When I quote ~"you're spoiling our fun" it's at the level of a paraphrase of one aspect of a synthesis of actual responses. It wasn't by any means the whole conversation; I don't recall if it was even the whole of any one person's response; but it was one prominent theme that came out of the response to people speaking up about problems with Zoia, and that prominence can be offputting. Mitigating this was that an even more prominent theme was "Okay, let's fix things". But this isn't maths and they don't cancel out: they're both there.

This all said, I actually don't want to talk about Zoia. I don't want to sound like I'm stomping on people when all I want to say is that this dynamic exists (here, everywhere). And talking about Zoia also feels like a distraction from the question I asked and I think Karen was getting at, which is again: going forward, how do we react when we're having fun and we're made aware that someone else is being hurt by the thing we find fun?

I doubt we need a standard operating procedure but it's something really worth thinking about in advance of when it happens. Because it's hard, when that happens (having been there) : one wants to be a good person, but one also wants to have fun. And then there's the ego's self-defense mechanism: a good person wouldn't have fun doing something that hurts someone, and I'm a good person, so since I was having fun it can't really have hurt anyone. Yeah, bad logic, but like I said I've been there and it can take logic a long time to beat the ego over that one if you haven't prepared.

Having a code of conduct is fantastic. But if we don't have *at least* vague brainstormy ideas of how we'll react to it when a) Your Best Friend says Complete Stranger is harassing zir; b) YBF says YotherBF is harassing zir; c) CS says YBF is harassing zir; d) CS says you're harassing zir; etc -- then it's just false security, has the same potential for denial or coverups as if there were no such code, and in that case means all the additional pain of broken trust.

And for those that think that this is a fantastic group so it's just a waste of time planning for a non-existent situation -- well, I still think it was a little bit there with Zoia (the outline of the pattern if nothing else); but even if you don't agree with that, this is a transferable skill: if we come up with ideas of how we can react here, we can then also use those if similar situations come up in other aspects of our lives.

Deborah 

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ross Singer
Sent: Friday, 25 January 2013 3:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Group Decision Making (was Zoia)

On Jan 24, 2013, at 6:50 PM, "Fitchett, Deborah" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> People did raise specific issues with Zoia which can reasonably be fit into the code of conduct's definition of harassment (many of which have therefore been addressed) so saying "no one has spoken up" seems strange. People did speak up. Some people listened and did something about it; some people objected ~"You're spoiling our fun" and this kind of reaction is what has the potential to make some people nervous about speaking up, because no-one wants to spoil people's fun.

When we're talking about "you're spoiling our fun", are we talking about zoia's offensive plugins?

I don't think I've seen anybody leap to the defense of @mf or @forecast (or any of the others mentioned).  Some people have poured some of their craft beers on the ground for their fallen plugins, but I don't think anybody's actually come out and actively objected to cleaning up the bot's language.  In fact, on the contrary, I think people have been pretty proactive about looking for the things that need to be cleaned up and trying to archive what's there before cleansing.

I am not sure a defense of zoia is the same thing as a defense of @habla or @icp (as two examples).

If we're not talking about zoia anymore, then apologies, -Ross.


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