Watching "Donglegate" unfold over the past few days has been like watching a comedy of errors slowly metastasize into a tragedy of thoughtlessness. News coverage of what unfolded at (and after) this year's PyCon developer conference has already been written; I'll assume that you’re up to speed. What follows is straight opinion about a silly situation.
As events unfolded from Sunday until today, partisans quickly formed to weigh in on some key questions. Was SendGrid evangelist Adria Richards right or wrong to take offense at the jokes in question? Were the two male developers out of bounds with their "dongle" comments? Did they even say the things they were accused of? Was taking the matter right to Twitter the wrong way to go? Was the termination of two people—including Richards herself—a preferred outcome? How did DDoS vigilantes get involved in a complaint over some genital jokes? Finally: how long until the lawsuits?