> On 10 Nov 2019, at 18:23, Patricia Shanahan <[email protected]> wrote: > > As a reminder, the original proposal that troubles me was: > >> I don't know the details on the circumstances here, but it seems to >> me that the point of "public accusations" should constitute >> harassment in and of itself. Do we make that explicit?
Andrew Musselman wrote: ... > Yes, I saw that question; I feel like it's jumping the gun to talk about > how to punish people who claim to have been harmed. Perhaps raise the helicopter a bit. What do we want here ? I think what we want here is that what would further the foundations goals*. I.e. as narrow as our bylaws/corp. document - or as broad as our mission. But just that. (And even though as a person I may well labour daily to fix things that I feel are unfair and `use apache for that', make society more just & do a lot of things in that vein & some publicly. And some of that may reflect well those associated with me; and some may not - depending on the eye of the beholder. Or even campaign for politicians some others would find very objectionable). So for that we need to ensure that the we have a healthy community (and I personally think that means one as diverse as the world we serve — The guidelines of the CoC provide, I think, a good, prioritised, list. ). And lots of things, including all forms of harassment, are very much counter to that goal. As they damage our ability to provide software for the public good. And that is why they need stamping out when they happen. Swiftly. However I think it stops there too; so we should and must take action for & on behalf of our community; and do so fast to prevent festering -- but once we’ve tackled some issue (and that may well feel very punishing to those involved or ousted) - a lot of the followup may not be ours*. Especially as we should keep in mind that some back-stoppers outside the ASF, such as defamation lawsuits are only available to a very small fraction of our international community. That is not saying that we should by definition shy away from this. IMHO — a healthy community may well need to report things to the authorities - or similar such steps. Not in the least to protect others or its members from further abuse in different settings. That said - the `automatic’ aspect troubles me - but solving it through angles like `reflect bad on the ASF’ and hence counter to the ASF its mission - like what we somewhat try to do in our Board CoC; does not feel, to me, as an ideal solution either. Dw *: The hackspace in London strikes this balance with keeping the initial formal warning or ban `private (by default - with the board making sporadic exceptions)’ - but with clear & swift communication; transparent & open - yet not `in the public view’.
