 So thank you everybody for coming. In case it's not obvious, I am not Laura. Laura is this lady here. So I am now in the anti-harassment team. Laura prepared the presentation and then she found out that she couldn't attend. So she has recorded a video for you to watch. And then she listed something that she would like people discussing. And the video is only 12 minutes, so let's just start. Tell me if you can listen it. Yeah, we have to output the audio too. Team. And one of the teams that I am contributing to is the anti-harassment team since about one year ago. 2015. Okay, let's go. Hello, my name is Laura Arjona. I am a non-applauding development developer since 2015. And one of the teams that I am contributing to is the anti-harassment team since about one year ago. I couldn't come to that conf, but it was very interested in this both to happen. So I'm very thankful to Anna and to all the people that made it possible and to all of you that are attending and I hope participating. I'm living in the Gobi document, a link to this test script. For the case, it's shown too small in the screen. And a link to the slides too. In this presentation, I will explain a bit what is the anti-harassment team or at least my understanding of it. I'll try to summarize the last year working in the team and some challenges that we face inside the team and in Debian in general, in order to improve the current status of things. So what is the Debian anti-harassment team? You can visit our wiki page to learn about it. I will open now here. We are a point of contact for not only people seeing or being victims of abuse, but also for any community member concerned of creating a more welcoming and respectful environment in Debian. The main documents that we use for reference and we recommend everybody to know about them are the Debian diversity statement approved in 2012. The Debian Code of Conduct approved in 2014. And the Debian Code of Conduct introduced in 2014 if I am not mistaken. In May 2016, some people noticed that the anti-harassment team could be unresponsive because some of the members were retired of Debian or in Hiatus for reasons. And there was a call about this and the team was relaunched with some new people, me among them. So you can see the current composition of the team in the web page in our website about the organization in Debian. And it's also written in our wiki page here. And this is the current composition of the team, Bati Langasek, Margarita Manterola, Laura Arjona-Rena, which is me, and Neil McGovern. What do we do or how do we act? Usually we received a report of a bad behavior of somebody or a violation of the Code of Conduct. We acknowledge the receipt. We offer listening and a friendly word from the community by mail or IRC to the victim or to the reporter. We gather information about the issue and if there is possible mediation, we talk to the offender and offer it. Or we contact the offender and explain the behavior that is wrong, how can they improve the situation, our proposal, and offer help or support in making things better. We try to understand and respect everybody's feelings. We focus on the bad behavior and the type of the community Debian wants to be. And then we iterate and finally close or escalate. We try to keep the reporter informed about the process. And about our tools, apart from the reference documents that I already mentioned, we don't have much other resources to help ourselves handle the different issues that come to our inboxes. We have reviewed the Wiki page which included some links to further info and resources. And we have added some more at the top of the further info section. Here, these are the new links. If you know any other documents that can help the team members or any Debian contributor to promote a more welcoming environment or to deal with conflicts or misbehavior, please send it to the mail alias and we'll consider adding it to the Wiki page. But note that if we end this, with a long list of links, the Wiki page may become less useful. So, helping creating that section, selecting the most adequate and updated links is also welcome. Finally, the own activity of the team helps ourselves to learn from experience for the good and for the bad. And when a new issue arises in some cases, we can reuse some parts of former communications in order to act quicker. And in every case, we can also try better than the last time. Note that for the good or for the bad, we or at least me don't keep history of the activity of the team. Before May 2016. So now I'll try to produce a kind of activity report of our last year. I have counted about 40 threats or conversations since July 2016 until today. A short summary of the topics. We have dealt with some issues that we have dealt with seven issues. Three of them are still ongoing. Four issues about behavior in the backtracking system. One issue about content in Planet Debian. And two serious issues about behavior of Debian contributors towards people. Only these seven proper issues mean about one issue each two months average. This is in my experience a pace of almost nonstop because some issues take months to get them handled and closed. And we have more requests in between as I explain now. We had three more messages informing about potential issues that didn't go further fortunately. We had six messages with removal requests from the mailing list archives. One of them was spamming as an act of harassment and that was the only one that could be tackled by us and the messages removed as spam after some time. The others were answered or redirected to listmasters but no actual action was taken. We had two trolling messages ignored