Conflicts Resolution that actually works (for everyone!)

[mariha]

Why do we need Conflicts Resolution?

(by Conflicts Resolution we mean a feature implemented in software, that supports groups in resolving actual conflicts by creating a set of functionalities which act as a scaffold that makes some practices more accessible and maybe limits others)

Karrot at it's origin was heavily influenced by Elinor Ostrom's research on commons (TODO: source needed), for which she was rewarded with Nobel Prize in Economics (2009), and it is a good basis to build on (mariha's opinion).

Ostrom's design principles illustrated by long-enduring common-pool resources (CPR) institutions:

4. Monitoring
   Monitors, who actively audit CPR conditions and appropriator behaviour, are accountable to the appropriators or are the appropriators

5. Graduated sanctions
   Appropriators who violate operational rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the offense) by other appropriators, by officials accountable to these appropriators, or by both.

6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms
   Appropriators and their officials have rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among appropriators or between appropriators and officials.

(out of 8 principles)
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, 1990, 2015, p. 90

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What conflicts resolution mechanisms has been implemented in Karrot?

There is a Membership Review functionality, which was previously called Conflicts Resolution (sic!) with a possibility to remove a user from the group which is a whole group systemic consensus based anonymous decision about someone's membership. There is also a space to defend oneself provided as a discussion on a group-wide public forum, by textual communication.

The functionality is an effective implementation of an ostracism and it is believed to be a potential source of systemic violence mechanism in the groups. Based on one particular example - mariha's personal experience (*) - the functionality may lead to the violation of Human Rights of a person under review, in particular when combined with implicit power structures that exist in the group. More evidence is needed to prove that in a wider sense though.

(*) Mariha claims (as an author of this note) she was discriminated in an unfair process, where nobody even talked with her (except text messaging). She was asked to not join the project that she had already joined (had been welcomed to and felt part of), and there was made a dependency of her respectfulness to the member who asked for that and the whole team's boundaries based on how well she performed on that (impossible!) task - while she cared about both: that person and the project. Her attempts to object and discuss the issue were called stalking, an offer to mediate was left unanswered. The process took many months and she feels harshly punished without breaking any rules. She still doesn't know what she could have done differently so that she was not removed from the project. Nothing seems to be certain any more | UDHR Articles that were violated: (1?), 2, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 11.

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What is wrong with Membership Review (formerly Conflicts Resolution) feature?

• Proper conflict resolution is different from membership-review-with-a-possibility-to-remove-a-person-from-the-group by expected outcome.
• Conflicts are never one-sided, currently the process is against ppp (potentially problematic person) who is judged by the whole group; the person who starts the process is not affected by it at all. It's like the person committed a crime against the group.
• It may be impossible to express and defend oneself by text messaging on a semi-public forum only, not every content fits in a whole-group discussion (privacy) or textual communication (pain/suffering - internet creates distance and people can't feel empathy over it; it may be below ones (human?) dignity to name it openly, and there may be no words for some things, like for example the pain of being treated unfairly by a group of people who you trusted; or the one of being intruded into ones sense of identity and belonging / anything that touches deep into the core of human dignity)
• Belonging to the group should not be a question of an external subjective judgement, it's an internal state of an individual. Once someone was accepted, a group makes an arbitrary decision for an individual - it is power abusive; intrudes into their identity; and that just can never work. It violates ones integrity to decide for them where do they belong or not.
• If the right questions are not asked, like reconstruction of a sequence of events from both sides, some of the evidence may be never revealed to the public - there is no space for that in the process.

The below is written based on mariha's personal experiences/observations and a podcast recording of a conversation (in polish) with prof. Monika Kostera about ostracism in self-organized groups, from sociological perspective, in the context of online communities and polish NGO sector, the mechanisms are general though and not specific to these groups.

Ostracism (active as mobbing and bullying or passive as shunning) in self-organized groups:

• Effects on the communities
  Centralization of power, loyalty of a group to the leader (conflict risks an exclusion) and within the group (power structure in a non-hierarchical group is likely a taboo, shared secret unites the group), results in a culture of conflicts avoidance and emotions dismissal, most importantly: missed opportunity of learning from this experience and updating the system to prevent similar situation from happening again
• Effects on the individuals
  Group violence, social death - even the psychopaths are not resistant to it, internalization of punishment, being a non-person, activates the same regions in the brain as physical pain, ... an article

Possible remedies (according to Monika Kostera):

