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I disagree. Each conference has their own goals, but I'd think that a general thread that underlies all of them is the exchange of ideas. If you can't criticize

I disagree. Each conference has their own goals, but I'd think that a general thread that underlies all of them is the exchange of ideas. If you can't criticize ideas ("Joe Schmoe is wrong about X"), then I'd say you're not doing a great job of exchanging ideas. I think preventing attendees from criticizing people ("Joe Schmoe is dumb") is perfectly fine, but that's clearly not what happened here.

tptacek 6y ago
Like I said: it's a surprising norm for a conference. But if it's clearly communicated, it's fine. It's just that kind of event. Here, it wasn't clearly communicated; if the author had seen the norm, they'd have presented something else, or not at all. What I reject is the idea that all spaces are somehow required to make space for criticism. There are spaces where that rule doesn't make sense. We're unlikely to find people to argue that the conference handled this well, or that the author did anything wrong.
- bawolff 6y ago
  I have trouble imagining why anyone would want to go to a conference where any and all criticism is banned. Is it even possible to say something meaningful without implicitly criticizing the opposite of whatever you are saying? However I agree with you in as much as, if some folks who think its a good idea all get together and communicate it clearly, there's nothing wrong with that. I probably wouldn't go, but there's a lot of conferences in the world I don't "get" and have no desire to go to, and that's ok.
- silly-silly 6y ago
  > What I reject is the idea that all spaces are somehow required to make space for > criticism. There are spaces where that rule doesn't make sense. There are spaces where it doesn't make sense - for you -. Any forum where criticism is not acceptable should be classified as advertising or possibly propaganda.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I've been at conferences where the organizers strongly emphasize CoCs but have had presenters who were almost virulently critical of companies if maybe not explicitly individuals (though obviously execs by definition). And these were presentations that the same organizers consistently have praised. Maybe it's something about punching up vs. down. I've also seen someone asked to cover up a company T with an IMO utterly innocuous joke on it (at a different event). But, yeah, if you want to run a conference with a CoC that basically says we'll ask you to leave if anyone is offended by you for any reason, just please let me know so I can choose not to attend.
gorgoiler 6y ago
I like your example. I can see why, on the scale of... “Joe is dumb” .. “Joe is wrong” .. “Joe is wrong about X” .. “Why I think Joe is wrong about X” ...anything but the final one feels unduly confrontational. That’s how I felt, reading your comment.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The 4th implies the 3rd. If I think you're wrong, I'll say you're wrong--with reasons. Adding some additional words like "in my oh so humble opinion I think" doesn't change the fundamental meaning. (And I have absolutely criticized well-known people's opinions on public stages.)
  - gorgoiler 6y ago
    It absolutely changes the meaning. Perhaps, in some cultures or subcultures, showing humility has a weakening effect but I tend to avoid those places nowadays, or at least push back on them. ...I think [and am willing to be proven wrong.]
    - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
      A subtle feature of language, at least in English, is that prefacing things with "I think" or "I feel", while displaying humility in personal conversations, has the effect of devaluing your own argument if done in excess. If you are perceived to be forever apologizing for your own opinion, nobody is going to take you seriously, because what you ultimately lack is confidence - and if you're not confident about what you're saying, why should I be? It is, and should be, OK to actually strongly state a position you hold, especially if you can back it up, and especially if the person you are responding to is going to take your criticism well (which the author did know). "Joe is an idiot" is very different from "Joe is wrong" especially when Joe is definitively and demonstrably wrong (which he was in this case, the author demonstrated clearly and succinctly how to do something Joel said was difficult to do). Adults are (or should be) also capable of determining when a talk is a string of personal attacks, or a mature but critical response (critical meaning evaluation, not negative). If every other phrase was "Joel has his head in his ass" then NumFOCUS would have certainly had a case; that wasn't the case here.
eplanit 6y ago
"If you can't criticize ideas ("Joe Schmoe is wrong about X"), then I'd say you're not doing a great job of exchanging ideas." But, the example you give is one that criticizes Joe Schmoe, not X. How about just "X is wrong", and leave Joe out of it so that the discourse is about the rightness or wrongness of X.
- avhon1 6y ago
  If Joe Schmoe is a very public proponent of X, then everyone will make that connection themselves. Also, if Joe Schmoe and Alice Shclalice have different, but aligned, support of X, it can be useful to your audience to identify different parts of your criticism as "this is how I disagree with Joe" and "this is how I disagree with Alice".
  - eplanit 6y ago
    Which still uses language that criticizes the people: "how I disagree with $PERSON". To keep a discourse civil, don't allow it to become personal.
    - strken 6y ago
      In my view, the discourse from the conference was already civil. Can you explain your point of view a bit more?
- strken 6y ago
  If your talk is in response to another talk by someone else, and you're taking slides and content from their talk and reacting to them, it's important that your audience know what the initial talk was. They have to have the context of the debate, including who is on each side, to fully investigate both sides and reach their own conclusions.
  - ben0x539 6y ago
    Well, maybe don't do that then. You could address the ideas from that talk instead of the talk specifically, and have a slide, like, "My talk is a response to this other talk by this person and I encourage you to check it out".
ben0x539 6y ago
Leaving aside whether this'd be a good policy for a conference, this argument doesn't really check out for me. You can exchange ideas without making judgements on other ideas. Like, let your ideas speak for themselves, marketplace of ideas etc, or even make comparisons without saying your ideas are _better or worse_ than other ideas. I'm sure you wouldn't run out of useful and engaging conference content even with some hypothetical arbitrary rules like "don't say idea X is bad", "don't say person X is wrong about idea Y", like, at worst you'd have to make some minor edits to your slides and reword things to be less personal, unless your entire gimmick is that your presentation is a callout post.
- prewett 6y ago
  Some ideas have demonstratively poorer outcomes, or more succinctly: "bad". Some ideas are demonstratively at odds with the observed behavior of the world: "wrong". If you can't say "person X is wrong about idea Y" what kind of discussion can you have? How would you advise Galileo to present his paper on an experiment that demonstrated that the leading academic voice (Aristotle) was wrong?
- esfandia 6y ago
  Research is literally predicated on showing results that are better than the state of the art. Without that judgment on other work there can be no progress in research!
  - ben0x539 6y ago
    You can talk up your cool new thing without explicit criticism of the old thing. Like, that's probably not a good rule for every conference in general, but it's a rule you could have for a specific conference without immediately disqualifying all possible good talks.

