Ok, sorry for this mail, it was way too late and I was darn tired when sending it. In any case, I'll update the policy with sensible input I got. If you have any input after that just mail me privately. Jos On 2011-05-13 Jos wrote:
On 2011-05-12 Jim wrote:
On Wed, 11 May 2011 23:06:02 +0200, Jos Poortvliet wrote:
Surely a disagreement in itself can be uncomfortable, and I realize I was exaggerating a bit. I just tried to say that this is a subjective thing and we'll take feelings serious. You can't define feelings nor can anyone judge how someone else feels. Hence we have to base it on that.
I think the definition you're looking for should include "unwanted and annoying actions".
A good (though perhaps US-centric - but honestly the definition seems good enough to cover international cases as well) legal definition is available at http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=853
If someone engages in an activity that upsets another and the other asks them to stop and the first person refuses, then it's harassment.
Since it sounds like the conference organizers are looking to protect themselves legally (as well as the attendees), then perhaps it would be good to discuss with a legal professional.
It surprises me how much discussion this simple question has caused, because it's not like no other conference has never thought of this or addressed it before. Maybe the organizers could talk to someone involved in the BrainShare conferences, as I'm sure they've addressed this at some point in the past.
This policy is actually 90% literally based on a well established policy which was also used at LCA. LCA is well known as a conference which pioneered decent policies concerning minorities and it has worked out very well in the past. I have spoken to several people who explicitly stated LCA is the *only* conference they go to, due to the culture it has with regard to treating people. Linus Torvalds himself, for example, never misses an LCA despite being not a big fan of conferences at all - and these policies are one of the reasons for this.
Calling attention to the fact that having a good atmosphere matters has led at LCA to a great atmosphere and I am surprised and annoyed that so many people have been argueing so much against my proposal. Imho over half the arguments are irrelevant, the rest is simply wrong. A few make a little sense, and I applaud the 3-4 ppl who had concrete, useful suggestions. But the vast majority has been a waste of time.
As far as I'm concerned, the discussion is over. I'm gonna stop reading this thread, make the modifications made by the few sensible commenters and ignore the armchair philosophers. I bet they're even to lazy to change anything on the wiki anyway.
Sorry to be so blunt.
Next time I have something like this I'll just talk to a few sensible people and put it live.
g'night,
Jos
PS before you think otherwise, my rant is NOT targeted at you, Jim. I'll have a look at the link you posted tomorrow. And I'm sure the ppl who my criticism is targeting have no problem feeling it doesn't apply to them.
All I can say is that there seems to be (as often the case) a very strong inverse relationship between the number of (irrelevant) mails on -project someone sends and the amount of work someone does on openSUSE.
May I remember everyone here of the fact that opinions and ideas are cheap and work is what counts? If you're not even willing to put in a bit of time to properly read what others say and make concrete suggestions if someone asks for input (see the conference program thread for example) you'd better spend your time on, I dunno, a political mailinglist, where opinions are all that counts and nobody cares about reality.
Again sorry for the rant.