 My name is Micah Soren and I help the HD not in conflict resolution. My PhD is in radio frequency safety of mobile phones My biggest party tree is telling people that they're mobile phones are really safe Science said But I do know a bit about conflict resolution in especially in distributed communities And the kind of communities where people sometimes see each other sometimes they only know each other via mailing lists So having done my PhD in RF safety I've spent a lot of my time around engineers and scientists and coders and people who consider themselves to have excellent standards of conflict resolution and Excellent ways of dealing with each other. Yes, I can see those snorts. I can hear you Actually, I used to as an engineer who had that opinion of myself. I have appalling skills at this I can tell you so I'm mostly going to tell you some war stories and the kinds of things I've learned from them and the kinds of things I'm learned from Looking at other people's experiences and frameworks and research and how to do this kind of thing Maybe at the end if we have time, there'll be some proud participation. This is your warning Okay The first thing I learned is that One of the biggest rules people seem to assume about communities is that everyone should be welcome, right? let's Let's let's take a pretty happy view of things in most communities people say you look at anyone who can contribute Especially at something called a meritocracy should be welcome It's not necessarily true Line number one you do need filters And if you've got filter failure, that's when you have problems Okay, here is one of my first one of my favorite war stories, so in Australia, there's a As in many other parts of the world's there's conventions where people get together and talk about science fiction and fantasy stories and books and fan fiction all kinds of things and in 2009 one of the long-standing members of the community contacted the organizers and said hey There's this person who's going to be there. I think can you tell me if they're there because they sexually assaulted me and I didn't happen at an event So these events happen once a year So most of the community knows each other through distributed ways through online through maybe running into each other straight is a big place I mean, there's only 12 people there, but it is a big place Spot the Australians giggling here So The Organizers went wow, that's that's that's intense. They spoke to the person and he said yeah, no that really happened I'm really upset about it. I had no idea what to do and I didn't realize that that was a problem at the time So, you know, it wasn't even a question of he said she said there was a clear confession and When what did this started getting out to the community and there were conversations about Okay, how do we resolve this and who can attend what and maybe we can create a situation where you can both attend some parts of the convention There was oh my god You can you can still feel the echoes of those conversations from 2009 on today's internet go But it made people think about What's acceptable and despite the conversations of well that couldn't have happened or He's a pretty good guy, so we should let him hear anyway The community decided to establish much tighter controls about Who could attend what and how to attend things and also made them Do a few other things as well One of the things that they did was listen just Walk in and listen to people and not ask them too many invasive questions about what happened But have a think about what actually, you know, can you tell me what happened? Can you tell me what you want? They modeled good behavior. Oh, sorry. Did you want to take a photo of that? There you are They might look good behavior, so they walked around and they a few of them got together in bandit and Around the situation went what are we going to do about this? How we got to change our community from being the kind of place where people say things like he might have sexually assaulted someone But he's a really nice guy, so he should be here to the kind of place. We want to come to and they decided to just walk around and be clear about what's okay and they Talked to people and they were kind and they were nice and they spoke publicly about their opinion And they spoke publicly and kindly and quietly about the kind of community. They wanted it to be In 2009 Unrelatedly entirely unrelated Lee Alex Bailey who's pretty famous for Being famous on the internet You know for being an awesome open-source developer and a community manager At the time give a keynote at Oscon talking about recruiting diversity and her point was that you've got to start with the diversity you want to see That applies for everything if you want a community that behaves Well, you want to start the community well, and if you're already done the wrong track Then what you want to do is lead it is create a situation where you're leading it Where you're one of the people that are making it a different kind of place This is a Photo of the at the time the dream with Debting do people know what dream with this Does anyone remember like journal? Does anyone even know what life journal is? Okay, it was a blogging platform back when those kinds of things were a little cooler than now and It was a publicly accessible place when you want to go and set up a blog a little bit like WordPress, but Not not at all really like WordPress, but in some ways a bit like it in that in that it offered the same kind of features But after a while they started treating some of their members pretty badly Refusing some content closing accounts So some of their developers left and created a competitive program Competitive service, which is basically the same thing but better called dream with and this is the diversity statement We welcome you we welcome people of any gender identity or expression race