carolynn ivy

Hi! I'm Carolynn, and I used to be a regular in IRC and now I mostly hang out on Discord and in the WL community. I'm going to be posting a very long post because I think there are some pretty fundamental issues with how conflict is dealt with in this community. I'll be breaking this post up into multiple collapsible chunks to make it easier to digest. I tried introducing some of these ideas in the unofficial channel in discord but was very disappointed with the response, and I hope those who dismissed ideas in there are willing to understand the inefficacy of that medium and read this post with fresh eyes.

The fundamental flaw I want to mainly address is an over-reliance on "retributive justice," which is a form of justice used in many forms around the world and in many communities throughout history, though certainly not every. Conflict is dealt with in the framing of "discipline." Essentially this means that the primary function of Disc and AHT as teams is to ask the question: "Did someone break the rules, and what should be the punishment?" This encourages that behavior in the community is judged by these staffers to be one of two things: either Bad Enough that the individual in question is expelled from community spaces (or sometimes given a warning preceding such a ban), or Not Bad Enough to need being addressed (though sometimes warranting increased scrutiny).

This mindset feels prevalent in both site and chat spaces. It places staff as arbiters of Right and Wrong, which is not only misguided when applied to interpersonal conflict but very limiting when it applies to more clear cases of harm. I'll illustrate using multiple different examples of conflict in the community.

+ Retribution and Vulnerable Groups

I'll start with an illustrative anecdote: a while ago in #site19 I witnessed a moderator making extremely disparaging and hurtful remarks about people struggling with addiction, during a period when I was one such person. After unsuccessfully trying to push back on these remarks, I spoke to a different moderator I trusted, who agreed with me that the statements were harmful, and agreed to speak about it with others. Eventually she told me that admins had decided that the moderator in question had Done Nothing Wrong, which was a decision she was very unhappy with. I ended up speaking with the admin she referred me to, who ultimately only ended up disparaging addicts as having "done it to themselves." After disparagement and dismissal I hopelessly asked to at least have a conversation about it with others. I never got that conversation.

The mindset of "did this person break the rules," with the inextricable baggage of punishment, did not allow me to have a conversation or come to a resolution with a person who had caused me harm. By focusing on some objective, removed criteria for determining harmful behavior, my voice was removed from the equation. By focusing on "does this warrant punishment" the admin covered for his friend's harm, because he believed he was not deserving of punishment—and I didn't even want punishment! I have no reason to doubt that this moderator is a great person in a lot of interactions, and I think those disparaging remarks were probably a form of trauma response. But deciding a person Does Not Warrant Punishment frequently means a person is deemed "in the clear" or "Good" in the same way deciding a person Does Warrant Punishment often means a person is "bad (for the community)." Both remove room for conversation and growth. They're both declarative.

+ Retribution and Plagiarism

Right now, if a conflict happens over potential plagiarism, Disc staff, after arduous debate, decides if a person technically committed plagiarism or not, and as a third party puts down a permanent ban if plagiarism was committed. Plagiarism is frequently not the result of a person maliciously trying to steal someone else's glory, but it often is something more simple; a simple misunderstanding about where artistic boundaries lie. In such a circumstance, it is not clear to me that a permanent ban or Doing Nothing are the two best options, when compared with, say, a mediated conversation between parties.

In three of the most recent cases surrounding possible plagiarism, it often took arduous debate between staffers to figure out if the person in question was In The Wrong, with the stakes generally being a permanent ban (with appeal). One of the more memorable of these recent cases initially had a consensus forming that Yes, This Was Plagiarism, with a couple specifically deciding it was a "dick move," but after significant community uproar and following dissenting posts, the tide rapidly turned around, resulting in a large number of edited staff posts and ultimately a personal apology from a Disciplinary Captain. This case in particular, of which much has been said, is a great example of how punitive approaches to community health and interpersonal conflict can obfuscate meaningful or healthy conversation, with often groupthink-y adherence to the idea of punishment.

A more recent case had someone be approached by an author for possibly plagiarizing their work on a different branch, during which the individual in question admitted they were communicating poorly and occasionally dishonestly because of the fear of retribution. No space was given to consider that they may have simply made an error or crossed a boundary with art; the discussion was always within line-of-sight of a ban. After significant debate and confusion, Disc staff eventually settled on not banning this person, though some agreed that it was "shady" or "bad faith." The person who possibly had their work plagiarized was not centered in this process and did not get room to express their discomfort to the other party in a safe and mediated fashion; as soon as it came to Disc, it was up to Disc to decide, and so the threat of "discipline" was involved from the moment the conflict started.

Now, this might be contentious—I don't actually care at all if either of these people broke a rule. Breaking a rule is of no consequence on its own. Rules are not the ends here; they're a means to improving community health. What is a conversation worth having is whether the interpersonal conflicts reflected here could have been resolved in a way that valued both members of the community, as opposed to pitting them against each other in an adversarial manner.

