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Fwd: Social committee proposal: mediation or repression ?



On Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 08:03:09AM +0200, sven@powerlinux.fr wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 07:32:15AM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 10:03:56PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > > Rationale
> > > ---------
> > > 
> > > There wasn't a huge amount of discussion about this; mostly people
> > > seemed to acquiesce to the way I put it, which is that we need some
> > > method for dealing with disruptive behaviour that lies between
> > > individuals asking for it to stop and expelling people.
> 
> In all the discussion i have seen about the social comittee, which i
> have, as you can imagine, followed with interest, there is something
> that disturbs me most.
> 
> All the  talks have been about how to elect members, and giving the SoC
> individual members the power to quickly take action (suposedly by
> warning or temporarily banning folk from lists).
> 
> This is indeed also how most DDs have seen the problem i was involved
> with over the last year, and some remarks, particularly those of Anthony
> Town about "definitive measures that cannot be contested" are indeed
> very disturbing.
> 
> Now, if your governement would be proposing a proposal like what is
> currently being proposed, many of you would be off screaming about
> police state and repression before prevention, not to mention attacks on
> freedom of speach over the censorship powers which have nothing to envy
> to the russian governement closing up news agencies or even repression
> and censorship from darker times.
> 
> I understand that most of us DDs don't really have much political
> conciousness, or most probably don't want to see their own dealings as
> being politically dubious, but this is indeed a very very disturbing
> path to walk.
> 
> In order to solve social dispute, the first step should always be
> mediation, and no, mediation is not trying to talk to the party you
> already judged guilty in order to make him be silent, and if this fails
> pass out punishement and unilateral judgements.
> 
> The first order of business in a social dispute is communication and
> negotiation. If a complaints arise, then the social comittee should
> investigate it, speak with both parties involved in the dispute, verify
> the veracity of those claims with facts and independent third parties,
> and try to discuss.
> 
> Hearing both parties is important, understanding what their grief are,
> and trying to find a middle ground acceptable to both. And only if this
> really fails, should action be taken. 
> 
> Furthermore, the social committee needs to be impartial, which i know
> can be difficult, and hiding their discussions in private channels is
> not going to help there, and brings again up the ghost of shady dealings
> and cabal decision.
> 
> So, what i believe is important in this, is for the social committee to
> have a clear mandate to negotiate and mediate first, before using
> repressive means, and maybe for each social committee member to take an
> oath of impartiality, fairness and will to solve issues in negotiation and
> mediation, just like real world judges do.
> 
> This is the only way to bring debian back again on the way to fun and
> friendliness, and the way to a police state that ian is proposing,
> altough nearer to the habits of DDs, is definitively not the way to go.
> 
> Friendly,
> 
> Sven Luther
> 

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