ethnicity size nationality sexual orientation ability level neurotype We welcome fans geeks nerds pixel staying techno peasant Riches we welcome internet beginners who aren't sure what any of those terms refer to you might wear a baby sling of a job A keeper a leather piercings a pet or anything. So this was their diversity statement. This was them standing up for the community that they wanted to see They model good behavior Their diversity statement is still one of the best I've ever seen Why do they want to do that? For a start you have a community who value it who want it There are some people in the community whose boundaries aren't as clearly enforceable as other people's sometimes they're women sometimes they're queer people sometimes they're Poor people sometimes they're people of a different race sometimes they're people who wear a lot of jewelry through their eyeballs and Society generally use those people as less worthy of having their filters enforced Your job to do it If you can it's a really nice thing to be able to stand up for other people who might not have the freedom to do it for themselves But don't a kind way It's not always what you think is going on I've been in a lot of situations where one person saying look This person's really upset me and they hurt me and they shouldn't be here In fact, I don't think they should belong to this community at all and it turns out after listening to them that Actually, both people can contest but both both ends are okay and what you've got is a culture clash Some people think that there's one thing going on or that the community is about something else and Other people think that there's something else going on. It's very important to be able to just listen to them and You can do that via email as well and it's hard and it's not fun Who's ever had to try and resolve the conflict via email? Yeah, yeah, you're those people with that thousand yards Okay One of the other things that the people in the speculative science fiction community was stack stack the odds. Okay, so they Sat among themselves and they went we want to change the community, right? Who's going to be on the board next year, right? What about the year after that and the year after that they did that for three years running they figured out who was going to Put forward the effort of being on the board and they did it in a systematic way so that none of them wore out all at once They all wore out eventually It's hard doing this kind of thing But they had a really serious program in place where who's going to be on the board and who's going to be on the conference? organizing committee who's going to be Contacting people who's going to be writing the anti-arrestment policy and they they actually changed it They got together and they sat in the background. There's always, you know, there's always the meta channel There's the channel where everyone's talking and then there's the channel for where everyone's talking about how you talk to each other They stack the odds in the meta channel It's not considered very nice to isolate the problem person, but it's actually been shown in a bunch of different studies Every time there's a study that talks about how do you change the culture at your workplace? one of the highest value things that can happen in a workplace is to remove the one or two really toxic people and Most studies will come across if you're looking into workplace improvements We'll either avoid this topic entirely or focus on it very strongly Removing the problem like one or two serious problem people has more increased value for an organization Then any collection of workshops any away days any kind of team building exercises Yeah, education is an oculation Vaccinate your community against How you don't want them to behave what is acceptable and what is not acceptable? The people of this particular convention they For several years in a row started running as a parallel track to everything else in the conference safe spaces workshops Which was all about how to say yes How to say no what is consent? What is okay? How do you ask for consent? How do you establish it? How do you establish safety? How do you make yourself a safe person to be around it? Why would you want to do that and It wasn't even with the aim That they never talked about this is to stop sexual harassment happening again Although of course it is but it was to give people the tools to deal with how To behave the next time they were in an uncomfortable situation Whether it was when someone's accused them of something that they weren't sure they'd done or how to recognize When they might be about to cross someone's boundary or have to just stand up for themselves And you know what it's a really different place now the entire Sci-fi convention world in Australia small and incestuous as it is like all other worlds in Australia is very different Okay, this is another story Pretty famous Open source female lead project in fact I think for a long time they were at 95% female contributors. I'm not going to name it They had all kinds of problems they had various different kinds of boards and again, this is a situation where the meta channel Wasn't This is actually a situation with the meta channel was the problem They had several meta channels and they hadn't spoken to each other well enough And there were a couple of toxic people around and nobody knew how to deal with them and nobody knew what to do about it so I Have a lot, you know, I've spoken to a lot of the people who are involved in it one-on-one or in your groups and a lot Of the same kind of thing which is we just didn't know how to get past the barriers and they had online channels and They would talk to each other and sometimes they needed to do things like just again model the behavior one of them would sit around and welcome any newbie and we'd sit around to the testers and say so I'm