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

[Raymond Jennings]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 1:56 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Raymond Jennings <shentino@×××××.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> Certainly Comrel ought to investigate the validity of any testimony,
> especially things like PM logs or such which are easily tampered with.
> That might include asking the accused for their own logs, or simply
> discounting any evidence like this that isn't backed by multiple
> people (maybe more than one witnessed an event, or maybe the same sort
> of event happened multiple times).
>

And I think the witness should be given the chance to explain or update as
needed.  Having comrel act as the middleman preserves their anonymity.

>
> > 2) If the testimony proves false and unreliable, the witness's identity
> can
> > be exposed.  And in this case, deservedly so.
>
> This is still very problematically legally, because this amounts to
> potential defamation against the witness if you can't prove that
> you've gotten it right to the standards of a court.
>

Not if policy is updated so that a) people submitting testimony to comrel
going forward give implied consent and b) standard boilerplate legalese
where they waive the right to sue.

And also:
1) In civil lawsuits for defamation, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff
2) Truth is an absolute defense to defamation/libel/slander
3) Opinions are not actionable.  My opinion is that Donald Trump has
horrible hair.  Whether his hair is horrible or not, it is the truth that I
have such an opinion, and he can't sue me, because my statement is about my
opinion, not his hair.

>
> > 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.
>
> I do agree that people who falsely accuse others should be sanctioned,
> but this is probably best handled in private through the same Comrel
> processes.
>
> And if after scrutiny all you have is he-says-she-says then we should
> probably just tell everybody what they should be doing, get them to
> acknowledge that they intend to do so going forward (regardless of
> whether it did or didn't happen in the past), and move on unless new
> evidence surfaces.  Sometimes you can't always tell what happened.
> I'm certainly not suggesting that a mere accusation should lead to
> harsh action.
>
> --
> Rich
>
>