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> In the end, we all converged on the same opinion: that LambdaConf should focus on the behavior of attendees, rather than their belief systems. And that wasn'
by EdHominem 11y ago
> In the end, we all converged on the same opinion: that LambdaConf should focus on the behavior of attendees, rather than their belief systems.
And that wasn't the starting point? What a joke!
> We would never allow a violent criminal to attend LambdaConf.
Yes, you would. You'd be sued if you didn't. They did their time and (presumably) got out or the question would be moot. If they (or anyone else) threatened someone, see the next point.
> There is always a line. There must be one. The question is, where do we draw that line?
I've run conferences for years where the only policy of that sort is that we won't hesitate to call the police.
It's worked perfectly because if someone follows someone else to harass them that's illegal despite the subject matter. Harassing someone for liking the wrong pokemon is just as actionable as harassing them because they're the wrong gender. If the person isn't harassing anyone they're free to their opinion no matter how odious.
The police are very helpful in explaining "a disturbance" and how someone is creating one!
And here's the answer to threats, violence, etc. They get arrested. Not expelled. Not shamed. Arrested. Treat it like you'd treat random street crime and have them arrested.
- st3v3r 11y agoOk, but that's not everything. What about talks with sexist content? Remember the "Perform like a porn star" talk (http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2009/04/25/why-rails-is-still-a-ghetto/ http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2009/04/25/why-rails-is-still-a...)? The person giving the talk might not be actively harassing someone, but they're clearly making the conference a place where women do not feel welcome.
- EdHominem 11y agoThat's the content they choose to sponsor (with a soapbox), and which they should curate.
- greenrd 11y agoYou need a code of conduct to prevent that if you are not to pre-vet all slides, which is excessively bureaucratic and creates an implicit code of conduct anyway.
- EdHominem 11y agoNo, it's pretty easy. If you have a mandate you ruthlessly cull anything not on that mandate. You don't need a blacklist of banned topic, you have a whitelist of worthwhile ones and you ignore anything else. Lambda is pretty solidly about functional programming. Maybe extending to programming/admin in general but not to politics. Speakers should always be tweaking their talk for the audience anyways to handle different durations, venues, crowds, time of day, etc. If there's anything you don't want you can fix it here.
- greenrd 11y agoYou don't understand what a code of conduct is, or what this debate is about.
- EdHominem 11y agoYes, I do. I've run both tech and "fan" conferences. I'm absolutely within my legal right to call the police on anyone who I kick out for anything other than a tiny list of protected reasons, and I do so. (Very rarely, almost everyone leaves immediately when you show that you aren't playing some rules-lawyering game but simply calling the police.) Both as someone familiar with human behavior and as someone who's gotten legal advice, a code of conduct never helps me or the good attendees. It only offers refuge for the spoilers.