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Proposal: mediators

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  Proposal: mediators Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> - 2019-01-08 16:30 +0100
    Re: Proposal: mediators Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> - 2019-01-08 16:50 +0100
      Re: Proposal: mediators Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> - 2019-01-26 10:50 +0100
    Re: Proposal: mediators Bernd Zeimetz <bernd@bzed.de> - 2019-01-08 23:40 +0100
    Re: Proposal: mediators Thomas Lange <lange@informatik.uni-koeln.de> - 2019-01-09 05:00 +0100

#10216 — Proposal: mediators

Dear all,

I would like to propose a system for mediation that can be used before
or during expulsion processes, and for other purposes.

Please note that while I use the word "mediation", there may be a better
one.  Thus, it is not needed to reply to me that what I propose is not a
real mediation if this is the case.  Please focus on  what I propose and
not on how I named it !

### Goal

The goal will be to help all parties or their proxies to prepare
fact-driven synthethic position statements that can be presented to
others, in particular to the decision makers, both to help them to take
their decision and to help announce it in a way that is the most
resilient to misunderstanding and the criticisms that it triggers.  It
is also hoped that the mediation process may also sometimes help both
parties to settle their disagreement, although it will not be considered
a failure when settlement is not reached.

### Who

I think that the mediator should not be doing this task on a regular
basis, to avoid burn-out, to avoid being in contact with too many
private information, and to avoid being perceived as partial.  In order
to ensure that the mediators are available and have demonstrated some
williness to communicate with others, I propose to select them randomly
among the Developers who have been the application maintainer of at
least one person.  A call would be valid one day; in case of no answer,
another mediator would be called, and so on (better strategies using
further filtering could be done if it does not look realistic that a
volunteer could be found after 10 calls).  The call would be initiated
by the decision makers, when they feel that this mediation process would
help them.

### How

The mediator will contact both sides separately and will never connect
them nor request or suggest direct communication between them.  The
mediator will minimise the volume of communication, aiming at addressing
each issue only once.  The mediator will ask each party to sort the
points they want to make in order of relevance (I hope that this process
will help to reduce the number of points), summarise them, and ask if
the summary is clear and accurate (I think that when somebody can
recognise one's views in the words of another person, it is a good
indication that there is mutual understanding).  The mediator will then
present the views of each side to the other side, and ask if there is
agreement, disagreement, and recommend to avoid lengthy rebuttals.  The
mediation is only part of the conflict resolution, and it is already a
great achievement to agree to disagree.  Lastly, even when clear action
points emerge from the discussion, the mediator will never propose an
implementation, leaving that choice to the decision makers.

### Privacy

Communication will be written, encrypted and kept confidential.  It may
be given to the decision makers if needed and must be destroyed after a
reasonable delay (advice welcome).  The mediator will never disclose the
contents of the messages and information exchanged.

### Limitations

To avoid any legal consequences and to avoid damage that could be caused
by improper consideration of a victim's suffering, this mediation system
should never be used when the facts being discussed are so grave that
they could be punished by a justice court.

### Summary

In light of the expulsion being discussed at the moment, my impression
is that such a process could, or even still can, be useful to underline
what are the points considered most important by each side, and which
action of the other side can solve them (I am not going to speculate
here).  I also hope that this proposal may be more broadly useful,
especially for the issues at the inteface between behaviour and
technique (typical examples are when an NMU are a commit revert trigger
a latent conflict).

### Next step

I personally would prefer to avoid long point-to-point discussions on
the weakest parts of what I wrote above.  How about reacting on what you
liked (if you liked some part), and just sending the rest to /dev/null ?

Thank you for reading so far, and have a nice day !

Charles

PS: please pardon my English, it might betray my thoughts.

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Akano, Uruma, Okinawa, Japan

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#10218

I think that rather than writing down a procedure like this it would be
better to  get some success cases of trying something along these lines.
So, for example, I'd recommend that you and people who have similar
views volunteer to be available as mediators.
Once people use your services, and you have some practical experience
then worry about writing it up.

I am interested in mediation  but my approach is very different than
yours.

* I think the emotions and feelings are more important than the facts

* I am interested in working  in cases where there is a desire to reach
  settlement

* I think that your emphasis on facts and a statement of facts fails to
  account for some of the significant realities in dealing with conduct
  issues

So, while I'm interested in mediation-like things, I am not interested
in this project.  I'm trying to find ways I can olunteer to help that
are more aligned with my goals.


However,  I've seen others on discussions recently who may have goals
aligned with yours.
Debian is a community where we move forward by trying things out.
Make your services available, let people know.
Whether people are interested in using the services will be one gage of
success.

