Problem Sensing - Bullying on Telegram

[stephen-rowan]

Kerstin Nobel - First incident was on December 17th. Len made a comment about the EU government and added in brackets that they "want to vaccinate babies". I commented that I would ask to leave those comments out of the chat because some, including me, might find it insensitive. I´ll send a screenshot of Marks reply, which was out of line in my opinion and the screenshots makes it clear that it was not just me, who thought this.

Kerstin Nobel - The second incident was basically a gender discussion which led to Mark calling out, as I said - cultural Marxism. I provided just the Wikipedia on this theorem to make people aware of what it means and Mark made very rude comments and called me "leftist gang". I made sure to not call him out to keep the discussion fair, but he didn´t and then Matthias (midas) chimed in about communism and then Danny called for this to end on both of us. I did not make any pro-communist remarks and didn´t put any political stuff into my replies or comments at all, but Len and Mark do this in a very clear way and I find this to be very problematic. (On a personal note, since I live in the US part time for like 10 years. This community is not even mostly US based and the irrational fear of communism in the US is just stupid and we all know that parts of Catalyst are experimenting with UBI and stuff, so it would be great if the US paranoid far righters could leave their agenda out of this.) But I wanted to be fair and didn´t say what I would have loved to say.

Honestly, I have no idea how to deal with it. I don´t need any anonymity, I´m happy to mediate this with Mark in a group setting. I´m also ok with however the circle usually does things. For me it was just necessary to let somebody that I relate to in this community know, that I´m not ok with how I was treated and that I´m seeing a problem in how communication is going in two of the Telegram groups. This was my comment. While it might be accusing in it´s content, I think it is a difference to accuse and bully/ drown somebody (Mark) and to provide a viewpoint (me) on a comment so that the community can choose what they find more relevant. This should not be answered with how Mark did that.

And can we please understand what Mark is doing and how he is steering the conversation. He called me out for discussing Marxism (which he brought up) and then other people saw me as the person who is causing a problem or an argument, while this was not even the case. this is the rest of the conversation.

here is another female member of the diversity chat and her thoughts.

Stephen Rowan (Whitenstall) - Thank you Kerstin. My first thought is to raise this a problem that relates to Codes of Conduct. To mature Catalyst needs to address how behaviour is regulated in a distributed environment (it is never a free for all). I can document what you have provided "as is" in one of Circle's GitHub repos (if you agree - it will then be public and open source) , then raise it as an agenda item and refer to it at this week's Circle Meeting (this Thursday). I support a range of viewpoints in Catalyst - but people have to listen to and respect each other. I will talk to other Circle members about this beforehand - so they have an opportunity to read the context.

[mark-stopka]

And can we please understand what Mark is doing and how he is steering the conversation. He called me out for discussing Marxism (which he brought up) and then other people saw me as the person who is causing a problem or an argument, while this was not even the case. this is the rest of the conversation.

Maybe keep the highlights out of your comments I suppose. You decide to provide "viewpoint", highlighting a conspiracy theory section of the article after I have provided explanation below.

[stephen-rowan]

And can we please understand what Mark is doing and how he is steering the conversation. He called me out for discussing Marxism (which he brought up) and then other people saw me as the person who is causing a problem or an argument, while this was not even the case. this is the rest of the conversation.

Maybe keep the highlights out of your comments I suppose. You decide to provide "viewpoint", highlighting a conspiracy theory section of the article after I have provided explanation below.

Mark - I am documenting what has been given to me. And posting this issue here gives you an opportunity to respond.

[mark-stopka]

And posting this issue here gives you an opportunity to respond.

Is that not what I just did?

I would also like to point out that Kenric Nelson called Rick McCracken driving an "anti-mandate agenda"; on Twitter. If any sort of Code of Conduct is established it must clearly state what channels are within a scope of said Code of Conduct.

We already had examples of non-Cardano related disputes on other non-Cardano relevant channels being used as a tool to remove people from Cardano Foundation managed communication channels.

