Update the term 'Prejudice' in the Glossary

[AdaRoseCannon]

It has been raised to my attention that in the Glossary for Prejudice one of the listed items is "political view" should not be a protected class. It should be okay to disallow someone from participating because of their well known hard-line prejudices even if they 'are on their best behaviour' and don't show active discrimination in the group itself.

The best example for this is the 'Nazi Bar' anecdote:

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

[nigelmegitt]

This is pretty controversial!

Putting aside whether or not "political view" should be in the list, I'm not convinced that disallowing anyone from participating is in scope of the CEPC. The CEPC is about regulating behaviours not membership, isn't it? It doesn't prescribe specific actions to take, but in extremis the Process does allow for exclusion, and causes for doing so could include a breach of the CEPC.

In the CEPC that "Participant" includes in its definition "Anyone from the Public" - that potentially includes all political views.

I'm very uncomfortable with Nazis, but I'm also uncomfortable with the idea that we should shut down well behaved interactions now in case of a hypothetical future incident of bad behaviour. It seems to me that such action is likely to encourage the poor behaviour we wish to prevent. It also pre-judges that people won't change their views over time, perhaps as a result of dialogue.

Is it not at the point when a problem occurs that such strong action such as disallowing participation is needed? The action to take before is to have a CEPC, promote it, and acceptable behaviour (etc.), not to pro-actively remove people solely for their political views.

Dunno, maybe I'm not in tune here?

[AdaRoseCannon]

It's not so that the CEPC itself can explicitly exclude someone it's to give chairs the power to exclude someone if they feel it necessary. This isn't just an academic exercise here either. This particular entry is preventing some groups from adopting the CEPC. So I view it as a matter of some urgency.

[nigelmegitt]

This particular entry is preventing some groups from adopting the CEPC.

They don't have a choice, do they?

Before proceeding with this change, I think more motivation is needed for why a group might object to the presence of "political view" in the list. It seems to me that we need to ask "why" a couple more times.

[AdaRoseCannon]

These are groups that would rather shutdown than be forced to let Nazi-adjacent groups participate (for good reason.)

Also as far as I am concerned this reasoning is sound and it's only a minor change to the glossary rather than the rules themselves.

[AdaRoseCannon]

There is good reason why political views are not mentioned in the code itself and in my opinion it's inclusion in the glossary is an oversight.

[TzviyaSiegman]

I think this is a very delicate line. A few points:

1. Our definition of Prejudice does not mention politics. Our definition of discrimination includes political views.
2. I am a bit hesitant to remove this because overall we want this to be a comfortable place for different political viewpoints (e.g. Republican vs Democrat in USA). We do not want this to be a comfortable place for bad actors, but I don't think that removing the term "political views" will change this.
3. As far as @AdaRoseCannon 's point about Nazi-adjacent groups, I fully agree, but I don't think that CEPC can be used as a gatekeeping mechanism. I think we need to come up with other solutions (and, I am at least somewhat aware of the situation).

Perhaps this is more about who the W3C's approach to who it does and does not make welcome? About the principles promoted? These are long term issues and will not solve an immediate issue, but I do think we need to work on both.

[nigelmegitt]

Nazi-adjacent groups

Who is deciding where to draw the line? Most political disagreements are not as extreme as this. Is it okay for a mainly right-leaning group to exclude a member who is more left-leaning (or vice versa)? What about a group that seeks to exclude a climate change activist? Is it okay to exclude them purely because of their (personal) stance on climate change?

Clearly, No to both those questions. But the proposed change could make it a "Yes" from the CEPC perspective.

this reasoning is sound and it's only a minor change to the glossary rather than the rules themselves

At this time, I disagree that there has been any reasoned motivation for this change in this ticket. I'm not disagreeing that there may be a reason, and it may indeed have been an oversight.

But I find the one listed motivation, paraphrasing, "so that we can exclude otherwise well-behaved people with political views with which we do not agree" to be chilling. I should add, in the context of a WG where a political discussion would normally be irrelevant, if a participant seeks to divert the work of the group by means of a political discussion, as Chair, I would want backing to close that down. It wouldn't matter which political views were being expressed, but it would matter if the discussion is an attempt to needle an individual or make them feel uncomfortable. I don't think any change is needed to support this now though.

[AdaRoseCannon]

It's not so that the CEPC explicitly excludes people it's so that it does not tie the hands of the people using it from preventing known bad-actors who will then use the CEPC against the chairs claiming that they were discriminated against for their political views.

The CEPC was very carefully designed so as to avoid being used to cut-both-ways like this and this particular entry as far as I am concerned is a bug which allows it to be used as such.

