Say Their Names.  Full Document Contents/Articles/Say Their Names..md, Say Their Names., Heather Burns. > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [#WordPress, #community, #open-source, #accountability, #ethics, #tech-culture] > Author: Heather Burns > Source: HeatherBurns.tech > Reference: [Say Their Names](https://heatherburns.tech/2024/10/14/say-their-names/) > date created: 2024-10-14 17:00 > > # Title: Say Their Names > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ## 📝 Summary: Heather Burns reflects on the systemic failures within the WordPress community, emphasizing accountability for the mistreatment of Asmahan Attayeb and Jennifer Westmoreland. She critiques how toxic behaviors were normalized, calling for a reckoning to ensure justice and transformation. ## 📖 Main Content: Burns draws attention to the toxic dynamics within the WordPress community and the role the community played in enabling abuse. She highlights moments of camaraderie among volunteers but laments how corporate indifference and manipulation undermined grassroots efforts. Burns calls for focusing on the upcoming trials as pivotal community events. ### 🗒️ Notes: - **Community Challenges**: - Structural issues like racism, sexism, and toxic positivity were prevalent. - Volunteers were exploited, with their efforts devalued by corporate actors. - **Call for Accountability**: - Burns emphasizes the need to "say their names" as an act of acknowledgment. - Upcoming trials represent a crucial moment for justice and closure. ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. Heather highlights how systemic neglect and community silence paved the way for deeper abuse behind closed doors, urging everyone to confront their complicity. 2. Burns critiques how corporate indifference manipulated volunteer efforts, diminishing the values that once united the community. ## 📰 Newsletter: In this issue, let’s talk about accountability in tech communities. Heather Burns’ latest post urges us to reflect on how WordPress volunteers and leaders can do better in addressing past wrongs. With ongoing developments leading to upcoming trials, this is a critical moment to reimagine the future of open-source spaces. Engage in our discussion on how we can foster a more inclusive and responsible ecosystem. [Read more](https://heatherburns.tech/2024/10/14/say-their-names/). ## ✅ Action Items: - **Align with Advocacy**: Burns' insights highlight the need to address toxic dynamics in open-source communities. - **Engage Contributors**: Use this moment to onboard volunteers with a renewed focus on ethics and transparency. - **Plan for OSPO**: Emphasize the need for organizational structures that promote sustainable, inclusive growth. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - Greater transparency in governance reduces toxicity in open-source communities. - Legal accountability fosters cultural change within tech ecosystems. ## 📊 Methodology: - **Case Studies**: Compare governance models of successful tech communities. - **Surveys**: Gather volunteer feedback on organizational transparency. ## ❓ Questions: - How can WordPress rebuild trust within its contributor base? - What governance structures prevent corporate overreach in open-source projects? ## 🔮 Future Research: Explore how legal cases impact community governance and volunteer engagement. ## 💡 Implications: The outcome of these trials could reshape norms around volunteerism and corporate accountability in open-source projects. ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Visual**: Limited use of imagery—adding infographics could aid engagement. - **Aural**: Consider an audio version for accessibility. - **Verbal**: The article employs strong, reflective language. - **Kinesthetic**: Recommend adding calls to action for hands-on learning. ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader**: Ensure all images have proper alt-text. - **Keyboard Navigation**: Verify seamless navigation. - **Contrast**: Optimize readability with high-contrast settings. ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - **Inclusive Language**: The article uses inclusive, reflective phrasing. - **Cultural Representation**: Future versions could integrate more diverse voices. ## ✅ Logical validity: - **Sound Reasoning**: The argument for community accountability is well-structured. - **Fallacy**: Slight reliance on emotional appeals could weaken logical rigor. ## 🔍 SEO Evaluation: - **Keywords**: Effective use of relevant terms like “WordPress,” “community,” and “accountability.” - **Meta Description**: Could benefit from a refined summary with keywords. - **Internal Links**: Add links to other related community discussions. ## 🎯 Conclusion: Heather Burns challenges the WordPress community to confront its failures and prioritize justice, urging transformation beyond performative changes. This reflection is a call to action for all involved to rebuild trust and ensure ethical practices in the future. <!-- deep-read:sections end --> ## Highlights - • [open source communities](https://heatherburns.tech/tag/open-source-communities/) [](https://heatherburns.tech/2024/10/14/say-their-names/) In recent days I have been asked for my thoughts on the Matt-ers which have unfolded in the WordPress community, which was my home for nine years. For those not au fait, as it says on the part of my CV where I desperately try to pretend that any prospective employer is interested in it, which I can assure you they’re not: *Open Source Community Contributor and Volunteer 2011-2020* *I was an enthusiastic contributor to several OSS project communities, helping* *community members to understand privacy, accessibility, and various regulatory* *changes impacting the field. I delivered 32 conference talks across eight countries,* *trained thousands of professionals, was a local meetup organiser in two cities, was a co-organiser for four multi-day conferences, and I helped build the WordPress 4.9.6 privacy suite to ship privacy tools to 40% of the sites on the open web.