+ Retribution and Egregious Harm

Even in cases of more egregious harm or even abuse, the victims needs for healing should be centered and they should be given the space to say what they need for harm done to be healed. At present, AHT's function is still largely colored in discipline despite being an "Anti-Harassment Team." AHT largely does one job; they collect information on harm done, decide as a third party whether that harm counts as abusive or harassment, and if decided it does, enact permanent removal from the site and (some) associated spaces. But, for example, banning a couple pedophiles and abusers did not make the site's capacity for grooming and abuse just go away, and many victims were very clear in expressing this in multiple channels; and yet nothing was done for months until finally, after a long long period of community discussion and enough outrage, the age limit became raised on the site—and it's not even clear that this measure is enough to address the problem. I don't believe this inaction was at all because individual staffers didn't want to address a problem, but rather that the system set up shunted the problem over to a single group, whose toolkit is largely limited to discipline, and in doing so removed victims from the ability to determine how their harm is addressed. Retributive justice presumes the problem was solved at the moment of banning; as long as their toolkit is so limited, AHT is not an anti-harassment team as much as they are a specialized Disciplinary team.

Another big issue with retributive approaches is that they presume that when an individual is banned from a space, they are not a part of the community of that space for as long as they are banned; the Problem has been successfully Excised. It is clear this is not the case. Banned individuals still participate in community spaces adjacent to the site, meaning that patterns of problematic behavior are not stopped by bans but merely localized somewhere else nearby. Banning a person may even frequently cause an escalation of a conflict to a political level. This may be acceptable if your goal is to only maintain order on the site, but if your goal is to facilitate community health, this is not a sufficient approach.

+ The Alternative

My suggestion is "restorative justice," a different mindset and process of community health. I gained a lot of experience with this system when working for multiple years at a collectively owned and co-operatively run workplace, in which I was responsible for facilitating the Safer Space Policy. My understanding of it is also informed by my own experience as a survivor of abuse. Restorative justice asks that harm be addressed with the intent to heal. The primary question, under restorative justice, is not "Did someone break the rules?" but rather "Is someone hurt or harmed? What does this person need to heal the harm done? How can we facilitate this and address the causes of the harm done?"

This encourages a more conversational approach to conflict resolution, in which people with conflict or people who have been harmed by others in the community are given the primary voice in deciding what the best way to heal this harm is, and all stakeholders are involved appropriately. Often, especially in the case of conflict without clear instances of egregious abuse, this could mean two parties have a mediated discussion to come to a conclusion that helps both participate in community more healthily. There's a lot of different approaches to situations stemming from this mindset; figuring out the right one is a matter of practice. Many issues can be solved not by contrasting people's needs against each other or else simply disciplining both, but addressing that these two individuals may have differing needs and that these needs come into conflict in the space. Simply coming to a resolution that enables both individuals to participate healthily, even when it's as simple as "not engaging in the space at the same times," can be more than enough. Most problems can be helped with a conversation—or the way to approach the problem can become more clear through conversation. Deescalation would be a priority skill here, ideally outlined or more actively taught to those new to staff. Key to this understanding is that members of the community who fuck up ideally can still be members of the community.

I don't mean to say staff does not sometimes have conversations between people or help mediate discussion about things sometimes—I just want a shift in mindset, with a framing of staff duty that centers this approach and not the punitive one.

In cases of intolerable offenses of violence, abuse, sexual harassment, and discrimination, restorative justice is survivor-centric. Sometimes a survivor will want to have their abuser completely removed from the space; sometimes they will have other needs or ways to address the conflict, that may involve more conversation, and sometimes they will have needs for how the space itself is set up, given that not all problems of abuse are individually caused. These needs should be satisfactorily addressed in the effort to make things right.

+ Final Thoughts

There has been a stunning amount of research and work done in restorative justice spaces in the past few decades, and many communities have successfully utilized it even in part, including spaces I have participated in. It tends to have higher accountability rates for harm, much higher satisfaction for survivors, and generally results in safer and happier communities. There's a lot of budding research and writing about its application in online community spaces, as well.

I am aware that, though this removes the stress of having to decide if your friend is a Valuable Member Of The Community Or Not, moving towards restorative justice would be a pretty large shift in mindset and resulting process, and as a result would take some considerable effort and conversation. I think it's an effort that people can make; if not all present Disc staffers, then there are plenty of people who would be willing to try the position out. I do not think this effort would be poorly spent; we should not only value community up to a point where we say "ehhh, good enough." We already have an Anti-Harassment Team because we recognize the need to protect the well-being of members of this community; we already have Community Outreach because we recognize community health extends beyond discipline. I'm only asking that our staff structure be made to wholly commit to community and community voices, and especially so in cases of conflict.