[nigelmegitt]

it's so that it does not tie the hands of the people using it from preventing known bad-actors who will then use the CEPC against the chairs claiming that they were discriminated against for their political views.

The solution to this is surely not to say "it's okay to discriminate against people for their political views" though?

This class of problem does not apply solely to political views. You could make the same argument about gender, religion etc but it would be absurd to remove those from the list.

[AdaRoseCannon]

Nigel, this is a real issue. That is going to be preventing participation in W3C from groups that really care about this issue. The issue needs to be fixed and clearly you feel that removing these two words is not an appropriate solution please can you suggest an alternative solution?

[nigelmegitt]

Ada, I don't claim to understand the problem well enough to propose a solution. It'd be really helpful if you could explain the problem first, rather than coming with a solution directly. So far, I've seen:

• it should be okay to disallow participation on the grounds of political view
• some groups do not want to participate if there might be others present (or nearby) with conflicting political views
• presence of "political view" in the list was an oversight
• need to prevent bad actors from claiming that they are discriminated against for their political views

This is a pretty broad ranging set of arguments, but to me none of them really explains what problem we are seeking to solve.

The non-participation one seems to be the key, if I've read your comments correctly.

We want W3C to be a safe and welcoming place, clearly. But what does it say about W3C itself if participants are (de-)selected based on their political views, other than that it is not welcoming to all members of the primary constituency, the users, and some of them might be excluded even if they act in good faith and behave appropriately?

I say again, we need to ask "why" a couple more times: Why does a group not want to participate in a W3C forum given the presence of "political view" in this list in the CEPC? What are the concerns of the members of such a group? If anyone from such a community is willing to explain in their own words, that would be great, but not essential.

[torgo]

Just to amplify this a bit: this is not academic. We are seeing a world-wide rise of fascism and a move in some circles to legitimise fascist views as part of the political discourse. I do not think the intent of the CEPC was ever to say "it's OK to be a Nazi" or to prevent group chairs from baring participation in groups by those who express fascist views. To crib from the person who raised this issue to me - there are tech people and projects out there that actively engage in or are built to facilitate the following:

• oppression, or encouraging oppression, of vulnerable people or minority groups.
• planning, encouragement of or inciting violence against vulnerable people.
• promoting fascism, nazism or other authoritarian systems and practices.
• perpetuating, promoting, or enacting systematic injustices, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia.

This is real. There are people out there doing all of the above. Should we open our doors to those communities? To do so would create precisely the toxic environment we are hoping to avoid in putting the CEPC in place. I'm not a philosopher, but in these kinds of discussion, I'm often guided by the paradox of tolerance - the notion that tolerant societies (or communities) cannot tolerate Intolerance. I honestly think, considering the fact that members of some groups are uncomfortable with the current wording, the least we can do is to remove the wording about political views.

[TzviyaSiegman]

Thanks @AdaRoseCannon and @torgo. I think that this might require more than removing the phrase "political views" from the glossary definition. I am very much in agreement with the concerns about the paradox of tolerance. We must figure out a way to prevent these behaviors from being accepted.

After giving this more thought, I support remove the phrase "political views", but I think we must also do more. I will add this to a future agenda.

[wareid]

I agree with @torgo and @AdaRoseCannon on this as well. Including "political beliefs" in the list of protected classes under prejudice is contradictory with the goal of protecting those classes. As it stands with political belief today, someone with extreme beliefs could enter a group situation, make their political position known, and when called out on it defend themselves by saying their beliefs are protected.

I don't think any one of us is comfortable with protecting any belief that brings harm to another.

[rhiaro]

@nigelmegitt to be more specific, if a group appears to tolerate known nazis (etc) because they are well behaved in the context of the group, this is a disincentive for for anyone endangered by or allied with anyone endangered by nazi (etc) ideology to participate. We may not even see the people who are automatically excluded by an apparent tolerance of bad actors, because they won't even knock on the door. So part of this is empowering group chairs / community leaders to be able to explicitly state "nazis (etc) not welcome here" - making it obvious it is a safe place for vulnerable people, and deterring potential bad actors - without having that one line in the CEPC used against them in retaliation.

[nigelmegitt]

@torgo that list is great, because it is a list of behaviours on which we can easily agree (I hope). Those are what we should be prohibiting, not people who we guess may at some future time exhibit them. And we already do.

I don't think any one of us is comfortable with protecting any belief that brings harm to another.

@wareid a privately held belief isn't what harms others though, it's behaviour or view exposed externally, right? I understand that if a person were surrounded in a group context by others who they knew to have very strongly different views then it would likely be difficult for them to feel welcome and express their own views, if the conversation were about those views. Where I would draw the line is if I thought that such intimidation were actually happening, then as Chair I would expect to step in. It is the intimidation, oppression etc that is the problem, no?

when called out on it defend themselves by saying their beliefs are protected.

