Re: GNOME Speaker Guidelines

[Stone Mirror <lefty shugendo org>]

Since you've brought it up, Patryk, my very first thought in looking at these guidelines was to marvel at the completeness with which Mr. Stallman's "keynote" at GCDS last year managed to run roughshod over every single one.

There's nothing wrong with jokes or humor. When the supposed "humor" comes directly at the expense of a minority of the audience―a part, in fact, which is unreasonably small―it should be apparent that this is not the sort of "humor" we want to be seeing in a keynote address at our community's own technical conference.

"Humor" is supposed to be funny; Mr. Stallman was not. A keynote should not single out a portion of the community for unwanted negative attention, particularly when that attention is of a sexual nature.

Within the past two weeks, a male attendee sexually assaulted a couple of women at a Linux conference. Perhaps he believed that they were "EMACS virgins" and he was exercising his "holy duty".

__
Sent from my Steve-Phone

On Jun 25, 2010, at 7:42 AM, Patryk Zawadzki <patrys pld-linux org> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 3:48 PM, Lefty ( 亢À ) <lefty shugendo org> wrote:
>> On 6/25/10 2:21 AM, "Patryk Zawadzki" <patrys pld-linux org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> It would be better if GNOME defined a precise set of rules (ie. "don't
>>> mention religion"). As for the hazy areas, common sense is a better
>>> judge than a set of written rules. If someone does something grossly
>>> inappropriate just don't invite them to further events.
>> The difficulty with "precise sets of rules", is that anything that someone
>> didn't manage to explicitly think up in advance is "fair game" as long as it
>> doesn't _precisely_ run afoul of one of those rules.
>> 
>> And when someone _does_ manage to find something which actually offends
>> everyone in the audience, but which wasn't envisioned beforehand, there's no
>> basis for complaint at all: it's not "against the rules".
> 
> Did you miss the common sense part? If the rules are vague, everything
> can be proved to be "against the rules".
> 
> I believe the rules were defined to stop RMS from making jokes. If you
> don't like his sense of humor, don't invite him. You don't have to ban
> all kinds of jokes and sarcasm along the way.
> 
> -- 
> Patryk Zawadzki