Re: Community transparency

On 26/02/2015 13:02, Robert Kaye wrote:
> I would like to take a minute to start a conversation about community transparency and what that means. Previously I've used the term "public shaming" and since then have gotten quite a bit of push-back from that. So, I'm officially retracting the use of that term. Mea culpa.
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> However, I would like to get feedback on one important mechanism of keeping a community informed on conflicts that are happening inside the community. Let me given an example of what happened in the past that illustrates this:
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> Back in 2006 we had one poisonous person divide the community into factions. People were either for or against this person and this person's speech continued to reinforce this split. Things had gotten quite out of hand and I started a series of conversations with this person, pointing out their fractious behavior. But, nothing ever changed over the course of these conversations. They kept elevating in tone and severity and still nothing changed. These conversations were held in private between myself, the person and one mediator. At the time the wisdom was to "not air your dirty laundry", meaning that you shouldn't manage disputes in the public view.
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> When finally I decided that no resolution was to be had and that I needed to eject this person from the community, I did so in a blog post. That, in hindsight, was clearly a bad idea. Because there were a number of people in the community who had no idea that this person was causing trouble nor that this person was about to be ejected from the community. This caused quite a stir in the community and some members felt that MusicBrainz was no longer a safe place to be, for fear of being indiscriminately tossed out at the whim of the the BDFL.
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> Since then, I've adopted a policy of engaging with people who are causing trouble in the community on a more public level, but I'm having a hard to putting that "policy" into words that do not cause drastic responses from the community. Clearly, some public transparency is needed in order to keep the community informed of trouble so that when serious action is taken, so that people are not surprised or feel that their involvement in the community is threatened when action is taken.
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> How should this happen? When should this happen? What sorts of bad behaviors warrant public notification? What don't?
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I think a few more recent examples might help a bit.

Paul