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determine Gratipay's response to questions about the Gittip crisis #319

Closed chadwhitacre closed 8 years ago

chadwhitacre commented 9 years ago

Reticketed from #312.

As we start stepping out again in the open-source community, we're going to get people asking us questions about the Gittip crisis. What's our plan for responding to them?

Current status (https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/319#issuecomment-161117138):

It would seem, then, that our "response to questions about the Gittip crisis" should be to apologize where we can, and, beyond that, to "find an empathic way to say that [we] don’t have a good solution."

Published: "Learning from Gittip: Safety and Consent" Final Draft: "Safety and Consent" Draft 6: "Learning from Gittip" Draft 5: "Learning from Gittip" Draft 4: "Learning from the Gittip Crisis" Draft 3: "Our Culture, Our Community" Draft 2: "Our Community" Draft 1: "Our Community" Draft 0: "Our Community"

Punchlist

chadwhitacre commented 9 years ago

But If I may I rather rephrase what I asked in order to clarify my intentions and to maybe help this organization have a response.

That's definitely the direction we want to go. We want to engage in conversation about specific questions. A "stance" sounds like a blog post published as the Gratipay brand, and I don't see us making any official posts or pronouncements about the Gittip Crisis, because that would simply be inflammatory at this point.

Given the same, or similar circumstance, how would Gratipay handle it now?

Probably about the same, to be honest. :-)

Therefore, our intention is to avoid getting anywhere close to a repeat of the Gittip Crisis, or the parallel mess we went through with 8chan and weev. How? By curating our userbase more closely, in order to weed out off-brand receivers before they get established. What does this look like? With our relaunch as Gratipay 2.0, we now review all Teams when they first apply, and again as needed. So far we've approved 70 new Teams and rejected 8, so we're running at about 90% acceptance so far.

How would this organization respond to controversy[?]

We've learned to try to ignore controversy. :-)

chadwhitacre commented 9 years ago

determine Gratipay's response to questions about the Gittip Crisis

Okay, so ... so far I think our response to questions about the Gittip Crisis is:

That sound right?

chadwhitacre commented 9 years ago

Anything left to be said here?

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

I wrote a blog post that I'm thinking of as addressing this: "Our Community."

Thoughts, @mattbk @seanstrom @kzisme, et al.? As we step back out in the open-source world (see #316), is this something we can point people to who ask about the Gittip Crisis?

mattbk commented 8 years ago

we chose to prioritize those not acting out

Anyone with a chip on his or her shoulder is going to read this as an insult to his or her values. I don't know how to get around it.

First, is Gratipay a community or a common carrier? A common carrier, such as PayPal or your bank, needs to moderate its user base for legality (no fraud, no funding of terrorism), but beyond that pretty much anyone can create an account.

So is Gratipay a common carrier? If not, people can go along with the rules, or be kicked out.

seanstrom commented 8 years ago

Is the post here saying that the feminist groups/individuals that were on Gittip, were the ones who were acting out and crowding out other people? I feel it's really easy to read it as that, but I may be out of context.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

So is Gratipay a common carrier?

No. Gratipay is a community. I've added that sentence to make it clearer.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

Anyone with a chip on his or her shoulder is going to read this as an insult to his or her values.

Is the post here saying that the feminist groups/individuals that were on Gittip, were the ones who were acting out and crowding out other people? I feel it's really easy to read it as that, but I may be out of context.

lol

I don't know how to get around it.

@mattbk Alright, so it seems like a bad idea to publish this on the blog, because no matter how lightly we tread, it's going to be inflammatory. I propose that we inline the "Our Community" post into this thread, and then if anyone brings it up we can point them here, and otherwise let's call it a day and move on with life. How about that?

seanstrom commented 8 years ago

Well I would imagine the reason why treading lightly isn't working is because this response isn't a direct response to what happened.

We most likely need something like this as a general response, but I wouldn't say this would be sufficient in answering the questions of whether Gratipay would alienate a group of people. Gratipay should have direct response to how it would be better for not only the ones who have stayed but potentially those who would come back.

Responding "lol" further just characterizes that we don't take this seriously and would rather push on then dealing with it for whatever reason. At least that's how it comes off to me.

seanstrom commented 8 years ago

Reading more of the comments above I see that you've already answered my questions. We would handle the incident the same and now we want to avoid any controversy. Which seems like the answer that has been proposed is to make sure that Gratipay will not allow teams that will potentially cause controversy between Gratipay and themselves. Which prevents Gratipay from ever addressing the issues publicly again, which seems to be what Gratipay wants, and exclude any potential dissenters.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

@seanstrom I laughed because you responded exactly as @mattbk had predicted (and I've added an <hr> to my comment to make that clearer).

Reading more of the comments above I see that you've already answered my questions.

