[council] Regarding dealing with inappropriate behaviour

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello Chuck,

> In that regard, we
> may want to consider some means of dealing with non-constructive
> behavior both for observers and members.  

I tend to agree that a chair should attempt to deal with inappropriate
behaviour, bearing in mind the wishes of the whole group.
Ie the decision is not made autocratically, but based on documented
guidelines for acceptable behaviour as well as seeking the views of
other members of the group.

I think the Council then is simply able to deal with issues on an appeal
basis - which could be handled in a similar way to that of the Board
appeal mechanisms - e.g a subgroup of the Council can investigate and
report to the whole Council.

However - I would hope that these situations are rare events.  The best
approach is to stop inappropriate behaviour as soon as it happens,
rather than let it gradually grow amongst multiple participants (ie such
behaviour tends to escalate).  If a problem is let run too long, then
you will always be blamed for singling out one person, when other people
have also been behaving inappropriately.

The rough rule of thumb is that was is not acceptable in a small
face-to-face environment in terms of language and courtesy is not
acceptable in a telephone conference or mailing list when people are
further apart.

I have noticed that when a group of people have been "fighting" amongst
themselves on a mailing list and then meet face-to-face, the bad
feelings are often carried over.  In contrast where a group has
initially met face-to-face a few times and the group members have built
some respect for each others opinions and good intentions, then mailing
lists discussions are generally much more civil.   For example, the
Council meets face-to-face as a group regularly, as do most of the more
active members of the registrar constituency.  Subsequently mailing list
and teleconference discussions tend to be fairly civil despite the fact
that the participants may be strong competitors in business, or have
strongly opposing views on a matter.


Regards,
Bruce Tonkin