That's not what "due process" actually is, though.
It's making sure you did what you're accused of, which is apparently what folk are worried about. (The phrase was in my head from one of Popehat's links from the article I mentioned, discussing a rape case which failed to convict because the prosecutors pressed the wrong charges, and the outrage from some people that the court didn't just convict anyway on the grounds that the accused had certainly done something).
I'm personally not concerned about a policy against "deliberate intimidation, stalking, following [...] sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention" because I think that those things are pretty clearly defined and obviously bad things.
I agree that "what if I happen to be walking in the same direction" is silly, although perhaps it shows that whoever said it really thinks the con security people are out to get them. The only reason I can think that someone might believe that is the large amount of outrage surrounding previous cases. If I'm con security, perhaps I now have an incentive to be more severe in case someone tweets about me?
I also, frankly, wouldn't expect my employer to look favourably on my turning up to a professional conference and making dick jokes in public, and I work for a university, not a business that needs to project a squeaky-clean corporate image.
Meh, it's an engineering get together. People make silly jokes and puns. I'm much more sanguine about "hehe, dongles" and "I'd fork his repository" than I would be about "I'd fork her repository" or the "I like it bare" comment which Richards refers to from earlier in the con (I'm sure I don't have to explain why the two sorts of joke aren't equivalent). It sounds like Richards taking out her frustration on Mr Dongle after those other nastier incidents (which more clearly merited Pycon's intervention). Of course, she didn't deserve what happened next: the other thing that stood out from the Mefi thread on that is that deploying Internet outrage in these marginal cases risks Mutually Assured Destruction.
The current case started out as a good HOWTO from elisem, where what the guy actually did was irrelevant. Once someone named the guy, in some places it has turned into outrage against the bad person (testimony, as you called it), at which point what he did becomes very relevant. I've seen a lot of threads mixing up these two things and saying it doesn't matter what he did.
Miscellaneous. Eclectic. Random. Perhaps markedly literate, or at least suffering from the compulsion to read any text that presents itself, including cereal boxes.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-05 05:53 pm (UTC)It's making sure you did what you're accused of, which is apparently what folk are worried about. (The phrase was in my head from one of Popehat's links from the article I mentioned, discussing a rape case which failed to convict because the prosecutors pressed the wrong charges, and the outrage from some people that the court didn't just convict anyway on the grounds that the accused had certainly done something).
I'm personally not concerned about a policy against "deliberate intimidation, stalking, following [...] sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention" because I think that those things are pretty clearly defined and obviously bad things.
I agree that "what if I happen to be walking in the same direction" is silly, although perhaps it shows that whoever said it really thinks the con security people are out to get them. The only reason I can think that someone might believe that is the large amount of outrage surrounding previous cases. If I'm con security, perhaps I now have an incentive to be more severe in case someone tweets about me?
I also, frankly, wouldn't expect my employer to look favourably on my turning up to a professional conference and making dick jokes in public, and I work for a university, not a business that needs to project a squeaky-clean corporate image.
Meh, it's an engineering get together. People make silly jokes and puns. I'm much more sanguine about "hehe, dongles" and "I'd fork his repository" than I would be about "I'd fork her repository" or the "I like it bare" comment which Richards refers to from earlier in the con (I'm sure I don't have to explain why the two sorts of joke aren't equivalent). It sounds like Richards taking out her frustration on Mr Dongle after those other nastier incidents (which more clearly merited Pycon's intervention). Of course, she didn't deserve what happened next: the other thing that stood out from the Mefi thread on that is that deploying Internet outrage in these marginal cases risks Mutually Assured Destruction.
The current case started out as a good HOWTO from elisem, where what the guy actually did was irrelevant. Once someone named the guy, in some places it has turned into outrage against the bad person (testimony, as you called it), at which point what he did becomes very relevant. I've seen a lot of threads mixing up these two things and saying it doesn't matter what he did.