[ketniptrip]

This feed and this problem has nothing to do with Marxism, so bringing up a reference on Marxism is not helpful. If you (Mark) suggest a theory (cultural Marxism) in the channel, the group, including me, can reply to that with a reference on what it means. Allison btw asked for an explanation of this term, I delivered a Wikipedia reference. This should not be followed up by you with an insult. You were disrespectful to me and I brought this up, because it is problematic.

[kenricnelson]

I'm sorry to hear of the manner in which Kerstin Nobel has been treated and I agree this is an important issue for the Cardano Catalyst community to address. There are different ways to frame the issue of Codes of Conduct on social media. I'm open to hearing suggestions. One thought is to set standards of competency regarding interpersonal communication. Technical communities have a tendency to pride themselves on the assertion of expertise. Unfortunately, these can devolve into destructive games of trying to minimize or ridicule another person's contribution. Even worse, a culture has developed in some technical communities in which people on the sidelines cheer on or excuse bullying because a) they find it entertaining or b) they don't recognize the poor competency it reflects. I hope we can elevate the conversation within the Catalyst community and hold each other accountable to high standards of interpersonal communication. I look forward to participating in this important objective and I appreciate the courage Kerstin Nobel has shown in bringing the problem to the communities attention.

[mark-stopka]

This feed and this problem has nothing to do with Marxism,

Agreed.

so bringing up a reference on Marxism is not helpful.

Which I did not. I brough up a specific example from the conversation provided and added context, but let me maybe expand on it below.

If you (Mark) suggest a theory (cultural Marxism) in the channel, the group, including me, can reply to that with a reference on what it means. Allison btw asked for an explanation of this term, I delivered a Wikipedia reference. This should not be followed up by you with an insult. You were disrespectful to me and I brought this up, because it is problematic.

First of all I provided an explanation to Allison directly, if I use a reference term, am I not the most qualified to define what I reference by use of said term? You intentionally provided a Wikipedia reference that suited your agenda (I am sure I can use the word when Kenric can) of labling me as a subject of far right extremist conspiracy theory; and now object to the fact that I did the same, just a little bit more openly.

Also, let me point out that while you object to me using the phrase "radical left gang", in statement below

This community is not even mostly US based and the irrational fear of communism in the US is just stupid and we all know that parts of Catalyst are experimenting with UBI and stuff, so it would be great if the US paranoid far righters could leave their agenda out of this.

you just called myself and Len "US paranoid far righters". Ignoring the fact, I am not even based in the US.

Lastly, the matthias in the aforementioned screenshot is not Matthias Sieber as you state in the body of your message but a different guy (that is if Matthias allows me to use the said word as he called me up on in the public chat also; see what I did there?).

[kenricnelson]

I was anticipating @mark-stopka would respond to my input. Unfortunately, he decided to do so on Twitter. While I look forward to working with the community to resolve these difficulties, it’s also clear that the game of escalating the conflicts, rather than seeking to be understanding in trying resolve the conflicts is part of the problem.

[ketniptrip]

"if I use a reference term, am I not the most qualified to define what I reference by use of said term? " Yes, you are in fact most qualified to define what YOU reference, but this would then be an opinion and providing an actual reference on a theory like I did is certainly more qualified than your opinion. Additionally, just because you already provided a definition in response to a question, this does certainly not mean, that I´m not allowed to share a different or additional viewpoint. It should not result in you insulting me personally.

I did not use "a" Wikipedia reference, I provided the one Wikipedia reference on this theory, so this does in fact not "suit my agenda", it provides an actual reference, which is an important way of how this community evaluates things. Instead of insulting me, you could have provided a different viewpoint, I would have not interfered, because people are allowed to make sense of this for themselves by reading up on provided material.

The association with the far right conspiracy theorists and their hate of communism actually resulted from your response in both situations and I agree, that it is not very civil. It proves very well, tho, that your behavior can lead to other people also using a style of communication, that might not be appropriate. So this again proves, that a code of conduct on how we want to communicate as a group is necessary.

