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On the Anti Harassment Team

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  On the Anti Harassment Team Margarita Manterola <margamanterola@gmail.com> - 2017-08-13 17:20 +0200
    Re: On the Anti Harassment Team Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> - 2017-08-13 17:40 +0200
      Re: On the Anti Harassment Team Sotirios Vrachas <sotirios@vrachas.com> - 2017-08-13 21:30 +0200
    Re: On the Anti Harassment Team Sotirios Vrachas <sotirios@vrachas.com> - 2017-08-13 21:30 +0200
      Re: On the Anti Harassment Team Laura Arjona Reina <larjona@debian.org> - 2017-08-13 23:30 +0200
    Re: On the Anti Harassment Team Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2017-08-13 22:10 +0200
    Re: On the Anti Harassment Team Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2018-02-01 00:20 +0100
      Re: On the Anti Harassment Team Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> - 2018-02-01 15:20 +0100

#9422 — On the Anti Harassment Team

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During DebConf17 there was a BOF about the Anti-Harassment team. You can
find links to slides, text, video and collaborative pad of the discussion
in our wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/AntiHarassment .

We presented a status report of the issues that had been handled during the
past year as well as invited participants to comment on some questions
related to the team.  These are the conclusions from that discussion.

1) Scope and Powers: the team is in charge of mediating between developers
but doesn't have any actual powers, it can only recommend actions to other
delegates (listmasters, DAM, etc), but it's on the delegates to take
action. There are advantages and disadvantages to this model, but after
discussing it, we ended up deciding to keep going as we are.

2) Activity reporting: we plan to do an annual or semi-annual report to the
project, similar to the one presented in the BOF.

3) Members: the job that our team does is quite taxing and in order to be
responsive we would like to have new members, and work on a rotational
basis (i.e. two or three years of term, not forever) to avoid burn-out.
Additionally, we believe that we need extra training to be better prepared
to handling issues, this is something that we want to work on.

4) Name: we find that "anti harassment" is not a great name both because
it's negative and because it puts people on edge when we contact them.  We
asked people to suggest other names.  The current best suggestion that we
have is "Respect & Inclusion team" with respect@debian.org as the alias
(not created yet). This discussion is still open and we welcome other
suggestions and ideas (contact us via antiharassment@debian.org ).

Let's keep being excellent to each other,
Laura & Marga from the Anti-Harassment team

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#9423

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On Sun, 2017-08-13 at 17:11 +0200, Margarita Manterola wrote:
[...]
> 4) Name: we find that "anti harassment" is not a great name both because
> it's negative and because it puts people on edge when we contact them.  We
> asked people to suggest other names.  The current best suggestion that we
> have is "Respect & Inclusion team" with respect@debian.org as the alias
> (not created yet). This discussion is still open and we welcome other
> suggestions and ideas (contact us via antiharassment@debian.org ).

Emphasising "respect" may be problematic.  It's something abusive
people often demand when they encounter resistance.

You could use "safety" or "welfare" - but that might be claiming too
wide a role.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
If you seem to know what you are doing, you'll be given more to do.

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#9424

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>> 4) Name: we find that "anti harassment" is not a great name both because
>> it's negative and because it puts people on edge when we contact
them.  We
>> asked people to suggest other names.  The current best suggestion that we
>> have is "Respect & Inclusion team" with respect@debian.org as the alias
>> (not created yet). This discussion is still open and we welcome other
>> suggestions and ideas (contact us via antiharassment@debian.org ).
>
> Emphasising "respect" may be problematic.  It's something abusive
> people often demand when they encounter resistance.

Agree.

> You could use "safety" or "welfare" - but that might be claiming too
> wide a role.

"safety" might be confused with "security", and a message to
"safety@debian.org" might be more appropriately related for the safety
of the Debian Project and its user.

"Tranquility Team" with tranquility@debian.org might reflect what this
groups is interested in.

Sotiri

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#9425

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> 3) Members: the job that our team does is quite taxing and in order to be
> responsive we would like to have new members, and work on a rotational
> basis (i.e. two or three years of term, not forever) to avoid burn-out.
> Additionally, we believe that we need extra training to be better prepared
> to handling issues, this is something that we want to work on.

Rotation after two or three years requires a long term commitment from
new members. Six months shifts with the relevant training might be a lot
less taxing to everyone.

