To date, we've never had any harrassment problems at a FUDCon to the best of my knowledge, nor do I believe this would change in the near future. However, some community conferences have had this problem:
We've been asked whether we'd consider an anti-harrassment policy for FUDCon. Some Fedora community members have been involved in the creation of a generic policy that is available for adaptation and use:
I believe all planners would agree we want attendees at a FUDCon to enjoy their time there, and that we want them to feel safe to participate and contribute there. However, there are some pending questions about what risks and benefits the establishment of a policy creates. For instance, does it increase liability for organizers, or Red Hat as a sponsor? I'd think not, but since I'm not an expert, and don't believe any of us in the planning group are, I've reached out to find a personnel policy expert in Red Hat who could advise us.
I completely and utterly agree here,
This is unacceptable it can not continue, we are blessed that it has not happened at Fedora Centric events. We need to make sure the policy is strict. Any people making unwanted advances towards any member of the community should be severely punished.
I believe we should have some "harassment free convention" banner at the bottom of websites, linking to a permanent page of the guidelines, and possibly a register of people violating these conditions to be banned from participating events for a period of time.
I am currently organizing a FAD in Brisbane for January, i will be implementing this at our FAD if it is complete.
Kind Regards, Luke Martinez.
btw: i meant a register that event organizers may view.
Hopefully we together can move this community forward, Luke Martinez
We are not exploring any punitive options right now, such as the ones you suggest. We're simply researching the risks and benefits of having a policy.
This wasn't able to be worked in for FUDCon Tempe.
I'd like to re-open this, and propose a modification: why don't we have a Fedora anti-harassment policy? There is no need to restrict it to conferences, or a conference. Fedora is an inherently community-based project, and I don't see any problem with asserting a requirement that people refrain from harassment in all involvement with the Fedora community. That way, events (starting with the next FUDCon) and Fedora sub-projects can simply 'include' the project-wide anti-harassment policy. This is a concept that's gaining traction; OSCon recently got a widespread positive response to doing it, for instance. And in my personal opinion it's simply the right thing to do. We can take advantage of existing resources in actually drafting a policy - Geek Feminism, the existing policies of other events and communities.
Replying to [comment:7 adamwill]:
I'd like to re-open this, and propose a modification: why don't we have a Fedora anti-harassment policy? There is no need to restrict it to conferences, or a conference. Fedora is an inherently community-based project, and I don't see any problem with asserting a requirement that people refrain from harassment in all involvement with the Fedora community. That way, events (starting with the next FUDCon) and Fedora sub-projects can simply 'include' the project-wide anti-harassment policy.
I'd go even further in the direction of your modification and suggest that we shouldn't restrict it to harrassment at all.
I would have thought that harrassment was covered by the existing policy of being excellent to each other? At least it seems to me that harrassing someone is nothing but an example (although a pretty bad one) of a behavior that is not excellent.
Perhaps we'd need a policy that says something like: {{{ Be excellent to each other.
That's it, really. But if you need it, here are a few examples of what we do not consider to be excellent behavior: - harrassment, by electronic means or in real life (e.g at conferences) - discrimination of any kind - ...
Again, those are examples and should not be considered an exhaustive list of stuff you're not allowed to do. The exhaustive definition is contained in the first sentance of this policy. }}}
I agree with Adam that we need to have a more explicit policy for events and more generally for all community interactions, but I'd rather have a very broad definition like the one we seem to have used implicitly for a while.
I would hope that cases of harrassment would generally be relatively easy to agree on as being an example of a "not excellent behavior" and so they would be objected by the whole community, without the need for any official enforcement (as a strict policy would require).
But maybe I'm just too optimistic and most people would need the threat of that enforcement before they behave properly...
This is an interesting thread, but I guess a policy won't be a solution. I leave you here a post I made that you might find interesting (or not.) http://bit.ly/q9cygl
I am closing this. Again. Was not adopted for Blacksburg.
Milestone Blacksburg 2012: On-site Materials Complete deleted
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