Re: Questions around Justice and Our Current CoC procedures
Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> writes:
> On Sunday, February 20, 2022 10:13:03 PM EST Russ Allbery wrote:
>> I guess the other possibility is that people really want warnings to be
>> way more serious than any meaning I personally would ascribe to the
>> word "warning" and are thinking of them as formal project censure or
>> something akin to that. In that case, my argument is that we need a
>> warning that's actually just a warning, and the thing we've got is much
>> too strong and the real problem is that we don't have something lighter
>> touch.
> Currently a DAM warning is a suspension/expulsion with deferred
> execution.
We have wildly different understandings of what a DAM warning is. Which
clearly points to a problem that needs to be solved!
> I think every non-government job I've had had a discipline process that
> went:
> 1. Verbal warning.
> 2. Written warning.
> 3. You're fired.
> No, Debian isn't an employer, but I think the sense that DAM warnings
> are used is similar.
That seems like a mistake to me. Anything that makes Debian seem more
like an employer seems like a mistake to me. We just aren't; we're a
voluntary association that doesn't have any of the same requirements and
does not have the employees or facilities to have the same type of formal
process. We should actively avoid creating spurious parallels to
employment processes that we are not following, going to follow, or are
capable of following.
> I agree with the idea that more feedback with a lighter touch would be a
> good idea, but I think anything with a lighter touch doesn't need DAM to
> do it. We are all empowered to provide other developers feedback when
> we see concerning behavior. People just need to do it. It doesn't take
> any new rules.
We do need DAM to do it sometimes because sometimes people refuse to
change their behavior unless someone with perceived authority tells them
they need to. Otherwise, they just counter-attack and escalate with the
person who tried to give them feedback.
I'm not calling out anyone specific here. I truly don't have anyone
specific in mind. This is just standard human stuff; in any sufficiently
large group of people, and Debian is more than large enough, there are
going to be a few people like that. It would be nice if peer feedback
were always sufficient, but this isn't how humans work.
Given that, and given that we clearly don't want to boot everyone who does
that (even apart from the fact that the project is loathe to boot anyone
for almost any reason, sometimes people really do change behavior once
someone they can't just ignore points out the rules of the community),
some sort of ability for someone with perceived authority to give a
warning that's actually just a warning, not an "expulsion with deferred
execution," is useful.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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