Softer Sanctions - Sketches

2nd meeting 24/10

Participants: Bruno, Nick, Daniel

  • check-in

  • duration 1h15

  • quick recap last session

    • round
      • Nick
        • chats about how to get ppl motivated
        • there was a team in Warsaw and that fell back to zero
        • had troubles with people thikning the mediation team is not fair enough
        • used other tools
        • encourage to contact the person first in case of conflicts
        • struggle to do the work
        • inevitably a problem with the size of the group, getting too big gets problematic
        • they had yellow card and red card, their own system of sanctions
        • chatted about official rules giving legitimacy
        • division between technical conflicts (about the rules) and personal
      • Bruno
        • situation in warsaw familiar with topics in soliyl
        • previouly dealt with conflicts more on a personal level
        • but more recently trying to be more professional about it, and refer to rules
        • meditation group attempted, but never worked
        • conflict issues falls back to the board
        • the board gives out warnings, can pause people from participating, either in certain places or in general, for a period of time
  • how things work in FSLux and main challenges

    • system quite similar to warsaw
    • legal association is split into projects
      • foodsaving (biggest part)
        • has own mediatation team / conflict resolution
        • contact /complaint form
        • email address, people send proof/screenshots
        • rules
        • 5 people, before used to be 3, but mostly 2 doing it, and having too much workload
        • have quite clear rules
        • have sanctions, e.g.:
          • you cannot pickup for 2 weeks
          • team sends a message to tell them
          • no technical action happens
          • works for most cases
          • the team checks people respect that
          • if they don’t, it would be escalation of further rule violation
        • if you do really bad stuff, can request the board to remove someone from the whole association
          • e.g. going to supermarket and asking to work with another association (stealing co-operations)
        • board has a guideline to follow
          • can ask for external mediation, some people do pro bono mediation, never was used though
            • parties need to agree to do a mediation, and if one doesn’t agree, cannot do it
          • most things are done by sayng you didn’t follow a rule and quite clear
          • more personal conflicts need proper meditation, but many people don’t want to spend time going somewhere to meet someone doing meditation
        • lots of people, divided into regions, have meetings, but not everyone attends
          • people don’t always know each other
      • encourage each project to think about their own procedure
      • suggest to other projects they might want to have a process, otherwise it comes to the board
        • better to resolve them more closely to where things happen
      • a idea to introduce responsiblity to remove responsiblity from the board and give it to a judge-like role, but hasn’t been implemented, idea to have more neutral person
      • how people join the conflict resolution team?
        • say you want to help out, circle decides whether they need help or not
      • have a guideline about how to handle conflicts
        • talking to the person first, using NVC, escalating.
      • other projects are:
        • foodsaving points (public fridges)
          • no conflict resolution process defined
          • … but situations did come up
          • wasn’t clear who is doing the maintenance
          • might create one role for that
          • 20-30 people here, people don’t always know each other
        • communication circle
          • does a lot!
          • media prescence, interviews, speaking to external, potential partners, replying to requests, political work, meeting politicians, public face
          • try to get some funding
          • no conflict resolution process defined yet
          • smaller group, 4-5 people, could put conflicts on the agenda
        • difference between active members or volunteers that do a specific task, but no meeting
          • active members engage with organisation things, be in a role
  • check Excalidraw Excalidraw | Hand-drawn look & feel • Collaborative • Secure

    • check the dots on the different versions
    • reds and yellows on 2 and 4
    • a defined role is crucial
    • but that is a social thing, hard to enforce on Karrot
    • observation that not everything needs to be implemented as a feature, not necessarily need to enact it
    • reminder instead of a direct report
  • sketches

    • Nick
      • focus on sanctions rather than general conflicts
      • add sanctions that go with the agreements
      • relates to an activity type or place
      • in the confirmation dialog it could show sanctions
      • sanctions is a cold word
      • a tick box showing that you agree, when somebody is in the act of doing somwthing
      • on the button “didn’t show up” add a “did they break a rule?”
      • magic box of apply sanctions, not sure who
      • active sanctions on the profile
      • report on who, where, what, agreement…
      • a big mistery on how to apply the decision
      • started going into roles
        • conflict team, if nothing set up, fallback on a “anyone”
    • Daniel
      • starting point the sad smiley on the profile page
      • conflict policy: “I will try this” or “report”
      • report with clear questions, inspired on NVC, not confusing observations with feelings
      • attach files
      • send to people in charge
      • on the chat/wall, the three dots and the conflict policy screen
      • a reminder every now and then, should be a bit annoying maybe
    • Bruno
      • on issues/agreements section
      • on agreements page, ! point button
      • did someone break an agreement? want to engage with other people about it?
      • alternative path via the profile page
      • select which agreement it relates to, add more info
      • choose mediator(s) in common, could be a team
      • important, not something open to whole group, problematic to make things too public in whole group, make sure it’s a smaller group
      • like fallback ideas, if you can’t find people in comon, or don’t have team, fallback to group
      • have bell notification if you are called to help out with a report
    • reactions, comments…
      • Nick
        • central question of who’s gonna deal with it keeps coming up
        • one thing that is promising with the roles is to focus less on the technical details but representing in a group
        • that might help, if it’s clear who’s dealing resolves these tricky questions
        • in FS they’ve had problems with the report button
        • ideally needs to be closest possible to the situation
        • without knowing where to direct the report to, it’s hard to make a feature functional
        • tieing up with other features are details compared to this central question
        • likes the idea of making things visible in the right context
        • feeble response just adding a button
        • my sketches feel more technocratic
      • Daniel
        • liked the part about how to create the sanctions
        • linked to place types
        • agreement feature can be reused, like a specific category
        • conflict policy can be shown in different places, like a category in agreements
      • Bruno
        • noticed not so much effort put into the definition of sanctions, but means we have identified something important
        • not sure if I agree with nick, about whether we need to enact actions in the software, could end up with a design that’s just a text box describing outcomes that poeple have decided, but not enforced actions within the software
        • how to reach the simpliest yet most effective design that would make the biggest improvement, as it can get quite complex
        • still have faith in the idea of mechanism to force people to adopt the role (meditation/conflict)
        • if we have software-enacted sanctions, definately need define somewhere in the code who will do it, ca find ways to help groups get people to take reponsiblity
        • e.g. new groups prompt to make a team, or fallback to wider group
      • Nick
        • how to make the software know who can something
        • groups have governance procedures outside the software
  • check out

Daniel’s


Nick’s

Bruno’s


Bruno’s (on the end of person deciding)