I have said before that one of my favorite bloggers is Kathy Sierra. I am shocked and ashamed to say that I may have seen her last blog post for a while (warning disturbing content).
The basic story is that some very disturbed or judgement-impaired individual has made some very not-funny threats on her, causing her to cancel her ETech conference presentations, and basically find herself holed up in her house for fear of what may be just a sick joke, or a sickly serious non-joke.
As much value as can be gained from the likes of all the blogs I read, one ding-bat can change all that. I think it is imperative that the rest of us stand up for what is right in these cases and I hope anyone who has information about the person responsible for this stands up and submits the evidence to the appropriate authorities.
This takes the sexism complaints I have heard about in the tech world to entirely different level. I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible for it, and I’m feeling fairly helpless about what to do about it.
Although Kathy Sierra is the one taking the hits here this time, this is about freedom of information for all. Online bullies cannot and should not destroy the web experience for the rest of us.
UPDATE:
I’m with Robert Scoble and Walt Crawford. A week of keeping an anti-jackass blog post at the top of everyone’s blog is about as good a response to this as most bloggers can do. I would like to add that I’d like to extend my anti-jackass wishes beyond this incident and onto any case where such threats occur. The internet is getting pretty nasty and it is a big shame.
Punctuated Equilibrium: A Librarian's View of Public Policy 