> Insult is taken, not given. You can't decide what insults me, the same as I can't decide what insults you. By that token, anyone can claim that anything anyone says is insulting to them.
Agreed, and because the conference organizers wield the power to decide who speaks (or to implement deciding in some fashion), they can choose how the insult they're referring to is measured and responded to. For example, it could be by committee, etc..
I'm disappointed if, regardless of their belief on what constitutes insulting behavior, they didn't put forth at least some effort to see if Crockford could meet their standards.
> Does that mean I have the ability to say "NPM's dependency management is so poor quality it's insulting" and have any talk about NPM banned?
You can say that, and organize a conference that bans talk about NPM. As long as your were upfront about it, I'd be fine with it--just sounds like the trappings of a bad conference. If you invited a speaker, only to realize that they were planning to talk about NPM (say you hadn't made your contingency clear), then hopefully you would check if they would drop talk about NPM. If you found out that someone had talked about NPM at a previous conference, and so removed them from your conference without doing the above, I would be disappointed in you, too ;).
> Making rules like "don't be sexist" means that to prevent someone coming, you have to show that the person was in fact being sexist.
I'm not sure if you're saying that, to you, nothing in his behavior appears sexist. I was trying to think of the issue of what to do after / assuming they believed he had acted inappropriately in the past.
Agreed, and because the conference organizers wield the power to decide who speaks (or to implement deciding in some fashion), they can choose how the insult they're referring to is measured and responded to. For example, it could be by committee, etc..
I'm disappointed if, regardless of their belief on what constitutes insulting behavior, they didn't put forth at least some effort to see if Crockford could meet their standards.
> Does that mean I have the ability to say "NPM's dependency management is so poor quality it's insulting" and have any talk about NPM banned?
You can say that, and organize a conference that bans talk about NPM. As long as your were upfront about it, I'd be fine with it--just sounds like the trappings of a bad conference. If you invited a speaker, only to realize that they were planning to talk about NPM (say you hadn't made your contingency clear), then hopefully you would check if they would drop talk about NPM. If you found out that someone had talked about NPM at a previous conference, and so removed them from your conference without doing the above, I would be disappointed in you, too ;).
> Making rules like "don't be sexist" means that to prevent someone coming, you have to show that the person was in fact being sexist.
I'm not sure if you're saying that, to you, nothing in his behavior appears sexist. I was trying to think of the issue of what to do after / assuming they believed he had acted inappropriately in the past.