Write our new anti harassment-policy!

[Kellis Amberlee]

Hey y'all!

Thank you for all your lovely opinions! This is a midweek update to summarize what we've got so far and to make sure we're all on the same playing field. We've also got a few questions for you at the bottom.

It looks like you're mostly okay with having the admod team double as the anti harassment-team. Thanks for the confidence! We're not worried about the workload. We were just wanting to make sure you felt represented and safe.

If you decided you wanted regular users involved, you could vote on people you think would be great on the anti harassment team. Or, if you wanted us to take on that decision, we could make choices on people we'd offer the role to. A third option is contacting us if you're interested. We would be able to offer a private section of the forum that even the admod team would be unable to see. To be upfront, carbonated wit could still log in to it under the super admin-account but has promised to stay away. Yes, we can also have coloured names for any standard users on the team.

I once asked to be banned to see how things look. I saw a timer telling me when I'd be allowed back and the reason why I'd been banned. Nothing more than that.

Re: reverse discrimination: It seems there is some confusion around this issue. The examples cited in this thread are not what was meant. Rather, we're talking about the kind of bad-faith argument you sometimes see where people try to make the people being abused sound like the abusers. 'X are the REAL racists,' most claims of 'misandry,' et cetera.

A few of you have mentioned a block function. That isn't something we're aquainted with. We have a ”add friend & foe”-feature that's accessible through clicking on someone's profile. If you add someone as a foe you won't see their comments unless another user is quoting them.

Questions for you:

* letternext suggested that people should get explicit permission to photograph others during meetups. What do you think?
* It looks like the consensus is definitely to adapt the two suggested policies. So, how?
- - are there sections that we can keep as is?
- - are there sections that only need minor edits?
- - are there sections that need major revision?
- - which ones? what revisions would you suggest?
* Where can we start on defining harassment? Are the rules enough or do we need more? Do you have any examples you want included? We've seen age and sex work among the suggestions above. How do you feel about those?
* The issue of an existing harasser joining FOCA could do with more conversation. So far we've mostly seen people saying they'd like the anti-harassment team to keep an eye on the suspected harasser. We question whether that's going to be enough for most people, so if we could get a bit more consensus we'd appreciate it.

Thank you again for telling us what you want! We're excited to be working together to better the board.

[GeekChic]

1) Explicit permission to photograph: Yes - I think that this is a very good idea. I've worked with several people who have religious / cultural objections to being photographed. I personally loathe being photographed and have successfully avoided photos save for gov't ID for decades.

2) Edits to the suggested policies: One edit that both policies need is clear descriptions of terms - like "reverse discrimination". I honestly still don't know what it is based on your description (to me you're just describing asshattery).

[meekbookworm]

1) Explicit permission to photograph: Yes - I think that this is a very good idea. I've worked with several people who have religious / cultural objections to being photographed. I personally loathe being photographed and have successfully avoided photos save for gov't ID for decades.

I agree--even if someone took the pictures and photoshopped platypuses over everyone who didn't want their image captured, the photos would still exist. It isn't that hard to ask permission before pointing a camera. That being said, enforcing such a policy seems beyond our forum's capabilities.

I'm still rather uncomfortable with the "reverse racism" stuff. In the model policy it said that claims of "reverse racism" would not be investigated, but (if it's not placing an undue burden on our mods) I think it's fair to ask for moderation if something is truly racist/sexist even against a privileged party--we have a team of people who can decide if the complaint is reasonable or if it's trying to shut down the conversation. Having the mod team open to judging posts reported for all kinds of reasons might make it possible to classify replying to a post with an accusation of reverse sexism/racism/abuse/whatever as harassment. This might protect the original posters while still leaving the mods free to investigate any/all claims. I think there also should be more leniency in the 101 space if people are willing to interact with the possibly terrible arguments.

Regarding the possible stalker issue--is it possible to remove the feature that lets you see someone's previous posts when you click their name? I like it, but it probably could really help someone be able to identify people :S

[Vicki]

1) Explicit permission to photograph: Yes - I think that this is a very good idea. I've worked with several people who have religious / cultural objections to being photographed. I personally loathe being photographed and have successfully avoided photos save for gov't ID for decades.

I agree--even if someone took the pictures and photoshopped platypuses over everyone who didn't want their image captured, the photos would still exist. It isn't that hard to ask permission before pointing a camera. That being said, enforcing such a policy seems beyond our forum's capabilities.

It might be worth putting something about photography permissions into meetup guidelines, even if that's less enforceable than rules about behavior on this forum.