tptacek 6y ago

Like I said: it's a surprising norm for a conference. But if it's clearly communicated, it's fine. It's just that kind of event. Here, it wasn't clearly communicated; if the author had seen the norm, they'd have presented something else, or not at all. What I reject is the idea that all spaces are somehow required to make space for criticism. There are spaces where that rule doesn't make sense. We're unlikely to find people to argue that the conference handled this well, or that the author did anything wrong.

bawolff 6y ago
I have trouble imagining why anyone would want to go to a conference where any and all criticism is banned. Is it even possible to say something meaningful without implicitly criticizing the opposite of whatever you are saying? However I agree with you in as much as, if some folks who think its a good idea all get together and communicate it clearly, there's nothing wrong with that. I probably wouldn't go, but there's a lot of conferences in the world I don't "get" and have no desire to go to, and that's ok.
silly-silly 6y ago
> What I reject is the idea that all spaces are somehow required to make space for > criticism. There are spaces where that rule doesn't make sense. There are spaces where it doesn't make sense - for you -. Any forum where criticism is not acceptable should be classified as advertising or possibly propaganda.
ghaff 6y ago
I've been at conferences where the organizers strongly emphasize CoCs but have had presenters who were almost virulently critical of companies if maybe not explicitly individuals (though obviously execs by definition). And these were presentations that the same organizers consistently have praised. Maybe it's something about punching up vs. down. I've also seen someone asked to cover up a company T with an IMO utterly innocuous joke on it (at a different event). But, yeah, if you want to run a conference with a CoC that basically says we'll ask you to leave if anyone is offended by you for any reason, just please let me know so I can choose not to attend.

gorgoiler 6y ago

I like your example. I can see why, on the scale of... “Joe is dumb” .. “Joe is wrong” .. “Joe is wrong about X” .. “Why I think Joe is wrong about X” ...anything but the final one feels unduly confrontational. That’s how I felt, reading your comment.

