Just got the following email in my inbox<p>Dear members of the Neural Information Processing Systems community,<p>Something remarkable has happened in our community. The name NeurIPS has sprung up organically as an alternative acronym, and we’re delighted to see it being adopted. Indeed, one forward-thinking member of the community purchased neurips.com and described the site’s purpose as “...host[ing] the conference content under a different acronym... until the board catches up.”<p>We’ve caught up! We were considering alternative acronyms when the community support for NeurIPS became apparent. We ask all attendees this year to respect this solution from the community and to use the new acronym in order that the conference focus can be on science and ideas.<p>We have taken several actions to support this acronym. First, all signage and the program booklet for the 2018 meeting will refer either to the full conference name or to NeurIPS. Second, we’ve asked sponsors to do the same in their materials and publicity, to the extent possible at this late date. Third, we will hire a branding company to design a new logo for the conference. Fourth, we’ve moved the conference site to neurips.cc, and the owner of neurips.com, Peter Henderson, has graciously donated the domain name to the Foundation.<p>Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to share thoughts and concerns regarding this important issue. The Neural Information Processing Systems community has a lot of people working very hard, and with much passion, to make the conference the best it can be. We look forward to continuing this conversation at the Town Hall during the conference.<p>Yours,<p>The Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation Board of Trustees
This seems like an acceptable outcome. I am not convinced this is going to do much to inhibit the actions of the bad actors out there who do and say harassing things, but it probably can't hurt.<p>Hopefully now the ML world can put this behind them and get back to focusing on, well, Machine Learning.
Some people had a lot of hard feelings about the old name. Glad to see their concerns addressed without actually changing the name of the conference (hence keeping the brand).