An interesting comparison, democracy. Community consensus and transparency were what brought our shared project to the great heights we now see, and yet the CoC and especially its enforcement are rooted in none of this. If this trainwreck that we are currently experiencing on this list is truly our best shot at an open, welcoming, and supportive environment when it flies in the face of everything that brought us here in the first place, then all of that was a lie.
I'm pretty sure that's just wrong, though. Keeping everything behind closed doors is the opposite of open. Community members having the CoC used against them as a club and being afraid of retribution for seeking help is the opposite of a welcoming and supportive environment. I would put forth that the CoC, or more accurately, this heavy-handed implementation of it, has been an abject failure that requires us all to step back and try to look at all of this more objectively. To move forward, we must address the issues with the CoC and its enforcement, but to do so as a community, to come to any meaningful and informed consensuses as such, will not be possible so long as nobody outside the committee has any access to the stats, as no logging of actions taken is available publicly, as the cases themselves remain largely invisible even when they do not pertain to sensitive situations or materials.
Because if we do not base this in open process, consensus, and transparency, then all platitudes aside, it's just not going to be very... good. It's not going to address our needs, and we're not going to be able to refine it as things come up. Not doing this /isn't working/, and we need it work.
-I
On 09/08/18 20:48, Victoria Coleman wrote:
Hi everyone,
I’ve been following this discussion from afar (literally from a remote mountainous part of Greece [1]) so please excuse the reflection. I saw this today:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/jeongpedia/566897/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/jeongpedia/566897/
This is us. This is our shared project. What an incredible privilege it is to have the opportunity to be part of something utopian, yet real, that is seen by the world as the last bastion of shared reality. This is no accident, no fluke. It’s because of us. This incredible community of ours. We are all different and yet we all, staff and volunteers alike, strive to bring the best of ourselves to this monumental project of ours. Sometimes we get it wrong. We get emotional, we say the wrong thing, we get frustrated with each other. But we are all in this together. And we hold ourselves to a higher standard. I hope we can also forgive each other when we fall down and offer a helping hand instead of a harsh, hurtful word. The CoC , like democracy, is not perfect but it’s our best shot at an open, welcoming and supportive environment in our technical spaces. Let’s continue refining it and let’s get back to work.
Warmly,
Victoria
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelion
On Aug 9, 2018, at 7:24 PM, Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi!
to me that this could easily be used as a shaming and blaming list. If the block is over and the person wants to change their behavior, it might be hard for them to start with a clean sheet if we keep a backlog public of everyone. I'd see it not only as a privacy issue for the people reporting, but also the reported.
You have a good point here. Maybe it should not be permanent, but should expire after the ban is lifted. I can see how that could be better (though nothing that was ever public is completely forgotten, but still not carrying it around in our spaces might be good). So I'd say public record while the ban is active is a must, but after that expunging the record is fine.
-- Stas Malyshev smalyshev@wikimedia.org
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