I agree on the tracking issue. A few years ago I heard about a situation in which a law enforcement agency was tracking complaints about its officers and learned through that system that one of its officers had a pattern of receiving "courtesy complaints", not bad enough to indicate that the officer should be fired, but problematic enough in a pattern to suggest  that intervention from a supervisor was appropriate. The intervention that was attempted was to pair that officer with a more experienced officer to teach the younger officer about how to do his/her job with less friction. After that intervention, the pattern of complaints stopped.



On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 7:32 PM, Kevin Payravi <kevinpayravi@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm confused about why WMF is in charge of these issues at events instead of the local organizers

I'm not sure if saying that the Foundation is in charge of safe space at local events is accurate; I see it as a shared responsibility between the Foundation and local organizers, and participants as well.

As an organizer of several events in the US space, having the Foundation's involvement is valuable. As is clear from this thread, managing the safety of an event isn't an easy task, and so many different situations can arise. Organizers might not always fully have the needed experience and capacity to deal with these issues, and even if they do, it can be helpful to have the Foundation's personnel and prior experience.

There is also the importance of tracking incidents across spaces i.e. if an incident occurs at one event, being able to ensure the incident does not continue (or similar incidents do not occur) at future events is important - and the Foundation is in a good position to be able to facilitate that.

Thanks,
Kevin Payravi
SuperHamster

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018, 2:08 PM Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks, James. I think that "clarifying the distinction between friendly spaces situations and Trust & Safety issues" is a good idea.

A specific suggestion that was made earlier in this thread which sounded like a good idea to me was to have an indicator, somewhat like we currently do for "Photos OK" or "Photos not OK", for "friendly touch OK" or "friendly touch not OK".

I would also like to see the upcoming review of the relevant policies include discussions of who should be responsible for them (I'm confused about why WMF is in charge of these issues at events instead of the local organizers) and the level of transparency regarding reports and investigations.

Thanks for your attention to these issues.
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Kevin Payravi
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