On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 09:44:24PM -0400, Sam Hartman wrote: > I understand that from the respondent's standpoint being able to trust > that you'll be given a fair hearing is also part of the process. > However, were I to be a respondent I'd be more worried about the fair > hearing from the folks who could ban me from the meeting than whether I > got removed from an I* position. We have to get fairness right for the > exclusions too. I think fairness for exclusions is much more important than for removals, for the following reasons: - Tolerating I* members who harass is much harder than tolerating any other participants who harass. The latter one might be able to ignore for the duration of the process, but the former, one might have to continue to interface with in order to do business. - I* members represent the IETF. Unacceptable behavior by them is therefore more harmful to the IETF than similar behavior from plain old participants. - I* members sign up for it with much more "oomph" (funding, time commitment, ...) than most other volunteers. I* members should get more training, they are fewer in number, talk to each other more, should be more aware, and have less in the way of acceptable excuses than non-managers. I* memberships come with prestige and some fame within and around the IETF. This is a valuable thing; abuse of it is all the more upsetting than mere boorsish behavior by anyone else might be. - Conversely, many participants may have had less training about harassment and so might get a pass once where a manager might not. Their actions and words are less disruptive, and so on. - Removal might not come with exclusion. Removal is more urgent when the issue is harassment by someone in a position of authority. Therefore the two remedies must be considered somewhat independently, and of the two I do think exclusion is potentially worse than removal, especially given the proposed confidentiality guarantees! - Due to the proposed confidentiality guarantees, an I* member could resign and not reveal to their employer why they resigned, making plausible excuses ("it was too tiring", "I got bored", "I want to focus on my day job more", ...). Whereas a non-manager who is suddenly unable to do their job will probably have a much harder time explaining the exclusion to their boss. At the very least we need to consider a simple process for temporarily replacing a WG's AD with another (ditto chairs). And when the Subject or Reporter are also I* members, then only prompt (for the duration of the investigation at least) removal seems desirable. Similarly, exclusion from physical meetings is more important than exclusion from mailing lists (and jabber). Similar reasoning leads me to support a mechanism for at-least-temporary-but-immediate exclusion from physical meetings. I think one would have to behave quite badly and publicly in order to merit immediate exclusion online. But if someone did, then it would be obvious for all to see. (Or if the harassment takes place continuously via off-list communication, well, it's really time to bring in law enforcement.) Online exclusion seems to be the remedy most in need of a fair process. Nico --