The problem that I was raising was about your rude behavior in two community chats. The Telegram chats are often the very first communication channels where people experience this community and if you bully members of the chat like you did with me on two seperate occasions, we are in danger of losing valuable community members that are not interested to be part of a community, where they are insulted, if they participate.

[mark-stopka]

I was anticipating @mark-stopka would respond to my input. Unfortunately, he decided to do so on Twitter. While I look forward to working with the community to resolve these difficulties, it’s also clear that the game of escalating the conflicts, rather than seeking to be understanding in trying resolve the conflicts is part of the problem.

Excuse me?

[ketniptrip]

I'm sorry to hear of the manner in which Kerstin Nobel has been treated and I agree this is an important issue for the Cardano Catalyst community to address. There are different ways to frame the issue of Codes of Conduct on social media. I'm open to hearing suggestions. One thought is to set standards of competency regarding interpersonal communication. Technical communities have a tendency to pride themselves on the assertion of expertise. Unfortunately, these can devolve into destructive games of trying to minimize or ridicule another person's contribution. Even worse, a culture has developed in some technical communities in which people on the sidelines cheer on or excuse bullying because a) they find it entertaining or b) they don't recognize the poor competency it reflects. I hope we can elevate the conversation within the Catalyst community and hold each other accountable to high standards of interpersonal communication. I look forward to participating in this important objective and I appreciate the courage Kerstin Nobel has shown in bringing the problem to the communities attention.

Thank you Kenric, for taking my concerns seriously and for providing valuable ideas and some context from other communities with similar problems. I agree that is is important to work out how we can develop our ways of communicating as a group.

[manonthemat]

Lastly, the matthias in the aforementioned screenshot is not Matthias Sieber as you state in the body of your message but a different guy (that is if Matthias allows me to use the said word as he called me up on in the public chat also; see what I did there?).

Appreciate the clarification. That matthias goes by the telegram handle midas, while I go by MatzeOne there.

[ketniptrip]

Lastly, the matthias in the aforementioned screenshot is not Matthias Sieber as you state in the body of your message but a different guy (that is if Matthias allows me to use the said word as he called me up on in the public chat also; see what I did there?).

Appreciate the clarification. That matthias goes by the telegram handle midas, while I go by MatzeOne there.

Same. I appreciate the clarification as well and asked Stephen to change this in the initial text. Sorry, Matthias.

[manonthemat]

Lastly, the matthias in the aforementioned screenshot is not Matthias Sieber as you state in the body of your message but a different guy (that is if Matthias allows me to use the said word as he called me up on in the public chat also; see what I did there?).

Appreciate the clarification. That matthias goes by the telegram handle midas, while I go by MatzeOne there.

Same. I appreciate the clarification as well and asked Stephen to change this in the initial text. Sorry, Matthias.

No worries. It's a pretty common mistake people make. I'm glad that part was cleared up for you.

[stephen-rowan]

OK @ketniptrip - I have changed to Matthias (midas) in the main text of this issue.

[FundTrack]

Wow, though I missed all of this, I am surprised that no one asked me directly in a dm if in fact Inwas an anti-vaxxer. Someone along the line took it upon themselves to label me as such. Never asking me what my opinion was on Covid Vaccinations. If someone really wants to know. Send me a dm.I'll be happy to explain my feelings and considerations.

[FundTrack]

Does this thread qualify as "much ado about nothing?"

[ketniptrip]

Wow, though I missed all of this, I am surprised that no one asked me directly in a dm if in fact Inwas an anti-vaxxer. Someone along the line took it upon themselves to label me as such. Never asking me what my opinion was on Covid Vaccinations. If someone really wants to know. Send me a dm.I'll be happy to explain my feelings and considerations.