getting a bug report to a developer. It's kind of like telling them they have an ugly baby Be gentle with it ask questions, you know, don't walk in and say I can't work with this is rubbish Here's another situation. Maybe you could walk in and say I don't really know how to start developing or testing this Can you give me a hand understanding the code and that made a big difference? and The channels and the meta channels did get better and then got worse and then got better and then got worse, but overall They did pretty well I'm gonna come back to that one Okay, one of the things you need to be able to do in a community is Know who to talk to and how to address a problem. So you've encountered a situation Someone's accused you of bad behavior or you've encountered bad behavior. Maybe it was at a conference event Maybe it will post conference events. Maybe it was online. Maybe someone sent me what would I do? I don't want to have to like to walk up to everyone and tell them that I'm embarrassed that this guy's felt me up or That I think I've done something really bad I just want to find somebody to talk to quietly. So it's very important to be able to make those choices Visible to your community Let them know who to contact have an email address have a Twitter account have people in t-shirts something This is work reinforcing boundaries teaching people creating filters It's hard. It's labor. It's what's going to make your organization. It's going to make it Make or break it like in a lot of ways. It's what's going to make your organization better than Much more than whether you can sell widgets or better than the kind of code you can do This is what's going to make it. You know that there's that saying that how people don't need jobs or organizations They need bosses Or they leave their workmates. This is this is same kind of thing. What you want is somebody making the place safe So when you are thinking about how to set up a community or how to resolve the conflicts things about How you're going to moderate it and how you're going to compensate that either with money or with something else You can do is lower the barrier of entry for the more vulnerable people the people who don't want to speak up Sometimes the conflicts arise because people feel like they can't speak about them and they can't speak about them because they're part of a minority group or I don't know maybe they have a disability and they don't have to call anyone else up every time and say I'm in a wheelchair. Can you tell me where the stairs are so they don't show up or they snuck you on a mailing list about it Which is fair enough. I'd be snucked if you I mean, it's not a funner a nice thing to be but I can really understand why they'd be angry What you want to do is lower the barrier of entry for people who? Can't do it for themselves necessarily or for whom it's harder. Oh one of the coolest stories I've heard is There's a little corner of the internet called metafilter Methi for short and then they're they were reddit before reddit They're still online. They are really unattractive website actually really plain what they do is They keep like they have a moderator that they pay. They're very clear on their moderation rules They charge people a five dollar annual fee to participate in the community to post right I Mean it's a small sum of money But the pain of you know dealing with PayPal or credit cards or whatever to create the count and and and do all that means that they are less likely to get spanners that they're less likely to get the kind of people who are going to be Sock puppets of pains in the arse about it or you know Yeah, you're less likely to get better people who are going to be difficult if there is a small barrier to participation Remember that everyone who is in a more vulnerable position is making a cost to benefit calculation in their head before they post anything Anyone vulnerable has to sit there and think If I say my opinion on this forum Am I going to get backlash? People who don't have to think that Maybe they can maybe you can make that a little more fair for them One of the good things to make clear is that there's no opt into good behavior You like there's no opt out. You just are you up Yeah, there's no opt into good behavior. You can opt out by leaving and it's okay. Like it's really okay to leave the community The best way to do things is to create a code of conduct. Yes, you have people. Yes, you need to know how you behave The reality is you already have a code of conduct. Your community has unspoken rules of Ways in which it is okay and not okay to behave for for example. We are all wearing clothes I didn't think about it today, did you? We have all these assumed assumptions about life that life teaches us and sometimes the group teaches us by subtle punishment or subtle encouragement about what's okay, and what's not okay, so creating code of conduct is actually Just Formalizing the rules of what things are Here's an example of a code of conduct that your community might not want but a different This is one of the channels of anonymous Does everyone know who anonymous is? They're Hmm, they're a desperate online group of people Behave as among other things activists against whatever causes they feel like and initially they were all anonymous That was the point that nobody knew they were Some of them have come to life since the point is the Their code of conduct is not necessarily what you want, but this is the code of conduct that worked for them This is one of our channels. Nobody kicks nobody bans inside this channel You don't interact with another person's channel personal disputes are taboo. That's often a good one but you know sometimes Like the last one over here, so don't expect the IRC cops to handle your problems for you try and resolve it yourself That's not always true. Some communities prefer to have moderate or get