Re: Results of the Antiharassment Team Survey
On Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 08:37:30AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote: > The no-mediation approach is un-inclusive towards people who > involuntarily write things that sound more harsh than meant. This is a > rather common pattern in nerds that we tend to overreact and overstress > things. Not doing any mediation before making actions such as expelling > people from the project is a violation of the diversity statement. It's of course reasonable for any review process to let you know that what you wrote appeared harsh and ask whether that's what you intended before taking any action. But if what you wrote *was* reasonably read as being harsh (even if your intention was not to communicate in that way), what would be the ideal end goal of mediation? Teaching you how to communicate more effectively seems like something that's outside the project's responsibility. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org
Re: Results of the Antiharassment Team Survey
> "Marc" == Marc Haber writes: Marc> On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 10:04:43PM +0200, Christian Kastner wrote: >> Answering the second question first: my interpretation of >> mediation in this context is a resolution process for the >> aforementioned conflicting interpretations, whereby one or more >> neutral roles (eg: DPL or A-H) attempt a resolution in >> cooperation with the involved parties. >> >> I see this form of mediation helping to draw that line because >> (a) it gives all parties an opportunity to have their side heard, >> (b) it demonstrates that those drawing the line have sufficiently >> engaged in understanding the problem, and (c) it sends a clear >> signal that we as a project aim to solve conflicts cooperatively. >> >> To me, (a) is an issue of fairness of the process. "The Project >> will draw a line but will hear you before drawing that line". >> >> It is my impression that some of the grievances, or the magnitude >> thereof, result not from actual actions against an individual, >> but rather from not being heard in the process. Marc> +1 >> First, there are numerous reasons why two parties might arrive at >> conflicting interpretations, ranging anywhere from >> misunderstandings to moral differences to incomplete information >> to simple matters of principle. >> >> Second, even if the root cause is correctly identified, there >> might be more than one solution to the problem, with varying >> costs and benefits to the parties but also to the project. >> >> To me, the no-mediation-approach is at best a crude heuristic >> that just targets a specific symptom, regardless of the actual >> cause. Marc> The no-mediation approach is un-inclusive towards people who Marc> involuntarily write things that sound more harsh than Marc> meant. This is a rather common pattern in nerds that we tend Marc> to overreact and overstress things. Not doing any mediation Marc> before making actions such as expelling people from the Marc> project is a violation of the diversity statement. I'm not 100% sure that you and Christian are talking about the same thing. Christian is talking about mediating the question of whether something is a CoC violation or not. You are talking about having a conversation about how to respond when there is a CoC violation. (If it's more harsh than intended in a way where it's not respectful or doesn't create a welcoming community, it's inconsistent with our standards regardless of what you intended. But the best response is often to help you do a better job of expressing what you intended when things are coming across too harsh.) I think that conversation you're talking about--understanding the circumstances and especially for people interested in improving discussing ways to do that--is something I hope our AH process will have. --Sam
Re: Results of the Antiharassment Team Survey
On 15.07.19 13:02, Sam Hartman wrote: > First, it sounds like you'd have an interaction where reporters, > respondents and the DPL (or AH) might all be talking together. No, although I can see how one could read it like that. With "including all parties", I meant what you said further below: > Typically the DPL or the AH team sits in the middle and exchanges > separate mails with both sides. > Also, typically neither the DPL nor the AH team is entirely neutral. > They are more aligned with creating a welcoming community than is > entirely consistent with neutrality. Fair point. > I agree that we need a way to have a disagreement about whether some > issue is or is not a violation of the code of conduct. > > I don't think we want that to be a default part of handling a given > issue. > > Often discussing whether something is a violation tends to escalate the > conflict significantly. I'd expect the exact opposite from proper mediation. It's clearly what happens in practice: discussions get heated, people gravitate towards either pole, the issue escalates, ad nauseam. It's as if everyone had fallen in the "outrage culture" trap. What if all of this is just because we don't have the proper mediation? And this is not a jibe at A-H -- I think we are all in agreement that volunteers can do so much, and maybe this is one of the issues where we could use some outside help, just as we do when we need legal help. > You have what starts as a relatively simple problem. Someone is > aggressive on a list. > You ask them to stop. > > They debate whether they are agressive. Quickly both sides have heals > dug in That's a difficult problem that I can, for the moment, only acknowledge. > Having someone who is presumed to be able to interpret the code of > conduct helps a lot. Yes you want a procedure for overriding them. Agreed, even though I would attach a caveat to the presumption. > Yes, you want to have community discussions about interesting corner > cases. IMHO: absolutely not, at least not on our lists. The "interesting corner case" quickly becomes "strongly A" or "strongly B" (and the majority of people wisely just stay out of that mess). There's far too many people (on both sides) obsessed with trying to be right at all costs, rather than searching for compromise. > But being able to say that a particular behavior strongly defaults to > being inconsistent with our code of conduct can really help de-escalate > the situation. For particular behavior: absolutely.
Re: Cultural differences and how to handle them
On 7/3/19 4:51 PM, Chris Lamb wrote: Adrian Bunk wrote: In this discussion here we have two pretty distinct groups of people: The first group has the opinion that Debian should honor various minorities, and that Debian in general should have also a political mission. The second group is unhappy with people being honored by Debian for non-technical reasons, and wants Debian in general to be a non-political technical project. Easy to miss, but obvious once you are aware of it: I wish to posit the existence of a third group who are not partipating in this discussion. This group are simply too exhausted and bored of making the same refutations in these debates and have long given up trying. Indeed, they likely find themselves too physically and emotionally numb to invest in -project or lists outside their niche interests. They may have even made steps to distance themselves from Debian entirely due to low-level feelings of fatigue that they cannot put words to, compounded by having no desire to be associated with a certain retrograde culture that they perceive the Project projects. If asked to charecterise this thread, they may attempt to be objective by pointing out that dissecting the minutæ of (say) Hispanic culture or the «Historikerstreit» is a distraction at best, and might even charitibly concede that the thread is a dry satire of the "just asking questions" or the "tired arguments presented as an insightfully novel rebuttal" genres. However, the majority of their response would frankly not be to its advantage, let alone repeatable in polite company. This is all to say that I would issue a not-insignificant caution to all from making crass or otherwise premature overgeneralisations about who constitutes this esteemed Project. Regards, I wish to reboot this - I think vast majority is the third group, so just vocal few (on different sides of every argument) are creating this feeling of uncertainty and discomfort. I just wish I was able to craft such fine mail myself but I am proud that Chris did it. Z