--Sam

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#10299

On 08/01/19 15:47, Sam Hartman wrote:
> I think that rather than writing down a procedure like this it would be
> better to  get some success cases of trying something along these lines.

There appear to be some excellent opportunities available to try this.

It also appears to be better than having a GR or a series of GRs.


> So, for example, I'd recommend that you and people who have similar
> views volunteer to be available as mediators.
> Once people use your services, and you have some practical experience
> then worry about writing it up.
>
> I am interested in mediation  but my approach is very different than
> yours.



I'm not going to weigh in on which approach is best.  The only hard rule
and most fundamental prerequisite for mediation to start is that the
person running the process is perceived to be neutral by all sides.

Given my own comments and request for information recently and my former
role as a representative in FSFE, many people have contacted me
personally to share stories about intimidation in free software
communities.  There is a common pattern across multiple communities and
it appears to apply to all those specific cases discussed recently in
Debian:

a) without blaming any side, there appear to be problems in the
relationship that have been well known for some time.  There was simply
no reason to suddenly pounce on people like this.

b) the relevant people actively attend events (e.g. DebConf, MiniDebConf
and other free software events) where nobody makes any attempts to
discuss any concerns or improve the relationship.  Even if the
relationship is uncomfortable or if the person concerned doesn't attempt
to make contact, I personally feel it is a responsibility of leadership
figures to take the initiative although in recent cases, other people
have taken initiative through 2018 and leadership figures have actively
declined opportunities for meeting or mediation.

c) at some random moment afterwards, a person is sent a long written
list of perceived failings, usually with threats or punishments.  These
emails are usually CC'd to multiple addresses which adds to the feeling
of intimidation and bullying for the person who receives the email. 
Let's face it, do you take this approach in any other relationship?  For
example, would you just send an email to your neighbour one day with a
long list of things they did wrong over the 10 years they have been
living beside you?  Would you send a list like this to your spouse?  Why
does Debian do this to members?

d) this hostile approach is reflected in subsequent communications by
all parties, making the environment even more awkward for all parties
and the wider community

This is not just happening in Debian.

I feel that just about any approach to mediation would improve upon the
pattern people are describing.

The formation of the antiharassment team suggests there is some
enthusiasm for having some dispute resolution capability in Debian.  It
appears that these unsuccessful approaches are being improvised because
of a lack of training and experience in dispute resolution.  I would go
as far as saying that spending money on training a number of people to
implement best practice and improve the culture may be a better use of
funds than something like Outreachy (USD 20,000 per year) as bringing
these capabilities into the organization may do far more to create the
culture required to solve the Debian diversity problem.

One of the people concerned actually contacted the DPL in March 2018 to
try and improve discussion:

"It seems we are both sometimes disappointed with the communications
between ourselves.  We both believe in the same things and we both
believe in the integrity and reputation of the Debian project. Maybe the
mode of communications isn't ideal.  Could it be better for us to find
an opportunity to discuss things in person perhaps?  I am usually in the
UK...."

and the DPL has repeatedly declined any discussion.  It is not clear to me how the DPL can be qualified to give opinions about members of the project when he doesn't have time to talk to a member directly first.  What is clear is that a lot of time could have been saved for many people if more value was placed on having such meetings.

The appeal process recently discussed appears to be unsuitable.  There
is at least one showstopper which I have documented[1] in that thread. 
If people understand that the appeal process is unsuitable and may never
be used, that leaves the organization to choose between mediation or a
GR.  DAM could also save everybody a lot of time if they choose to
pre-empt that discussion, roll back and arrange mediation.

Regards,

Daniel

1. https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2019/01/msg00231.html

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#10229

Hi,

> I would like to propose a system for mediation that can be used before
> or during expulsion processes, and for other purposes.
> [...]

thanks for wrinting it down, but I still think the better option is
to spend some Debian funds to let a professional mediator handle
this, who is not involved in Debian politics at all.
A view that is not biased at all makes much more sense, especially
when people in the project do not like the outcome...

Thanks,

Bernd


-- 
  Bernd Zeimetz                            Debian GNU/Linux Developer
  http://bzed.de                                http://www.debian.org
  GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485  DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F

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#10232

> thanks for wrinting it down, but I still think the better option is
> to spend some Debian funds to let a professional mediator handle
> this, 
Great idea! IMO it should be very easy for the AH team or any DD to
ask the DPL for getting money for an external mediator if a situation
is escalating. If we would already had implemented this, some hundreds
of mails would have been saved.

Please, please spend money for this. It's worth it more than anything
else.

-- 
regards Thomas

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