confcodeofconduct.com

confcodeofconduct.com copied to clipboard

I intended to make the policy clearer on certain details and use more powerful language. I also made certain parts of the policy focus more on actions than intent because actions are a more concrete, less ambiguous, and less abusable type of language to base a policy off of. I also edited some parts to add the adjective off-topic to the rules about sexual content because certain topics require discussion of sexual issues. As well, I switched a few parts to use abuse instead of harassment because it's shorter and more impactful and also because of semantic satiation.

I think the biggest change was in:

Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

where I removed a whole list of things that offensive verbal comments could be about, reordered actions by approximate seriousness and added a few types of things that harassment could be. I removed the list of possible offensive topics because I felt that the list could never be complete and that the actual topic itself is beside the point, the reason why offensive comments are bad is not because they hurt people's feelings but because the language is not intended to serve a constructive purpose but only to hurt people and also because the comments are off-topic for the conference.