:-)

seanstrom commented 8 years ago

The question I asked may have been predicted but it still was a genuine question. The question allows for Gratipay to even clarify their intent more here. If I misunderstood the intent of the "lol", then I'll recognize that I jumped the gun. But even then it feels that in general Gratipay is just going to maneuver around groups that were once apart of Gittip. Doesn't seem like an actual solution for those that are still concerned about the Gittip Crisis in general. At least that's how I'm perceiving it and how I would feel about it.

kzisme commented 8 years ago

@whit537 Just checked the "Our Community" post and I like it!

I've been following this discussion and I side with you.

My thinking is that there will be a few different groups of people.

  1. New users/teams
  2. This group will probably be interested in open work and the FOSS community, and unless told they probably don't care about what happened in the past. As long as we fulfill our social mission I feel like new users wouldn't care to hear about our past troubles as long as we have made steps to dig/swim/crawl out way out of it.

Also, these new users will have questions (direct them at our community post or somewhere else) about what we do and if we are a fit for them.

  1. Returning teams
  2. This group will have probably followed along with us on our journey through the closing of balanced and everything that occurred. If this group is still around - they probably don't really want to continue bringing up the past as long as we are making strides forward.

Those are just my thoughts :smile_cat:

EDIT: Ping me in the upcoming radar when the draft is published :)

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

@kzisme I think your markdown formatting got a little garbled, so I'm reformatting:

My thinking is that there will be a few different groups of people.

1. New users/teams

This group will probably be interested in open work and the FOSS community, and unless told they probably don't care about what happened in the past. As long as we fulfill our social mission I feel like new users wouldn't care to hear about our past troubles as long as we have made steps to dig/swim/crawl out way out of it.

Also, these new users will have questions (direct them at our community post or somewhere else) about what we do and if we are a fit for them.

2. Returning teams

This group will have probably followed along with us on our journey through the closing of balanced and everything that occurred. If this group is still around - they probably don't really want to continue bringing up the past as long as we are making strides forward.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

The question allows for Gratipay to even clarify their intent more here.

@seanstrom It sounds like you're asking for us to retroactively apply our Gratipay 2.0 Team review process to certain Gratipay 1.0 receivers. Our general policy is that we only answer "Will you accept __?" questions within the context of our actual Team review process. I don't think it makes sense to make an exception in this case, for several reasons:

If our review process and the Teams we've already reviewed don't give you sufficient information about whether Gratipay is something you want to align yourself with, then you'll just have to wait until we are asked to review a Team that would serve as a good litmus test for you.

mattbk commented 8 years ago

Alright, so it seems like a bad idea to publish this on the blog, because no matter how lightly we tread, it's going to be inflammatory. I propose that we inline the "Our Community" post into this thread, and then if anyone brings it up we can point them here, and otherwise let's call it a day and move on with life. How about that?

All I've been saying is that the "you have to align with our values" qualification is vague and subjective, and it looks vague and subjective from the outside. People are going to have a problem with that, but probably only 1) people whose teams are rejected and 2) people who quit gittip because they didn't like what you did.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

@mattbk So should we publish the "Our Community" post or not? What do you think needs to be done to close this ticket?

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

I think our actual Team reviews make the brand/values qualification less "vague and subjective from the outside." Process:

  1. Wonder if Gratipay is for you.
  2. Go through rejected Teams.
  3. See if there are any you are friends with.
  4. Read the review ticket for that Team.
  5. See Gratipay's vague values concretely applied to a Team you know.
  6. Decide whether to apply yourself.
mattbk commented 8 years ago

The pragmatic fact we’ve learned is that if we don’t actively remove people who are acting out, they passively crowd out those who aren’t. Faced with the choice, we chose to prioritize those not acting out — namely, you! :-)

It's a great discussion point, and gets into the philosophy behind trying to have a society. While we can hide behind laws in some cases, we only do that because laws are how we keep people from being dicks to each other and they are backed up by the government, police, etc. What Gratipay is doing in this case is setting up its own laws for its own society--backed up by "if you don't get along, you don't get to play."

I think it's very interesting to be a business that is promoting openness and trust, yet at the same time keeping people out. Most people would expect a hippy-dippy organization to allow everyone in, but Gratipay is countering that expectation.

Because it's such an intricate point, it's going to generate a reaction from people who disagree that an open company would be against openness or the free-for-all negative interactions that various groups of people embrace as part of their identities. That being said, it's worth publishing as long as people feel like they can engage in a constructive way.

seanstrom commented 8 years ago

I'm just pointing out that we've come up with several new policies that basically make it impossible to arrive to another controversial situation between Gratipay and whoever. And then we won't actually speak much about the previous controversial moment and even tell ourselves that not many want to hear about it anymore. It seems like we are doing a whole lot to basically never actually address previous issue, but to just use new policies to defend ourselves. Those are my thoughts.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

I'm just pointing out that we've come up with several new policies that basically make it impossible to arrive to another controversial situation between Gratipay and whoever.