Yes, Mark labeled you as an Anti vaxxer as you can see in the screenshots. It seems like you did not appreciate this and would have preferred somebody asked you about your opinion/viewpoint before labeling you and I think that sounds fair. This is the reason for this feed. I think you brought up a good idea. A DM could be a good way of bringing up concerns or just asking for clarification, maybe this can be one of the things to include in the discussion for a possible code of conduct.

[mark-stopka]

Wow, though I missed all of this, I am surprised that no one asked me directly in a dm if in fact Inwas an anti-vaxxer. Someone along the line took it upon themselves to label me as such. Never asking me what my opinion was on Covid Vaccinations. If someone really wants to know. Send me a dm.I'll be happy to explain my feelings and considerations.

Yes, Mark labeled you as an Anti vaxxer as you can see in the screenshots. It seems like you did not appreciate this and would have preferred somebody asked you about your opinion/viewpoint before labeling you and I think that sounds fair. This is the reason for this feed. I think you brought up a good idea. A DM could be a good way of bringing up concerns or just asking for clarification, maybe this can be one of the things to include in the discussion for a possible code of conduct.

Are we going to have a stake weighted vote with minimal participation quorum if the community even thinks we should have a CoC?

[mark-stopka]

I did not make any pro-communist remarks and didn´t put any political stuff into my replies or comments at all, but Len and Mark do this in a very clear way and I find this to be very problematic.

Reminds me of the whole Cardano Foundation thing in late 2019, from e-mails between my lawyer and Giana who was a CF lawyer at the time.

Mark Stopka insulted Vincent Hanquez, a developer from IOHK (see enclosed screenshot).

Interestingly enough, Vincent himself never felt insulted or trash-talked.

In addition, for context:

• https://t.me/CatalystCommunityAdvisors/24200
• https://t.me/ProjectCatalystChat/59972

[kenricnelson]

Does this thread qualify as "much ado about nothing?"

Whether you think this is an important conversation depends on whether building an open community that has the ability to defend itself from exploitation is important. The breakthrough beauty of Blockchain technology is the mathematical guarantees of security against exploitive attack. Achieving similar guarantees in the governance processes is still an open problem. Developing standards of excellence in interpersonal communication is one aspect of governance. Designing bottom-up approaches in which the community supports and holds members accountable to those standards is a challenging problem.

[FundTrack]

The original part of this thread was so confusing to read. Communist! Marxist! Anti-vaxxer! Like the Abbott and Costello routine, “Who’s on First”. Look it up and watch if you don’t know it. Quite funny.

Now the subject is creating a Code of Conduct, that it sounds like would be intended to “define” acceptable speech.

Twitter’s new found Code of Conduct (founded in the idea that free speech does not matter and a small cabal gets to define acceptable speech) suggests any community should Be very careful about creating such a standard. The power to silence can be damaging.

On Wed, 5 Jan 2022 at 4:01 AM, Kenric Nelson @.***> wrote:

Does this thread qualify as "much ado about nothing?"

Whether you think this is an important conversation depends on whether building an open community that has the ability to defend itself from exploitation is important. The breakthrough beauty of Blockchain technology is the mathematical guarantees of security against exploitive attack. Achieving similar guarantees in the governance processes is still an open problem. Developing standards of excellence in interpersonal communication is one aspect of governance. Designing bottom-up approaches in which the community supports and holds members accountable to those standards is a challenging problem.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/Catalyst-Circle/Catalyst-Prioritized-Problems/issues/62#issuecomment-1005317051, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ARNSZJTFAMT5GVSTI75HGHTUUOQ6LANCNFSM5LIBLOKQ . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: @.*** .com>

-- Leonard Delunas s: lenkabul m: +357 95 547588 e: @.*** https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonard-delunas-60183660

[mark-stopka]

The breakthrough beauty of Blockchain technology is the mathematical guarantees of security against exploitive attack.

