[diversity-talk] anti-harassment policy at SotM

[alyssa wright]

Yes, agreed -- a wonderful perspective and generous summary. I wonder if
there's any way to continue this conversation, perhaps at the event itself?
Maybe a BoF or lightning talk? Like what's action item here?

I'm copying Kate as I believe she's done a lot with anti-harassment
policies in the open source geo space.

Best,
Alyssa.



On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:53 PM, Steven Johnson <sejohnson8 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Well put and very perceptive summary. Thank you, Jon.
>
> --SEJ
>
> Sent from my electronic tether.
>
> On Jun 24, 2013, at 15:53, Jon <jon at serf.org> wrote:
>
> > On 24/06/2013 18:13, Alan McConchie wrote:
> >> Someone at the SotMUS birds of a feather session was involved in
> organizing SotM 2013, and mentioned something about resistance to having an
> anti-harassment policy. Unfortunately, I don't remember who said this, or
> what were the details of this situation.
> >>
> >> Perhaps someone who was at the BoF session remembers more specifics?
> >
> > Hello, that was me. The discussion at the meeting didn't go into
> specifics, so here's the background.
> >
> > SotM has never had an anti-harassment policy before. As an organiser of
> a couple of conferences in the past, I've seen some harassment problems,
> and this was especially brought to the front of my mind by the full-blown
> community meltdown following this year's PyCon in March. For background on
> this, see for example:
> >
> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes-got-two-people-fired-and-led-to-ddos-attacks/
> > and
> >
> http://plasticbag.org/archives/2013/03/on-being-grown-ups-about-childish-behaviour
> >
> > I proposed a wording to the SotM team which I put together by looking at
> the anti harassment policies of a lot of con websites. It gave some
> examples of what harassment might look like, and made it clear that if
> someone tells you that you are harassing them (with examples) you must stop.
> >
> > I was surprised to find that almost everyone who engaged in the
> discussion opposed this. The opposition included such arguments as:
> > - it's too negative, it will put people off coming (I'm not sure who)
> > - there's never been a problem before (that we know of) so there
> probably never will be
> > - discrimination is illegal so we don't need to do anything (just rely
> on calling the police, presumably)
> > - free speech is protected so we can't legally do anything further
> > - we have no power to enforce anything outside the conference venue so
> we shouldn't try inside
> > - if we give examples of harassment people will take that as a
> definitive list and feel free to do anything not included on it
> > - there is no need for a policy because we can always rely on the
> community "to enforce norms"
> >
> > My view is that if we can prevent even one person from being harassed,
> by making it clear to the potential harasser that specific things would be
> uncacceptable, then having the policy would be worth it, but ultimately I
> wasn't supported by anyone else on the team. In the end we came up with the
> compromise wording which you can see on the website, which I think is
> better than nothing, but too vague since it contains no examples. In fact,
> it didn't even include the word "harassment" until the very final draft,
> only "discrimination". In the final form it says that harassment is
> unacceptable, but gives no clues as to what we think harassment actually
> is. Still, I think this is good progress, and maybe it will be improved on
> in future years.
> >
> > I'm not at all accusing my co-organisers as being in favour of allowing
> harassment or being sexist (etc) themselves. We had long since, and with
> little or no input from me, identified that SotM is white-male dominated
> and committed ourselves to acting to redress this. I think that they're
> just, being mostly white straight able-bodied males themselves, not aware
> of or interested in the privilege they enjoy or the impact harassment can
> have on the victim.
> >
> > I believe that, while OSM is currently straight-white-ablebodied-male
> dominated, most of them are very open to hearing from the less privileged -
> there just hasn't been a channel for that before. My hope is that this
> group will provide one.
> >
> > Jon.
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >> On Jun 23, 2013, at 4:23 PM, Richard Weait wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Friday, 14 June 2013, Alan said:
> >>>
> >>> "For example, the international State of the Map conference (in
> >>> Birmingham, UK, from Sept 6-8) is in its final planning stages, and
> >>> there has been some push-back against instituting a formal
> >>> anti-harrasment policy at the conference. The diversity-talk mailing
> >>> list will be an important site to organize in support of initiatives
> >>> like these." [1]
> >>>
> >>> Alan, it seems that there is an anti-harassment statement on the State
> >>> of the Map web site. [2]  What was the nature of the push-back you
> >>> mention?
> >>>
> >>> [1] in
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/diversity-talk/2013-June/000007.html
> >>> [2] http://2013.stateofthemap.org/info/booking/
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> diversity-talk mailing list
> >>> diversity-talk at openstreetmap.org
> >>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/diversity-talk
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > diversity-talk mailing list
> > diversity-talk at openstreetmap.org
> > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/diversity-talk
>
> _______________________________________________
> diversity-talk mailing list
> diversity-talk at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/diversity-talk
>
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