CoC DOs are enforceable too?

@emido could you propose your now-preferred wording of a template for self-help call-out of problem posts? I'm not sure where it goes. Maybe in the reporting docs?

The rest of the stuff here, I'm willing to accept there's no conclusion and we can solve issues over time later.

I have included the template here: https://pad.disroot.org/p/Social.Coop_Conflict_Resolution_Guidelines_v2

Thanks, but there's too much assumed in that doc still.

There's certainly times when no previous conflict exists. I don't know that seeing one bad toot that I only read and am not involved in could even be called a "conflict". I just see the toot, send the message to fix it, it's fixed…

So all the "while you work on resolving the conflict" stuff is overbearing in such a case.

It's so easy to write with a particular scenario in mind, isn't it? Come to think of it, that's pretty much the situation we're trying to address, when one person has one view of a conversation, and visualises an incorrect scenario about what's going on in another person's head.

Perhaps we are called to be poets here. To try to express an essence which fits different scenarios, without laboriously spelling out all the different steps, all the different possibilities, all the different assumptions.

There's something to be said for minimalism here, isn't there? Actually, in drafting policies (for our cohousing community) I have experienced in practice the virtue of taking out any material that does not positively need to be there.

I'm guessing that relates to what you are saying, @manuelabosch ? Also, we need also not to take out matters that seem really vital to e.g. @wolftune It's a worthy challenge. And, I think, a measure of the cultural maturity of a group of people, if they can get their collective act together in this way. Let's keep up the good work!

Thank you both @emido and @wolftune for continuing a most thoughtful discussion on these points. I can't think of any points to raise that you haven't written to already! I do, though, have a short reflection on where we are. I get the sense that we are talking mostly about something that is to do with a living online culture. Sure, in extremis we need some "hard" rules to protect people from substantial immediate harm. But we will only be communicating well together if these hard rules are not invoked.

When I think more about this, what I am imagining is more like some trusted person ("elder", if you like) just taking the person aside, so to speak -- that would happen in a face-to-face context, but some kind of private messaging should suffice -- and ask, what is going on? If it's a new person, have they simply not internalised the culture? If it's a well-established member of the community, is it a temporary lapse due to some bad thing happening to them that is not visible to the rest of the online community? To me it would seem relatively straightforward to deal with either of these cases, if we provide a mechanism and a way of choosing a trusted person to engage the wayward one. (We neither want it to slip between everyone, nor for everyone to pile in because they can't see that someone else has stepped in already.)

But the scenario that taxes my imagination more is where we could have someone who persistently contravenes the CoC. What runs well in my imagination is a conversation between the forum "elders" (one interpretation of "jury", I suppose) about what might be going on for / in that person, and deciding amongst themselves whether they think they collectively have the resource to address the issue constructively; or if not, then whether a "hard" rule should be invoked. I'm not suggesting that we act as a mental health agency for the severely disturbed! But for lesser cases, a bit of skilled listening might really help the wayward person themselves recognise the issue and adopt a less disruptive manner.

I don't think I'm saying anything different from what you have written above, just reflecting back my own understanding of the situation.

So, I wonder if we can have the CoC, suitably worded to let people know that extreme disruption will be dealt with (in extremis), but that softer, restorative processes (which will take more time and care to work out) will indeed be carried out, within the capacity and willingness of the team of, whatever we call them -- moderators, jury, panel (that discussion is elsewhere isn't it ;) )

Although I agree with all your views that you're stating, I have a quite different scenario in mind.

Someone who persistently contravenes the CoC is one thing (and seems to be what most people focus on, understandably).

What I'm getting at is more like the value of good facilitation with as much self-help as possible.

In the in-person analogy, people may be talking in good faith about a contentious subject and simply may in-the-moment say something that threatens to be toxic (it's condescending, dismissive, insulting, bigoted and/or similar…). It's subtle, not really aggressive. But it threatens tension and derailment, bad for the community. Again, the people are not persistent bad actors, just normal people discussing a subject with disagreement.

Sometimes, others can simply help facilitate. Ask "what do you mean?" or "I think she was meaning something more like X, is that right?" etc. But sometimes a good facilitator would cut off a statement and say, "hold on, that's not a productive, respectful way to communicate! Please try again". Then, the person could pause a moment and say, "okay, sorry — I meant…" and say their point better. And this goes way better for everyone than if there's an extended debate about the badly-formed statement.