but they motivated. We had four requests from Debian project leader, Debian account managers or depth committee about issues or people to ongoing because of the ongoing issues. Some more non-span mails, some of them was answered some other got buried in our inboxes for example a request of interview about enforcing a code of conduct how does it work in practice. We didn't answer. And finally some more internal communication about five tasks that are still pending updating the wiki page which is partially down as I explained before creating a GBGK it was proposed but undone yet about a report to the DPL or to the project we started on January couldn't be delivered due to lack of team feedback it's being partially down today a task about renewing the depth code of conduct it was proposed by several Debian contributors I sent a second proposal after working on it there was consensus in there is more work needed together with the depth com team and here we are and finally communication about enlarging the team or renewing some members that are not active so everything gets done and we have some rotation for our own mental health and that's all from the report or for my part now I propose some topics for discussion here throw some ideas but it's not mandatory to discuss about them if there are other topics of more interest of the audience one idea for discuss is the name of the team anti-harassment puts some people in defensive mode I'd like a name in the positive side making people feel that we care about the health of the community about respect, about inclusiveness we can do some brainstorming in the Gobi I'll add my bad proposals there too another topic for discussion can be how to strengthen the team enlarge it, new members, rotation also because issues are hard and disgusting most of the time are there any volunteers who decides who is in the team last time was the DPL some people volunteered and the DPL accepted them probably after today the team is more known and the number of reported cases will rise we are a big community and even 2% of people suffering harassment is a lot of people and a lot of issues for a small team can we maybe tackle this at team level some kind of moderator roles in each team another topic for discussion is that we are slow we try to breathe deeply, measure our words be kind, coordinate an answer inside of the team we have few experience some of us are not English native speakers so everything takes time some iterations take a week or more if there is a peak of other work or life stuff delays increase and people suffer it's sad another possible topic for discussion is delegation or not delegation currently we are a consultive body some people understand anti harassment as moderators and de escalators some others feel that anti harassment will need more powers to enforce themselves the code of conduct and decide in serious issues currently we gather information, try to mediate if possible and produce a report or proposal as I explained before not else, nothing else how to report our activity to the project the format of the reports I don't know if what I said makes sense for you resonates or it's kind of vague the level of detail where to report Debian project mailing list is public for example when, once a year, when something happens after closing any issue I don't know and that's all I think from my part thanks for attending and I hope you can discuss and I will try to follow closely the stream, the gobby and the IRC now it's your turn thank you very much and hugs and kisses for everybody bye bye so this was the report from Laura we have a few things now in gobby that we are going to start discussing but we also have Margaria who is also part of the team so I would like to ask you if you want to ask something to watch whatever she has said test, yes so I think Laura made a great summary and I agree with the points of discussion for me the main thing that I would like to discuss it's the name which was the first item in her list but it's the last on gobby whatever, I really think that being called anti-harassment is detrimental to the team because when we write to someone saying we are the anti-harassment team like the person is like oh I'm being accused of being a harasser and like it doesn't lead to good results so it would be really nice to have a more positive name that leads to like we are trying to create an inclusive community and yeah and the other issues are also interesting to discuss but I'm interested in hearing what people have to say so the main thing is the last point for our reason when ordering the item for discussion we reached the conclusion that is you know like the thing that it's more like to have some back-up by sharing you know plenty of proposals and so on so we decided to lead that for the last item because the worst case scenario is something that can be discussed later by making this or whatever so the first point as Laura has explained is the anti-harassment team right now is not a delegated team I would like to hear your thoughts about if it should be a delegating or not which power the team should have because right now something important is that the team has absolutely no power they only have let's say the obligation of reading the people who are mailing them and trying to help them but absolutely no power so about the delegation I think it's quite important that it's a team that gets a delegation but I don't see that it absolutely needs to have specific powers so it's kind of yes but no but I think it would be really nice to have a delegation because it lays down it also brings credibility to the team by being at the receiving end of a delegation but