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[Cheetah]

• Are you allowed to wear a sleeper (sometimes called a onesie) in the public area of the convention (including ones with "babyish" designs)?
• Are you allowed to suck on a pacifier in a public area of the convention?
• Are you allowed to display a clip-on pacifier on apparel in a public area of the convention?

Yes, I understand perfectly what you are suggesting.

[Dhary Montecore]

Of course there is a difference between the statement and the application of the rules.

From my experience at ConFuzzled, I've seen a few attendees in the past wearing sleepers and pacifiers with no problem (walking around in an exposed diaper would probably be frowned upon though). And the wording in their CoC is exactly the same.

As Chief of Security for ConFuzlled I have to state that this is NOT true and IF it ever happened it was overlooked by my team by accident.

I would cite the example of the Cfz weapons policy as an example where a rule revision really helped. As it was a Medieval theme, the staff anticipated many people would want to bring imitation weapons. As a result, they revised the rules on them to make them more specific and clear, and people were generally happy about it.

Yes, It was me who wrote the weapons guide and I introduced it 1:1 at EF and CFz. It is a GUIDELINE, not a change in rules. All weapons have to be checked in with the security upon arrival as all the years before. BUT I do get your point. It might be a good idea to make such a guideline on fetish gear in public areas as well, just as a courtesy and service to our attendees. Thank you for that suggestion! :3

[AliothFox]

I have been very public on Twitter in my responses to this drama.  Let me explain my take on the matter.

I think the main reason the drama spiraled out of control is because of the things that a few of the staff members said, "in the heat of the moment," as Cheetah said.  However, the one thing that caught my attention is when he said, "On twitter, single tweets are often taken out of context and being passed around with comments making them appear to be a huge thing that they really weren't. A lot of very wrong things have been said by various people in the heat of the moment, and that was certainly a mistake - but in many cases, these tweets look a lot less political and more like the actual personal emotional response they were in the original context of an ongoing personal argument between a few very agitated private parties."

The tweet in question said, "Go suffocate yourself with a diaper," followed by epithets that I won't repeat here out of politeness.  Now, I think (I HOPE) everyone here can agree that there is no possible context that would make such a statement acceptable, under any circumstances.  That is where the line was crossed, and the initial post of this thread really doesn't seem to respond to that.  It says, in essence, "Our staff acted wrongly, but you should have known better than to provoke them."  At the risk of using political buzzwords, that sounds a lot like victim-blaming.  No matter what was said to the staff member in question, his response - whether on an official EF channel or on his own channel - was completely over the line.  When he wished death on his critic, it moved beyond merely heated - and even, I'll admit, verbally abusive - dialogue.  The babyfur community is not blameless in this, but it was the Eurofurence staff who allowed what should have been a simple matter of clarification to turn into an ugly brawl that resulted in the tweet in question.

And the reason it turned into the public frenzy is because those concerns have not been substantially addressed.  You said, "We're very sorry."  Great! You should be. It got out of hand, and it's good that you recognize that. But what is being done to correct it?  The official response is very vague.  Re-writing social media guidelines and re-assigning responsibilities are not particularly clear.  You said you were "re-assigning responsibilities."  Can you clarify what this means?

Now, the other matter that I'm concerned about is the fact that EF seems to have taken the position of, "We can only address the issues that happened on EF's official channel."  Perhaps not in those exact words, but that seems to be the general attitude.  And that is part of the problem.  The tweet that was mentioned previously is a prime example of that - and Eurofurence has not done anything to address how WRONG that tweet was.  It did not happen on EF's official channel, but it did happen, it directly concerns EF's staff in relation to EF, and it was very public.  There are numerous screenshots on Twitter reflecting this. 

This was a public mistake, and it deserves a public apology with no strings attached.  Let me say this very plainly so that there is no mistaking or word-twisting: The rules and policies may have been what started this scandal, but they are not the main issue.  You've clarified the rules.  You have settled a lot of those questions.  What you have not done is made any admission that the staff acted inappropriately.  It was a "sorry, not sorry" response.  Have the responsible parties been relieved of their duties?  Will they be personally made to apologize for the tweets in question?  This cannot be handled "behind the scenes" because that's not where the tweets occurred.  At this point, the damage is done, and you have lost what will likely be a substantial number of attendees - continuing to take the, "Those tweets were inappropriate, but it's your fault for provoking them" position is not going to be helpful.  A sincere apology, however - with no strings attached, and with a clear, detailed (not vague, as this one is) plan of what will be done both to prevent this from happening in the future and to redress the specific grievance in question may do something to help you recover the tarnished reputation.