So, taking someone aside and asking "what's going on?" sounds like an intrusive (but well-meaning) inquiry into the person, as though their problem statement is a reflection of deeper personal context. I think that sort of about-the-person approach can sometimes be quite wrong. If a person expresses some emotion, that they are angry etc., maybe taking them aside is appropriate. But in other cases, nothing more than "hey! that sort of phrasing is NOT appropriate. Try again" is all that's needed. But making a public spectacle of that can be a problem.

In summary:

I want everyone to agree to some explicit standards to which we hold one another. I want a clear, reliable norm for how we handle that. We then all expect to be held to that standard by everyone else, knowing that insisting on respectful appropriate communication does not involve personal judgments or assumptions of bad faith.

Is that clearer?

yes ... I hear you as talking (in my terms) about the communications culture. And I'm explicitly agreeing that the best way of handing deviations from cultural norms is informally, and with forbearance (or even humour!) On top of this, if anything is needed, for these minor points, maybe some fallback to ensure that someone is mentioning it. Properly, however, that shouldn't be needed, as the spontaneous processes in a positive culture work well. As you've described. I'm alive, though, to the possibility that a well-meaning "hold on..." needs a reasonable degree of sensitivity to deliver well, and sometimes the person who delivers it can cause more hurt than needed in the other. It's a delicate point. Again, it's the culture -- not only the culture following the CoC, but the culture of correction.

The point I'm trying to point out could be that we would benefit from some people taking on the role of watchers and guardians of the culture as a whole. Process facilitators, if you like. Raising awareness of what good practice is, in its different forms. And, of course, modelling it.

Your summary is clear enough -- that you would like clear and reliable norms, not just for the standards of behaviour themselves, but also for how we hold each other to them. I feel a little uneasy when I think about that, and I'm not exactly sure why. It may be that it is really hard to spell out all that stuff explicitly. How best to call out someone for failure to abide by an explicit standard is not something, in my view, that is standard and rule-governed -- rather it depends on empathy with the individual. I can't help feeling a little awkwardness when rules such as these are spelled out too mechanically. (That's one of my reservations about NVC, by the way. Good learning tool, but...)

It would be great if we could, as part of our collective culture, value gracefulness in our interactions. I am painfully aware of how much I have lacked grace on occasions. So I'm wondering how the insisting can be done gracefully as well as sensitively? While (to repeat myself to be clear) recognising that, rarely, ungraceful restraint is unfortunately needed.

I'm not wanting programmatic rules that remove practical wisdom and turn people into computers. I agree 100% with feeling concerned about that direction.

What I'm saying is that a few things should be explicit:

• Here's the list of things that we identify as problematic to the extent that any violation should be removed (not just a graceful request that could be turned down)
• The first step for any problem post is merely getting it removed/fixed — we hope to almost never have to go any farther with any other actions/penalties
• Because our tools don't include a clear way to (A) edit posts and (B) request edits / point out problem-posts, here's a tooling guide so people understand the options
• If you (person who sees problem post) doesn't want to be the messenger, here's how to contact someone else who can handle it

We need grace both in posting initially and in calling out problems. We need a guide that isn't too rigid that helps people succeed.

One specific additional concern that I think should be spelled out:

We want to avoid back-and-forth discussion of a post on the thread of the post itself. We don't want an ungraceful post followed by a dozen discussions of it to derail an actual topic. That's why problem posts should be removed ASAP and separate discussion of the post take place (privately or publicly, per good human judgment). That way the original discussion can stay on topic and stay valuable and clean for readers…

Final point for now: some people who feel marginalized may be less likely to speak up in absence of a clear policy that explicitly states our dedication to maintaining these norms.

This is getting tangention from the initial topic here (which is about the CoC terms themselves), but I made a draft of how I see a better self-help addressing of violations to go along with the reporting guide:

https://pad.disroot.org/p/combined-reporting-docs

I think the ideas there capture the points well enough and bring up issues for the CoC too. I think this is much better foundation than I've seen in the other docs so far.