Reading up on it (severely after the fact admittedly) I found it hard to work out what the problem was. As far as I can tell no-one was involved against their will, and those involved were not put under any obligations.
If everyone involved was consenting adults how did it become a ‘fiasco?’ Did people simply object aesthetically to it happening in the places they were, or were there plans to expand it in some seemingly detrimental way?
The latter—the drama wasn’t due to the original event, but due to the suggestion that it be formalized as an Event for the next year. Which, for reasons which were elaborated in many places, would likely have not been successful.
As for why doing the project again would have been a mistake, asking people for consent is not a cost-free thing, and many such events work far better with fewer participants for reasons both obvious and subtle.
The real mistake theferret made was posting about this on the internet. I was involved in a discussion about the OSBP on the xkcd forums when the post happened, and was amazed by the degree of misunderstanding and overreaction among people condemning it. That was the sort of reaction theferret should have seen coming, and kept the project an invite-by-referral thing rather than a public recruiting thing.
Reading up on it (severely after the fact admittedly) I found it hard to work out what the problem was. As far as I can tell no-one was involved against their will, and those involved were not put under any obligations.
If everyone involved was consenting adults how did it become a ‘fiasco?’ Did people simply object aesthetically to it happening in the places they were, or were there plans to expand it in some seemingly detrimental way?
The latter—the drama wasn’t due to the original event, but due to the suggestion that it be formalized as an Event for the next year. Which, for reasons which were elaborated in many places, would likely have not been successful.
But even then, if all participants are consenting adults, who could grope each other infromally anyway, who cares?
As for why doing the project again would have been a mistake, asking people for consent is not a cost-free thing, and many such events work far better with fewer participants for reasons both obvious and subtle.
The real mistake theferret made was posting about this on the internet. I was involved in a discussion about the OSBP on the xkcd forums when the post happened, and was amazed by the degree of misunderstanding and overreaction among people condemning it. That was the sort of reaction theferret should have seen coming, and kept the project an invite-by-referral thing rather than a public recruiting thing.
The event as proposed did not control sufficiently for “consenting”. (Or “adult”, for that matter.) That was the exact problem, in fact.