Sotiri

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#9429

Hi all

El 13/08/17 a las 21:28, Sotirios Vrachas escribió:
>> 3) Members: the job that our team does is quite taxing and in order to be
>> responsive we would like to have new members, and work on a rotational
>> basis (i.e. two or three years of term, not forever) to avoid burn-out.
>> Additionally, we believe that we need extra training to be better prepared
>> to handling issues, this is something that we want to work on.
> 
> Rotation after two or three years requires a long term commitment from
> new members. Six months shifts with the relevant training might be a lot
> less taxing to everyone.

Thanks for caring.

I wouldn't ask anybody a mid-long term commitment from the beginning: we are
volunteers, it's perfectly ok to take a break or step down from the team
for any reason, at any time.

The comment about 2-3 year membership is more intended to the project to take
into account that even in the case that team members would feel ok and
work fine, they probably will need a break "soon". And then you need to
sum the amount of time of finding new person(s) to join the team, and leave
them a bit of margin to get accostumed to the team and participate without
feeling the pressure to be in the "first line".

In fact, I think the same for any Debian team, not only Anti Harassment Team...

Best regards
-- 
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona

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#9427

Hello,

On Sun, Aug 13 2017, Margarita Manterola wrote:

> 4) Name: we find that "anti harassment" is not a great name both
> because it's negative and because it puts people on edge when we
> contact them.  We asked people to suggest other names.  The current
> best suggestion that we have is "Respect & Inclusion team" with
> respect@debian.org as the alias (not created yet). This discussion is
> still open and we welcome other suggestions and ideas (contact us via
> antiharassment@debian.org ).

On the other hand, having a team labelled "anti-harassment" immediately
reassures people that the project takes harassment seriously.  If I
needed to contact the team, I would wonder whether a respect and
inclusion team was really interested in my case.  But that's just me.

-- 
Sean Whitton

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#9750

On 13/08/17 17:11, Margarita Manterola wrote:
> During DebConf17 there was a BOF about the Anti-Harassment team. You can
> find linksto slides, text, videoand collaborative pad of the discussion
> in our wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/AntiHarassment.
> 
> We presented a status report of the issues that had been handled during
> the past year as well as invited participants to comment on some
> questions related to the team.  These are the conclusions from that
> discussion.
> 
> 1) Scope and Powers: the team is in charge of mediating between
> developers but doesn't have any actual powers, it can only recommend
> actions to other delegates (listmasters, DAM, etc), but it's on the
> delegates to take action. There are advantages and disadvantages to this
> model, but after discussing it, we ended up deciding to keep going as we
> are.

Even if the team doesn't have powers, is there an obligation for
delegates to refer less urgent matters to the team before taking action?
 Would such an obligation be useful?


> 
> 2) Activity reporting: we plan to do an annual or semi-annual report to
> the project, similar to the one presented in the BOF.
> 
> 3) Members: thejobthat our team doesis quite taxing and in order to be
> responsive we would like to have new members, and work on a rotational
> basis (i.e. two or three years of term, not forever) to avoid burn-out.
> Additionally, we believe that we need extra trainingto be better
> prepared to handling issues, this is something that we want to work on.
> 
> 4) Name: we find that "anti harassment" is not a great name both because
> it's negative and because it puts people on edge when we contact them. 
> We asked people to suggest other names.  The current best suggestion
> that we have is "Respect & Inclusion team" with respect@debian.org
> <mailto:respect@debian.org> as the alias(not created yet).This
> discussion is still open and we welcome other suggestionsand
> ideas(contact us via antiharassment@debian.org
> <mailto:antiharassment@debian.org> ).
> 


Maybe something along the lines of Conflict Management, Dispute
Management or mediation would be more neutral?

As you point out, (Anti)Harassment has a negative feeling and it also
limits people's perceptions of what this team could get involved in.  In
some cases issues can be resolved by some kind of mediation before
harassment occurs.

I've seen some cases in other organizations over the last couple of
years where independent assistance was needed but it didn't appear to be
"harassment" when it was first noticed.  In one case harassment was
discovered but only after other issues.  In such situations, it is
useful to have the help of somebody neutral who can get to the bottom of
the issue, notice harassment if it does exist and be fair to people on
all sides.

While some situations are one-sided, others involve personality
conflicts, stress, life changes, mental illness or other things where
there is no "winner" or "loser".  Debian is already an outstanding
organization but being able to deal with such situations more
compassionately would make it more so and may be a compelling reason for
people to contribute to this team.

Regards,

Daniel

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#9751

I've seen other organizations call the antiharassment team an ombudsman
team; perhaps ombudsteam might be more gender neutral though.
I support the idea of changing the name and support the idea of letting
the team decide on its name.

I think rather than creating rules about delegates needing to refer less
urgent matters to the team, we'd be better served by reminding delegates
that they have that option.

--Sam

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