[Tsanawo]

Just to be clear, these views are my stance and my stance only, I do not speak for any other staff members nor EuroFurence in general.

Will they be personally made to apologize for the tweets in question?

I certainly hope not, the moment I will be forced to apologize for anything I wrote in my personal Twitter timeline, how outrageous it might be, is the moment I resign from staff.

[Dhary Montecore]

Just to be clear, these views are my stance and my stance only, I do not speak for any other staff members nor EuroFurence in general.

Will they be personally made to apologize for the tweets in question?

I certainly hope not, the moment I will be forced to apologize for anything I wrote in my personal Twitter timeline, how outrageous it might be, is the moment I resign from staff.

I absolutely agree. I saw the tweet-conversation in question and I agree it was completely out of line, but so has been the entire conversation. This entire convention is based on the countless hours of VOLUNTEER work. Even if we wanted to we couldn't force PRIVATE people to apologise (or to anything for that matter) for what they have said on their PRIVATE twitter. The moment we would do that we would lose our staff and the con would be over for far more than 2000 people that have nothing to do nor care about this twitter drama.

You might overestimate the amount of support the agitators in this drama have amongst our attendees.

The consequences taken are clear and stated in the public statement: We WILL make sure that no offensive tweets/answers will be posted on our official twitter account again and we will establish a purely professional PR system to avoid such escalations in future.

Again, we are very sorry for the emotionally stained tweets that have been made in response to some of the tweets thrown at EF.  

[AliothFox]

Just to be clear, these views are my stance and my stance only, I do not speak for any other staff members nor EuroFurence in general.

Will they be personally made to apologize for the tweets in question?

I certainly hope not, the moment I will be forced to apologize for anything I wrote in my personal Twitter timeline, how outrageous it might be, is the moment I resign from staff.

I absolutely agree. I saw the tweet-conversation in question and I agree it was completely out of line, but so has been the entire conversation. This entire convention is based on the countless hours of VOLUNTEER work. Even if we wanted to we couldn't force PRIVATE people to apologise (or to anything for that matter) for what they have said on their PRIVATE twitter. The moment we would do that we would lose our staff and the con would be over for far more than 2000 people that have nothing to do nor care about this twitter drama.

You might overestimate the amount of support the agitators in this drama have amongst our attendees.

The consequences taken are clear and stated in the public statement: We WILL make sure that no offensive tweets/answers will be posted on our official twitter account again and we will establish a purely professional PR system to avoid such escalations in future.

Again, we are very sorry for the emotionally stained tweets that have been made in response to some of the tweets thrown at EF.  

And you continue to call the victims the "agitators of the drama."  This view only reinforces the lack of professionalism.  I'm not here to stir up drama.  I'm here to address legitimate grievances.  If I were to tweet on my timeline in a public way (yes, the tweets in question were public - the account in question has SINCE been made private, but it wasn't at the time) about my employers/organizers, I would be relieved of my responsibilities, and rightfully so.  If I were to wish death on another person in such a public way, I would be fired/relieved from any position I held - and rightfully so.  Anything less is tacit endorsement of that position.

[Ralphie Raccoon]

As Chief of Security for ConFuzlled I have to state that this is NOT true and IF it ever happened it was overlooked by my team by accident.

It was while the Con was at the Britannia, so some years ago. It was also on the last day after the closing ceremony, but security were still present. They had a little get together near the nightclub. It may have been before your time, I don't know when you joined. There were sleepers and "kiddie" clothes, and a few pacis around necks. No exposed diapers, as you'd expect. Quite discreet, really. Trust me, it happened, as a couple of them are good friends of mine. Nobody seemed bothered. Personally I don't think such things are an issue, after all, I've seen worse things at fancy dress parties in nightclubs(!), but of course I don't make the rules.

And Thankyou for accepting my suggestion! At least then if anything, if someone wears something specific that is banned you have something to cite that will prevent a dispute. Saves a whole lot of bother if you can just point to a list! 

[Tsanawo]

I think we're using two different meaning of private which confused the conversation a bit.
1. Private as in personal
2. Private as in protected.

To avoid confusion is it possible to use either personal or protected instead of private in both cases. This might help clear up some miscommunication.

[AliothFox]

I think we're using two different meaning of private which confused the conversation a bit.
1. Private as in personal
2. Private as in protected.

To avoid confusion is it possible to use either personal or protected instead of private in both cases. This might help clear up some miscommunication.

To clarify, then.  The tweet in question was made from a personal account.  The account was NOT protected at the time the tweet was made, but it has since been switched to protected.

