I don't get it

Posted Dec 2, 2010 0:07 UTC (Thu) by jackb (guest, #41909)
In reply to: I don't get it by xtifr
Parent article: The dark side of open source conferences

The thing that the world is full of jerks (of both genders). You can't legislate them out of existence and when people are determined to be a jerk they'll find a way to do it no matter what kind of rules you try to apply to prevent it.

When you find yourself (no matter your gender) dealing with a jerk your options are basically as follows: ignore it, deal with it yourself or complain about it. If you reach adulthood without learning how to deal with the jerks yourself then that's really your own problem.

It would be great if that skill wasn't necessary but wishing that jerks didn't exist in the world isn't going to make it so. If people would focus more on standing up for themselves rather than appealing to authority figures they'd make a lot more progress.

I don't get it

Posted Dec 2, 2010 0:29 UTC (Thu) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

Ummm

No one is legislating against anything.

We are applying our right to self selection.

People are free to be jerks, and others are free to ignore them and exclude them from their community

I don't get it

Posted Dec 2, 2010 2:01 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (3 responses)

> If people would focus more on standing up for themselves rather than appealing to authority figures they'd make a lot more progress.

Really? Because authority figures have, you know, authority. I mean, standing up for yourself is a fine thing to do, but there's a limit to what you can do as a random attendee, and I don't see how it'd be some moral failing to ask the organizers to do their damn job. If someone is harassing people, the appropriate response is to kick them out, and I can't do that, but the conference organizers can (and should). Or would you prefer, like, some sort of vigilante justice?

The fact is, in a conference setting, some people have more authority than others. So those people have to make a choice. They can use that authority to back up the jerks (e.g., by egging them on from the podium or just ignoring legitimate complaints) or to back up the non-jerks (e.g. by kicking out people who harass others and not inviting them back).

And the nature of authority is that whichever option they pick is likely to have much more of an effect on how the conference turns out than whatever I do. So in practice, telling attendees that they should stand up for themselves and stop whining means (1) you're saying that it's okay for people with authority to back up the jerks, and (2) it's the responsibility of individual (female) attendees to take on not just the jerks, but the whole conference apparatus.

I don't get it

Posted Dec 2, 2010 9:49 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Or would you prefer, like, some sort of vigilante justice?

I cannot imagine how horrifying libertarian conferences must be (if there are enough libertarians even in the US to have conferences of any kind).

I don't get it

Posted Dec 3, 2010 14:01 UTC (Fri) by RussNelson (guest, #27730) [Link] (1 responses)

Hehe, you don't actually know any libertarians, do you? Libertarians are fine with rules ... they just want the rules to be voluntarily agreed-upon. In the case of a conference or a meeting, there are rules. Break the rules, and get the punishment ... or don't attend in the first place. THAT is how libertarians work in the real world (rather than your fantasy libertarians).

I don't get it

Posted Dec 5, 2010 1:16 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Oh, I know quite a lot of them. Every one says something different and says that the *others* are not real libertarians. You are about opinion fifty.

Adult harassment victims did nothing wrong

Posted Dec 2, 2010 2:50 UTC (Thu) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

> If you reach adulthood without learning how to deal with the jerks
> yourself then that's really your own problem.

What you are saying is that adult victims of any kind of harassment (be it sexual harassment at open source conferences, bullying at work, war rape, ...) have to deal with it on their own, because it's their own fault?

I don't get it

Posted Dec 2, 2010 4:24 UTC (Thu) by james_w (guest, #51167) [Link]

> and when people are determined to be a jerk they'll find a way to do it no matter what kind of rules you try to apply to prevent it.

True, but we can make it very difficult for them to do it at our conferences.

This isn't about stopping everyone in the world from being jerks, this is about keeping it out of our conferences, so that a minority don't spoil them for everyone else, and prevent us from getting more contributors.

One jerk can do a lot of damage, including stopping 10 or 100 people from contributing to a project or attending a conference.

James