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wedrifid comments on How to deal with someone in a LessWrong meeting being creepy - Less Wrong
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Both definitions are used, and plenty more besides. This is actually why bubuy's point is so important. The cluster of things that are called 'creepy' is diverse and the most useful response to given situations varies depending on what the actual situation is rather than on whether someone calls it 'creepy'.
Incidentally, your definition is weakened by focusing on preemptively applying judgement more than causal accuracy. While the intent is to convey that the person being labeled 'creepy' is responsible for the feelings of the other it actually implies that even the most lewdly inappropriate, boundary-oblivious and clingy loser is immune to being 'creepy' when their target is sufficiently physically secure, emotionally mature and psychologically self-determined. This is absurd, clearly not your intent and actually forces the 'victim' to be disempowered before they are entitled to any 'anti-creep' rights.
It is quite OK to keep assertions of 'and it is right and fitting that we hold person Y responsible in this case and use some form of sanction' out of the actual definition of 'creepy' and in the realm of policy advocation.
I'm not sure that it is - unless you mean that the target is unjustified in feeling physically safe, and the loser is actually posing a threat to hir. But we can still define such behavior as "creepy" by extension, since the target would actually judge themselfes as being unsafe if they were more reasonable and knowledgeable about the loser's attitude and behavior. Definitions often perform poorly at such boundaries, but this does not imply that there isn't a salient cluster in thingspace which is adequately captured by the above definition.
That would also be sufficient to abandon the definition. But no, I mean she is actually are physically safe and the guy is being creepy as @#%#. Either the recipient of the creepiness or an observer can both legitimately call that behavior creepy even if the victim of it neither feels nor actually is physically unsafe.
The above definition conveys concepts that aren't even intended for use in 'thingspace' as opposed to 'political space'. Specifically, the assignment of blame and responsibility. It can be resolved to a thing space cluster but if this is done it points to a cluster that does not, in fact, serve your purposes. If interpreted as a literal epistemic description when executing 'creepiness' prevention policies it would result in inferior outcomes to what you would get if you executed your actual meaning. Fortunately few would (acta as if they) interpret the definition literally and would instead interpret it as an approximate reference to a related thing in thingspace but with additional policy decisions snuck in.
I'd say that the target can legitimately state that the guy's behavior is making her uncomfortable (assuming that this is in fact the case), and/or tell the guy to buzz off and have this enforced as necessary. Either the target or any third party can legitimately caution the guy that his behavior could be interpreted as "creepy" (i.e. at least mildly threatening) by others.
However, I would not use "creepy" to describe all instances where someone is being merely bothered by someone else; nor would I want to have a fixed cluster of behaviors be regarded as "creepy", regardless of the target's actual feelings and reactions. Thus, I'd say that defining the above as not-creepy is in fact very reasonable.
Um, no. Physical causality is not the same as appropriately-assigned blame and responsibility. Even then, I could easily rephrase my definition as: "Person X's experience and overall disposition causes her to feel physically unsafe to some degree, upon being exposed to some peculiar attitudes and behavors on Person Y's part" and this would not change my preferred policy.
Like feeling uncomfortable and unsafe when those n*s sit next to you in the bus? Why don't they move to the back rows? How insensitive!