(Re-)building an inclusive SageMath community. II: Recognizing and fighting abuse, bullying, disrespect

[Matthias Koeppe]

Trigger Warning: In this post, I will discuss topics that can make some people uncomfortable; in particular readers who have themselves been the target of abuse, bullying, and disrespect in the past. (I apologize if I have omitted this Trigger Warning in previous posts that touched these topics.)

My previous post in the series: https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/OeN8o14s6Jc/m/ChnpijP3AgAJ, titled "I: How we talk about past, current, future contributions" appeared over a month ago.

Unfortunately, this post has been met with a complete silence. I argue that this is but one symptom of a disease of our Sage community: The community has been severely damaged by toxicity, not just by the most recent excesses but already over a much longer term. Possible other symptoms: 

(1) The lack of visible diversity in our community. 

(2) Silence when harmful conduct is happening in plain sight. 

(3) The disengagement from matters of community, governance, leadership.

I argue that we need active long-term steps to rebuild a healthy, inclusive community.

Rebuilding our community has to be rooted in consideration for the weakest in our community, the voices that have already disappeared from our community, and for the targets of abuse, bullying, and disrespect.

The question that we need to ask is: What is necessary so that they feel comfortable and empowered to participate?

I argue that it has to start with
- recognizing and acknowledging the existence and the asymmetric nature of abuse, bullying, and disrespect,
- understanding the specific damage that all of these do on individuals (hint: targets of abuse do not just get "upset") and on our community,
- learning about the techniques and mechanisms of abusers and abuse (for example: keeping plausible deniability and "playing the victim" are well-known parts of the tool set of abusers),
- affirming as a community the goal of building an inclusive community in which abuse, bullying, aggression, disrespect, harassment are shunned.

What is counterproductive:

- Euphemisms such as describing abusive comments as a "heated discussion".

- Well-meaning advice to targets of abuse to take a break.

- Giving abusers the benefit of the doubt.

- Reprimanding targets of abuse for calling out abuse.
- Both-siding bullying with anti-bullying activism.

Matthias

[Doris Behrendt]

Hi all,

allow me drop some thoughts and step into the silence:

I am not a developer but >>only<< a mathematician, but am following this list for quite some time.
Mostly, I have only time to skim-read this list, but it is indeed an important source of information for me. I nearly never take part in discussions or polls since I don't have enough time to read all the mails in detail, do some research (to fill the gaps of my missing developer knowledge) and then make a decision/write something -- and by doing so -- not be silent.

I am very thankful for ALL people who invest time into this awesome software that I use nearly every day for free.

For me it is really sad that -- afaik -- two of those persons that invest so much time into this project (Dima and Matthias) have so many differences, mainly on a personal level, it seems to me.

But there are also other people whose posts felt like quite some bad vibrations.

As a not so young woman in tech, I am used to such ... problems.


I would suggest a meeting in person, with enough time, with a good mediator. Those differences need to be spoken out and worked on. 100 E-Mails per day will not untangle the knot, imho.


And, btw, none of all the e-mails made me feel uncomfortable, just sad.


Best wishes,

Doris Behrendt

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[G. M.-S.]

I totally concur with Doris.

Time permitting, I shall add some other thoughts of mine.

Best,

Guillermo

[Matthias Koeppe]

Hi Doris,

Thanks for breaking the silence and sharing your thoughts!

Matthias

[David Roe]

The Sage Code of Conduct Committee shares the goal of making sage development welcoming and pleasant.  If you do not feel comfortable responding to the whole list, you are welcome to write to us, either collectively at sage-c...@googlegroups.com or individually.  We welcome input on how the community is currently falling short, even if you do not have specific solutions.

The Sage Code of Conduct Committee

David Roe
J-P Labbe
John Palmieri
Julian Rüth
Nils Bruin
Viviane Pons