involved earlier Be specific about what isn't isn't okay and be specific about what you can and can't do Does this look familiar? This is the Drupal conflict resolution guidelines They're really good and when I read them I went wow, there's a community that's dealt with conflict Because like you can always tell who hasn't hasn't dealt with problems by how specific they are in what to do when it happens Like like there's Condom pattern you can buy where one of the instructions is please do not send used product back to company Yeah, I don't think those kinds of rules developed by accident they fulfill it when someone's done it Consequences. Yeah. Okay. Once you've got a code of conduct once you've created a boundary The only way to enforce it is clear and fast clear and hard real quick You don't want there to be any questions That the code of conduct has been enforced you you need to be kind you need to be gentle you need to hear all sides But you need to do it your first your only chance as having an effective boundary is to enforce it the first time it's broken Yep, it's okay to ban people It's not the first resort. It's rarely the first resort and if it is maybe that's all the community for you Maybe it is the community for you. That's your choice But remember it is Your role to ensure that things are in fact resolved and one of the ways to resolve them is to revisit Is to visit consequences and one of the consequences are Being asked to leave the community or being banned from the community This is all my favorite stories. Okay, 2005 Qcon Qcon is a conference about security that happens in New Zealand once a year They call themselves the absolute best one. It's true. They're also the only one. They're very clear to say that in 2005 15 so December last year they had the keynote speaker Personal invited friend of the organizers stood on stage and made a transphobic joke as part of their speech and the Organizers kind of sad and shock. Okay, and let them finish and Took the side and sat them down and said what the hell was that and Made them pack their bags and leave the conference then and then I Don't care that you don't have a hotel stay for the night. I don't care where you're going next You're leaving now My favorite story just the clearest public declaration that we are going to make this place safe for you and You know, I'm sure those people the organizer and the speaker later had a lot of words and Later had a lot of conversations about their own internal conflict and what isn't is okay and who embarrassed who actually But they were a little about it and look this was their report about the conference. We had Cyber flames lasers significant facial damage hackers crackers jackers directors and as far as we know only one creeper They also removed all other references to this person from their conference removed their All the stuff from the Program so you can't find them anymore, but they did it They were kind by being kind to their community You know, there was no question of what happened If you can be public about what's going on Even if the conflict is private have the conversations in private but have a public conversation mention it some way It's really important to let people know that if there is a problem someone will step in someone will do something about it It will be dealt with and you're not the only one dealing with it You always get to choose You always get to you know in the situation he said she said in the situation of two people At least one of those people is hurting upset, right? At least one of those people has had probably potentially Something awful happened to them. Maybe mildly awful, but by the time they speak into a moderator It's not mild anymore. You know people normally wait until there's a problem before they talk to someone. You get to choose who side you're Oh, yeah, okay, so I'm gonna tell you one of the most awful stories from my life a long time ago. I was president of a committee of a Community that dealt with alternative sexualities. So again I mean I've done nothing to do with software, but there were a lot of people there who were part of a distributed community who Mostly see each other A couple of times a month. There'd be a lot of conversations online on email and Facebook on forums and We had a case of Somebody accusing their partner of domestic violence Happens and we as a group had to seriously think about what to do about it How do we get our evidence for that? Okay, so maybe the police are involved. Maybe they're not It's a group that deals with relationships so people have relationships within the group It's not like like for example, if we've been Organizing a drive-in alcohol recovery group there. There are rules that say things like Avoid dating anyone within this community It wasn't like that people date each other all the time and one of the decisions we came to is that Because we know this and because it was a relationship based situation If there are people around who are abusive in relationships and we know that Then by allowing them in the group who were de facto standing up for them and saying this person is an okay person to date And it was a lot of big conversations about you know, is it our job to save people from crap relationships? We'll know but abusive maybe you know What do we do about that and we didn't know what to do and there were months and they were terrible terrible situations and oh my god The worst thing I think I did in that situation was create a A group discussion where I knew not everyone was capable of dealing with what was going on but We decided to have a consensus based agreement about what to do with this person and therefore with the community guidelines as a whole and So that meant we had to have all of the community all of the organizers agree before we did something. I Can't even tell you how much that yeah, yeah, okay People who've