I love the idea of being "professional" on an open-source volunteers project: put on a mask during the work day, and keep your mask at night. Then read articles and watch movies about "being yourself", "finding your inner self" and stuff like that all day long. When the dissonance is too great, your mind break and it's depression, gun violence (in the US), suicide etc.
Yes, you should be professional, the same way you'd probably be respectful at a dinner party that occurred outside of work hours. This is about as puritanical as a coffee shop that prevents you from bringing a guitar and amplifier in and playing loud riffs at 4pm. If you want to remove your mask then please, feel free to do so, but maybe find a more appropriate environment for letting loose than the Django community forums.
Also, really? The idea that asking people on Django-hosted channels to "be respectful" will lead to gun violence is pretty out there.
I have a difficult time with the phrase "professional." I used to think it had some meaning. Now I think it's a code word for "don't do things that the managers/organizers don't like."
Can I wear a pony suit to work and be professional? What about at DjangoCon? What about wearing shorts and sandals? In some places they are acceptable, in others they are not. Does that make them professional or not? So it seems like DjangoCon allows certain types of non-professional conduct.
Is it professional to drink alcohol while at work in most programming companies? What about taking a nap during someone's presentation? I don't think so. Is the same true for DjangoCon? I don't think so. I've done both at conferences, and people knew about it, and no one seemed to have a problem with it. I've seen others do the same.
There's another meaning of "professional", which is to do quality work, and be responsible for any errors that occurred. I don't think this is the type of "professional" that people mean. I've not seen anyone kicked out or even chided by the organizers for presenting a lousy and unprofessional presentation.
As to the coffee shop example, that can be judged without reference to respect. The goal of a coffee shop is to sell coffee. They have broad discretion as to what they think is the way of achieving that goal. This is based on property law. If they don't want you to play loud riffs at 4pm then they don't have to claim there was disrespect, only that it's unwanted, and they can use the credible threat of police response to back their demand that you leave.
The neighbors also have some say in the matter. Loud music might be prohibited, and your amp is turned up too high. Again, "respect" doesn't factor into this at all.
But for a dinner party, or for Django, I don't think it's possible to have a good definition of "professional" or "respectful." It comes down to the vague "don't do things that we don't like, otherwise we'll kick you out." Using "professional" just makes it sound more objective.
I didn't address the last remark, it's not a direct relation.
It's the same stuff the other way around: a small sexist joke (or to rely on the news, a joke about penis) doesn't lead to violence against women or lower salary for them at work. It's accumulation, generalization that leads to that.
"being respectful" is entirely contextual, subject to trends (as with this code of conduct), to cultural bias, and can be tweaked to mean whatever you want to say at the moment and place.
If the "real you" is a douchebag nobody wants to deal with, then, yes, it is probably for the best that it is clearly laid out for the entire community that nobody wants to deal with it and you need to act better.