[Dhary Montecore]

And you continue to call the victims the "agitators of the drama."  This view only reinforces the lack of professionalism.  I'm not here to stir up drama.  I'm here to address legitimate grievances.  If I were to tweet on my timeline in a public way (yes, the tweets in question were public - the account in question has SINCE been made private, but it wasn't at the time) about my employers/organizers, I would be relieved of my responsibilities, and rightfully so.  If I were to wish death on another person in such a public way, I would be fired/relieved from any position I held - and rightfully so.  Anything less is tacit endorsement of that position.

You are measuring a volunteer organisation by commercial standards. This does not work. And yes, I am talking about the agitators. Those that sparked the entire drama by very personal and insulting tweets. I do NOT talk about the babyfur community or those (more than 80%) of the participants of the conversations that argued in a calm and respectable manner. This entire escalation is based on a few known agitators and the very emotional and unprofessional response they got. Our response is not to be excused but so are the original tweets.

Again, we are a volunteer organisation, we are NOT paid, we pay ourselves. So please do not try to force a convention organisation into a commercial companies frame.

[Dhary Montecore]

As Chief of Security for ConFuzlled I have to state that this is NOT true and IF it ever happened it was overlooked by my team by accident.

It was while the Con was at the Britannia, so some years ago. It was also on the last day after the closing ceremony, but security were still present. They had a little get together near the nightclub. It may have been before your time, I don't know when you joined. There were sleepers and "kiddie" clothes, and a few pacis around necks. No exposed diapers, as you'd expect. Quite discreet, really. Trust me, it happened, as a couple of them are good friends of mine. Nobody seemed bothered. Personally I don't think such things are an issue, after all, I've seen worse things at fancy dress parties in nightclubs(!), but of course I don't make the rules.

And Thankyou for accepting my suggestion! At least then if anything, if someone wears something specific that is banned you have something to cite that will prevent a dispute. Saves a whole lot of bother if you can just point to a list! 

You're most welcome! It is not that we don't see the issue. The Problem is, that this topic is very emotionally charged on both sides. Things will be rectified, promise. But this does only work in a constructive dialog. Suggestions like yours are highly valuable and always help to improve things for everyone instead of trying to gain personal benefits. So thank you again!

Regarding ConFuzzled: In this case you are absolutely right. I took over after the Britannia-Years and I reworked the CoC only then. :3

[AliothFox]

And you continue to call the victims the "agitators of the drama."  This view only reinforces the lack of professionalism.  I'm not here to stir up drama.  I'm here to address legitimate grievances.  If I were to tweet on my timeline in a public way (yes, the tweets in question were public - the account in question has SINCE been made private, but it wasn't at the time) about my employers/organizers, I would be relieved of my responsibilities, and rightfully so.  If I were to wish death on another person in such a public way, I would be fired/relieved from any position I held - and rightfully so.  Anything less is tacit endorsement of that position.

You are measuring a volunteer organisation by commercial standards. This does not work. And yes, I am talking about the agitators. Those that sparked the entire drama by very personal and insulting tweets. I do NOT talk about the babyfur community or those (more than 80%) of the participants of the conversations that argued in a calm and respectable manner. This entire escalation is based on a few known agitators and the very emotional and unprofessional response they got. Our response is not to be excused but so are the original tweets.

Again, we are a volunteer organisation, we are NOT paid, we pay ourselves. So please do not try to force a convention organisation into a commercial companies frame.

I don't feel like this discussion is likely to be productive any further.  You are blaming "known agitators" while defending/ignoring the larger issue at hand.  A forced apology is no apology.  At this point, the damage is done, as the babyfur community (which accounts for a much larger percentage of the furry fandom than you seem to be aware of) will likely encourage its members and their friends to simply not go.  Time will tell.

[Cheetah]

(Edit: This took a long time to write, so while I typed this, about 10 other replies have been posted. That means, this reply is completely ignorant of them. Please keep that in mind when reading.)

The tweet in question said, "Go suffocate yourself with a diaper," followed by epithets that I won't repeat here out of politeness.  Now, I think (I HOPE) everyone here can agree that there is no possible context that would make such a statement acceptable, under any circumstances.

Well, the tweet he responded to said "You're using retarded shit logic that just because you are outside of Germany, you haven't registerd for EF, fucking idiot", and was subsequently called a Nazi.
I hope you can agree that there is also no possible context that would make such a statement acceptable?