* As some of you may recall, all this counted for was being on the receiving end of some of the worst behavior in the WordPress project. The reason I am still here though, strong and better and smiling despite all of that, is because I was also on the receiving end of some of the best people in the project. Some of them were, and always will be, the best friends I have ever had in my life. They know who they are. They are, as Elbow once sang, the stars that I navigate home by. They gave me that light. It’s thanks to the light that I can share my thoughts on what, in my view, really Matt-ers here, and that is this: Their names are Asmahan Attayeb and Jennifer Westmoreland, and we are responsible for what happened to them. We are responsible. We did this. *Say their names.* The abusive behaviour we all saw in the community, in public, and which we – **collectively, as a community**, kept our heads down about – turned out to be [a hint of what was happening,](https://freewp.com/2024/10/14/matthew-charles-mullenweg-defendant/) privately, behind closed doors. *Say their names.* The use of contracts, and terms and conditions, and the four open source freedoms, as forms of control and manipulation which we all saw in public in the community, and which we – **collectively, as a community** – merely grunted about in Slack channels, turned out to be [a hint of what was happening](https://casetext.com/case/attayeb-v-mullenweg/), privately, behind closed doors. *Say their names.* The singling out of people who were, through no fault of their own, at their lowest and vulnerable – like I was, for a time – as easy pickings to be exploited, which we all saw in public in the community, and which we – **collectively, as a community** – just wrote off as “Matt Bombs”, turned out to be a practice run for when, for him, it really Matt-ered. *Say their names.* The misogyny, the racism, and the [transphobia](https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-with-trans-user-over-account-ban-revealing-private-account-names-in-the-process/) which we all saw in the community, in public, and which we – **collectively, as a community** – rolled our eyes at because it was happening to *someone else,* turned out to be a hint of what was happening, privately, behind closed doors. *Say their names.* The smarmy American toxic positivity we all experienced from the Automattic “community team”, a brigade of contemptible corporate brand enforcers cosplaying as caring suburban mommies, and which we – **collectively, as a community** – rolled our eyes at, because it was just the hoops we had to jump through to host a bloody fucking conference, turned out to be the iterated code for domestic coercion and control. *Say their names.* The WordPress community – not the corporate entity, the local volunteers on the ground, the real people – was always about *community*. It was about realising that we had more in common than that which divides us. It was about national borders that ceased to exist, it was about language differences which ceased to matter, it was about class and status differences which evaporated. It was about meeting someone at a conference whom, several years later, you’d somehow find yourself watching a sunrise with. It was about *us.* It’s why we stayed, and kept going, despite all the crap happening around us. It’s why many of you even claimed that you weren’t just not interested in the drama, you were *beyond* it – that you were somehow above, beyond, and superior to what was happening to us at the grassroots, from the comfort of your warm suburban homes – firm in your conviction that none of “that” could ever, possibly, come near you or *your* families. And yet. All of us, *all of us*, somehow knew, that whole time, that corporate upstairs was laughing at us. Sneering, even. Our little volunteer communities? We knew that they served no use to corporate’s VCs. The community groups, the nonprofits, the charity projects, the people just trying to have a voice, the salt of the earth that we built sites for? We knew that corporate and their VCs were rolling their eyes at us. The conferences we staged, exhausted, unpaid, on our feet, with expenses funded out of our own pockets? We knew that corporate and their VCs didn’t give a shit: we weren’t going to make them any fucking money. We knew. We always knew. We knew. So we just kept our heads down and focused on what we *could do*, in the places where we *were*, and the people we *could* help, staying out of *drama*. And we were fucking mugs. We were fucking mugs, and we let ourselves be put into that position, which meant that we couldn’t be to our community what a community is supposed to be. As best as I can tell, googling American courtroom filings from a Scottish university campus, the criminal trials – not civil procedure, *criminal trials* – go ahead on May 19 and June 16 2025, in the same courtroom in San Francisco, for the abusive, corrupt, and disgusting behavior which it was in our power to prevent. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ja6es6av0rh4nsgjkjbdwmat)) - As best as I can tell, googling American courtroom filings from a Scottish university campus, the criminal trials – not civil procedure, *criminal trials* – go ahead on May 19 and June 16 2025, in the same courtroom in San Francisco, for the abusive, corrupt, and disgusting behavior which it was in our power to prevent. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ja6fv5m8m5zeyhbq3xvhnz6q)) - Stop the clocks. Strike the set. Kill the meetups. Cancel the WordCamps. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ja6fvc8v3wn023w6hwrh50za)) - Their names are Asmahan Attayeb and Jennifer Westmoreland, and we are responsible for what happened to them. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ja6fvq72b9hzpqkzzpvnqs49)) - Asmahan and Jennifer, we failed you. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ja6fvx8d2b20w20d2netjcy4))