Hi Scott,

On 24 January 2016 at 03:25, Scott Arciszewski <sc...@paragonie.com> wrote:
> I think focusing on the extreme behaviors is harmful towards a mature and
> progressive discussion on these matters. My opinion is based on two
> premises:
>
> 1. Good opsec, which career criminals and dedicated harassers would be
> incentivized to adopt, can completely thwart any CoC we could come up with.
> A good example would be DOXBIN, which hosted peoples' personal information
> (their "dox") on a Tor hidden service and thumbed its nose to law
> enforcement for years. The operator, Nachash, is still free. At no point in
> time has an arrest been made.

All true, however other forms of harassment do occur in public by
identifiable people.

> 2. If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you create a
> tool meant for dealing with the most extreme harassers, and you will never
> CATCH them, all that happens is you create a system for potentially
> inflicting damage on less extreme transgressors.

But we can address those instances that are visible and identifiable
and actionable. Should we dispense with 99% coverage just because we
can't cover the last 1%?

> Focusing on the existence/nonexistence/frequency of extreme harassment is a
> non-starter. Yes, you might think you only need it once every 10 years now.
> Maybe it turns out we need it once per week and we were blind to the abuses
> that were occurring. Or maybe it turns out we don't ever need it at all, but
> we've created a process for harassment by proxy.

I think it's a misrepresentation to claim that a Code of Conduct is a
(new) process for harassment. That the PHP project can act as a
potential vehicle for harassment is a pre-existing state that a Code
of Conduct does not alter (except to message that it's bad and will be
handled). Rather than reporting false information (if that's what you
mean) to a limited team, the process right now is essentially report
it to the mailing list publicly or reach out to individuals on the
list to bring it to the project's attention.

> Extreme harassment needs to be dealt with by specialized professionals, i.e.
> law enforcement, clinical therapists, and mental health professionals. We
> shouldn't even consider them in scope.

We absolutely should consider them in scope unless there's a very good
reason not to.

> That's all I have to say at the moment. I'm going to go back to addressing
> technical problems; human problems are beyond me to solve adequately.

They are beyond most of us, but we can all chip away at those problems
one tiny piece at a time. Who knows, eventually we may one day solve
most of them. I like to think so, at least :).

Paddy


--
Pádraic Brady

http://blog.astrumfutura.com

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