When should behaviour outside a community have consequences inside it?
This whole question really stems from a sad and pervasive tendency for &#x27;intelligent&#x27; people to overestimate their general expertise, and then apply their value judgements to individuals in their social circle, regardless of its utility or relevance.<p>Examples of this:<p>Alan Turing -- father of Computer Science shunned, at the time, because everyone had value judgements regarding his homosexuality (completely irrelevant to Computer Science).<p>The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).<p>This, of course, continues further, with things such as Hollywood blacklisting (today) Conservatives, and formerly Communists.<p>The solution is simple:<p>Within a community, individuals should only be judged based on their contributions and value within that community.<p>If I am deeply opposed to gay marriage, but a fantastic coder, that should not affect my standing within a community that is entirely code focused.<p>If I strongly believe in UFO visitations, and disbelieve climate change, but am a great graphic designer, that should not affect my reputation as an artist.<p>Everyone is not expected to be right, or agreeable, about everything, with everyone else. Aiming for this is pointless.<p>This inability to separate emotions and passions from cooperating on a shared focus with others, of differing emotions and passions, but equal interest in the shared focus (community) is deeply damaging.<p>There are enough problems and difficulties getting skilled people together to work on something great -- there is no use at all in reducing that crowd of people further by limiting it to those who share ones views in any number of hot button issues.<p>Leave politics to your political circles, make your own impressions of people before making personal judgements from reputation, find every reason to work together, not any excuse not to.