We already protect against this with the clause:

Retaliating, or taking adverse action, against anyone who files a complaint that someone has violated this code of conduct.

if a group appears to tolerate known nazis (etc) ... "nazis (etc) not welcome here"

@rhiaro right, but this is the extreme situation. It is a normal situation for a group to appear to tolerate less extreme political views, like conservatism, liberalism, etc. Which political groups or views do you think W3C should proscribe? How are you going to decide? How should a Chair decide? Should a Chair be able to say "this person believes in a health system free at the point of use, so they are barred from participation"?

[wareid]

@wareid a privately held belief isn't what harms others though, it's behaviour or view exposed externally, right?

If a view is indeed privately held, a chair or group will not know about it, and it won't be acted on. If it's public enough that members of the group know about it, it has bearing on how the group operates.

[cwebber]

Here's a framing that makes this proposal easier: removing "political positions" as a protected group from the CoC does not add new rules, it removes a rule. I've seen myself the way that many things can be stuffed under "political positions", and many of them are positions that can be used to violate the other categories. That's the real risk here.

We can keep this very simple by focusing on removing a rule rather than specifying adding a replacement, and this can give communities flexibility in terms of how they choose to enforce in this area.

Here's a tangent: in systems that are highly automated, I like crunchy, specific rules with deterministic outcomes. In highly social systems, there tends to be a lot of information that's not captured by the system, so "judgement" tends to be required to some degree. Thus I'm a supporter of code of conducts in general, particularly as they help set expectations and create a social contract, but acknowledge that the best ones have parallels with the game rules of rules-light, narrative RPGs, with high trust between cooperating players and the GM. With crunchier game rules, you often find the "powergamer" showing up at the table and thinking about how to bend rules to their will. These people seem to always ruin narrative RPGs because they aren't interested in the cooperative narrative, they're interested in "winning". In such systems, minimalism is worthwhile, and gets filled in with group discussion and consensus of interpretation of those rules.

Here we have a rule that is subject to powergaming by the worst kind of players. The best thing to do is to remove the rule, giving the group more flexibility to decide what to do as a group.

[rhiaro]

@rhiaro right, but this is the extreme situation.

It is an extreme situation that we are facing, in reality, today.

It is a normal situation for a group to appear to tolerate less extreme political views, like conservatism, liberalism, etc. Which political groups or views do you think W3C should proscribe?

I don't think the w3c should prescribe any political views.

The kinds of things we're talking about are communities who believe in superiority of one group of people over another, to such an extent that they believe the perceived-inferior groups should be oppressed or harmed. The sort of things that shouldn't be up for debate in civilised society, but for some reason are. Chairs and community leaders need to be able to call this out, and act if it's reported, without the CoC backfiring. That's all.

[nigelmegitt]

@rhiaro right, but this is the extreme situation.

It is an extreme situation that we are facing, in reality, today.

We also have the non-extreme situation, in reality, today. My argument is not that we do not face the extreme situation, but that, in dealing with it, we should carefully consider potential unintended consequences.

Having said that, @chaals 's rationale at #163 (review) in particular is persuasive to me, and seems to align with @cwebber 's point: I'm not going to argue on this thread any further.

If it's the case that I'm the only person in the set wanting "hold back from making this change while we think about it more", then please consider that now to be the empty set!

Thanks all for taking the time to present the arguments and dig into this. I believe that the extra consideration and explanation only improves the quality and solidity of the conclusion.

[chaals]

I think @nigelmegitt is correct to be concerned about the substance of the issue raised here.

I believe the tolerance paradox is an important problem we face, because I believe it is important to continue to work in an open, welcoming environment, to ensure we are engaged with people we need to be talking to.

Some of the people who have been critical to the development of W3C, and with whom I have worked, hold views they do not actively conceal that I find morally repugnant. (I am also aware of people who find some view or other of mine repugnant, but continue to engage with me in a respectful and constructive manner).

I don't think the right answer is to insist that people hide their political views as a condition of being guaranteed a continued right to participation.

Without a clear "rule", we are left in a position of dealing with cases as they arise. I believe some have arisen, from discussion here, although there is no explanation of what they are so it makes it difficult to even understand conventions we have considered acceptable.

Unfortunately, this puts an onus on those dealing with them to justify their behaviour. Fortunately the outcome of that will likely be a body of examples we can refer to in helping to understand the community's objectives, what we believe is acceptable or not, which can hep us to think about it further.

[TzviyaSiegman]

PR #163 has been approved, so this issue will be closed.