Anti-harassment procedures - next version

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Hi Adrian,

I will respond here as your request. 

On Thursday, March 6, 2014, Adrian Farrelwrote:

AB wrote:

>
> I started to dislike posting at IETF because it's not diverse. I prefer this
> diversity list mostly. I was told by one nice USA person yesterday that
> many USA participants don't know what is the meaning of diversity. So
> may be add the definition of it well help. Comments below,

OK. It is generally more efficient to have all discussions of the same concept
in the same place so that everyone can join in.
However, I hear your point and understand your reasons.

[snip]

> What bothers me are
> 1) the slowness of unresolved issues.

OK. I see how this can fit with the anti-harassment process.
We could set targets for investigation by the Ombudsperson.
I am reluctant to set absolute deadlines because circumstances can vary, but
guidance is easy.
Do you have suggestions for timelines?

There should be a reporter if there is no reporter to IETF then this organisation is a bad organisation ( I may replace bad behavior by cow boy shooting style).  There should be no delay more than 24 hours between incident and reporting. The IETF should receive that report in its data base and its mailnot in its ombudsperson's private email-box. The ombudsperson should contact the victim within 16 hours (just to give time between different regions). The ombudsperson should check investigate with respondent and give him/her right to report any incident happened with Subject/possible-victim. The judgement of ombudsperson should take not more than 3-4 working days from receiving the report. 


>  2) the cow boy style in few inputs from participants (we are not in a
>  movie of Good Bad and Ugly), so may we shoot documents, we may
>  shoot texts, we may shoot paragraphs, we may shoot processes, we
> MAY not shoot humans (i.e. Just because they are Indians, Africans, 
> Women, Religious, Weak, non-expert, new-comers, etc.)

Yes. We all (you, me, them) need to learn to moderate and improve our
communication styles.

I don't think there is any action on this document from your comment. It might
be more related to Dave's document.

You may distinguish both your document and Dave's document, but for me they are similar against bad behaviour and may work together for preventing harassment in IETF. 

IMHO The IETF managers should report any IETF attacking of personalities because it mostly may become/used-in harassment in future and such report will help future investigations. IETF Messages are used to make people laugh about other colleagues and humiliate them within the WG or IETF. 


> 3) no one stops cow boy style, so are we in a BAD organisation
> or a COW BOY organisation. 

Interesting observation.
I don't think we are a cowboy organisation or a bad organisation.
We have some folk who act as cowboys (they might not actually be cowboys :-)
I think we have some management issues that we need to work on.

Yes, managers should report it in IETF, and then solve to limit that freedom of such cowboy style. That can be better managed when defining harassments. 
 

Advice on process for handling those issues would be valuable. That is "make it
stop" is understood, but how to do that is harder.

I think is not hard. IETF should be stronger (proactive not only reactive) and prevent such actions before occurs. 



As Jari said the other night (and there was a comment from the floor) it doesn't
scale for the IETF chair or the IESG to respond to email beahviour in real time.

It is ok, even within 2 or 3 days, but why the message is not destroyed from the IETF lists, are IETF messages like RFCs. If there are  IETF messages against some ones personality and reputation and he/she wants  to file to police I think that person got rights. 


As with the previous point, I don't think there is any action on this document
from your comment. It might be more related to Dave's document.

I am not sure, it depends on the situation, culture and the parties future. 
 


> 4) Some don't respect others, and that is a BIG problem. 

Yes. I have this fault. I respect people's rights but not always the people. I
need to work on that, I guess.


> The use of words in IETF as: hat, and shoot makes the thought of west
> movies which we all like to watch, but we do not like to live inside it. 

Yes. The use of language can carry connotations that were or were not intended
by the speaker. It is a remarkably rare communication skill to select words that
are sensitive to your audience. It is like speaking a foreign language even for
a native speaker. It is especially hard when the speaker is using a phrase that
is very deeply embedded in their culture and they are distracted by their
enthusiasm for the subject matter.

As listeners, we also have a responsibility to be flexible and open.

> There are common sense issues that need solutions. What are the
> insensible points that need mor discuss to be solved? I think that
> may be all my points were not in the draft, so I wait. 

Don't wait!
This is a discussion.
Pursue your points and suggest text.

But...
Be aware of the specific scope of this document. It is about the anti-harassment
policy. It is not a general place to capture all related issues. If we try to do
that it seems unlikely to me that reaching speedy consensus and actually getting
an implementation of the anti-harassment policy will happen. 

Ok I will review it again with clear mind, and input another review
 
Sometimes it is
better to break the problem space into separate pieces and work on them in
different documents.

By this I mean that I am not rejecting your ideas, just suggesting to put them
in different places so as to make sure that this document is not delayed.

Ok , I agree,


> Overall, please define diversity in the draft. Then it can be discussed better
> related to diversity otherwise your draft has no diversity approach. 

Just as we are very cautious about defining "harassment" in this document, I
would be extremely worried about defining "diversity" in this document. 

Ok, but introducing the situation in draft of that there may be no diversity in groups and the possible newcomer which with high probability will harassed, IMHO  harassment is caused from groups or individuals that do not accept diversity in their group or space. 
 

So, bottom line, I take an action from your point 1) only, and even for that I
would welcome some further input.

Ok, no problem. I will add you may have the timeline and guidance but still some thing is missing. After all of this process what will happen to those parties involve. May be that can be out of scope for this draft. 

AB 
 
 


 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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