Re: [guadec-list] anti-harassment policy

[Matthew Garrett <mjg59 srcf ucam org>]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 03:57:27PM +0200, Alexandre Franke wrote:

> Have you been to FOSDEM?

Not since I started caring about conferences having useful CoCs.

> Have there been complaints about the FOSDEM policy not being enough or
> people boycotting the FOSDEM because of the lack of a stronger policy?

There have been complaints, yes. Some people I know won't go to FOSDEM 
as a result. But that's anecdotal rather than compelling evidence, and I 
wouldn't expect anybody to change their mind based on it. It's certainly 
possible for a conference to be successful without a strong CoC. It's 
absolutely possible for the vast majority of attendees to have a good 
time.

> > Given that many large conferences (including OSCON, LCA, the OpenStack
> > summit and every Linux Foundation event) with a cumulative total of
> > thousands of attendees have implemented such policies, if chilling
> > effects were likely shouldn't we have seen complaints already?
>
> You're using an argument that's been rightfully dismissed when used
> the other way around. "If harassment was such a big problem, I would
> have heard about it".

There are many documented cases of harassment occurring. How many 
documented cases of people being unjustly restricted by a CoC have there 
been? If it's equally difficult to talk about both (which strikes me as 
unlikely - discussing harassment at conferences tends to get you 
sexualised slurs and threats of violence, discussing restrictions on 
freedom of speech tends to get you praise), that still seems like an 
argument that more people are affected by harassment than are affected 
by CoCs.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 srcf ucam org