Re: Sam's text and way forward on the last call of draft-farrresnickel-harassment-05.txt

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 09:44:24PM -0400, Sam Hartman wrote:
> I understand that from the respondent's standpoint being able to trust
> that you'll be given a fair hearing is also part of the process.
> However, were I to be a respondent I'd be more worried about the fair
> hearing from the folks who could ban me from the meeting than whether I
> got removed from an I* position.  We have to get fairness right for the
> exclusions too.

I think fairness for exclusions is much more important than for
removals, for the following reasons:

 - Tolerating I* members who harass is much harder than tolerating any
   other participants who harass.  The latter one might be able to
   ignore for the duration of the process, but the former, one might
   have to continue to interface with in order to do business.

 - I* members represent the IETF.  Unacceptable behavior by them is
   therefore more harmful to the IETF than similar behavior from plain
   old participants.

 - I* members sign up for it with much more "oomph" (funding, time
   commitment, ...) than most other volunteers.  I* members should get
   more training, they are fewer in number, talk to each other more,
   should be more aware, and have less in the way of acceptable excuses
   than non-managers.

   I* memberships come with prestige and some fame within and around the
   IETF.  This is a valuable thing; abuse of it is all the more
   upsetting than mere boorsish behavior by anyone else might be.

 - Conversely, many participants may have had less training about
   harassment and so might get a pass once where a manager might not.
   Their actions and words are less disruptive, and so on.

 - Removal might not come with exclusion.  Removal is more urgent when
   the issue is harassment by someone in a position of authority.

   Therefore the two remedies must be considered somewhat independently,
   and of the two I do think exclusion is potentially worse than
   removal, especially given the proposed confidentiality guarantees!

 - Due to the proposed confidentiality guarantees, an I* member could
   resign and not reveal to their employer why they resigned, making
   plausible excuses ("it was too tiring", "I got bored", "I want to
   focus on my day job more", ...).  Whereas a non-manager who is
   suddenly unable to do their job will probably have a much harder
   time explaining the exclusion to their boss.

At the very least we need to consider a simple process for temporarily
replacing a WG's AD with another (ditto chairs).  And when the Subject
or Reporter are also I* members, then only prompt (for the duration of
the investigation at least) removal seems desirable.

Similarly, exclusion from physical meetings is more important than
exclusion from mailing lists (and jabber).  Similar reasoning leads me
to support a mechanism for at-least-temporary-but-immediate exclusion
from physical meetings.

I think one would have to behave quite badly and publicly in order to
merit immediate exclusion online.  But if someone did, then it would be
obvious for all to see.  (Or if the harassment takes place continuously
via off-list communication, well, it's really time to bring in law
enforcement.)

Online exclusion seems to be the remedy most in need of a fair process.

Nico
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