certainly could make comments about sports and tech events that we see from TV or web, don't we?

    As long as we're in the context(and being a male in Taiwan IT industry, I am!), we have the right to comment, I think.

    Also please re-read your own plurk microblog response, I think Ms. X actually spelled out her concern about gender issue and Spiral of silence. Yeah she didn't mentioned this in her blog last year, but she raised them this time in your microblog, plurk. And with all my respect, you shouldn't take this lightly, be it in the form of friends chatting in microblog......

    Oh, as a guy that didn't attend Y! OHD 2009 Taiwan, allow me to provide link to this photo: hack girls on developer's lap

    Also a blog post: Yahoo Sorry About Lap Dancing at Event in Taiwan also got a photo.

    ==
    No hard feelings intended. Maybe someday we should meet downstairs, have a chat and get things straight, my friend :D

    Austin (PowerOp)

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  3. Those complaining deliver a lot. :-)

    BTW, I've seen a guy there in the upper part of the Yahoo comments page confessing he'd choose a gal out of two equally professional candidates of different genders. Discrimination? Hell, yes. The poor other candidate would walk back home pissed and knowing why exactly he didn't get the position. Maybe very soon we'll need a public movement to fight for oppressed male rights...

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