tried this are shaking their heads all I can tell you is don't do that Like there are good ways to build consensus But in order to have consensus-based decision-making you first need to have years of training a community in how to come to Consensus-based decision and if you don't have which like student politics does that a lot But if you don't have that in place Then the moment there's a conflict you're dealing with how to resolve conflict and you barely get to what do we do about this particular So for a time we thought we were off topic or maybe we were off of the values Maybe we went on the values of the community. So we had to re-establish them Maybe we weren't talking about what was the right thing actually what we decided was something else And I'll tell you about that in a minute Another story from a little more recently I'm I've just been on the board of the Australian Open Knowledge Foundation which is an arm of the global open knowledge group and Which we've been around for a long time and we do things that are open and that's everything from open government to science to education to data to you name it and And we I've been living in Melbourne a long time in Melbourne. We've had a really sensational community Things are so good. We wrote our own code of conduct for all Australia. We Have weekly events. We have a thriving community. We constantly have new volunteers to come and do stuff You like that is a real sign of a thriving world and then Just recently We got into a massive fight on the mailing list among the organizers So it was you know, it ended up being one city versus another city and what we came to realize is That we weren't thank you. We went off topic or off values. We were something else We didn't know how to talk as moderators. What we didn't have was the right structure for us What I learned is that you can't make anyone do anything. This is all this happened when I was in India. I Was living in Hyderabad. I am for a year or two and all of this was happening in Australia And I was watching the mailing list and watching the Twitter feed and starting to cry because these are all people I care about what are they doing fighting with each other? And this is a community I actually built from scratch like all of us started with nothing and suddenly so, you know, there were Midnight phone calls and 6 a.m. Phone calls to try and catch people at the right time zones And I'm so sorry that happened to you and okay. Can you tell me what happened? What's going on? Can we have a phone conversation all together? All right? What I learned is that I couldn't make anyone apologize to anyone like I couldn't make anything happen I could just talk with people. I could give them information. I could create any situation I wanted but it was up to them. I Tried to create makes list, you know One of the things that did work was making less distance was even though people were distributed Getting them all together into the same room even into the same conference call made a big difference You know, they're human now. This isn't just some person whose name I see on a mailing list Find really annoying It's always personal. It's always somebody's upset. You've got to remember that someone's upset actually It's not about logic like yeah, there's logical reasons and there's time for logical conversations But it's not the first response you've got to deal with Yeah, we're off topic. We're of values actually what we didn't know was how to resolve moderator things and What's happening in Australia is that we are too distributed and we haven't come to an agreement about how to deal with moderator conflicts and We don't what we discovered is that we don't have Conversations among moderators enough so like the Melbourne group is really active the Sydney group is really active each of the different cities Is functioning very well, but intercity we don't have agreements about what our culture is Best advice I can give you is to have the most awkward conversation you can possibly think of Start early think about it. It's your job to have like it's as anyone who's part of the community It's your job to make things less awkward for other people Sometimes that means being really awkward for a few minutes at a time You've got to normalize it. You've got to make it normal. We've got to make it okay to have conflict The best way to do it is to sit down in someone and say, how do you want to talk about things when we have conflict What makes you feel more listened to? What what kind of words do you want me to not use what makes you angry? How can we resolve what we're doing? How can we talk amongst ourselves? What do you want out of a resolution? If you're not doing that what you're normalizing is unresolved conflict is people not resolving stuff is people Leaving is people not talking to each other is I'm not going to that event if you're invited that person Ah, yeah, cool. So there's this really good framework For thinking about among other things conflict resolution. Well, it's about values in the workplace Really, we're thinking about giving voice to values One of the things I talk about is think about what helps you speak up one of the Things that makes things work really well is knowing ahead of time. What's going to make it easy to talk on behalf of someone else on behalf of yourself when values are breached, what are your values? But what sort of story do you tell yourself about who you are? Am I a brave person? Okay, in that case I can talk because I'm feeling brave Am I timid am I not really shy? Okay, but do you like complying with values? Do you like complying with the rules in that case? Maybe it helps you speak up When there are clear rules and you know that you're following them Maybe it's because you know whatever stories you tell yourself, you know The story I tell myself in that picture is that I meet and I really like plants That was