>>>>> "Felix" == Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com> writes:
In the interest of full disclosure, I no longer have any affiliation
with DAM.
Felix> With regard to disciplinary proceedings, however, Debian has
Felix> a long way to go in implementing basic precepts of
Felix> justice. For example, it would be good to hold hearings in
Felix> which the accused can make a statement before any action is
Felix> taken.
I think phrasing this in terms of justice and rights for keeping
governments accountable is likely to get a knee-jerk reaction from a
number of people who do not want to think of things that.
It's fairly clear to a number of us that maintaining standards of a
private community is a very different problem than maintaining justice
for people who have the power to deny life and liberty.
I do think there are standards of fairness and desirable conduct in
managing a community, but I don't think going back to the Magna Carta or
other documents of human rights is very productive in moving the
discussion forward.
However, I do find there are areas where I agree with you.
I'm going to focus on DAM in this message rather than listmaster or the
community team.
I think the calculus for each group works out differently.
As an example, because the community team cannot (for the most part)
take formal action, I think it is desirable to avoid too much process
for them.
Having witnessed things from a number of angles, I agree with you if
that I think it would be an improvement if DAM agreed to ask
a member for input before taking decisions that affect them.
DAM has long held that they don't do so as a matter of policy.
I don't have an explicit citation for this, but I'm fairly sure it was
discussed back in 2019.
As I understand it, the argument is roughly that by the time things get
to DAM, they are unambiguous.
Unfortunately, it really rubs people the wrong way.
While I think it would be rare that it would change things, membership
actions are infrequent, and it actually is possible for there to be
understandings even late in a process that has gotten to DAM.
And while in theory DAM could change their decision if it became clear
their was a misunderstood, I think in practice the bar for changing a
decision after it is made will end up being higher than the bar for
making a different decision in the first place.
Figuring out how to accomplish requesting a statement is a little
tricky, but I think it is worth the effort. DAM takes membership
actions (including warnings) by consensus. It's fairly difficult to get
all the members of DAM together.
I don't think it would work in practice for the request for a statement
to be a consensus action and to be followed shortly there after by
another consensus action to take a decision and to write it up. That
would require DAM to get together as a group twice in short succession;
given how hard it is to schedule DAM action, that would not work.
So, for this to be practical, the request for a statement would need to
be something that a single person, acting on their own (or with some
input but not full consensus) could do.
As a result, it's not reasonable to expect DAM to communicate all the
factors of the case to someone, or even to communicate all the
potentially public evidence. It could include a description of the
triggering event in most cases.
A message might look something like:
Hi Sam,
We are writing to you because we're concerned about your message to blah
with message-id blah-blah in which you said a bunch of bad things.
We're considering this is the context of your broader interactions with
the project and wanted to give you an
opportunity to give us any input either about that message or your
interactions with the project before we decide if we are going to take
any action.
We anticipate being able to consider any input in the next 72 hours.
I honestly think it is achievable for DAM to send messages like that in
most situations and I think it would improve the perception of fairness.
There are some cases where there's not a triggering event or where the
trigger that caused DAM to become focused is not something that can be
shared. In those cases, the request for a statement would be a lot more
vague.
I appreciate that several in the project would desire that DAM put
together the level of detail that they would send to the NMC as part of
handling an appeal and send that to the person whose membership was being
considered.
Realistically, that's not achievable given the level of effort involved.
That's especially true for warnings.
Felix> Disciplinary actions are sufficiently rare to make that a
Felix> small burden on the members. Without a jury system, it is the
Felix> best we can do to offer a trial by our peers. Thank you!
A number of people over the years have talked about embodying some of
the processes and protections of a trial in community management actions
in Debian. That has included ideas like having the project as a whole
decide/affirm the decision, making evidence available, giving the
"accused" access to evidence and access to those who have made claims
against them.
I think there's broad agreement among those who have actually worked on
community management in Debian that this would be a horrible idea and
would not make Debian a welcoming community.
Unfortunately, no one has actually taken the time to write up a good
explanation of why that's the case.
Put another way, I don't think we want anything like a trial and I think
doing that would not accomplish goals we have for a community.
But I think the people who do want a trial are owed a good explanation
as to why the DPL and their delegates have consistently moved away from
such a system.
No, the DPL and project delegates are not required to do what vocal
members of the project suggest.
But I do think when a concern has been raised sufficiently, the DPL
and/or their delegates need to respond to this concern.
I think that "why don't we have trials for this sort of thing," has
long-sense reached that bar.
I tried to get people to volunteer to work on this during my DPL term.
I felt that given my position of privilege it would be better for people
who faced some of the issues more directly to try to answer the question.
I was not able to find someone both interested and motivated back then.
Currently, I'm busy over on debian-vote.
If no one has written up a good answer to this by the time the secret
ballots GR is done, I'll give it my best effort.
--Sam
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