I don't always think it needs additional powers I mean when a problem arises you either make sure the person leaves or you find for example on the lists to enforce it if they do so you don't need that power at the NT harassment team I mean I possibly do agree with you but the counter to that is to say that there's no point having a team which does a lot of work comes up with a solution and then finds out after the fact potentially that another team in Debian doesn't want to enforce what was the decided solution so that's the risk there if there's some point there's a need of power let's talk about it as far as Dam is concerned there is space for discussion I won't go into detail now because I'm burnt out at the moment but I recall there's been conversation but I don't remember the details the only thing I remember is that there is space for working something out what about powers to the team does somebody have an opinion what actually should be the actual powers of the team it's more a question to Marga what are the powers that you would need to promote the diversity we want and protect the victims because I've kind of failed to answer that question myself maybe because I'm not in the position but yeah what are the powers you would need when it comes to people who feels that they're being harassed by victims in these situations it's very important for them to know that there is immediate recourse and after that there can be further discussion periods because when you allow somebody who is positioned as a harasser to maintain a presence and active contribution to a project what you're saying is that that person's potential value is more important than creating a safe space or comfort for the people present and involved in the community at large the other thing that's big with that is it's really easy for people to report incidences I've heard the phrase use incident reporting a lot rather than harassment reporting because it kind of softens the conversation but when you're having this theoretical maybe something will happen in the future it doesn't all the time and I bet a lot of us can think of a case where we've seen something in the news perhaps with a cop shooting someone where they say there's an investigation and that's the end of the story so right when we are discussing the powers I think there's also a question of what our scope is which is very unclear so we are the anti harassment team so we are supposed to receive complaints regarding harassment it's not that those are non but they are very few we have many more complaints about violations of the code of conduct that don't don't fall under the typical definition of harassment right that we have a code of conduct and sometimes people make mistakes and they violate the code of conduct and so we get this thing so for example it's not mean to someone else on a bug is that really our scope or is it not it's not clear we get the reports we try to mediate we try we do our best into like creating an inclusive community but it isn't really clear whether this is our scope or not so we are always in a constant struggle of are we really supposed to be the people doing this work or not because it's not that someone is being sexually harassed where you can really say okay this is the anti harassment team responsibility it's someone making awful comments on a bug if I'm talking too much just anybody tell me to stop so a pretty common take on groups that are doing like anti harassment work or like definitions of harassment in communities is usually around not just like you know the example of sexual harassment but harassment in general and like that's being taken in a broader and broader definition these days so racist comments in addition to sexist comments in addition to like things like being mean or making someone feel uncomfortable because of a discriminatory practice which usually looks like picking at someone based on skill level or demographic like identity so when that happens and like with incident reporting teams kind of the assumption is the first thing is just talk to the person and say hey like this is this thing that happened this is how you made someone feel uncomfortable you know there's a lot of nuance like you're never supposed to say who the person was who said they were feeling uncomfortable like there's negotiation in that I guess as a practical example do you think that do you think that this team should be able to decide for example that given some examples of someone whose behavior on the list seems to be completely inappropriate do you think this team should have the power to say that person is banned or should it be merely that you say we're going to send this as a dossier to the listmasters I mean what's your opinion of the purpose I'm not sure why we are focusing so much on my opinion because but the point of the both was to listen to your opinion as a community rather than our opinion as a team to be able to get input from the community so I'd rather listen to the answer from other people and not from me the importance I think of hearing your opinion is that having dealt with these cases for example Laura presented that in one case you were able to remove a message and in other cases you were not because listmasters didn't agree and I think that as a data point is important you the scope of this team is not defined because it implies everything because it could imply if somebody today wanted to upload a hot baby back into the archive well anti harassment would probably step in anti harassment or whatever this is renamed to so yeah the scope is way too broad but because the problem is transversal to all of the interaction areas we have