One quibble: Even if one continues to think of conventions as a party for friends, throwing out someone who is harassing other guests — or starting fights, or breaking house rules, or otherwise ruining the good time that was to be had by all — remains the sensible, rational, reasonable, proportional response.

Direct comparisons between WorldCon and Dragon*Con strike me as beside the point. Dragon*Con is at least five different conventions at once–a comics con, an anime con, a film & TV pop-culture con, a gaming con, and, deep down the chain of interest, a fannish f&sf convention. Now, as a gamer and a comics fan, I have no objection to those–my first real convention was a GenCon, and my second was a HerosCon–but they’re very different animals from fannish f&sf conventions. The question on the table is not, I think, “How do we make fannish f&sf conventions bigger?”, but “How do we make them safer and more inviting to the people who want to attend fannish f&sf conventions?”.

I’m not actively involved in running conventions any more, although I do still volunteer. When I did run conventions I made it clear that the conventions I ran were for people who liked the sort of conventions I ran. If you like my conventions you are welcome. If you don’t then please stay away and make both of us happier.

If you want to run a convention as a business then feel free. The solution to getting the type of convention you want is to run it yourself. Existing conventions are under no obligation to change to suit your tastes. You aren’t paying the concom, money actually flows the other way – unless the con really is run as a business.

Of course Rose’s post wasn’t advocating *actually* running conventions as for-profit businesses but rather was using the business/customer model as a guide to keeping conventions safe.

I’m also quite disturbed by your urging conventions to think more along business lines. To me this leads to the end of conventions as I know them, because if you actually think about it that way, you realize you’re wasting your time. The only way I can justify my work on conventions (which has been extensive over the years) is as my contribution to the communities I value that intersect there.

None of which is directly relevant to handling harassment issues, I don’t think. But it does mean many of your arguments for why it’s beneficial to do better are like fingernails on a blackboard to me — when I generally agree with you that we haven’t historically been that good at handling it.

One point where we DO agree and that I think is VERY important is that we are not well set up (and, I might add, not legally authorized) to perform investigations, “trials”, and so forth. And we shouldn’t be; we should instead avoid that, taking administrative actions on memberships where necessary but leaving the heavy lifting to the legal authorities.

If anyone wants to prevent someone else from attending a convention then the proper response is to go to court and take out a restraining order.

I absolutely agree with the need to show that science fiction fandom stands against harassment. But I have a question about one of your points here.

What do you see as the advantage of a “focus on conventions as businesses providing services, and on convention attendees as customers” rather than, say, the model of a convention as a party, at which all of the attendees are welcome guests? A party host needs to design the party to allow/assure the happiness and safely of all of the guests, both in the hopes that they will be happy and in the hopes of having them return to the next party. I don’t see that the model of business/customer is any more likely to assure equality of concern for the happiness of all present than party/guests would.

Quite the contrary, in fact–I think that a business/customer model would tend to leave conventions in the habit of valuing the “customers” they already know and ignoring the customers they don’t know. Well, tend *even more strongly*–conventions do that already. You know, the way that businesses do. Think about how bars fight against smoking bans, because they are only aware of the customers who were willing to put up with smoke and are unaware of the customers who want to find a smoke-free environment.

Party hosts will favor the people they know the best. Businesses will favor the customers they value the most. If William Q. Professional is harassing the “paying customers”, as a business owner I’m going to have to make a calculation about whether Bill attracts more “customers” than he drives off. Sometimes I’m going to make that decision wrong. But if I’m a party host and one of my closer circle of friends harasses someone I don’t know as well, I don’t have to think about what’s best for the business; I have to think about human decency.

I say this not as someone who knows the answers. You think this change in perspective would be helpful, and it’s something you’ve obviously put some thought into. I’m wondering what I’m missing.