[Osmf-talk] [OSM-talk] Call to Take Action and Confront Systemic Offensive Behavior in the OSM Community

[W B]

I agree with and endorse KaiRo's points here.
One of the most eye opening articles I've ever read on the topic of dealing
with unacceptable behavior came from a restaurant dealing with harassment
from customers. They developed a soccer/football-style "yellow/orange/red"
"card" system where the front-line staff who are directly
exposed/vulnerable are able to tell a supervisor a color keyword with
automatic, progressive responses to the problem.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurajames/2019/08/30/the-customer-is-not-always-right-this-new-system-for-restaurants-protects-workers-from-sexual-harassment/

Obviously in digital, volunteer environments things will be very different
from a restaurant, but from my experience in makerspaces I've seen
firsthand how it's important to not have to convene a board meeting just to
deal with a random idiot: when things are spelled out and pre-agreed-upon,
offenses can be moderated proportionately and immediately by volunteers and
community members. Ideally (and often, from what I've seen) a potentially
abusive member hits a yellow/orange situation (testing the waters) and we
have an opportunity to correct their misbehavior before it deserves a more
formalized, consequential red response. In my work as a Reddit moderator,
for example, I give out a lot of "hey your comment was removed for these
reasons, this is your first warning" type messages, and it's always eye
opening who manages to correct themselves and who goes for broke and earns
themselves a ban. And as we see, often Reddit users themselves will reply
with "messages like you're breaking the rules, please stop" without any
moderator attention at all.

On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 1:34 PM Robert Kaiser <kairo at kairo.at> wrote:

> Allan Mustard schrieb:
> >      We have asked the Local Chapters and Communities Working Group
> >      (LCCWG ) to take the lead on this and to work with signatories of
> >      the open letter to the Board [1] as well as members of the Diversity
> >      and Inclusion Special Committee to produce proposals for the Board
> >      to consider at its January meeting.  The LCCWG has accepted this
> >      task.  This issue will be on the agenda of the January meeting of
> >      the Board of Directors, exact time and date yet to be determined,
> >      though as is customary it will be posted to the Foundation's website
> >      well in advance.
>
> Thanks for taking this on, I think it's good to have a set of rules or
> guidelines written down - and enforced - so all people participating in
> the community can feel to be in a safe space when taking part in any
> actions and discussions.
>
> Many of us feel like we should not need a CoC or similar because it
> should be common sense to treat everyone else with respect and don't
> discriminate against other groups or minorities, and I agree that it
> SHOULD not be necessary to have such rules - but reality unfortunately
> shows that there are people who end up undermining that common sense and
> then you actually need such an instrument. Also, due to bad experiences
> in their past, a number of people in underrepresented groups tend to not
> feel safe if they don't know if such a framework exists and will be
> enforced if necessary.
>
> We had those discussions years ago in the Mozilla community as well, and
> we ended up with a document that I think is really good, and also
> managed to avoid the "code of conduct" name that feels pretty
> indoctrinating to some people, while still being very clear about what
> this all means, the name we ended up with is "Community Participation
> Guidelines". Note that I strongly believe that any such framework isn't
> worth much if there is no enforcement, so let's make sure we define that
> for OSM when we go into this - the Mozilla document has the
> surface-level information for that in the "Consequences" and "Reporting"
> sections - it's of course important to have a defined process of how to
> treat reports and how they lead to said consequences.
>
> The Mozilla document is here in its current version:
> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/
>
> (Note: I am a long-term Mozilla community member, but just like in the
> OSM community, I'm not in any relevant power position there, I've just
> been a discussion participant when those guidelines were first designed.)
>
> I hope this can help as a constructive input to this topic.
>
> Cheers,
> KaiRo
>
>
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