a photo I took of my lap in an airport after I'd taken some Black pepper cunies from somewhere one of the other stories I tell myself is that I get really angry Actually, not that true But I found for a long time that that really helped me like thinking about about in terms of anger at injustices Okay, what's the time now? 130 excellent. We've got time. Okay, and it's a small group. So we're definitely going to be able to do it So anyone ever heard this phrase when is the best time to plant a tree? The best time is 20 years ago, you know, you want to start your community with a code of conduct You want to start a community with good ways of resolving conflict? Second best time is right now. So what we're going to do. Okay, we're going to do the Now it is time for the audience participation part of things. I would like you to find a partner It's the person you're sitting next to is really good If you're not sitting next to anyone and you don't want to that's your choice If you do want to get involved find yourself a partner and here's what we're going to do You're going to trip over there and try not to die. That's what you're gonna do What you're gonna do is think about the conversation you want to have the least The most awkward conversation you can think of. Maybe it's with your parents, maybe it's with your partner Maybe it's with someone at work, maybe it's with your boss, maybe it's with your kids Maybe it's with yourself Think about that conversation that makes you just go You know that that suddenly makes you want to play Candy Crush and run away and Watch rubbish television. No, I don't want to do anything else. Think about it. Think about that one and practice having it Right. The best thing you can do is get yourself ready for the situations before they occur Right. The best thing that's going to help you be awkward and know how to deal with a problem The reason the code of conducts with conflict resolution is because people have anticipated what to do when a problem arises. So You're probably gonna have to deal with whatever it is that you're avoiding Find somebody, each of you, think about the conversation you don't want to have And try to have a role-play with the person next to you about that conversation Just try and have it with someone right now. Prepare yourself You go I'm available for conversations I don't know I I I I I I I Now's your chance to swap I I I I This feels like conversations starting to die a bit What did you get out of that? Did anyone actually have an awkward conversation like attempt? Yeah, a couple. Yeah, awesome. Anyone else actually try and have like a bit of a trial. Yeah, you what did you get out of it? I Yeah, anyone else You're clearly all very expert at the awkward. Yeah, how'd you go? Thank you Yep Yeah, yeah cool. How did you go? I was there for the same thing, whatever you say. The way we tell the dentist person, we should make sure that we don't use the strong words. They talk a lot about going to the doctor, of course. Cool, thanks. What about you four at the front? How did you go? I actually lost competition. You're still alive? Did it? It was very helpful because you actually listened to what I said and even took notes. I don't know if you're actually going to follow through on that, but at least it made me feel like what I was saying wasn't just being like, oh that stupid woman wants her big deal home in Paris. People a lot of times ask me, I say I don't want to quote to him, and I go, why would you possibly? Cool, thank you for that. Anyone else? People bad and who just talks bad about the condom. That's what we always talk about. Is that a thing you talk about? It is, we're both still having community work, well I guess I don't know what you're talking about, the community working here for people. I've seen you make a lot of good documents. Oh, that's good. So one of the things I had a question about, I don't know if this is the right time, but you mentioned the science fiction, how this incident happened in the kind of catalyst moment where the community had decided what sort of direction they wanted to go. And you mentioned that it's a much better community now. And I was curious how much you attribute that to, like obviously things like from the safe states, which I was just excellent with, that's education and that's this kind of opt-in education to it, a lot of people who want to be empowered to be empowered. But I'm curious, back to the cynical, how much of that was also attributed to attrition? Like people, I mean, deliver it attrition to your life, you're no longer welcome here, but also attrition in that, if you're doing safe space workshops, this is no longer my community. And then sort of people self-selecting to leave, and I believe only the finance people can leave. Yep, I'm not sure how much everyone heard, but the question was in the sci-fi community, I was talking about seeing the community, it's better how much is that attributable to the efforts of these people of taking specifically black and safe space workshops and how much is it due to attrition. And I think you're dead of the money. The moment you create rules that say, this kind of thing is not okay here, the kind of people who behave like that are less likely to be there or to stay there or to behave like that, because it's not encouraged. And there's a police that we sort of hate somewhere that says that's not okay and that's not acceptable here, especially if it's publicly visible that there will be consequences. And the self-selecting is actually the simplest way that communities improve. We call this community, when the communities declare what their values are and what reason isn't okay, the people who don't behave like that either leave or are made to leave by directoring direct behavior by punishment or by actual banning. Yes. And here's an open conversation. Yes. We also risk sweeping the