Really, it's a moot point to score the insults and then declare a winner and a loser. Doco has no representative function within the staff, and he was personally attacked on his personal account, it's his own right to free speech. Yes, he got a stern talk, because we really did not enjoy having to cope with the extra provocation that caused, but you can't go and privately insult volunteers, and then expect them to react like salespeople. We disagree with what he said, we apologized as an organisation, but we're not going to enact a sacrificial ritual on the basis that the mob demands blood. Figuratively speaking, of course.

What I find more embarassing, and what I'm way more sorry for is what happened on our official twitter account. That's a place where you should be able to expect factual, professional and level headed answers, and that is the part that I feel responsible for. As you might have read in our declaration above, twitter responsibilities and policies will change so that won't happen again.

The official response is very vague.  Re-writing social media guidelines and re-assigning responsibilities are not particularly clear.  You said you were "re-assigning responsibilities."  Can you clarify what this means?

It means that different people will handle the twitter account than before, there will be a hierarchy, and a clear policy how we will communicate via twitter.The current draft of the new policy provides for a new twitter PR team lead, a procedure how the different departments can provide content to be posted, and formal communication guidelines - like author tags, and rules such as that the account will be for informative purposes only, and will not take part in discussions.  It does not get more concrete than that, because it takes a few days to organize this, and also to find new volunteers for the new positions.

Now, the other matter that I'm concerned about is the fact that EF seems to have taken the position of, "We can only address the issues that happened on EF's official channel."

First of all, we have about 200 volunteers, and I can not expect them to always act in a representative way, especially not when they are personally being attacked. Each of them are entitled to their own opinions. The board of directors and maybe the senior staff are an exception of that. That's why it makes a difference whether doco says something on twitter, or I say something on twitter.

But, to use your own way of reasoning, you seem to have taken the position of, "They made a mistake, and that means they are not allowed to defend themselves against any kind of retaliation."

Look, if you want to criticise me personally, then please take it to me personally and we can talk about it. Or address the Organisation that I am representing. That is fine. What people however did was, take screenshots from pretty much everything I said on my protected private account, put them on caricatures, and made them go viral with THEIR own spin attached to it.

When I said, "If crapping your pants in public is a requirement for you we have a conflict of interest", that is literally what I wanted to say. (It implies, that if it is not a requirement, we do not have a conflict of interest, by the way.)

I was subtweeting as a reaction to someone complaining about a (non-existing) "diaper ban" and how EF would be totally ruined for him if he wasn't allowed to wear them in public. And since he clearly implied a fetish background, and not a medical one, I was quite angry. First of all because wearing a diaper is only a problem when it's "blatant display", and the rules say so quite prominently. And secondly because, if you don't have a medical condition, why ELSE would you want to wear one in public?

Some people apparently WANTED to spin that into "Cheetah thinks, all babyfurs crap their pants in public", and so they did. Which I, by the way, totally clarified in subsequent tweets, which mysteriously never made it into any screenshots.

A lot of the outrage is fabricated, and I know exactly by whom.

I know what I said was totally not politically correct, and if I had know what I would cause, I wouldn't have tweeted it.

I am sorry for everyone who I unintentionally offended by it.

Have the responsible parties been relieved of their duties?

If you want to have me relieved from my duties, you'll have to convince the members of the Eurofurence e.V. (the legal entity behind Eurofurence) to call for an extraordinary general meeting, and vote for the removal of their chairman. Everyone can become a member. You, too. I dare you to do it. Take responsibility, and in return you get the power to change. Despite all mistakes I made, the last thing I will do is give in to an angry mob. Sorry, but not sorry.

We could let doco go. But what would that change. It would be just a meaningless ritual. He's already not in a representative position, so that would not change. And the only two jobs we could let him go from are posting travel information tweets once a month, and helping sort badges behind the reg counter.  On the other hand he's been in our team for 18 years. You don't fire someone who's been with you for so long, and who is generally a good person. We're going to handle this internally. You will have to trust us on this one.

[AliothFox]

As I said, I did not come here to start drama.  I came here to clarify why people were upset, and to seek a redress for it.  I was denied that redress, so at this point, it is out of my hands.  If the things I've said before have not made matters clear, I see no sense in repeating myself.  If you would like to put some sort of "spin" on that, that's your prerogative.

At this point, I will not be attending EF in the future, and I will be encouraging others - babyfur and non-babyfur - to do the same.  Your responses to my points have made some things clearer - and I sincerely thank you for that - while leaving others unaddressed.  I'm not some sort of appointed representative for the babyfur community; I'm just trying to help EF understand the reasons why people are upset, which I have apparently failed to do.

[Cheetah]

(To all staffers feeling the urge to flame here: I appreciate your loyalty, but you're not helping the cause right now. Moderation is in effect.)