Re: Comrel Accountability (Was "Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Trying to become a Gentoo Developer again spanning 8 years...")

[Raymond Jennings]

I think these are valid concerns, but I also think that witnesses should be
required to stand by their word

As I mentioned before though, I think that could be done by having the
comrel member accepting their "testimony" be held responsible for:

1) Forwarding back any challenges to credibility, basically serving as a
go-between.  This preserves the anonymity, but also allows the "accused" to
rebut any questionable evidence or explain anything that may have been
taken out of context, whether by mistake or otherwise.
2) If the testimony proves false and unreliable, the witness's identity can
be exposed.  And in this case, deservedly so.
3) Being held responsible in the place of the witness as an incentive for
comrel to keep the blame where it belongs.  If the testimony is sound, this
is a cakewalk, but if not then comrel should be incentivized to forward the
blame back to the bad witness.
4) IIRC/IMHO, its comrel's job to bring malicious witnesses to justice, and
if they don't its a failure of responsibility on comrel's part and they
should take the heat for it.  If they're doing their jobs properly though,
passing the blame back where it belongs should be a cakewalk.

On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 6:22 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 5:26 AM, Daniel Campbell <zlg@g.o> wrote:
> >
> > Speaking of the CoC, if a developer is punished or acted upon due to an
> > infraction, they should know which rule they're being sentenced on and
> > what interpretation of said rule (since some of them are arbitrary) was
> > used to reach that decision.
> >
>
> My understanding is that anybody Comrel deals with is informed about
> what the specific concerns were.  If this isn't happenening it
> certainly can be brought up on appeal.
>
> > Privacy is important too, but IMO as soon as someone brings up an issue
> > to Comrel, they're admitting that they and/or the other person failed to
> > solve a problem as adults and now needs intervention. They should be
> > willing to voice it at least semi-publicly (on a mailing list and/or bug
> > available only to Gentoo developers, for instance). This keeps a record
> > for the entire Gentoo community to inspect. This is important to
> > building trust in those who make these (sometimes difficult) decisions.
> >
> > Records, evidence, and statements (from all involved parties) should be
> > available to the developer community for a period of time. Call it 6
> > months or a year, or some other measure where the community has the time
> > to look at the information. This would give the community power to
> > appeal on behalf of someone if they feel the wrong choice was made. If
> > someone's really a problem for Gentoo, the dev community is more likely
> > to agree with Comrel because the evidence will back it up.
>
> There are pros and cons to making this sort of thing public.  Here are
> a bunch of reasons I can think of offhand why this is potentially a
> bad idea:
>
> Somebody who is the victim of some kind of abuse may be reluctant to
> come forward, whether due to embarassment, a desire to not be seen as
> a “tattle tale,” or concern for retaliation, whether by the person who
> is accused or by somebody who is friends with the accused.
>
> Whether innocent or guilty, the accused will find it more difficult to
> re-enter the community if their past actions are public knowledge.
> Maybe they intend to do the right thing, but everybody else will look
> at them with distrust.
>
> It may make somebody who has changed their ways reluctant to return,
> feeling that they weren’t just separated, but publicly humiliated.
>
> It opens the Foundation/community/etc up to accusations of defamation.
> Right now if somebody is sent on their way it is a private matter, and
> nobody knows the specifics of any concerns other than the accused and
> a fairly controlled group that so far has managed to keep such things
> private.  Legally that is a fairly hard thing to challenge due to the
> freedom of association (nobody can force a group to let them in,
> unless they can prove there is some kind of illegal form of
> discrimination going on).  However, once you start making accusations
> public knowledge it becomes slander and defamation and Gentoo would
> potentially have to defend the truth of these accusations in court,
> which is a much higher standard.  Why make ourselves liable in this
> way?  Almost no organization publicizes these kinds of details of
> personnel issues for this reason.  Courts aren't subject to the same
> concerns either, you can't sue a court for publicizing the record of a
> case where somebody was ultimately found innocent, perhaps after
> initially being found guilty.
>
> In the same way, publishing the details of what happened potentially
> also harms the victim.  Suppose member A of the community is divulging
> via unsolicited PMs/etc to other community members that member B of
> the community has a less-common sexual orientation, etc, and does so
> repeatedly with no signs of wanting to change, but the matter is not
> yet public knowledge.  If we were to make the matter public knowledge
> we actually accomplish the very thing that member B was trying to
> stop, and they’re not going to want to come forward if they know this
> will happen.  Most likely they would just leave the community, which
> shouldn’t happen.
>
> It turns every interpersonal conflict potentially into a matter of
> public debate.  Right now we can have a general debate about whether
> something does/doesn’t belong in the CoC, but it isn’t a personal
> matter.  If you’re having that debate in the context of whether some
> specific action was or wasn’t abusive/etc then that is going to inject
> a lot of other concerns.
>
> Don't get me wrong, I'm all for improving accountability and there are
> a bunch of ways that can be done but I don't think that making the
> details of these cases public is really the right solution.  I realize
> that may ultimately be unsatisfying but I think it is the better way,
> given that none of the options is truly ideal.
>
> --
> Rich
>
>