I am glad you brought that up, let's see what Ouroboros: A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol (Cardano underlying consenus protocol) describes in section 10 Attacks Discussion:

Transaction denial (censorship) attacks: In a transaction denial attack, the adversary wishes to prevent a certain transaction from becoming confirmed. For instance, the adversary may want to target a specific account and prevent the account holder from issuing an outgoing transaction. Such an attack is not feasible under the conditions of Theorem 5.5. Indeed, liveness ensures that, provided the transaction is attempted to be inserted for a sufficient number of slots by the network, it will be eventually confirmed.

[FundTrack]

I'm getting a bit fed up with these out of context remarks. My comment was about an unelected class of bureaucrats making decisions that affect the lives of our children - without recourse - like the decisions to force children to be vaccinated - without a parental protection. I chose a striking example simply to make a point (warning) about the power Of unelected groups off intermediaries. Yet the point I was making was ignored. And turned into someone's woke offence to even mention vaccination.

Please stop and think. Separate the issue from the example.

And stop deflecting attention from the issue by tarring and feathering me over the example.

[mark-stopka]

@FundTrack are you saying that some people who like to introduce themselves with pronouns same as is normal for their gender and physical sex may be bringing divisive identity politics into Cardano community? 😅

To be clear, I never have problem with people who actually have a gender identity disorder requesting use of specific pronouns, but from people who do not, it is laughable.

• The Intellectual Roots Of Wokeness for reference.

[kenricnelson]

The original part of this thread was so confusing to read. Communist! Marxist! Anti-vaxxer! Like the Abbott and Costello routine, “Who’s on First”. Look it up and watch if you don’t know it. Quite funny. Now the subject is creating a Code of Conduct, that it sounds like would be intended to “define” acceptable speech. Twitter’s new found Code of Conduct (founded in the idea that free speech does not matter and a small cabal gets to define acceptable speech) suggests any community should Be very careful about creating such a standard. The power to silence can be damaging. On Wed, 5 Jan 2022 at 4:01 AM, Kenric Nelson @.> wrote: Does this thread qualify as "much ado about nothing?" Whether you think this is an important conversation depends on whether building an open community that has the ability to defend itself from exploitation is important. The breakthrough beauty of Blockchain technology is the mathematical guarantees of security against exploitive attack. Achieving similar guarantees in the governance processes is still an open problem. Developing standards of excellence in interpersonal communication is one aspect of governance. Designing bottom-up approaches in which the community supports and holds members accountable to those standards is a challenging problem. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#62 (comment)>, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ARNSZJTFAMT5GVSTI75HGHTUUOQ6LANCNFSM5LIBLOKQ . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: @. .com> -- Leonard Delunas s: lenkabul m: +357 95 547588 e: @.*** https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonard-delunas-60183660

Leonard, Thanks for bringing up very important points. Your correct that it's quite important not to stifle communication. The establishment of communication norms, a code of conduct, or as this Cardano document titles the issue "Community Moderation Guide" is required in collaboration to encourage and facilitate broad communication, while defending the community against exploitation. In the Cardano Community Moderation Guide each member of the community is responsible to protect the security of the community by "Hold yourself and others to high standards" through the practice of "Preventing harassment, Extinguishing threats, Leave the trolling behind, and Share the power". It is these security measures that Kerstin is seeking to uphold and is asking for community support in enforcing. The next section of the document provides guidance on remediation. Currently, IOHK is responsible for this role; however, the goal of Catalyst and ultimately Voltaire, is to transition to community governance. The Circle is a prototype, initial step toward community governance, and is only charged with Sensing Problems. In this case, the Circle is bringing the issue to the communities attention. Either the community can mediate a resolution of this particular situation or IOHK in its moderation role for the community boards may have to remediate. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G__eWrmsUxecET2e3zIniPSQJ-FWI1YAGJ-vLwzm8U8/edit

[kenricnelson]

For more background on the challenges of protecting the security of a decentralized collaborative community, I recommend two books. I'm sure there are many more on the topic but these two include foundational research on the topic.

Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, 1956. Popper wrote this groundbreaking book in the midst of World War II. The book grew out of his philosophical research on the foundations of science, showing that earlier ideas regarding the use of data to infer hypotheses was inadequate, and that in fact scientists establish competing hypotheses and then use data to test and eliminate bad hypotheses. Likewise, he saw that a critical function of a healthy open society was the ability to peacefully remove bad leaders and ideas. The challenge is that an open collaborative community is grounded in the freedom of expression, while exploiters of these communities utilize that freedom to usurp control and ultimately to silence critiques. Harassment in particular is an effort to silence and stifle communication, which is why it is a security issue for open collaborative communities.

Martin Nowak with Roger Highfield, Supercooperators: The Mathematics of Evolution, Altruism, and Human Behavior {or why we need each other to succeed}, 2011. One of the difficult puzzles of biological evolution is given a foundation of competition, how does cooperation emerge. Nowak, a scientist of computational evolution at Harvard, as shown in collaboration with others that a key element is the power of forgiveness to establish a competitive advantage for cooperation. In repetitive games of the Prisoner's Dilemma, it turns out that remembering another agent's reputation gives the community advantage in not always retaliating. From this element of forgiveness, large successful communities of cooperation can emerge. The catch is that they also become vulnerable to exploitation. Thus a challenging problem emerges regarding the balancing of openness and the need to be restrictive of actions that harm the community.

Both books are fantastic and I'm sure there are other good sources on the topic.

[mark-stopka]

Since @kenricnelson is talking about transition of of existing documents, I would like to raise the lack of insight of the community into what is intended to be transitioned in regards to existing documents, and processes; that will enable the community to perform gap analysis as well as raise risks and issues with existing documents.

[FundTrack]

It seems that I am being dragged into this debate. Though my participation only came by being named an anti-vaxxer and American far-right anti-communist.

Kenric, there is a subtle distinction between my point and your restatement. My concern was about some group (I called it a cabal) having the power to define "acceptable' and "unacceptable" speech for a large, diverse group. Not, as you described my concern stifling communication. Perhaps a fine distinction, but to me one was the mechanism (the method, if you prefer of a very small group of people operating in an echoing-like manner) and the other is the ultimate effect (stifling). Please observe that the title of these posts prominently include the word "Bullying". Maybe I am missing part of the conversation. But I observed this brouhaha emerge after one person expressed umbrage at my use if a purposefully controversial (but real life) example of a central authority - namely unelected EU bureaucrats - imposing rather controversial medical procedures on children - even over the objections of their natural and lawful guardians (parents).

All of a sudden, "Bullying" became the context for establishing Codes of Conduct, I did not see expressions of different opinions as anywhere even close to bullying. As if the "woke" point of view is the only acceptable point of view?

Why is the Circle being asked to turn their attention to issue #62 - pejoratively labeled as "Problem Sensing - Bullying on Telegram (Issue

62)" ?

Where was the bullying?

And if I had the posts correctly, it seems that one part of the "bullying" issue was a complaint about twitter conversations. Explain howl the Cardano community has a right or authority to regulate or stifle differing opinions expressed in an entirely separate medium.

Is it not good manners to ask argumenting people to take their arguments out of these premises. Find a different venue. Let them go their own ways.

To close, and to avoid mis-interpretation, my concern is about a small group of vocal community members (is it 5, 6, even 10?) using incendiary words (e.g. bullying) to promote definitions of acceptable speech - among the active participants of Project Catalyst Telegram forums (a much narrower, smaller group than the Cardano Community at large). I worry / fear that the next steps will be Twitter-like bannings for people who express "misleading information". Whether true or not.

