Re: Last Call: <draft-farrresnickel-harassment-05.txt> (IETF Anti-Harassment Procedures) to Best Current Practice

[Stewart Bryant <[e-mail]>]

On 11/03/2015 17:30, Adrian Farrel wrote:
> Stewart, I do wish you would reference the document before launching into your
> critique.
>
> There is nothing in this document that constitutes the IETF making up "its own
> list".
>
> The text of the document, makes an observation about the IESG statement at
> http://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/ietf-anti-harassment-policy.html.
> This statement was made on 2nd November 2013 while you were serving on the IESG.
Not withstanding that, my position is and always was that the IETF is not
a competent body when it comes to compiling this list and that we should
use a list, or perhaps the union of a number of lists, compiled by those
with the expertise.

The alternative risks creating very messy loopholes.
>
> The text then says that the document "adopts the general definition, but does
> not attempt to further precisely define behavior that falls under the set of
> procedures..."
>
> In other word, this document does not provide a list of categories that maybe
> considered grounds for harassment. So your assertion is not founded.
>
> I understand that you have good reason to believe that the list at
> http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents is well considered and
> reasonable. People coming from other cultures might consider it missing many
> categories while others might consider some of the categories it includes to be
> outrageous!
Indeed that is a concern, and there is no way around asserting the set. Any
other approach risks a dispute of the form "but that is permitted (or maybe
even required) in my culture".
> Unless we are going to build a full and water-tight definition of harassment and
> obtain IEFT consensus on it *before* adopting any anti-harassment processes and
> appointing a team to handle any complaints, I suggest we need to move ahead with
> the document as it is. Personally, I would be pleasantly surprised if a body as
> culturally diverse (and opinionated) as the IETF could come to consensus on such
> a definition in any short period of time given (as you note) the IETF "has no
> significant expertise in this area."
>
> Perhaps a way forward here would be for us to all support this document and for
> a further document to attempt to give a more precise definition as advice and
> guidance to the Ombudsteam. If you would like to start a draft on that and run
> it through the consensus process, we might all benefit from it.
Another way is to look at how other multi-national multi-cultural 
organizations
address this. For example what is the UN (i.e. ITU, UNHCR ... ) policy 
in this
regard?

- Stewart