process Shanley's feedback #49
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The thing that jumped out at me the most is:
How do we need to modify our understanding and articulation of what an open company is to account for this? I'm also seeing a caution about letting a "theory of running a company [be] more important than applying judgement to situations." In what ways do I/we do that? The third thing I'm seeing is:
How do we take this on board? |
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BTW, Shanley made it clear that she doesn't want to be involved in the details of this conversation:
https://twitter.com/shanley/status/467098076105019393
https://twitter.com/shanley/status/467103601987301376
https://twitter.com/shanley/status/467103869026058240 After initially creating this issue I changed "Shanley" in the description to her GitHub @mention. Then I remembered these comments and I changed it back to "Shanley." I don't know if GitHub will have notified her or subscribed her in this case, but if so: Sorry, Shanley! I would unsubscribe you if I could (but you can at least unsubscribe yourself). :-) |
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Here's a copy/paste of Shanley's feedback, edited for readability:
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Just wanted to chime in to say that I'm thinking about this. To be honest, I find myself a little angry at Shanley for the way she approaches some of this. I also feel that my anger likely isn't fair, and is perhaps largely defensive, so I'm going to take some time to think through this and make sense of it. |
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That was just too angry of her; I feel like these are undeserved attacks on @whit537 (unless she just talks that freely). Anyways, we had a big discussion about an issue like this in gratipay/gratipay.com#1683. |
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I'd like to focus on the feedback she gave us and not the way she delivered it. I think the better we're able to do that the more productive this conversation will be. :-) |
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First off, let me just say that I agree with @whit537's last comment: what anybody thinks of how Shanley presented it doesn't matter at all. It truly doesn't. People's thoughts on that is wholly irrelevant to the issue at hand. What she has said, however, is still important. Thanks for starting a discussion about this, Chad. I believe Shanley has a very good point. As much as I love this idea of radical transparency, it seems anything that can be accurately described as radical has a very high risk of leaving out those who are already marginalized. The level of transparency in GIttip is by all means radical. I am an exception -- not the norm -- in that I am both part of one of these marginalized groups (by being a trans woman) and am willing to take part in the most transparent portions of Gittip. It is honestly probably not the best idea for me to do so, and I feel I have an obligation to point that out on behalf of those who aren't willing to take that risk. Because it is a risk. It is a huge risk. Some of the most significant Gittip users are part of demographics that frequently get screwed over in the most terrible ways, and it's simply not always safe for them to take part in that level of transparency. While I applaud the attempts so far at accommodating them, I think we need to find a way to accommodate them without the unintentional connotation that we prefer those who are willing to take part more publicly. I am not sure how to do this. The way to approach this needs to be a community decision, and we need to explicitly get feedback from people in these groups. I just want everybody to be able to be directly involved in Gittip if they want to be, and this has to be acknowledged before we can accomplish that. |
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There's also these two Tweets, which I think summarize the issue very well: i've noticed that a lot of people you are having "open calls" with are likely almost all men. yet your top users are women and organizations focused on diversity. Basically: By trying to force a level of openness that is not safely attainable for some of our largest userbases, we're inherently biasing Gittip as a whole. |
Besides yourself, @duckinator, who else do we need to hear from? @rummik and @Changaco both decline to participate in video calls, so we should at least hear from them. Who else? |
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I reached out on Twitter. Hopefully somebody will speak up there, here, or privately (I offered to discuss it privately via email with anyone who wishes to do so). |
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As far I remember I was one time call with @thefoxis ;) So there are some women out there on gittip calls :) |
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@galuszkak that's true, but a few women being willing to join doesn't mean we're done. It's not merely a checkbox of demographics we need to snag a certain number of people from. It's an ongoing issue -- we're going to continue running into situations where Gittip's openness and transparency butts heads with some people's well-being. We have to handle that fully, not partially, and that means continually iterating everything about how we work. |
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Hm. I'm not really sure what my suggestions for this are. Though I do know that I personally feel a bit left out when recorded calls are happening that I should be part of, and text is a very slow medium for me, so when I am participating via chat, I lag behind. <.<; I'm fine with private calls though, so long as it's with people I know IRL, and not being left open to anyone who feels like popping in. |
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Sorry about that. I keep reading 'close' as 'cancel'. :/ |