pendulum too far. And I had an interesting conversation with someone who has consciously chosen in the US to mentor poor, rural, redneck white guys because there is nothing out there for them and we are making a whole bunch of spaces not safe for them. That's great. That's one of the most interesting things that are happening now. There's so much... You're not welcome to read those. Good angle. So the point was, it's possible to swing too fast. So I'm going to raise the issue of somebody actually starting an education program for poor, remote, rural... Redneck. White guys. White guys. Yeah. Yeah. They need education. In fact, that's one of the things that the sex worker community talks most about. Sex worker and safe sex and sex positive community groups talk about the most, that there's no healthy good way for, you know, the most privileged in society model or real-class middle-aged white guys to get involved in alternative sexuality stuff without coming across as creepy and everyone suddenly going, what are you doing here? No, no, no. We need to make the safe space for the queer and the women. Go away. Yeah. And that's a problem. Yeah. And it's actually a problem with marginalizing health issues as well. Not that I think was swung too far. Most guys are still predominantly tested on healthy white people. But there's actually all the drugs that give them less precedent for research because it's an issue that affects me. Yes. Yes, it's an issue. And yes, that is a really awkward conversation to have. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any questions? I don't know. So something that was said that I still struggle with is the point made about being transparent when there is a difficult conversation and there's some outcome from it and then being transparent about the fact that the conversation happened. And I'm trying to, this is so advantageous all the time, but do it in public and make sure everyone knows. And while I definitely see the value of that for other people who might have the same experience, I don't know that it's either don't know that it's safe to come forward or don't know that these expectations exist, what I'm going to struggle with is how to do that without making something that is already awful for at least people already much worse. So the situation where you've been or asked for the situation where you're uncomfortable and it was, you know that it was like a grand scheme of harassment, it wasn't potentially violent to you, but at the same time it was awful for you. You don't want to either make the person who was on the other side of that situation you don't want to make that a target of the ability that they don't deserve. You also don't want to have to live anymore. Like how do you balance that? How do you balance that? How can you be transparent about that while still responding to privacy? Yeah balancing transparency privacy, hard or quite difficult place by place is the short version. Sometimes it's enough for most people won't have known what's happened. Okay, almost nobody accept people who were there during an incident know what happened. Others it was something that happened publicly on any of those. In which case, if they're public, no question, their response and the consequences are public. Like you can have a lot of conversations in the background, but if something's happened publicly, if everyone knows about it, no question. The other end of the spectrum, something's happened privately. It's still important for the community and incidentals dealt with. Consequences have been revisited or smited upon with various individuals. We haven't got enough smiting. There is just never enough smiting. It's true. But also that this is a thing that happens and that it's normal. So you can visually hide the people's names. That doesn't always hide them. Yeah. I'd say, you know, a high-profile contributor. Yeah, a high-profile contributor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another attaining at the conference. So anyone who's there is exactly the right but everybody else is like, that sounds reasonable but you know, or there's suddenly a giant fight being among the community. Who's that? I know and once they're okay and I wouldn't have done that. This one time, another thing happened to me. This thing happened to a friend of a friend of mine. Look, you can't get it right. People will go. People will gossip. Most people are idiots. You're self-included. We're all idiots sometimes. It's okay. You're not going to make it great by not talking about it. The question is, which is going to be worse, having said something publicly or having said nothing publicly? It's not always a question of which is better. Sometimes it's a question of which is going to be worse, doing it or not doing it. And who is a dream who was born? Exactly. We're talking about the rights of different people. One person's right to not have to think about what's going to happen versus the community's right to know that something did happen or that people could say something. And the problem is, of course, that there are consequences being like in the case of an assault the fact is, the victim of the assault is going to be experienced and the consequences are going to be regardless of what happens. And you could make it easier for them maybe by not mentioning the thing publicly. But if your code of conduct specifically states when there are incidents when you let a community know then they know what they're signing up for. And yeah, sometimes it sucks and sometimes it really hurts well now. But sometimes other people know what it's like. I'm very happy to have my conversation but I think it's time to move on. You haven't liked the code of conduct versus the feather? I don't know. Is anyone holding one of those? Would anyone like to hold one of those? Not this time. But very happy. Sure. Yes. There I am. Totally good day.