[diversity-talk] Neurodiversity and CoC

[Alan McConchie]

Thanks to Tom, Mele, and Kai (in the parallel thread) for your very reasoned and calming words here. Normally I try to keep my mouth shut when things get heated on the mailing lists, since yet another voice usually doesn't help things. But on the other hand, if all of us who are repelled by the tone of the mailing lists keep our mouths shut, then nothing will improve. 

I will try not to weigh in too much on the content of the debate regarding neurodiversity. I already know a quite a bit about the topic, but I am educating myself further, especially WRT how people with traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are included (or not) under the umbrella of the neurodivergent. To a lay person, it certainly sounds like people coping with TBIs would be included in a term like "neurodiverse" or "neurodivergent", but as I read up on the topic, it appears that those terms have a clear and specific meaning among the individuals who identify as such, and that this specific meaning does not include TBIs. If I imagine things from the point of view of someone who identifies as neurodivergent, I can understand why that is the case, and I can see how misuse of that term could be offensive. But I think Alyssa's comment was an honest mistake.

It's not my job to tell someone else that they shouldn't be offended, and I am wary of going too far into "tone policing", but on the other hand the very first point in our proposed CoC is "be nice". I wish that Alyssa's well-meaning but incorrect use of the term "neurodiverse" had been used as a teachable moment to help us make this forum more welcoming, instead of being met with an angry response from Serge that has now alienated many more people than Alyssa's original email did (at least judging from public responses here and on twitter). 

I hope we can all agree that we want our community to be welcoming to people with TBIs, as well as to the neurodivergent, and we need to figure out the correct terminology to welcome both these groups without offending anyone. Perhaps that's another issue for the CoC?

However, I think the tone of the emails on this list still need to be dealt with. If we can't create a welcoming space on this mailing list, then how can we have any hope of success in the rest of OSM? However, I see a few complications dealing with this particular incident:

1. Is this a first offense, or worse? Here I'm speaking both about Alyssa's offensive comment and Serge's excessive response. I'm not a part of the local New York City OSM community, but I am aware that there have been long-running disagreements between Alyssa and Serge, thus making it hard to determine what constitutes a first offense here. In fact, the very first month of this list included a couple of threads regarding some unspecified incident in the NYC community [1]. I don't know enough details, but it seems we are beyond the first offense for one or both parties.

2. Another complication: Randal made a plea to the list administrators to remove Serge from the list because of his email. It appears that Alyssa herself is one of the list administrators, along with Darrell Fuhriman (please correct me if I'm wrong). What do we do in the case where one of the list administrators is one of the people involved in a flame war? Can Alyssa recuse herself from any administrative tasks regarding this event, so we can be sure that any decisions (such as formal warnings or ejection from the list) are made as impartially as possible by Darrell only? I think it's important we (as a list) handle this as transparently and impersonally as possible.

Alan

[1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/diversity-talk/2013-June/ <https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/diversity-talk/2013-June/>




> On Dec 2, 2014, at 5:38 AM, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org> wrote:
> 
> This has spiraled into people hurting each other's feelings. I'm sorry for everyone involved.
> 
> On October 14th, we integrated a change that makes the tone of public reminders clearer and tries to avoid both public shaming and private bullying:
> 
> > https://github.com/osmlab/CoC-mailing-lists/pull/13/files
>  <https://github.com/osmlab/CoC-mailing-lists/pull/13/files>
> 
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 11:26 PM, Melelani Sax-Barnett <saxbarm at gmail.com <mailto:saxbarm at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Let's all please take a deep breath and try to calm down. 
> 
> I'd like to share something we recently implemented as a very important part of our code of conduct at my workplace: the assumption of good intent. That is, the first time someone does something that offends someone else, we should assume good intent.
> 
> I think it's extremely unlikely that Alyssa was trying to hurt or offend anyone by what she said, but unfortunately it did end up doing so. The next step would be to let the person know that it was hurtful and why in a polite way and ask that they don't repeat the behavior. I'm not saying that it's not okay to be angry, but it's important at this stage to remain as level-headed as possible or seek the help of a mediator to make sure your message is communicated successfully. At the same time, the person who mistakenly acted in an offensive way is expected to demonstrate that they are listening and that they will try their best to avoid similar offenses in the future.
> 
> I know this probably all sounds silly, but we make mistakes, we will always make mistakes, let's try not to repeat them but use them as an opportunity to learn from each other.
> 
> My best,
> Mele 

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