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From various discussions: it seems a good starting point may be to offer both an open call and to talk privately when initially asking someone to talk. Don't specify the mediums -- just ask if they want to talk, and offer to do so via either an open call or privately. Decide on the medium after that decision is out of the way. If you're willing to try both, you need to list both at the start, not ask for the one you prefer (open calls), and only offer the other (private communication) after they recoil. You also want to avoid listing the mediums used at the start, because it's entirely possible that they may not have access to or choose not to use the specific ones you choose to list. Once you've decided on public vs private, list what you're able/willing to use, ask them to do the same, and basically play it by ear from there. @whit537 thoughts?^ |
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Note that the idea I mentioned above doesn't solve this entirely. It's only the first step. There's still other issues to handle. For example: the standups being in Hangouts is awesome. However, while we try to accommodate people who aren't willing to be in a public video chat, they are very much treated as second-class citizens: we entirely fucking forget about them sometimes. And when we don't, we still aren't letting them speak for themselves -- they provide a summary, and someone speaks on behalf of them. They're not given any other choice, really. These are the kinds of, often very subtle, things where our openness and people's ability to directly contribute to Gittip are in conflict, and we've got to resolve it somehow. |
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Part of me wants to play it safe as I'm an outsider to the main concern, but I have a thought in regards to psychology and sales-think: In sales, you usually try to make it as easy as possible to say "yes" to the thing you prefer. So you try not to have a big open-ended spiel like "so here is fact X and fact Y and qualifier Z, an what do you want to do?". Instead, you present it in such a way that it's a simple "yes" or "no". As in, "here are all the details and here's specifically what I'm hoping we can do, and are you interested?" That's not to say I want to force people into open calls, as obviously we'd want to still talk if someone were uncomfortable with that. But I don't see a problem with framing it like an open call is preferred, as I think Gittip's philosophy dictates that it usually is. Most everyone will say "private" if presented both options, and who are we to say that one person's concerns deserve private while another's don't? Hence me preferring to lean on "open", and allow private with minimal rationale for those who feel strongly. |
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@patcon there's two majorly different approaches:
If you want to go the psychology/sales-think route: don't upset the person you're trying to get to make a decision, because they'll often just avoid any decision at all or choose an even-less-preferred third option (such as not talking with us at all). |
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My understanding is that, framed the right way, the third option doesn't tend to happen :) Hence the reason the psychology of sales hasn't abandoned that approach. I mean, I say this because I think we have a preference -- openness. I personally want to throw that under the bus for the sake of conversation, but we have a preference nonetheless. (as I understand it) |
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It's entirely okay to have a preference. It's even entirely okay to explicitly state that. However, as we've been doing it, we're basically withholding that information unless a problem arises. I find it weird to withhold the fact that we're 100% okay with putting someone's comfort above openness until they're about to give up, which is effectively what we're doing. It serves no purpose but to cause stress. |
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There's also a third option I've never seen presented: a private conversation, followed by a written follow-up, the contents of which are not published until agreed upon by all parties involved. |
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Let's also be clear on some distinctions here, between:
The situation with Shanley was actually the @duckinator What context are you referring to when you say, "it seems a good starting point may be to offer both an open call and to talk privately when initially asking someone to talk"? |
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@whit537 I was actually referring to the discussions with Shanley yesterday. See this:
and this:
If we want to truly be inclusive, we need the option of private calls to be presented up-front. Regardless of whether or not this is intended (I don't think it is), offering to talk privately only after an open call is refused appears closer to begrudgingly giving up on what you want than actively prioritizing their comfort and safety over your ideologies. Open calls won't always work, and I feel that trying to force them will cause considerably more issues than it solves. I feel that in all of the cases where someone is talking to another person/company on Gittip's behalf, we need to find multiple approaches to offer, and go with the one they're most comfortable with. There may be cases, e.g. with companies, where private calls are rarely (if ever) done. Perhaps any other methods we come up with won't work in certain circumstances, either. |