even as technical as they can be or as social as they can be I want to make a comment before you continue anti harassment team they are only for people they cannot check everything so when you say that something like hot baby will happen they will step in always think that even if you are expecting them to read emails in communicating them things of course hot baby would draw somebody in the bad way who would feel attacked and would file a complaint on that the example was good this user never never please expect the anti harassment is going to be reading everything and they are going to please always contact them and have them to to take action I think one interesting idea is that the listmasters delegation could be reduced to like them being only the technical thing and delegating every anti harassment question to the anti harassment team if it was sufficiently staff etc but saying any exclusion from a list should go through anti harassment and whatever decision would be binding and the listmaster are just the technical executants and don't take these decisions ever the problem now is that anti harassment does part of the job and says this master look you should really do that but you can you are entitled to your own opinion without having all the dust in terms of executive power I think it correlates with responsibility so in Debian we have the listmasters responsible for main list webmasters responsible for web pages the FTP master responsible for packages and Debian account manager responsible for membership so if anti harassment decides that somebody shouldn't be a Debian member it's actually the Debian account manager responsibility to make that call glad to listen but if I remove a person because anti harassment told me so but I feel like I shouldn't then I am the person responsible for membership so probably it's my call and not anti harassment but this then brings up the question what is the responsibility of anti harassment if the responsibility if making it so that Debian is a safe space that is a huge responsibility and it should come with huge powers reverse Spider-Man problem so if the responsibility is a participation role or making sure that no complaints will be unheard there was a good point of safety is a shared responsibility it's not just anti harassment that keeps Debian safe it's the whole of Debian and anti harassment is to make sure that no complain will be unheard if it hasn't been taken care locally in which case the responsibility is shared there could be the final collectors of things that would have fallen through the cracks to be forwarded to the others if the least masters are not acting on anti harassment because they don't have time that is a red flag so I've seen it on a broader discussion of what are scopes and responsibilities and how to make them reasonable and actionable both in terms of expectations and in terms of powers okay so I think that there is one problem of having this decision making because well then it could be very difficult to enforce any kind of action and you might have to justify to every team like first to justify to anti harassment or team that makes a recommendation then you have to justify it again to another team I think that can be problematic for the people affected the victims we're having discussions and I think I agree with the idea that I think anti harassment and down there they should somehow work together or maybe have anti harassment have some more protection or support role but I definitely think that some team needs a delegation with tools to enforce sanctions when they are needed and to act in the protection of our members I think as a project we have failed for too long to protect our members properly and I think we need to do something about that so I wanted to say one thing about as my own opinion I also wanted to mention that further up on the GABI document Laura gave her opinion and those of us who were focusing on the in person conversation may not have noticed I didn't at first she I think liked the idea of balancing the powers across the different teams and said that there's always a dam and the DPL if necessary but if you want to read what she said I'll speak for her when I can't read it on the screen right now my point was going to be that the impact of a communication from a team with a set of enforcement powers versus a team without a set of enforcement powers feels different to the person on the other side of the conversation and I am not actually advocating one answer or the other answer I'm just and at least not with this point I'm just saying that so similarly if you're talking to a manager or an HR department at a job human resources it's a very different conversation than if you're talking to a peer or a support group in a safe space so we should consider what type of reaction we're looking to get and what type of powers would make that better or harder as one of the factors we consider I think I mean I put this idea on the GABI but I'd like to hear your reactions to this maybe a way to get out of this well where's the limit of the power of whom it could be to change the composition or change to make the anti harassment team be of one person out of each key team I mean if one of them and one of least masters and one of the committee they become the anti harassment team maybe aided by others I don't know just think this could solve the issue of what power do you have to take this decision that belongs to another sphere okay thank you everybody for your opinion let's talk a bit about the second point in the path how to report activity to the project because anti harassment they have been doing their job silently for a