Len

On Thu, Jan 6, 2022 at 5:14 PM Kenric Nelson @.***> wrote:

The original part of this thread was so confusing to read. Communist! Marxist! Anti-vaxxer! Like the Abbott and Costello routine, “Who’s on First”. Look it up and watch if you don’t know it. Quite funny. Now the subject is creating a Code of Conduct, that it sounds like would be intended to “define” acceptable speech. Twitter’s new found Code of Conduct (founded in the idea that free speech does not matter and a small cabal gets to define acceptable speech) suggests any community should Be very careful about creating such a standard. The power to silence can be damaging. On Wed, 5 Jan 2022 at 4:01 AM, Kenric Nelson @.> wrote: Does this thread qualify as "much ado about nothing?" Whether you think this is an important conversation depends on whether building an open community that has the ability to defend itself from exploitation is important. The breakthrough beauty of Blockchain technology is the mathematical guarantees of security against exploitive attack. Achieving similar guarantees in the governance processes is still an open problem. Developing standards of excellence in interpersonal communication is one aspect of governance. Designing bottom-up approaches in which the community supports and holds members accountable to those standards is a challenging problem. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#62 (comment) https://github.com/Catalyst-Circle/Catalyst-Prioritized-Problems/issues/62#issuecomment-1005317051>, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ARNSZJTFAMT5GVSTI75HGHTUUOQ6LANCNFSM5LIBLOKQ https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ARNSZJTFAMT5GVSTI75HGHTUUOQ6LANCNFSM5LIBLOKQ . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: @. .com> -- Leonard Delunas s: lenkabul m: +357 95 547588 e: @.*** https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonard-delunas-60183660

Leonard, Thanks for bringing up very important points. Your correct that it's quite important not to stifle communication. The establishment of communication norms, a code of conduct, or as this Cardano document titles the issue "Community Moderation Guide" is required in collaboration to encourage and facilitate broad communication, while defending the community against exploitation. In the Cardano Community Moderation Guide each member of the community is responsible to protect the security of the community by "Hold yourself and others to high standards" through the practice of "Preventing harassment, Extinguishing threats, Leave the trolling behind, and Share the power". It is these security measures that Kerstin is seeking to uphold and is asking for community support in enforcing. The next section of the document provides guidance on remediation. Currently, IOHK is responsible for this role; however, the goal of Catalyst and ultimately Voltaire, is to transition to community governance. The Circle is a prototype, initial step toward community governance, and is only charged with Sensing Problems. In this case, the Circle is bringing the issue to the communities attention. Either the community can mediate a resolution of this particular situation or IOHK in its moderation role for the community boards may have to remediate. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G__eWrmsUxecET2e3zIniPSQJ-FWI1YAGJ-vLwzm8U8/edit

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/Catalyst-Circle/Catalyst-Prioritized-Problems/issues/62#issuecomment-1006669262, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ARNSZJQIEIHQ6QZG4DF2YLLUUWWWHANCNFSM5LIBLOKQ . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.*** .com>

[manonthemat]

Where was the bullying?

Someone who was bullied reported the occurrence to the circle. If someone felt bullied, they were bullied - it's not for us to decide "objectively" if someone was being bullied.

Catalyst Circle as a community sensory array is tasked to listen to the community and act when Catalyst is negatively affected (e.g. by individual community members being bullied).

[mark-stopka]

Posting back what I received via e-mail suggesting that it was sent by @kenricnelson

Len,

You've made a thoughtful statement and I agree with many of your points. Further as you say, you were incidental to the situation. I also am a community member trying to offer some context. Ultimately, the parties involved need to work on a > resolution with support from the community. Part of what I learned from Stephen today, is that to date the mediation of issues like this has not be adequate. The Circle is interested in trying to help the community improve the situation.

Kenric

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G__eWrmsUxecET2e3zIniPSQJ-FWI1YAGJ-vLwzm8U8/edit

[mark-stopka]

In the aforementioned document:

Remember, when one proposal wins, the entire ecosystem gets better.

I would argue that the ecosystem gets better only when the proposal delivers on the commited scope, anything else, is to some extend a misapropriation of funds, either due to incomptence, or due to malicious intent.

[kenricnelson]

Where was the bullying?

Someone who was bullied reported the occurrence to the circle. If someone felt bullied, they were bullied - it's not for us to decide "objectively" if someone was being bullied.

