D_D Code of Conduct and moderation process - Seeking Input

💬 General
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Brilliant initiative and thanks a lot for getting it going @kempsterrrr!

First question: how many mediators do we expect to have in a season?

I’m just addressing the Moderation Procedures with this post, otherwise it’s too much to take in in one sitting.

I think Moderation Procedure v1 is a good and robust process that just needs a little bit of v2.

  • One person to speak to the complainant - it’s not always easy to report a bad thing, so one mediator has confidentiality and therefore trust baked in

  • it’s important for mediator to convey that that trust doesn’t equal a ‘result’.

  • One person (the same mediator?) to speak to the accused to reply to ‘the charge’, and I would incorporate the following from Moderation Procedures v2 at this point:

“Whilst these reports would be anonymous, enough context would need to be shared to help the moderators understand the situation better. This may include demographic data, situational/environmental context (i.e. group call, 1-to-1, f-2-f), the context of conversation, past experiences, feelings and any consequences. Any information shared must be okayed by each party, the primary goal here is to protect folks from harm.”

  • A panel of three moderators is a good number of listeners for accused to try and appeal to, and enough wisdom in those three to listen and hopefully come to a fair outcome.

  • The same goes if it comes to an appeal second round - I think it’s the question whether new moderators would be briefed by predecessors from the first round to ensure impartiality. There would always be the outcome of the initial interview with both the accused and accuser, so a lot of information would already be there.

  • I strongly suggest keeping the admins as administrators and not involved in making any decisions at all - it defeats the integrity of the process, I would say.

Just for context: on Moderation Procedures V2 the first part is quite flawed I believe:
showing a signed statement from the complainant to the accused is a recipe for disaster. The accused can fabricate a hell of a lot of lies or half truths based on that. And often the type of person who is a predator, manipulator, abuser will likely be pretty good at this.

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thanks for the TLDR. to clarify this as I don’t think is quite as I intended:

V1

  • Mediator takes original report (just form submission) of the complaint selects 3 random moderators and hands it off to them
  • Moderators speak to each part and make their judgement
  • Mediator communicates the judgement back to each party

very passive role, moderators do most of the work

V2

  • Mediator take original report (form submission) and they themselves take a full statement from each part on a video call which they have to agree and sign up to as accurate
  • Mediator shares these statements (anon, but with context) with moderators who make a decision based on the facts presented, not a conversation with the folks (more like a jury)
  • Mediator communicates moderators decision back to each party

Mediator does most of the work, more like a typical legal process, Moderators are handed evidence like a jury, they don’t get the evidence themselves

I think this might update some of your feedback in the next reply @Piablo

i.e.

the mediator speaks with each party directly to clarify their version of events, person who reported first then the accused. it is the mediator’s job to interview, question, clarify, examine etc. what each is saying and produce the reports which each party must agree is accurate. they don’t write to them. that would be very flawed I agree.

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After reading through it all, I feel that the Procedure 1 might be a better approach.

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For procedure 1:

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how can we will make sure that the procedure will be fair for the person who made the report?

what if the appeal makes the accused to take advantage and get out of the situation?

For Procedure 2:

  • asking the person who makes the report to make video call and sign agreement seems like quite a lot (as it discourages the willingness to even make report and people would rather leave the community than going through a complicated process to report something unfair happened to them)

  • also the accused party can always have the privilege of being loud and trying to get out of situation (which can cause a lot of distress to the person who reported the issue)

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Thanks meowy for the diagram super helpful :raised_hands:

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I thought this was great

There could be the potentiality to abuse the CoC itself.

Meaning someone makes multiple false accusations.

There could be consequences for that, for that is a form of harassment, especially if it’s on the same person.

We see abuse of systems like this in different areas of the world, so I thought it would be worth bringing up.

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I just deleted my tl’dr as it isn’t accurate. Saving space…and confusion! :smiley:

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MEOEY YOU ABSOLUTE LEGEND ( @with-heart would love this ) - thanks so much for the diagrams :heart:

how can we will make sure that the procedure will be fair for the person who made the report?

I think we have to trust our fellow humans (moderators) to make the right calls. If either party feels they haven’t, they can appeal it. Not sure I can think of anything else that wouldn’t make it unfairly balanced for the person who reported it and we need to be careful as this can be abused as well as per @allWiseee point below:

Good point mate. Wonder if the answer is it’s up to the moderators.

i.e. if they think something is in breach of CoC, they have the power to take action against either party? Main concern here would be scaring folks of reporting things. tough balance

what do you think?

not sure I understand mate, could you provide an example please? :pray:

Good points mate. Just playing the other side of this for a second… How different are these two approaches:

Approach 1 - The person who reported needs to have a conversation with 3 moderators who will make a decision

Approach 2 - The person makes statement to one person who shares it anon with 3 moderators

Is the complexity your referring to signing the statement? I’m just wondering as part of the reason for suggesting this as an alternative was so the person who reported didn’t have to speak to 3 people (instead of one, which might be more stressful for some) and just trust their judgement (without getting a chance to confirm they’ve understood your POV by signing the statement)

so the person who is reporting a violation should never be asked to speak with the person their report is about, unless THEY choose to do that to accept an apology/clear the air. the focus here is safety for both parties first. so they wouldn’t have a chance to act like this to someone who has reported them.

so in both cases, each person is only speaking with either the mediator or the moderators, never each other. does that address the question or did I miss something mate?

if someone is found to be in breach of the CoC, maybe the report could request they’re not allowed to engage with them directly in the community?

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Thank you @kempsterrrr for outlining this and thank you also @Piablo @meowy @allWiseee for sharing your feedback.

Just flagging this as a risk given the challenges faced with getting multi-sig signers to sign transactions this month: Whether procedure 1 or procedure 2 is selected, engagement is needed to moderate/mediate the infraction in a timely way.

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full agree. any ideas for helping with this?

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Very happy about ^that.

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Update here. Planning to move forward with Moderation Procedure 1 and will work on a finalised draft of this proposal to share back with everyone.

Thanks for your feedback @meowy @chuck25 @allWiseee @Piablo @p_b

I have locked the vote but feel free to share any more thoughts as they’re really helping :slight_smile:

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I truly appreciate all the work you have been doing.:purple_heart:

He’s the reason why I started doing diagrams for everything.
This is one of the many things I have learnt from him.:sparkles:

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Moderators will deliberate and report their decision back to the Mediator in writing in private who will then community communicate the decision to the accused party in writing.

Little typo.

Also, do we need to define admins? Are they different than mediators and moderators?

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Would recommend them be the same thing.

Also had a community member bring up a concern in the discord recently where they felt scammed by another member who may or may not have made some promise of work. Would like to see remediation methods other than people calling each other scammers in the discord.

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FYI the final version of this is being worked on in a Google doc here

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Can we move this document to a [DRAFT] proposal? I think we sorely need it.

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100% agree. There is a WIP here - have given you access.

I think this is very close. In DAO Governance Structure Upgrade we gave Stewards the responsibility of Moderators as defined here, until we find a better solution.

My thoughts are we just update this proposal to state that so we can get a process in place and then if we want to change it in the future we can. Thoughts?

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@Erik_Knobl I’ve just made edits to that document to assign this responsibility to the Stewards in full in pursuit of forward momentum. This is on the assumption we won’t be able to find another 10 people t play such an essential role in a decent time.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this.

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for the moment, I think it’s fine.
There are a lot of things we are asking the Stewards to do, and imo, not enough rewards. We may be pushing the line a little bit. Things to improve in the medium term.

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Agreed. I shipped it for now so folks can engage - [DRAFT] D_D Code of Conduct and moderation process