ghaff 6y ago
The 4th implies the 3rd. If I think you're wrong, I'll say you're wrong--with reasons. Adding some additional words like "in my oh so humble opinion I think" doesn't change the fundamental meaning. (And I have absolutely criticized well-known people's opinions on public stages.)
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  It absolutely changes the meaning. Perhaps, in some cultures or subcultures, showing humility has a weakening effect but I tend to avoid those places nowadays, or at least push back on them. ...I think [and am willing to be proven wrong.]
  - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
    A subtle feature of language, at least in English, is that prefacing things with "I think" or "I feel", while displaying humility in personal conversations, has the effect of devaluing your own argument if done in excess. If you are perceived to be forever apologizing for your own opinion, nobody is going to take you seriously, because what you ultimately lack is confidence - and if you're not confident about what you're saying, why should I be? It is, and should be, OK to actually strongly state a position you hold, especially if you can back it up, and especially if the person you are responding to is going to take your criticism well (which the author did know). "Joe is an idiot" is very different from "Joe is wrong" especially when Joe is definitively and demonstrably wrong (which he was in this case, the author demonstrated clearly and succinctly how to do something Joel said was difficult to do). Adults are (or should be) also capable of determining when a talk is a string of personal attacks, or a mature but critical response (critical meaning evaluation, not negative). If every other phrase was "Joel has his head in his ass" then NumFOCUS would have certainly had a case; that wasn't the case here.

eplanit 6y ago

"If you can't criticize ideas ("Joe Schmoe is wrong about X"), then I'd say you're not doing a great job of exchanging ideas." But, the example you give is one that criticizes Joe Schmoe, not X. How about just "X is wrong", and leave Joe out of it so that the discourse is about the rightness or wrongness of X.

avhon1 6y ago
If Joe Schmoe is a very public proponent of X, then everyone will make that connection themselves. Also, if Joe Schmoe and Alice Shclalice have different, but aligned, support of X, it can be useful to your audience to identify different parts of your criticism as "this is how I disagree with Joe" and "this is how I disagree with Alice".
- eplanit 6y ago
  Which still uses language that criticizes the people: "how I disagree with $PERSON". To keep a discourse civil, don't allow it to become personal.
  - strken 6y ago
    In my view, the discourse from the conference was already civil. Can you explain your point of view a bit more?
strken 6y ago
If your talk is in response to another talk by someone else, and you're taking slides and content from their talk and reacting to them, it's important that your audience know what the initial talk was. They have to have the context of the debate, including who is on each side, to fully investigate both sides and reach their own conclusions.
- ben0x539 6y ago
  Well, maybe don't do that then. You could address the ideas from that talk instead of the talk specifically, and have a slide, like, "My talk is a response to this other talk by this person and I encourage you to check it out".

ben0x539 6y ago

Leaving aside whether this'd be a good policy for a conference, this argument doesn't really check out for me. You can exchange ideas without making judgements on other ideas. Like, let your ideas speak for themselves, marketplace of ideas etc, or even make comparisons without saying your ideas are _better or worse_ than other ideas. I'm sure you wouldn't run out of useful and engaging conference content even with some hypothetical arbitrary rules like "don't say idea X is bad", "don't say person X is wrong about idea Y", like, at worst you'd have to make some minor edits to your slides and reword things to be less personal, unless your entire gimmick is that your presentation is a callout post.

prewett 6y ago
Some ideas have demonstratively poorer outcomes, or more succinctly: "bad". Some ideas are demonstratively at odds with the observed behavior of the world: "wrong". If you can't say "person X is wrong about idea Y" what kind of discussion can you have? How would you advise Galileo to present his paper on an experiment that demonstrated that the leading academic voice (Aristotle) was wrong?
esfandia 6y ago
Research is literally predicated on showing results that are better than the state of the art. Without that judgment on other work there can be no progress in research!
- ben0x539 6y ago
  You can talk up your cool new thing without explicit criticism of the old thing. Like, that's probably not a good rule for every conference in general, but it's a rule you could have for a specific conference without immediately disqualifying all possible good talks.