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

[Sam Hartman <[e-mail]>]

>>>>> "Jari" == Jari Arkko <[e-mail]> writes:

    Jari> Sam, Cutting to the 2nd item, i.e., what effect the ombudsteam
    Jari> might have on leadership.

    Jari> I understand your concern Sam. Do you have a suggestion on how
    Jari> that should be addressed? As an aside, I think we all agree
    Jari> that leadership that misbehaves needs to be removed. The
    Jari> debate is about the mechanics - whether those indirect through
    Jari> effects of action from the ombudsteam, indirect via their
    Jari> recommendation, or more direct.

OK.  So my understanding is that you believe that we have consensus that
leadership that harasses need to be able to be removed, but we don't
have a workable solution and we don't want to block the current effort
on that.

If so, let's find a clean way of deferring that, and see if we can get
people interested in working on the problem and coming up with a
proposal.

I'd like to take a stab to see if I understand what we do have consensus
on:

old:
(The Ombudsteam can not impose that a Respondent
      who is in a IETF management position be removed from that
      position.  There are existing mechanisms within IETF process for
      the removal of people from IETF management positions that may be
      used as necessary.)

new:
The Ombudsteam MAY ask a respondent to consider resigning from an IETF
management position.  The Ombudsteam May remove a respondent from a
working group  or document editor position.  While this document does
not create additional procedures permitting a nomcom appointee be
removed, the Ombudsteam can exclude a respondent from meetings and
mailing lists and other activities, making it impossible for them to
carry out their appointed tasks.

Rationale  for the above:

I think we should split handling of chairs and wg-level positions from nomcom stuff.
The discussion to date seems to have focused on nomcom-level
appointments, and we apparently don't have consensus to make changes to
that in this document.
However, I think we should carefully ask ourselves how we handle chair
harassment.
Recommending to the AD seems like the wrong approach.  The AD isn't
going to be in a position  to know the facts, the AD is not going to be
trained in harassment.  As a manager I've sometimes been told by HR that
I had to take certain actions; sometimes I agreed, sometimes I wished I
had other options.  However, sometimes the interest of (in that case the
company, in this case the IETF) to avoid harassment are more important
than an individual manager's preference.
So, I'd like to float the idea that the Ombudsteam is in the best
position to make harassment-related removals at that level.

I've removed the sentence saying that the Ombudsteam cannot make
leadership removals because it's too easy to read that as an affirmative
statement against leadership removals.  Instead, I've floated a specific
instantiation of the idea that the Ombudsteam does have the power to
make it impossible for a leader to do their job.  I think it's important
to confirm we have consensus on this point.  It would be a huge mess for
the Ombudsteam to try and do that and to discover we didn't have
community support for that.  In effect I'm arguing that it's important
enough to make sure we're on the same page here that we float specific
text for this issue and confirm it doesn't attract unresolvable
objections.  Pete has said on-list and in private discussions that he
believes their is support for the Ombudsteam choosing remedies like
this.


I've removed the sentence talking about the existing procedures for
removal.  To respond to Stephen, Spencer and Nico, our existing recall
procedure is entirely inadequate to the task.

Let's have a thought exercise.

First, we have a confidentiality problem.  It's unclear how the
Ombudsteam even gets in the position to say something leading to a
recall petition.  Let's imagine that somehow they get consent from the
subject (and decide they don't need consent from the respondent) and
make a statement like "We, the Ombudsteam assembled do hereby request
and implore the community to recall Sam Hartman for harassment related
reasons."

Imagine what happens next.  We have a flame fest where some people are
demanding more information so they can evaluate whether to sign the
recall petition, and others debate my qualifications in public.  We've
had a recall petition in recent memory.  Even in a situation where there
was strong agreement that the leader was not performing the job, it was
difficult to get signatures.  I claim this situation would be worse.
I'd be speaking up saying that I was sensitive to concerns raised and
I'd of course improve.  I bet you'd never get the recall petition
signed.

But let's imagine still further than you somehow get a recall petition
signed without a bunch of details becoming public.
OK, now we seek volunteers for a recall committee.  Of course I go to
all my supporters and beg them to volunteer so I get a fair hearing.
The subject and reporter probably do the same.  For extra fun let's
imagine that the subject volunteers.

So a committee is seated including some of my best friends/supporters,
the subject and some of their supporters and one or two people there
because they thought volunteering was good.
At the first meeting the committee asks for details and the Ombudsteam
regretfully informs them that they cannot provide any because of
confidentiality reasons.

OK, so while we're imagining things let's further imagine that somehow
the committee and Ombudsteam reach some agreement by which the
Ombudsteam can share all their internal investigation information with
the committee.  Now we're simply faced with a biased set of folks with
no harassment training trying to make a critical decision.  There will
be debates and second-guessing of the Ombudsteam's approach, there will
be  a huge mess.  When one side or the other goes to their lawyer and
points out this entire process is unfair, there's going to be a lot of
sympathy and a lot of action on contingency and the lawyers make out
big.

But perhaps Stephen and Nico are proposing we bypass the Ombudsteam
entirely.  So, we have a subject and reporter begging the community to
sign a recall petition giving them enough details of the harassment that
the community members can make up their own decisions.  That's hugely
broken on a number of fronts.  The subject will almost certain to be
subjected to additional harassment.  Even if successful you're left with
the biased committee of untrained volunteers trying to do their own
original investigation.

For these reasons I think it entirely inappropriate to claim our
existing procedures are adequate to the task.  I think there are
significant problems with the Ombudsteam making it impossible for a
leader to do their job too.  However, it may be something we have
consensus on today, and it allows us to get a procedure in place while
we work on something better.

--Sam