This is false. See https://github.com/gratipay/team-review/issues/17 for an example of when rejecting a Team under our new policies resulted in a controversial situation.

mattbk commented 8 years ago

I'm just pointing out that we've come up with several new policies that basically make it impossible to arrive to another controversial situation between Gratipay and whoever.

Doesn't avoiding controversy make good sense most of the time?

And then we won't actually speak much about the previous controversial moment and even tell ourselves that not many want to hear about it anymore.

That's what I see going on here as well, and I'm not a fan of it either. I think there are ways to document what happened (and it's been well-documented, just not in one place) without shoving it in the faces of new users.

It seems like we are doing a whole lot to basically never actually address previous issue, but to just use new policies to defend ourselves. Those are my thoughts.

I think @whit537 is trying to move forward, and can't fault him for that. Part of learning comes from the decision to not make the same mistakes.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

I think it's very interesting to be a business that is promoting openness and trust, yet at the same time keeping people out. Most people would expect a hippy-dippy organization to allow everyone in, but Gratipay is countering that expectation.

Yes! I think it's even more interesting, precisely because our criteria for acceptance and rejection are not ready-made (and might therefore be called "vague and subjective"). We're not following easy party lines ("gamergate" vs. "anti-gamergate" or whatever). We're trying to be careful and deliberate in our decisions, without resorting to facile litmus tests or caving in to mob justice. We have an open and transparent review process in which anyone and everyone is invited to participate. Anyone (me so far) that wants to deny a Team on the basis of "values" has to make a case, which others can challenge. I think this sets us crucially apart from, e.g., Patreon, where yes/no decisions are made behind closed doors.

And then we won't actually speak much about the previous controversial moment and even tell ourselves that not many want to hear about it anymore.

That's what I see going on here as well, and I'm not a fan of it either.

Okay, look, let's be honest: the Gittip Crisis was me getting rid of Shanley [see correction at https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/319#issuecomment-153813486]. There, I said it. I had had enough of her terrible behavior, so I called her out and she quit. Then the pendulum swung the other way and we attracted weev and 8chan. Between the three of them, they crowded out pretty much every user I actually cared about on Gittip/Gratipay. When Read the Docs wandered away, that was the last straw for me, and I decided to clean house, starting with 8chan and weev. Shit was hitting the fan with Balanced right around the same time, and so it worked out that we needed to relaunch anyway and we could establish proper Team review—which includes me not making yes/no decisions privately—as part of the relaunch.

Shanley, weev, and 8chan are the three Gratipay 1.0 receivers that I see as "acting out."

Am I being forthright enough? :-)

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

Here's another draft of "Our Community," and here's the first for comparison.

I'm still not comfortable with it, because it can be said that 8chan actively removes unwanted users, and that we passively crowd out unwanted users.

kzisme commented 8 years ago

@whit537 Any other thoughts on the state of the most recent draft?

@mattbk

mattbk commented 8 years ago

Fine with me.

webmaven commented 8 years ago

@whit537:

When Read the Docs wandered away, that was the last straw for me,

Note: https://blog.readthedocs.com/state-of-the-docs-2015/

We’ve begun working on a “gold” status feature for users that want to support us each month. This will be an optional, recurring subscription to Read the Docs.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

just not in one place

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Gittip_crisis doesn't count?

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

It probably shouldn’t be surprising that advertising revenue is an easier income source than seeking donations.

https://blog.readthedocs.com/state-of-the-docs-2015/

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

We’ve begun working on a “gold” status feature for users that want to support us each month.

Interestingly, it comes with strings attached:

The subscription will provide some additional features for users or projects, and some advanced project features might suggest a gold subscription for projects that make use of them.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

"Our Community," take three.

mattbk commented 8 years ago

Much better.

mattbk commented 8 years ago

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Gittip_crisis doesn't count?

I wasn't here for that, but it does explain things. It depends on whether everyone is comfortable endorsing the "lessons" section. This seems the most biased (to me), but again, I was not here.

One of the perils of "open work" is not knowing who is responsible for culture. Is one person more or less responsible than another?

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

This seems the most biased[.]

That seems fair to say. :-)

It depends on whether everyone is comfortable endorsing the "lessons" section.

Well, originally you were asking for "ways to document what happened [...] without shoving it in the faces of new users." Does the latest "Our Community" draft accomplish that?

One of the perils of "open work" is not knowing who is responsible for culture. Is one person more or less responsible than another?

