Hi Tim, It seems as though what I was proposing was not entirely clear.
Firstly, I feel that I understand the value of the policy that Sumana wrote. This is why I repeatedly praised it as valuable in my email. Having a harassment policy and guidelines for ejection from an event is important. I am not disputing this. What I was discussing was the idea of things that could be done to prevent instances of harassment, not to respond to them. I believe that most people are well intentioned, and that some percentage of instances of harassment arise from misunderstandings and/or a lack of understanding of expected behavior/social norms. What I was proposing was to attempt to foster a stronger sense of community, create greater understanding of what is and is not acceptable behavior (especially in grey areas, which are always the most difficult), and to create greater respect for all members of a community *before* any instances of harassment occur. In the case of individuals who are not well intentioned, these are individuals who do not have a place at conferences, as a main goal of such events is to foster community. Such individuals should be asked to leave a conferences and perhaps not invited back. It is clear, at this point, that harassment at tech conferences is a systemic problem, not just a couple of isolated events. As such, I think that attempting to address this problem in multiple manners is important. Again, I will state that having an anti-harassment policy is an important thing to have in place. Additionally, I am of the opinion that threat of retribution alone (in this case being shunned from a community) is not a completely effective tact to take when dealing with systemic problems. I hope that this has clarified my statement some. Best, Peter On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Ryan Lane <[email protected]> wrote: >> I think you're missing the objective of the policy. It aims >> at taking away the fear from potential participants to be >> harassed. Encouraging people with insufficient social >> skills to come is not going to help that cause especially if >> pressure is put on the other participants to engage with >> their harassers or even see them as "valuable". >> >> In all high-profile cases that surfaced in the past years, >> harassment almost never took place in a presentation or pan- >> el discussion, but during "social events" which ostensibly >> were meant to foster community building like you propose. >> So to mitigate the risk, social interaction should be mini- >> mized. >> > > Well, I think if you look at conferences as a whole, the biggest cases > have been in presentations. Here's a list of examples: > > http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents > > Of course these are just examples that are sexist. I'm positive there > are way more examples out there. > > In general, the social events are optional, but that doesn't mean we > should allow them to be free-for-alls either. The anti-harassment > policy should also involve social events. If you've had too much to > drink, then you should be cut off. If you harass someone at a social > event, even a non-sponsored one, you should also fall under this > policy. > > - Ryan > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