With journalists, I've decided on a personal policy of only doing open interviews. What would be the reason to make an exception in Shanley's case? If Shanley had emailed me and said, "Chad, as a user of Gittip I have feedback that I'd like to share with you confidentially out of concern for my {safety,privacy} and/or the {safety,privacy} of others," then of course I would accept the feedback confidentially. But she didn't contact me as a user of Gittip, she (actually her former business partner; Shanley cosigned and was cc'd on the email) approached me for an interview as a member of the media. I see the matter of my open interview policy as being something between me personally and the media. That's the terms on which I'm personally willing to deal with the media. I recognize and accept the opportunity cost associated with that policy, namely, not doing some interviews. Since this thread is about Gittip as an open company, I'd like to take my personal policy re: open interviews off the table. |
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Instead, I'd like to focus this conversation on the latter three categories:
To which we might add:
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@whit537 I get the impression that sometimes people in the media don't feel comfortable being in an open call for their own personal safety, not because of reasons related to media and such itself, and that that is where Shanley was coming from. I'm genuinely unsure how to approach that. Setting that aside, and looking at the other things you mentioned:
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Chiming in as someone who is also at the mercy of the open company policy and a top user of Gittip -- I've had multiple issues where my personal safety and comfort have been trampled because of Gittip's policies:
Giving harassers a platform to harass marginalized people, especially where their income is involved, has serious implications on the safety of the service for marginalized people. These are excellent examples of how this policy is ill-suited to understand or account for the safety, needs, or consent of marginalized people using Gittip. It's frustrating, disheartening, and scary because I've been lucky enough to be able to support myself off my earnings from Gittip, which puts me in a precarious position. Bringing up these issues reminds me that a small group of people controls my income, regardless of the large number of people who contribute money to me. I feel that I'm locked into a platform now that may not even be considering my safety or other needs/wants as a user. You might consider reading http://www.ashedryden.com/the-risk-in-speaking-up and http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/dissent-unheard-of |
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In addition to the points that have been well made above, the recent Twitter exchange (which Chad quotes above) reminded me of the issues around the use of pseudonyms on social media networks. For those that haven't been following those discussions, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars and particularly https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/case-pseudonyms and http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy%3F for context. I believe that, unless managed carefully, "radical transparency" in an organisation can have the same excluding effect that "real name" policies do in social media, because acceptable levels of risk vary based on individual circumstances. While I personally think radical transparency is an interesting approach to tackling many of the issues that make many modern enterprise organisations toxic cesspools of humanity, there are also good reasons for forgoing transparency in particular cases. For example, Gittip deliberately keeps the giver/receiver links private, as the aim is to be a vehicle for "no strings attached" support, where funders want recipients to be free to do what they want to do. I see shifting the perception and fact of Gittip's organisational model from "transparency at any cost" to finding a more nuanced balance between a baseline desire for transparency at the organisational level, while respecting the privacy of the individuals that interact with the organisation as the core concern here. The "user advocate" concept @juliepagano mentions above reminds me of the ombudsman role that exists for various industries, as well as the independent reporting officers and hotlines that may be put into place within large organisations to help provide a trusted avenue for reporting issues without the individual reporters facing personal retaliation from their management chains. Individuals in such positions are obliged to treat issues as being reported to them in confidence, while still also being able to take action to address concerns that are raised. In many ways, these aren't new problems - they're ones that have existed in organisations since time immemorial, and there is a lot of information and experience available regarding what does and doesn't work. Perhaps, like Github, Gittip needs to figure out a way to bring greater expertise to bear on some of these concerns. Unfortunately, unlike Github, "just start hiring professional HR staff" isn't an available option. |
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@ncoghlan Anonymity is probably the only reason I've been safe as I am, and is also the reason I don't fully participate in open calls. And though lately I've been trying to leverage that a bit more and keep it as part of my online persona, I don't really like that it's something I've had to do for so long. @whit537 In regards to categories and interactions using Hangouts and calls: I talked a bit about it on IRC. Since Hangouts is the medium I have the most trouble with, and it interferes a bit with my anonymity, and I know the problems I'm faced with when using it, I'm probably going to be focusing on that and areas that can be improved in. Hopefully it'll wind up helping other people too. |
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@kittenpies @juliepagano @ashedryden @ncoghlan: thank you all very much for your input here. I really appreciate all of you putting in the time to write such detailed responses. I've split out a few things from this issue into smaller, more easily actionable tasks. Please let me know what you think of them.