I see your point about enforcement--what if person A says B took their photo without permission, and B denies it or claims that they did have permission?--but something like "photographing other meetup attendees without their permission counts as harassment, and we will investigate any reports of unwanted photography" might be useful. Some investigations would wind up with "insufficient data," but if C and D say that A didn't have permission to photograph them either, and just grabbed a quick photo of everyone on that side of the table, that's evidence in one direction. And "A asked if anyone minded if they took a picture, and a couple of people said 'sure, go ahead' and B didn't say anything either way" is evidence in the other. (I'd rather have explicit permission, but I think there's a difference between B not hearing the question until too late, and A not asking.)

[Kellis Amberlee]

Hi!

FYI: We're gonna start working on a policy now. We'll keep this thread open so you can add anything you think of.

[kootiepatra1]

Just a thought, in light of the recent "Cutoff Culture" whats-his-name author accusing various critics (incluindg CA) of harassing him -- when they clearly weren't -- could there be any kind of brief summary defining the difference between harassment and criticism/disagreement? Or is that getting too pedantic?

[Kellis Amberlee]

Hi everyone!

We're nearly there, just this last question to get things finished. Perhaps we haven't been as clear as we should or could have been. We think it's really important that anti-harassment efforts be user led. We really don't want this to be a thing we do and you agree you're happy about until the second we disagree.

Because of that, we'd strongly prefer to have some users in the team as well as moderators and administrators. We've considered a team of 5, with 3 users and 2 mods. This would keep the power shifted towards users, rather than towards moderators. This absolutely isn't a set plan though. As we said, we really want you guys to make these decisions. We would still be there if you need our help but it would be Your Show to a much higher degree. If anyone has any objections to this, or thinks a different makeup would be better, post away!

Picking the Team:

There are a whole variety of ways we could all choose who ends up on the team! We could approach users, you could nominate users/moderators you'd like on the team, we could take volunteers, I could ask my ponies to put their noses on your names to choose you...What would you prefer?

There are also a number of options when it comes to how long people stay on the team. The mod/admin team take fairly regular time out when we have other stuff going on, but are pretty stable in terms of who's on the team. We could also have a rolling team, where people rotate in and out. Or a jury-duty system, where people are contacted as and when things happen.

We don't want to miss out on people who've maybe not written a lot here but have a lot of experience and/or good insight that would be valuable for the board. Just because you're a bit of a lurker doesn't mean you're not valued.

Do you agree? I'll give you until the weekend to think about it. If I haven't heard from anyone then, I'll finalize the plan with the admod team doubling as the anti harassment team.

[Doggle]

There are a whole variety of ways we could all choose who ends up on the team! We could approach users, you could nominate users/moderators you'd like on the team, we could take volunteers, I could ask my ponies to put their noses on your names to choose you...What would you prefer?

Ponies!

I think the most important thing is to try to get a team with a good demographic spread (race, gender, identity, orientation, disability, etc.) to have experience with different types of power dynamics and types of harassment.

[E.g., I recently read that one type of harassment which happens to PoC cosplayers is that they get unsolicited comments on whether or not racebending a character is appropriate, or how they should only play a character from their own race, etc. I have no experience with this and would never have guessed that that was a thing. Insert equivalents for all the other privilege axes - getting a team as wide as possible minimises the chance of failing to see why something is important.]

With that in mind, either asking for volunteers or tapping people to volunteer are fine. Or random selection of everyone with more than e.g. 50 posts here, or something.

[teabooksandchocolate]

Would it be possible to have both a constant/set team of the three users and two mods, plus a jury system of two or so users to tag in when there is an issue? So that way, the team doesn't have to handle every single thing, and other people can help out as needed? If not everyone wants to be "on call" for being on the anti-harassment team, maybe that could be a choice that's set in the user control panel? Like a toggle yes-no question? This way, there are fresh eyes for each case while keeping a group of people who are more aware of the behind the scenes and previous dynamics. This is just an idea I had, so if it isn't possible, I totally get that. I'm not even sure if it's the best way to handle it!

[Suzers]

I like tbac's suggestions. I think that allowing users to opt-in to being included in the "jury pool" would be a great idea. Like, I personally wouldn't necessarily want to/be able to commit to being on a harassment team full-time or consistently, but I'd happily check a box that says "yes, you can contact me to do this when something comes up".

And yes, I also strongly second Doggle on the importance of casting a wide demographic net. I have a lot of privilege, and I really want to do my part to support the folks here who have less of it than I do--but I also don't want trans users, poor folks, users with disabilities or people of color (etc. etc. etc.) to feel like they are obligated to deal with harassment cases all the time. So a jury system might work well for that, allowing people to opt-in overall and accept or decline the request to serve on the team depending on their spoon reserves at the time.