Re: Proposed IETF Anti-Harassment Policy

[Scott Brim <[e-mail]>]

Ok, we are already at the stage of "that's harassment", "no it's not".

This is why I (hurriedly) and others suggested it should be more
subjective. The purpose is productive relationships, so what's important is
how people feel. Only have a lightweight definition of harassment, and some
examples.  Give people a process by which they can tell others (directly or
through an intermediary) how they feel about what they hear and work toward
better collaboration.  Forget punishment for now.

Scott
On Oct 22, 2013 6:55 PM, "Theodore Ts'o" <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:33:37PM +0000, Ted Lemon wrote:
> >
> > My reaction to this is that it seems to trivialize types of
> > real-world harassment that are quite common (although hopefully not
> > common in the IETF).  If this image were the worst "harassment" that
> > our ombudsperson had to deal with, that would seem to me to be very
> > good news indeed.
>
> Actually, looking at the policy more closely, I believe it shouldn't
> be a problem and Bjoern Hoehrmann's assertions are specious.  To quote
> from the policy:
>
>    Harassment is unwelcome hostile or intimidating behavior, in
>    particular speech and behavior that is sexually aggressive or
>    intimidates based on attributes like race, gender, religion, age,
>    color, national origin, ancestry, disability, sexual orientation,
>    or gender identity.
>
> People who work at the NSA are not a protected class by the above
> definition, so there would be no grounds for a complaint of
> harassment.  Indeed, by this strict definition, even something like,
>
>    "Actually, X, Y, and Z, means that that making change A to the spec
>    would result in failure mode B, as any idiot could see."
>
> ... might not be professional language, but it wouldn't be harassment.
>
>                                             - Ted
>