[governance] Re: a formal appeal request to the appeal team to reverse the recent ban on a Member

[Norbert Bollow]

McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote (with specific names where I've
substituted the placeholder "XXX" and "YYY"):

> On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 11:57 AM, michael gurstein
> <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> <snip>
>  rather as
> > part of an extended pattern of communication to this list of which
> > the particular incident in question was only one element.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> XXX and YYY and others throw around tags like "neo-liberal" and
> "neo-con" and "American Exceptionalism" where they do not apply.  They
> are insulting to those who they are aimed at, mostly becuase they are
> wildly inaccurate.
> 
> They don't get called on it, but when SRS says "gleefully posting",
> those words get him banned?
> 
> That's the pattern.

I would suggest that there have been several very unhealthy patterns of
interaction.

The patterns which Michael Gurstein and McTim are pointing to are both
unhealthy. Neither side in the conflict has made a claim to sainthood
(and if such a claim were to be made, it would not be believed,
in view of all the evidence to the contrary). In the absence of
sainthood, people tend to react to what I've called "unhealthy patterns
of interaction" by themselves engaging in (similar or different)
unhealthy patterns of interaction. This is human nature. I have also
observed myself slipping into unhealthy patterns of interaction when at
the receiving end of mobbing-like group dynamic processes.

The question is: What is the best way forward for our Caucus, in order
to break this vicious circle as much as possible, without losing the
diversity of perspectives that makes this Internet Governance Caucus
valuable in the first place?

I'm looking forward to see whether the Appeals Team will be able to
shed some light on this question.

On the basis of my (rather substantial) experience in managing
discussion mailing lists on topics that are not primarily technical, my
view is that the kind of unhealthy pattern that Michael Gurstein
describes can only be effectively addressed by excluding the people
who cannot be dissuaded from communicating in a troll-like manner, and
the end result of reaching that point is independent of whether you
have a policy of taking action after the second warning or whether
this action is taken only after a dozen warnings or more. (Lists on
specific technical topics are different in that some of them fulfil
their intended purpose even in the presence of flamewars.) By contrast,
I think that the unhealthy pattern that McTim is pointing to is one
that can be effectively addressed in a different way, through
discussion and building a shared understanding of what the different
viewpoints are (and what the appropriate ways are to reference them).

Greetings,
Norbert

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