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Comment by codesuela | Hacker News Reader

Are you seriously suggesting the code of conduct applies to PRIVATE conversations between TWO people who obviously know each other? It is not like they meant to offend somebody. I am assuming they weren't talking loudly but rather meant to converse between each other. How I talk to my buddy is no ones fucking business.

How about you tell your friend of of those an American, a Russian and a German walk into a bar jokes, someone overhears it, snaps a picture and announces to his twitter following what a xenophobic asshole you are?

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If it were private, it wouldn't have happened with people nearby to hear it and the photo wouldn't have depicted dozens of people surrounding.

So you're saying "private" is not in fact, well, "private". I grew up as a kid on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, in Eastern Europe, where as it happens walls had ears and "private" was not in fact "private". To see this stuff repeating 25 years later in the free world is scary.

How on earth can you expect privacy in a conversation that people literally cannot help but overhear? This was a crowd of people in an audience either waiting for or listening to a presentation.

Yes, that's right. A privately run conference asking attendees to behave professionally around other attendees is exactly like the KGB, and is a sure sign that we are sliding downward into totalitarianism.

Thank you -- all of these hate-laden comments are making me lose my mind.

This is going already too far, but anyway, here it goes. First of all, during the '80s (the time when I grew up) the KGB or the Securitate (the institution that was operating in my country) had already left their "harsh" methods behind, for the most part anyway, but they were instead operating through the peer pressure of those around you (friends, neighbors, strangers on the street, even close relatives).

More exactly, had you by chance happened to listen to Radio Free Europe or made negative comments about the fact that there was no meat for sale in the stores, some of those mentioned above might have just "snitched" you to the powers that be (the Securitate in my country's case). You weren't risking that much, "just" your day job (like one of the guys in this story) and probably also the roof above your kids' heads (now if you don't have a job and you can't pay mortgage/rent you're in the same situation). Like I said, maybe it didn't seem much from the outside, but it was enough.

All this because someone might have overheard you say something that wasn't abiding to the rules of the time. Yes, I do find the power to speak freely a little bit scary.

Obviously I'm not arguing that Richards behaved appropriately in publicly shaming them. I'm saying that they behaved inappropriately in making the joke in the first place, and that there's nothing scary or totalitarian about a privately run conference having a code of conduct asking people to act professionally.

Of course, the proper way to handle this would have been for Richards to talk to someone running the conference. They would have then gone to the people who were making the inappropriate jokes and asked them to remember that this was a professional environment, upon which apologies would have been given, and that would have been the end of it.

Of course it is! Either you're free to say anything or you're not free at all. There's no relativism here.

You are free to say anything, and the people who run the conference are free to ask you to leave.

If you're at my private property, am I free to kill you? It's the same thing, it just falls under another paragraph of the constitution (in most countries; America has exceptions where you are indeed free to do this, but this is another topic). Let's forget the law for a second; by group opinion, do they have the moral right to do this?

I'm squeamish about this "moral rights" concept which seems at odds with my general view of morality, but I'll run with it assuming a sort of vague "is this fair?" definition.

>If you're at my private property, am I free to kill you? It's the same thing

No, it's not even close to the same thing. I have the right to ask you to leave, regardless of whether you're on my private property. The difference is that if you're on my property, my request actually carries weight. Your being on my private property is a privilege that I can extend to you and later revoke. I cannot control what you say, but I can make your welcome at my property conditional upon what you say. And in general, you do not have a "moral right" to trespass[1].

I do not have the right to kill you, regardless of whether you're on my private property. They are not comparable ideas.

And yes, I think that in terms of fairness, a property owner generally has the right to ask anyone on her property to leave for just about any reason or no reason[2]. If you come to my house and start making dick jokes that I find distasteful, there is absolutely nothing wrong with me asking you to cut it out or leave. But I don't have the right to kill you.

[1] There are exceptions, of course, which is why I dislike talking about general moral rights. I'm sure you can craft some clever thought experiment that will trip up this general rule, which is one of the reasons I consider myself a utilitarian.

[2] see above

Actually, I agree that killing someone is not the same thing as asking someone to leave, I was just alluding to "freedom of speech" and the constitution.

If we're at your house, sure, of course morally I'd have to leave if you ask me to. But this isn't your house anymore when there is an entire group involved, as anyone that has ever thrown a party can confirm. Group morality is (sometimes unfortunately) the average of what the group believes it to be.

I think it's clear what this group thinks about who's wrong and who's right.

Anyways, thanks for the detailed reply :)

P.S. Yes, I do believe that morality can be made absolute and quantifiable - you have different characteristics (types of behavior) and different levels of agreement with them (say, from 0 for "YOU'RE GONNA BURN IN HELL", through 5 for "I don't care", to 10 for "I do this all the time!").

Exactly. If you're sitting in a restaurant eating with some acquaintances/friends, you shouldn't expect privacy there either. The table next to you can get offended with some random inside joke that includes the words "penis", "boob", or maybe even "yoga pants."

