conflict and harassment

[mrsbrown]

Watching stuff going on in the Barony and remembering my own problems with harassment and difficult people I was motivated to find out some stuff and I'm saving the links here with my comments so I can find them again later.

I started with the Lochac dispute resolution document here . It's changed a fair bit since I last looked and has some good stuff on timelines and who should do what. I can't help feeling though that it doesn't quite address the consequences to the harasser that I'm looking for and also doesn't seem to be very good at some of the social group management that I think needs to happen.

Some of what's happening almost feels like some of the tech and fan conference harassment issues that I've read about both here, and through the geek feminism blog. (These sorts of things)

So I went and found the conference harassment policy resources prepared by the Ada Initiative. It has some things in common with the dispute resolution stuff, but obviously has a bit more about proactively discouraging bad behaviour and what to do about harassers and their impact on the conference. I like the stuff about making the reporting process really obvious and making the actions taken transparent to the whole community.

One of the interesting comments that comes up in the SCA community is that we are so used to dealing with people who have poor social skills that we make allowances for bad behaviour.  From my reading tonight I think we should stop doing that.

I think the SCA needs to
1. have a code of conduct
2. publicise it
3. provide dispute mentors so if you're not sure what to do, you know who to ask.
4. Be a bit more transparent about sanctions

Comments

More answer than you were expecting

[teffania]

1. http://sca.org.au/board/documents/policy/code-of-conduct
see also
http://sca.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Bullying-and-Harassment-Policy.pdf
http://sca.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Dispute-Resolution-and-Complaints-Management-Policy.pdf
and a social media policy is on it's way which should define a bit more about acceptable behaviour in that sphere and acceptable responses.
The policies aren't doing quite what we want so even though they are relatively new, they're under review again. (Also I personally think they need to link to each other more, and have less individual docs)

2. Passive advertising - the code of conduct is on all (non-event) membership forms, and people have to tick they've read it (that's why its' short). Yes we need to do another round of active advertising since the advertising of the last update didn't go out as planned. But ultimately we need a package that is easy to access and a membership who willingly point people to the package as we could send this out every second month and still have people not know about it.

3. There were plans for developing moderation skills more, but our volunteer got busy. It would be great to get it restarted. We've been wondering if we could develop the idea of a "bullying ombusman" more without it causing more problems than it solves, especially given we'd have an amateur in the role.

4. We are hamstrung by the SCA Inc rules regarding never revealing the reasons for sanctions (because of US litigation). However we are actually working towards a possible variance from this.

So yes we are trying, but with such a complex problem it's very tricky, we could use more help, more external working examples to study, and constant reminders that the work is so vital. And please don't let this stop others commenting, it's useful dialog to have. One of the biggest challenges is that very few disputes actually happen on our club turf. It's often in the grey areas of social post practise sessions or private facebook pages, which makes it much harder exercise authority, or even draft rules saying that when what you do in private impacts on the club it isn't a private matter anymore. Like I said, extremely complex. I think we are actually better at dealing with the equivalent of incidents happening at conferences - it's the fact that to some extent we socialise and practice together out of events that causes extra trouble.

Re: More answer than you were expecting

[mrsbrown]

Maybe more than I was expecting, but an excellent response, thankyou.

It's weird that we have both a dispute resolution guideline and a policy, and that they don't live near each other on the web or reference each other. But I'm sure it's on the list of stuff to do.

I don't have a problem with not revealing reasons for sanctions, but locals only found out about a recent level 1 banishment through the rumour mill because we weren't at the court at which it was announced. I can't find an announcement in the newsletter either. There's currently a rumour that the banishment was extended into this reign, but I don't know where to look to find it. If it gets announced in court, it should also be announced to the local populace and is a great opportunity to remind people about the code of conduct.

Re: More answer than you were expecting

[tangent_woman]

Where is this "rumour mill" of which you speak? I don't trust rumours to give an unbiased account of events, but I am seeing all kinds of weird behaviours and gaps in normality and I don't know what's going on, so I'd take a good rumour if I could find it.

I really hope that a variance on the US-centric policy of security though obscurity can be had, because I feel that events that impact on members of the populace should be at least a tiny bit transparent. As it is, I am being impacted by the current weirdness, but I don't know for sure who has been banished, to what level, for how long and why.

I think the only actual information I have seen is that our Baroness is taking a sabbatical. If the populace is to take that at face value, how are people who are not in a given court (in a galaxy far, far away) to know that the grievance process/dispute management/banishment stuff is even in play, except through the notoriously unreliable rumour mill? Not having any formal explanation of who did what to whom also leaves so much room for parties involved to misrepresent the situation and engage in conspiracy theories, grudges, fomenting of rancour, blame shifting and all that unhelpful stuff.

I tried googling for information about SCA sanctions, and Antir has a nice page on the topic which I was interested to not states that the banishment details (though not reasons) must be published in the next society newsletter or similar. I wonder if we have the same deal here? I've poked at a few copies of Pegasus and I can't find any mention of sanctions, but maybe it's in some other publication?

Re: More answer than you were expecting

[teffania]

The two documents fall under different bodies: one lochac, one SCA ltd (so Australia only) hence the different locations, but they definately need to reference each other more and be better integrated.

Royal sanctions are supposed to be published in the next issue of the kingdom newsletter. I guess in some ways the local populace don't need to know the sanction was applied, it is the person being sanctioned and the royals who need to remove a person from their presence - if it's a slap on the writs, then simply telling the person performs it's function.

I have heard a reliable first hand account that the sanction was extended to the current reign at 12th night.