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Another thing to remember with open calls, even if recorded, is that they are heavily biased against people who aren't able to attend at the actual time, whether work/family/time zones etc. Just because theoretically anyone can attend doesn't mean that they actually can in practice. It ends up skewing things towards those with no commitments and lots of time om their hands. A non-broadcast conversation with minutes, or anonymous chat log is no less transparent than an open video call. Since it's then text search/scan readable after the fact. As mentioned earlier in the thread it's always possible to get summaries/transcripts signed off by the people involved if you're worried about misrepresenting people, and it saves a lot of the exposure/privacy concerns of having every single conversation public in real time (and to an extent allows onee party to be anonymous while Chad or whoever isn't). I can somewhat see the arguments for the people who run gittip being always transparent, but not forcing that on everyone who interacts with you. |
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+1 @kittenpies, @juliepagano, @ashedryden, and @ncoghlan. +1 especially @duckinator for spawning off issues, suggesting we get policies and codes of conduct on communication, and organising things. Thank you. |
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Hey all, quick note to say thank you for participating in this conversation, especially @kittenpies @ashedryden @juliepagano @ncoghlan and @catch56. In Turning Down TechCrunch I said that "my ideas on when to agree to private calls and when to insist on openness are still very much in formation," and that's still true. I DON'T believe that "radical transparency" is an absolute good or an end in itself (is that even a term I've used? not seeing "radical transparency" here here or here), and I DO believe transparency (sharing information) and openness (sharing control) need to be balanced with "CONSENT, making people feel comfortable, PRIVACY, and Outreach." This is awesome feedback and an important conversation whose time has come, and I know it's going to help us make Gittip and the concept of an "open company" even better! So THANK YOU for the feedback and also THANK YOU FOR USING GITTIP. You're all doing great work and I'm humbled and honored that you've chosen to trust Gittip so far! THANK YOU! :-) Secondly, a couple apologies: @kittenpies I'm sorry for tone-policing you above by changing your all-caps to lowercase. :-( I've reverted that. @ashedryden I'm sorry for trampling on your personal safety and comfort and making you feel frustrated, disheartened, and scared about being funded on Gittip. That totally sucks, and I hope we can fix it. :-( (Please let me know who else I need to apologize to.) Okay! With that, I'm signing off for the weekend and then on Monday I have a client engagement (I've started experimenting with "pay what you want" consulting to supplement my Gittip income). I've read everything in this thread at least once and will continue to reread and digest. I plan to be back in the mix on Tuesday at the latest and will see where things stand then. Keep up the good work! :-) |
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For anyone who's not seen #56 or my relevant Tweets: I've stepped up as Gittip's first User Advocate. As I said on Twitter, this is basically a formalization of the roll I've been filling to some extent for Gittip since I first started helping out. Further discussion regarding UAs, their roles, and how to build the User Advocate team should take place on #56. Thanks for all of the input so far, and I look forward to getting more! |
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In addition to the tickets @duckinator has made (#54 #55 #56), I think our response here should also include:
I propose that we tackle these five tickets and then write up a blog post for blog.gittip.com. |
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I would also like to thank @duckinator for stepping forward to convert this feedback into actionable tickets and for also stepping up as our first UA! :D Yay @duckinator! :D |
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Nina is even more colorful than Shanley:
Wow! |
Interesting. We've actually had a support@gittip.com email address for seven months now, since gratipay/gratipay.com#1254. However, we haven't had a clear policy on consent and privacy related to that channel, so let's add gratipay/gratipay.com#2125 as a sixth ticket to land as part of this wider issue. |
+1 @ncoghlan |
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@whit537 It's probably telling (both a little on me and a little on gittip) that I didn't realize that email existed. I just took a look at the site to figure out where to find it listed. They only place I easily found it was the about page, which was not the first or even second place I would expect to find it. I'd recommend adding it to the FAQ page under a question about "Who do I contact if I need help" or something like that. I'd also recommend adding a "support" page of some sort explicitly for this sort of stuff and giving that page a link in your bottom navigation. That was the first thing I tried to look for. At the same time, the bottom nav is starting to get pretty crowded already. It might be worthwhile to put some time into considering the information architecture of the site to clean that up. |
Yeah, that's the place it's listed right now.
I've added a +1 for you to #39. :-) |
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Anything else to reticket from this one? |
I had a conversation with Shanley on Twitter last night, in which she provided a good deal of feedback on "open companies" vis-a-vis marginalized people. I've collected her feedback here:
https://medium.com/building-gittip/2e39b7ed12d
^^^ Raw tweets there, see below for a copy/paste edited for readability.
What do we need to learn from this?
[Posting in the BG repo instead of www because this is big picture. Since this is important and not everyone is watching BG yet, I'll post and close an issue in www as a notification.]
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