Addressing a Concern About Elections Q&A

Posted December 16, 2022

Hello, Kumo Fam,

On December 11, 2022, Kumoricon held its annual meeting of the membership which concluded with the live portion of our Q&A for membership-elected positions. During these elections, anonymous questions were asked during the Programming Q&A. These questions should not have been read during the election process as they clearly violated the following policy:

"Anonymous comments must be sponsored. Any member of the comment panel may volunteer to sponsor a submitted statement and read it anonymously. Sponsorship does not imply full agreement, but rather is a recognition that there is some value in reading the statement, and the sponsor may be challenged for the content of the statement. In deciding whether to sponsor a statement, the panel should consider whether factual claims are not sufficiently substantiated, whether the statement is excessively vitriolic, and whether the statement contains irrelevant or private details. The panel may require the submitter to amend the statement."

Our Staff and Attendee Services team is aware of this misconduct and will be working with the elections team and affected staff to determine why this was allowed to pass and how to prevent repeats of this situation in the future. The board would like to make it known though that this has happened and we would like to apologize.

We appreciate all of our staff, and want to promote productive dialogue during an election that questions and criticizes behaviors without resorting to attacking the character of our colleagues. This situation highlights that we still have work to do, and we are dedicated to making sure all of our staff feel supported, welcome, and included on our team.

Thank you,
The Kumoricon Board