This isn't the stock market. Past behavior is an indicator of present/future behavior. It's not the only indicator, certainly, but when a large number of people are telling you the same thing, then you have a responsibility to discover why that is.

The organizer's reaction made it sound like he had reservations about inviting this person, due to older reports similar to the author's.

>Past behavior is an indicator of present/future behavior.

But a pretty bad one. I wouldn't mind if a murderer would give talk (if it was good). And not about the murdering, but about let's say ReiserFS.

I'm willing to bet you had bowel control problems until a certain age, and I wonder if I can use that as an indicator of future behavior. There are reliable witnesses, after all.

Not sure why you're being downvoted for this, it's spot-on. Accusations, no matter how credible, do not indicate guilt.

All the more reason to have a well thought-out policy in place for how to deal with a potentially explosive situation.

If a conference wants to have a policy governing the actions of their attendees whilst at the conference, wonderful. If a conference thinks they have any right to govern the actions of people who happen to be attendees whilst not at the conference, then they can go pound sand.

It's sad that this woman was apparently treated so poorly, but there's no possible way for a conference to write a legally-binding code of conduct for how people spend their social lives outside of that conference. It's utter nonsense to even consider it.

The policy governs how the conference will react to situations like this - that's what it's there for, so there are procedures in place when something happens. By thinking it out ahead of time, it helps to avoid mistakes made in the heat of the moment.

The policy does not need to be legally binding, just very clear of the consequences, and they can make clear what will happen if they get a complaint about you.

Can I please get your full name and the list of conferences you plan to attend to further your career ?

Don't worry, in no way am I going to abuse this information to make baseless complaints against you. All my complaints will be solidly based on malice.

I'll repeat myself to ease your fear of the rabid hordes of malignant women who want to make your life miserable: "they can make clear what will happen if they get a complaint about you."

Of course what will happen from a complaint should take malignancy in consideration and offer at least some kind of right to respond to offenders.

>I'll repeat myself to ease your fear of the rabid hordes of malignant women who want to make your life miserable: "they can make clear what will happen if they get a complaint about you."

Can be paraphrased to apply to "rabid hordes of adulterous men who want to make your life miserable". Better ?

I'm just pointing out that for people discussing how to best setup procedures for handling deviant behaviour, you sure assume only perfectly honest people would come to use said procedures. If you assume p% of possible culpability for the accused, shouldn't you assume the same for the accuser ? Otherwise, you are just discriminating against the accused.

This is a hard problem society as large has not solved yet - witness both the huge cost of false negatives (unreported offenses) and false positives (false accusations). I'm just skeptical a conference organiser will correctly solve this between two round of emails.

Oh sure, he can publish a boilerplate "we take all complaints very seriously" policy. I predict we'll see them appear at most tech conferences shortly.

Of course it's a hard problem. (And I've never assumed perfect honesty on either part. It seems you just read what you wanted to read to make your point.)

What I'm claiming is that policies ARE needed, the current "hmm, what should I do now?" policy is the worst policy of them all, because improvised decisions aren't usually the best ones.

Such a policy can any policy, from "yes, we believe all women, be them malignant or not, and we'll ban you on the first offense" up to "I don't care what you people do outside of the venue, you should call the cops (here's the number) if you have a problem." It's important to know where the organizer stands to take your pick. There might even be a niche for "female-friendly conferences" that will by definition have harsher policies on the issue.

The conference gets to invite whoever they want. It's a private event, and they can set any conditions they choose for attendance. They can indeed write that policy and enforce it by revoking access. As far as I know the only US limits are when you're excluding a group legally protected from discrimination.

Except that others have done so?

Unless it involves a trial by jury, I don't think it's fair to ban people based on it.

Trial by jury is a mechanism we use to limit the actions of the state, to make sure its power over individuals is fairly applied.

In the US, people are generally free to associate with whomever they want. That includes the right to not associate with people. If a bar owner or a conference organizer wants to throw somebody out, that's perfectly within their rights unless they've contracted otherwise. Equally, patrons are welcome to their business elsewhere if they choose.