couple of years at least now so far Laura has done now the field reporting that has been done so far when things are not reported people think that either they are working a lot or they are doing nothing so which level of reporting do you think they should go reporting a lot reporting periodically reporting as it goes I think in my opinion not much reporting will be needed because there is not much you can share but probably making sure that everybody knows that anti harassment is there and that can be reached I think will be very useful probably agree with you but I guess having some reporting is useful just to show it exists but that could be like once a year to say we have dealt with some incidents and just post a summary as the kind of summary that is given here I don't think monthly or weekly reports would be helpful if nobody else has that if it is to make visible that anti harassment team exists then bits from the anti harassment team with some report and some suggestions on things did you know if you are uncomfortable in Debian it sounds like a joke I mean it sounds like a joke okay we have lighted minutes left so we are going to deploy everybody who wants to go that is the name of the team so how do you think the team should be named please give you silly ideas well I think first you will need to define the scope to be able to find a name it's not enough it's worth having this discussion so I agree with that this is just the tour project is going through this a little bit and they have a team called the community council and I think their scope is much wider they do deal with harassment but other issues and it's a team that has composed the five people and the project votes on who is on the team but I think that's a good name for a wide scope but I agree that the name is kind of connected to the scope question okay so let's go back to the point 3 one thought is that in the earlier the goals discussed in the earlier diversity round table line up a little bit with one of the points Laura made for this team namely fostering a welcome and inclusive culture within Debian separate from handling specific incidents and that is this if the scope does cover both points as opposed to just handling harassment then maybe a broader name like diversity and inclusion could be appropriate but that seems I don't think any I don't think I don't think anybody was envisioning the two things as the same team so that's a different question so Laura mentioned this during her presentation about the team she was suggesting that the current pace of the team is a lot of work to handle for the people who are currently active and question that she put is how it started the team so far last year when the team was let's say that nobody was active I called for her and Laura stepping but she has been wondering how to get more volunteers and how to make sure that the volunteers are people who should be able to handle with this because nobody knows how to handle with this and I personally going to ask another question do you think that the anti harassment team should have somebody who is totally external to the community but trying to handle this kind of thing for helping them can you clarify what you mean by that because if they're working on this they kind of become part of the community so do you mean someone who intentionally to try and choose someone who doesn't know about Debian or what do you mean there is this idea that have been floating around not related to this team that there are plenty of things that Debian contributed or like doing for example accounting so this idea of paying for you know keeping keeping the account keeping the money of the project I think not a lot of people want to do anti harassment related things because not only anti harassment there are related things who are also doing this kind of job it's not a fun one so I was wondering if we should get paid and get somebody who is paid to do this for helping specializing in handling this kind of issues I think it might be hard to get it's harder to get people to respect the decisions if it's someone who's from outside the project I would have guessed but it's hard to say for me okay so somebody wants to do a proposition about so if people from outside is of interest I do have one idea that might be helpful to the team would the team have an interest in someone who has dealt with harassment issues in some sort of specific area common to like a guest chat or something with the team to talk about their expertise to help the team learn from that is that something that you would want for me I was launching an idea if you think you have something that will help you should contact them I was just proposing okay I'll talk with the team my wife works at a domestic violence shelter so she's dealt specifically with harassment issues around that and I'm sure someone in her agency would be willing to do a one-time discussion just to give expertise and share it with the team like I was about to say something similar in money invested could be paying for training if there is a mediation facilitation that could be good for anti-arrestment and not just for anti-arrestment as far as I'm concerned yeah so yeah so anybody here feels like proposing a name and the powers that the team should have like even that we are ready to decide that everything should be in a lot maybe we can close the both with some proposition yeah community empowerment anti-arrestment yeah the thing is the anti-arrestment part maybe it's okay so we are going to leave it here if it happens that somebody this evening gets an idea about a name for the team you send them an email and thank you everybody for coming