Catalyst Circle as a community sensory array is tasked to listen to the community and act when Catalyst is negatively affected (e.g. by individual community members being bullied).

Matthias, We need to be careful about the need to validate complaints of bullying. Objectivity is indeed important, otherwise, complaints could become their own form of harassment. In Kerstin's case, she tried to resolve the issue with the parties involved. Only after failing to achieve a resolution did she raise the issue with Stephen privately. As Stephen explained in the Circle Meeting, while Cardano has a written policy regarding harassment and bullying, to date the implementation of these policies has not been adequate. Only after Stephen's review of the situation, and both his validation of the concerns and his recognition that the current processes would be inadequate to address the concerns, did he decide to post this as a Circle issue. While imperfect, that is an appropriate validation of the concern, that goes beyond how one person feels and that validation is important. An outcome of the Circle meeting is that IOG staff are aware of the concern and plan to work toward a resolution.

[mark-stopka]

@stephen-rowan, may you please provide screenshots with timestamps of the two statements referenced below?

Kerstin Nobel - First incident was on December 17th. Len made a comment about the EU government and added in brackets that they "want to vaccinate babies". I commented that I would ask to leave those comments out of the chat because some, including me, might find it insensitive. I´ll send a screenshot of Marks reply, which was out of line in my opinion and the screenshots makes it clear that it was not just me, who thought this.

Kerstin Nobel - The second incident was basically a gender discussion which led to Mark calling out, as I said - cultural Marxism. I provided just the Wikipedia on this theorem to make people aware of what it means and Mark made very rude comments and called me "leftist gang". I made sure to not call him out to keep the discussion fair, but he didn´t and then Matthias (midas) chimed in about communism and then Danny called for this to end on both of us. I did not make any pro-communist remarks and didn´t put any political stuff into my replies or comments at all, but Len and Mark do this in a very clear way and I find this to be very problematic. (On a personal note, since I live in the US part time for like 10 years. This community is not even mostly US based and the irrational fear of communism in the US is just stupid and we all know that parts of Catalyst are experimenting with UBI and stuff, so it would be great if the US paranoid far righters could leave their agenda out of this.) But I wanted to be fair and didn´t say what I would have loved to say.

[stephen-rowan]

I left Project Catalyst and CA Telegram @mark-stopka - so I cannot. Someone with access may be able to source this information.

[mark-stopka]

To clarify @stephen-rowan, I am looking for any evidence which supports the premise, that @ketniptrip brought this issue up with you before @kenricnelson got all whiny...

[stephen-rowan]

I can only suggest they provide the context Mark.

[ketniptrip]

To clarify @stephen-rowan, I am looking for any evidence which supports the premise, that @ketniptrip brought this issue up with you before @kenricnelson got all whiny...

Yes, I did and the inital text above is from this communication that I had with Stephen.

[mark-stopka]

To clarify @stephen-rowan, I am looking for any evidence which supports the premise, that @ketniptrip brought this issue up with you before @kenricnelson got all whiny...

Yes, I did and the inital text above is from this communication that I had with Stephen.

Please provide timestamped evidence.

[midas591]

How about you also publish what I have actually said before labeling me an anti-communist far right conspiracy theorist? Not that I care about that, but I do care about people openly lying about statements that I have made. You do not get to twist my words for you own benefit and expect me to just sit by and let that happen just like that.

How about you put this:

Objectivity is indeed important, otherwise, complaints could become their own form of harassment.

into action for once and perform your task as you're supposed to? Everyone can backtrack Telegram-comments, it's not hard at all. Yet you lot seem to find such a simple action too difficult to perform as opposed to start accusing people.

For your convenience, I'll publish them myself for all to see.

[mark-stopka]

Additional information that should always be taken in the context of this issue...

• CF asking IO to deplatform Sebastian
• Context that this is being done after we exposed potential nepotism
• Evidence related to proposal Bip32Ed25519 pure JS implementation which compares upstream OSS project with the provided deliverable by Strica