Re: Appeal procedure for DAM actions
On 26/01/19 16:12, Sam Hartman wrote:
> reasonably, I think that he's reached a level of
The post wasn't intended to start a discussion about anybody specific,
it is about the procedure. Please don't shoot the messenger. This
tendency to make discussions personal, especially when somebody has a
raised a challenging issue, contributes to a lot of the bad vibes that
people subsequently complain about.
If my view of this procedure is pretty dismal, that's just because I
value the people who contribute to Debian and I don't think any of us
are disposable. People are not packages and applying a `dpkg --purge
person` attitude for arbitrary political purposes or differences in
personalities in such a large organization is abhorrent.
To put it bluntly, when a volunteer receives a threat email with a bunch
of official-looking CCs, it feels like intimidation from gangsters. It
is a disgrace for Debian to make that impression on people.
Another blunt assessment of the situation, which can be deduced from the
private emails: the DPL thought he could skip over meeting with people
and talking to them and tried to simply sweep them under the carpet with
6 month "demotions" that would leave them for the next DPL to deal
with. To save himself maybe a couple of hours investing in
relationships, which is a basic responsibility of any leader, the DPL
has cost many people a lot more time and hurt some long standing
contributors in a bad way.
If Debian wants credibility rather than a kangaroo court, it is
essential to get the principles right, not only for fixing the current
mistakes but also to avoid a repeat of anything remotely like that in
future. If I didn't think this process could be improved I wouldn't
have written about its flaws in such detail, so please don't accuse me
of failing to be constructive.
There have been numerous cases of communications breaking down with
various people recently so please don't continue to make personal
accusations or single people out.
> constructive discussion. I think that Daniel's post would take a long
> time to respond to for a lot of us who have recently spent a lot of
> energy trying to work through some really hard issues.
Not everybody has seen all those details but snippets of it, like this
thread, have been selectively released into debian-project
This is another example of why the procedure is morally bankrupt: if the
DAM can take this guilty-until-proven-innocent approach, remove somebody
from the debian-private mailing list and then use that forum to promote
a version of events that the member can't see and rebut before a GR vote
then the vote is biased against the member concerned.
DAM can prove me wrong of course by guaranteeing that members subjected
to this procedure will continue having access to debian-private right up
to the end of any GR ballot on their membership.
> Here's why I don't think the post is constructive. There are a lot of
> reasons why you'd want to have rapid action for handling situations
> other than questions of technical competence. There are significant
> cases where maintaining the safety of the community requires rapid
> action. There's a lot of thought put into antiharassment efforts that
> argues for fairly rapid resolution of issues rather than the long
> drawn-out processes that Daniel supports.
For the record: you mention "safety of the community", but there was
never any safety issue on the part of any of the people threatened, it
was purely politics[1], scapegoating and some misunderstandings. The
only safety issue is the sending of threats and defamation by Debian
leadership figures.
My post is not opposed to rapid action. I fully believe in rapid action
to engage with people and improve relationships in the community, for
example, people have asked[2] questions about mediation. Or simply
meeting with people to talk about issues.
Rapid action that may hurt people is to be avoided.
Rapidly skipping over the former to attempt the latter is even more
disturbing.
Rapid action to find the cause of a problem is good too. Rapidly
searching for a scapegoat or somebody to blame is not.
In a number of cases this year, I've observed the DPL jumps into issues,
and I'm even counting at least one technical issue here, where he takes
a side without even asking for all sides of the story. In the technical
issue that comes to mind, he had actually conflated two different pieces
of work and formed an opinion about the discussion way too early. In a
technical debate it may be possible to overlook lapses like that, but
impartiality and neutrality are essential when dealing with grievances
and personal disputes.
This is a challenge for anybody in the DPL role. Sometimes I thought it
was just a "clearing the inbox" mentality at work, a DPL rushing to tick
everything off before the end of the day, giving every email a fast
answer rather than the best answer.
The type of DAM actions discussed in this and some related threads
appear to be purely harmful to the people concerned, like giving
electric shocks.
Rapid action by the DPL to attack somebody's reputation, sending
disparaging emails to people in other communities within minutes of a
communication from DAM? That is wrong. Given the circumstances that
the DPL had been informed about in July, it is truly shocking. That is
one reason why I strongly object to the "shoot first ask questions
later" approach. Emails like that can't be sent in the first place if
there is a more neutral approach.
Seriously, if you want to train a dog, do you kick the dog each time it
does something bad or do you give it treats when it does something
good? Multiple people have observed the former approach being attempted
in Debian. It doesn't work[3] with dogs, spanking[3] children or with
developers. Trying to do it more quickly or making up a process to
justify it won't make it more effective either. Quoting that article:
"The odds of a child being more aggressive at age five increased by 50
percent if he had been spanked more than twice in the month before the
study began". Does anybody want to repeat that study by demoting a
random selection of developers instead of spanking a random selection of
children?
> Daniel didn't do that, so I don't think he's being constructive here.
> Wheter it is actually sealioning or simply ignorance of other positions,
<snip>
> That said, Daniel brought up one point I would like to discuss with
> anyone who would be interested in bringing about changes. He points out
> that we have events where we have face-to-face time and we could use
> them more effectively for working through disputes. I'm not interested
> in debating with Daniel about whether the process should require that.
> I am very eager to discuss how we can do more of that empathy building
> and dispute resolution at events.
Those two points are contradictory - you suggest I'm being ignorant of
other positions, but you also refer to my post[1] in the thread about
mediation where I emphasized the benefit of face to face discussions and
the fact that those discussions were not only skipped, but actively
declined by DPL and DAM. My overall intention is to be constructive.
In fact, from what can be deduced from private exchanges, it appears the
DPL sent orders to DAM giving a very selective and one-sided account of
a situation. DAM did not know the most significant facts when they made
decisions in 2018. Nobody should hold a grudge against DAM if they were
not properly informed or if they were pushed . Although it wasn't the
most significant fact, did DAM know that the DPL had declined meetings,
for example? If you were in the DAM team and that information was
hidden from you, how would you feel?
The view of the situation on debian-private and in some defamatory
emails circulating outside Debian is also very one-sided, missing the
most important facts and grievously misrepresenting others. With or
without a bounty, I would encourage anybody who ever receives any
disturbing allegation about a developer to forward the email to the
developer in question and get their side of the story, straight from the
horse's mouth. Some people already asked "is this true?" and were very
disturbed when they found out what really happened.
If the communications to DAM weren't being hidden, it would be easier to
troubleshoot, fill in gaps and find common ground where people can
rebuild. I personally believe that is still possible if all sides are
willing to be open about those communications. The games with secret
evidence, emphasized in this appeal process, are a barrier to that.
People appear to avoid meetings because they think they know the answers
or they think they can take shortcuts dealing with other people.
Therefore, I simply can't see how I'm the one who has failed to be
constructive or failed to attempt to find other opportunities for
discussion before this impacted more people.
There is another constructive aspect to my email: I am hoping it will
help people focus on the choice in the other thread.
Regards,
Daniel
1. https://fsfellowship.eu/2019/01/26/fsfe-behavior-standards.html
2. https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2019/01/msg00232.html
3.
https://www.cuteness.com/13713210/how-does-punishment-affect-a-dogs-behavior
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