ETetangent·Sep 6, 2016
At this point, it would be desirable if people started actively boycotting Nodevember. I understand that quite many individuals in the Node community may be in favor of the decision to exclude Crockford, but I also suspect that there is a significant amount of people (if judging only by the responses in this thread) who very much dislike that decision. A concerted effort to boycott the conference, even if done by a minority, would set a precedent and send a very clear message that such arbitrarily rude behavior on the part of the organizers will not be tolerated in future events like this.
A boycott would also pressure the organizers to either "put up or shut up" regarding the evidence surrounding Crockford's dismissal. There is a very good chance [1] that this is a personal vendetta happening rather than any ethical misdeed done on Crock
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ford's part. If so, a move to boycott the conference would benefit not only the liberal side, but also the "politically correct" (for lack of better words) side, as nobody is interested that their political movement be hijacked by people seeking personal/egotistic goals [2]. If, on the other hand, Crockford was indeed dismissed due to political motives, there is still a decent chance that the evidence against him is extremely weak (hence reluctance to present it). Such a situation would also benefit both sides, in the sense that it would teach them a valuable lesson that persecuting people is not something that should be undertaken lightly.
There are other JavaScript conferences happening this year [3]. Go to those instead. Encourage your friends to do the same.
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[1] See Tim Hunt's case for an example of a similar situation where the evidence against an individual later turned out to be mostly made up of thin air. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-timothy-hunt... [2] Per conversation with the organizer, he had admitted to having "a long and storied history" with D. Crockford, which further corroborates the possibility of personal vendetta. https://twitter.com/getify/status/772413034773909504 [3] https://github.com/prigara/javascript-conferences