On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 9:55 PM, Fitchett, Deborah
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> So, given that we're all nice people who wouldn't intentionally harass or make spurious claims of harassment against each other, nevertheless sometimes someone will unintentionally say or do something that (especially given the concept of microagressions that Karen and I have alluded to and Kathryn named) really hurts someone else. This is, whatever else you want to call it, a problem because it decreases the feeling of community.
>
> So, how as a community should we respond when this happens?
>
> That's my question.

Different people will have different answers, but here's mine to
answer your question:

I'm breaking this into two parts: the Incident and the Community Response

1. Incident happens. Inform the offender that he/she has affected you
negatively. Oftentimes, as you pointed out, stuff like this is
unintentional, and the accidental offender and offended will resolve
the incident by having that initial discussion. I would predict that
most incidents will be resolved here.

2. If offender insists that he/she did not offend, or if offender is
actively harassing you, then you will need a third party to step in.
These people have either been indicated by the CoC or by the listserv
as those who you should go to for help.

If you are at a conference, find the conference organizer or staff
person. For #c4l13, that would be Francis. If you can't find Francis,
there will be other conference staff that would be available to help
if the situation calls for immediate action.

If you are in the #code4lib IRC, the zoia command to list people
designated as channel helpers is @helpers. I'd assume that there is at
least one helper in the channel at most times.

For the listserv, you have a free-for-all for public messages;
however, this listserv does have a maintainer, Eric Lease Morgan.


3. Wider community response to Incident:

If the incident doesn't past the first step (discussion reveals
offense was unintentional, apologies said, public note or community is
informed of resolution), then there's not much the community can do at
this point since the incident was resolved without outside
intervention.

If incident results in corrective action, the community should support
the decision made by the Help in Step 2 if they choose corrective
action, like ending a talk early or banning from the listserv, as well
as support those harmed by the incident, either publicly or privately
(whatever individuals are comfortable with).

If the Help in Step 2 run into issues implementing the CoC, then the
Help should come to the community with these issues and the community
should revise the CoC as they see fit.


So that's my answer. In Real Life people will have opinions about how
the CoC is enforced. People will argue that a particular decision was
unfair, and others will say that it didn't go far enough. We really
can't stop people having opinions, but what we could do here is have
constructive discussions that lead to something tangible (affirmation
of decision, change in CoC, modify decision, etc,), instead of
reproducing the comments section of a story on a news site.

I can add this as a new issue to the CoC Github, as supporting
documentation to the code later today.

Thanks,
Becky