No jokes allowed unless you're wrapped in a Faraday cage filled in with sound proof material. None whatsoever.

That analogy is completely ridiculous. Restaurants are not venues that require customers to agree to a code of conduct barring inappropriate jokes. They're also not the kind of places where people are sitting quietly and near enough each other to hear jokes told quietly.

Python conventions are places where people can overhear my conversation, take pictures of me, and publicize them as personal accusations with impunity?

I've been to plenty of conferences and I haven't heard of this happening, except to politicians when they forget there are microphones and news reporters around.

This is why our society does, in fact, have a separate set of privacy rules for people classified as "public figures". So the rest of us can hang out and chat in comfort by assuming in all probability the absence of a news reporter or papparazi trying to play "gotcha" with a camera and microphone.

Let's keep the threads of argument separate here. On the one hand, we have the question of whether or not that joke was acceptable in that situation, and in the ancestor comment, danilocampos was arguing that it was not. I tend to agree.

Then there is the separate question of whether publicly shaming the person as Richards did was an acceptable response. I certainly do not think it was. But it's a separate issue.

You don't believe in "proportionate response"?

The degree of the reaction is completely separate from the degree of the offense?

Consider Oritz vs. Swartz.

I don't understand why you think I don't believe in proportionate response, based on my previous comment. The reaction by Richards was not an official reaction by the organizers of PyCon.

If a teenager shoplifts a stereo from a store, and a vigilante witnesses it and shoots him in the head, I think we can all still agree that the teenager was in the wrong. The fact that the vigilante was even more in the wrong doesn't change that.

Apologies to all teenagers, I know you're tired of being used to epitomize offenders all the time. I told you you'd regret that whole lawn incident.

Because the two offenses aren't separate in the other direction.

    Teenager [commits offense], vigilante witness shoots offender in the head.

Where [offense] is

    A. shoplifts stereo, vs

    B. shooting store employees and preparing to shoot innocent bystanders.

If (A) the vigilante is a murderer, if (B) he's a hero.

So the ethics of the teenager's action (A or B) can be evaluated on its own, but the REaction of the vigilante can only be judged in the context of the teenager's action. The two actions are not mutually independent. One action is independent, but the other is dependent.

If PyCon is one of these "venues that require customers to agree to a code of conduct barring inappropriate jokes", many people will consider whether it's a venue in which they feel safe.

Safe? Why would that make anyone feel unsafe?

Conventions--and especially "hallway conversations" at conventions--tend to be one of the places people traditionally have a social more for being "private even when it's not private" (think Las Vegas.) It is a social more of such places for people to treat any conversation happening around them which is not intended for their ears, as if it wasn't happening. Restaurants are another good example of such a place.

There are many things I can say to people, which they will themselves appreciate hearing, but which I would feel unsafe saying, say, on the record on a public message board. Usually, if one wants to say these things "in confidence", one doesn't find a truly private space (a closed and sealed room)--one just relies on the social-etiquette confidence of a place like a restaurant.

They were sitting in an audience with over ten people inside of ten feet. It doesn't matter how private you want your conversation to be, in that kind of setting you will be overheard and should act accordingly.

Whether they meant to offend people is irrelevant — its pretty clear that jokes w/ sexual innuendo in a public context isn't okay. Period.

Also, as others have said, this clearly wasn't a private situation. The whole problem with these jokes, even if not told directly to someone's face, is that they create a poisonous atmosphere.

>poisonous atmosphere

as opposed to publicly shaming someone without prior warning?

That's bad too, but I think the original point still stands.

I'm sorry, it's not clear to me. I do not think that there's something inherently sexist in sexual innuendo, or that it somehow isn't OK when among adults (and even if there's kids, they likely won't understand it - that's the beauty of innuendo).

What's private about a conversation being held in a crowd?

> Are you seriously suggesting the code of conduct applies to PRIVATE conversations between TWO people who obviously know each other?

She was speaking to one of the two people. Further, judging by the description which has only been supported, it was not a "private" conversation between two people.

In my workplace, we migh say that someone has a tiny dick and its a very light joke that every laughs about.

You're doing a bit of mental gymnastics here, especially with your last example. Obviously, you're concerned with your security and comfortability, but you're taking it out of context.

Indeed, if I tell a hilarious racist joke as you've mentioned around the wrong people, it is very likely there will be a commotion that will get me removed from the setting. Even more so, the same wrong people might post it to their personal feed, announcing that you are, as you portrayed yourself, a xenophobic asshole. Now, if your boss happens to read that stream and hear that codesuela is a xenophobic asshole, they might decide to terminate you.

Your argument is that it wasn't meant to offend anybody. But it did, so that's out of play. You also seem to assume that they weren't talking loudly and somehow Adria was simply eavesdropping on them, which is just speculation on your part. While I agree that how you talk to your buddy is no one's business, that doesn't mean you're now exempt from being called out because it was meant to be private.

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