According to our "Review Teams," howto, "Anyone who thinks that a Team does clash with our brand [may] make a case publicly on GitHub," with the final decision resting with me (I expect to delegate that at some point, a la Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee).

mattbk commented 8 years ago

Oh totally, the recent draft is great. I'm not arguing that.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

Oh totally, the recent draft is great. I'm not arguing that.

Okay, cool. :-)

P.S. I'm inclined to rework this paragraph:

Look: we appreciate free speech (we are an open company, after all), and we resonate with aspects of feminism (we do have a Django-derived code of conduct, for example). This is a hard post to publish because we expect it to inflame passions on both “sides.” We would prefer not to think in terms of “sides” at all, but rather to work together to cultivate an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love. However, we’ve learned the hard way that if we don’t actively manage our user community, then forceful personalities with their own agendas are going to distract us from our mission. We want to be excited about every Team on Gratipay — and for them to be excited about us, and about each other. So far, our new review process seems to be working out that way.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

Fourth draft: "Our Culture, Our Community."

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

@seanstrom Are you still listening on this ticket? Any feedback?

mattbk commented 8 years ago

(The broader feminist and free speech traditions both have something to offer our own, of course: structural inequalities and censorship are both detrimental to freely sharing our work with each other.)

I would strike "our own" because the phrasing confused me.

I lament the loss of this idea, but I'm okay with the draft as it stands.

We want to be excited about every Team on Gratipay — and for them to be excited about us, and about each other.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

I would strike "our own" because the phrasing confused me.

I've added "our own tradition".

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

I lament the loss of this idea

Added back in the fifth paragraph (beginning, "In designing the terms of service [...]").

seanstrom commented 8 years ago

@whit537

I think the current draft reads well, and properly reflects where Gratipay is heading and clarifies Gratipay's stance. That being said, I will mention that I would assume some users may be unsatisfied since you didn't personally apologize for your part in the fiasco. Now I'm saying that's what you should do, or that you would need to do that in this article. I'm just pointing that out as a possibility.

Thoughts?

p.s. I'm not actually sure if you did apologize or not, so I may be totally wrong about that. I also not trying to police anyone here. So please don't see this as me telling you to apologize.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

I think the current draft reads well, and properly reflects where Gratipay is heading and clarifies Gratipay's stance.

Cool, thanks for working through this with us. :-) Sorry for being snarky earlier. :-/

[Y]ou didn't personally apologize for your part in the fiasco. I'm not actually sure if you did apologize or not, so I may be totally wrong about that.

I am sorry for my part in the fiasco. :-(

Two weeks after publishing "I Resent You," which I think of as the match that sparked the explosion of the Gittip crisis, and thirteen days after my second post, "Kindness and Kyriarchy," I published a third post in the series, entitled, "I Am Guilty." I think of that as my personal apology (and if you think it's inadequate, please say so). As your experience suggests, it hasn't really gotten much attention. It's prominently linked from both of the previous posts, but I never tweeted it (for example), because I had already started changing my Twitter habits by then.

How about we apologize as Gratipay, with a link to my personal apology in "I Am Guilty," in the third paragraph of "Our Culture, Our Community"? Addition in bold:

Gratipay is answering ESR’s challenge, “to leverage open-source insights in wider domains.” We want more bazaars, and better. Unfortunately, through years of naïveté and inaction, we allowed our nascent bazaar of bazaars to become a battleground for a bitter conflict between the fringes of two other traditions: radical feminism (represented chiefly by Shanley Kane) and radical free speech activism (represented chiefly by Andrew Auerenheimer). We ourselves were not wholly innocent in this conflict. We're sorry. By the time Stripe questioned the legality of our business model six months ago, it was almost a relief to bring Gratipay 1.0 to an end. We were scorched earth.

seanstrom commented 8 years ago

@whit537 I think your suggestion of linking the article and in bold is good way of showing as much information as we can on how you and Gratipay feel now. I'm going to read the article and I'll give you my thoughts. I hope to do that tonight or tomorrow.

Also I appreciate the apology, I'm sorry for being so rigid and pushing buttons.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

and in bold

Quick note: I made it bold in my comment to highlight the part of the paragraph that changed. I wasn't planning on making it bold in the post itself (as you'll see).

I'm sorry for being so rigid and pushing buttons.

No worries. I'm the one that started the conversation, so I was kinda asking for it. :-)

seanstrom commented 8 years ago

Oh my mistake, misinterpreted the bold.

I'm glad I can be of help, I know this stuff is rough, but I appreciate you being clear and honest.

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

@seanlinsley I appreciate having you participate in this conversation because you've got a fresh perspective and little-to-no vested interest, which I think is really helping us reach a good outcome here. Thanks! :-)

seanstrom commented 8 years ago

Haha I think that's a typo :).

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

:-P

chadwhitacre commented 8 years ago

FYI: I feel another draft brewing. :)