Mika Epstein has a sober but important post on being burned out from harassment in the WordPress space. Mika’s work on the Plugins team has been especially trying thanks to one plugin author who — despite warnings and a ban — made threats and sent her massive amounts of hostile and threatening emails. 😠
The threats were not virtual, however:
“See, every time I would go to a WordCamp, I had to prepare myself. What will I do if they show up? They had made, after all, ‘threats’ to come to California, and they’d already sent physical items to my office.”
Being effectively cyber stalked and harassed is not something anyone should have to go through. Often we think we inhabit a safe space, and for the most part, that is true. But the “it could never happen here” mentality is incorrect. What should we take from this?
“When you write new code, think about how it can be abused. Think about disrupting harassment. Think about allowing people to protect themselves. And, above all, if someone tells you this is going on? Believe them. I was lucky. Everyone believed me. Most people are not [believed].”
