I'm taking this about as well as you'd expect.

Author, Blogger and Freelance Editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden wrote the following post on LiveJournal on January 26, 2009. It has subsequently been friends-locked.

Original Post

There's been a big LJ thrash recently, one of those maelstroms of online stupidity that take on a life of their own. All kinds of good people got trashed, starting with Elizabeth Bear. Patrick got involved when he posted some consoling remarks to Lisa Spangenberg. In the course of those remarks, he observed that (1.) some people are stupid; and (2.) some people don't argue as well as others. The mob took this personally, and lit into him.

What would you expect from a group that's self-selected for agreement with the statement, "I'm stupid, and I don't argue well"? Things got extremely ugly.

I wonder whether any of those draggletailed loudmouths have noticed that Patrick has now deleted his entire Live Journal, all the way back to the beginning. I doubt they have. They don't strike me as the sort to go back and see the damage they've done. Patrick has as usual taken them seriously; whereas they, knowing themselves better than he does, will have known they weren't worth listening to, and assumed they'd had no effect.

I tender them my congratulations. Whatever good there was in Patrick's LJ is gone now. Those members of the mob who actually wanted someone to listen to them now have one less person to do it. The junior literary critics and wanna-be writers have lost one of the central editors in science fiction from their conversation. And if any of that lot professes to care about Patrick personally -- please understand I'm not rating that probability very high at the moment -- it should be obvious to them what kind of effect they've had.

I know Patrick better than anyone else. This is serious damage. The nithings who've hurt him will have moved on to some other inane topic by now. There's nothing worthwhile I can do to them. It wouldn't take away his hurt -- and besides, they wouldn't understand most of what I had to say to them.

One other issue: when Patrick and I first registered our Live Journal accounts, it never occurred to us to use anything other than our real names -- or rather, our real initials, which are easily traced to us, and which we've used as userIDs in other forums where our identities are or were known. Has it not occurred to the people attacking him that they can say anything, whereas what they say about him will show up whenever someone Googles his name? In terms of public reputation, they're playing with Monopoly money, and he's playing with the real thing.

Some of the people who are using false names are known to him. Some of them are known to or evident to me. In those cases, I've told Patrick who they really are. It's only fair. Just on the other side of the boundary for people whose identities he can figure out are people whom he can almost figure out: this one is a VP student. This one is someone he knows at conventions. This one is a reviewer he's had dealings with. And so forth.

Do any of those safely pseudonymous assholes ever stop to reflect that if he can tell they're a former VP student, but not which one, all former VP students become "people who may be traducing me on LJ at this very moment"? The same thing goes for people he knows from conventions, or wanna-be writers who might submit something to him. Entire classes of people become potential attackers. That's why I identify everyone I can: it exculpates everyone else in that class.

Those of you I can't identify are not off the hook. I suggest that you never seek to take credit under your real name for anything you've done or written under your LJ pseudonym, because it's unlikely that I will ever forget you or what you've done.

Okay, one more last thing: Patrick, being a better person than I am, is a complete sucker for people who say they're sorry. I should hope I know you lot better than that. Still, he sets a lot of store by repentance, and I can't badmouth it too much, because there've been plenty of times when he's forgiven me, too. I know this sounds weird, but I'm mostly telling you about it because I have faith that almost everyone to whom it potentially applies will not be listening.

And so to bed. May we all be better people in the morning

Addendum:

I moderate as I always have.

Further addendum:

Apparently some people are taking my remarks as a threat that I will Retaliate Against Them Professionally. I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around that [several adjectives deleted] interpretation; but since Kate Nepveu assures me that people are taking it that way, I must needs believe it.

So: no, it wasn't a threat. Anyone who insists that it was is just putting on airs to be interesting.