• in general: break circuits of power / Stuard Clegg
• dystopian: put ostracized in a position of power - will not work because it's structural violence, the victims will likely become the executors
• educate oneself and others about ostracism / social death and it's psychological and social consequences
• self-awareness: is it really something that I/we want to do? Maybe an honest, open conversation would be better (and usually enough, especially if that's an over-sensitive person)?
• [mariha's:] following human rights - start from the bottom: do no harm! Protect the most vulnerable ones who are also most susceptible to power abusive practices. Following human rights - fair trial, no discrimination, innocent until proved guilty, no arbitrary detention or exile, no cruelty (!): govern with clear rules, make exclusion from a group not an option without breaking a rule or maybe all together (limit rights/permissions/trust instead), gradual sanctions, give space to express and defend themselves, beware that non-direct communication (text messages) impairs empathy - natural stop mechanisms are off and it's so easy to behaves as a psychopath - the pain and harm on the other side is real though.
  Reasons to abolish the death penalty from Amnesty International seem to be very relevant, similar in a sense that death penalty is a form of complete isolation of an individual from the rest of the society (or maybe the society from that individual?), same as social death effect on an ostracized.
• money: NGO sector is financially undersourced and people face conflict between satisfying their own economic needs and following their own values system / being empathetic to others. Possibly people can be infinitely loyal to someone who provides for their financial needs, especially if they were "starved" before (?).

Ostracism and...

• Closed organizations, with hierarchical structure and well defined membership
  That would be a mobbing, penalized across Europe (and probably everywhere else).
• Modern democratic systems, build on values of openness and equality
  After the experiences of WWII, Human Rights were designed - see article 9, 10 and 11: freedom from arbitrary detention or exile, right to a fair trial and innocent until proved guilty. Death penalty breaks human rights, it can be too easily abused by people in power / privileged to get rid of their opposition / people who they feel uncomfortable about.
• Anarchism
  People are encouraged to leave a group if sth is not working for them, effort is made to reduce practical barriers / structural dependency of an individual on a group, so that if they want to separate from the group they are not de-favored or they feel forced to stay to provide for themselves

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What can be done?

First of all: DO NO HARM! Remove encoded in the software structural violence mechanisms

• A mutual support group for and from the people who got removed from some other group / ostracized at the primal instance of Karrot - Karrot's Forgotten People group

• Request a person who creates the group to read at load and consent to the statement:

  By joining this group, I commit myself to never-ever consciously participate in any forms of ostracism activities (like mobbing) and no-activities (like shunning). I will educate myself about social death effects it causes and I will leave the group if I ever fail to fulfill that commitment.

• Request all members of the groups to read at load and consent to the above statement

• Remove systemic consensus based Membership Review, as harmful for the people being object of it and the whole community engaging in it. Belonging to the group should be based on objective rules (explicitly phrased criteria of membership) that everyone (any single person) can easily assess, no need for the whole community to get involved.

Second: Looking forward

Can technology solve human problems? How much of the mechanisms do we want to impose with software? How can we support groups to nurture better practices / approaches to conflicts resolution while enabling a diversity of them and not limit them with our own cultural backgrounds/biases?

Some resources that may be useful:

• Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework
  includes Effectiveness criteria for non-judicial grievance mechanisms at p. 33
• NVC (non-violent communication), conflicts deescalation, and other similar workshops/resources - ex. SociocracyForAll, eXtinctionRebellion offer some - abusing them (as a tool of benevolent violence) is yet another level of cruelty, though!
• Looking back at what Ostrom wrote (below)

Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, 1990, 2015, p. 98, 99-100

Graduated punishments ranging from insignificant fines all the way to banishment, applied in settings in which the sanctioners know a great deal about the personal circumstances of the other appropriators and the potential harm that could be created by excessive sanctions, may be far more effective than a major fine imposed on first offender.

When CPR appropriators design their own operational rules (design principle 3) to be enforced by individuals who are local appropriators or are accountable to them (design principle 4), using graduated sanctions (design principle 5) that define who has rights to withdraw units from the CPR (design principle 1) and that effectively restrict appropriation activities, given local conditions (design principle 2), the commitment and monitoring problem are solved in an interrelated manner. Individuals who think that a set of rules will be effective in producing higher joint benefits and that monitoring (including their own) will protect them against being suckered are willing to make a contingent self-commitment of the following type:

I commit myself to follow the set of rules we have devised in all instances except dire emergencies if the rest of those affected make a similar commitment and act accordingly.

Once appropriators have made contingent self-commitments, they are then motivated to monitor other people's behaviors, at least from time to time, in order to assure themselves that others are following the rules most of the time. Contingent self-commitments and mutual monitoring reinforce one another, especially when appropriators have devised rules that tend to reduce monitoring costs.

Derek Wall, Elinor Ostrom's Rules for Radicals: Cooperative Alternatives Beyond Markets and States, 2017, p. 85-86

Ostrom's analysis suggests that particular practices could be used to build trust. She found, for example, that research suggested that cheap talk was useful. By cheap talk, she meant that if commoners or others were able to communicate directly with each other, trust was more likely to occur than if they did not meet and exchange views. Her principles of commons design can be seen as ways to help to generate trust. Thus graduated sanctions work better than severe punishment because breaking commons rules may be result of ignorance rather than selfishness. Pointing out a mistake or providing a minor sanction builds trust, where severe penalties will reduce trust. A word she used was 'scaffolding'. Rules and practices act to encourage some forms of behaviours and to discourage others; they work as a support or scaffold (Ostrom 1998). This assumption that individuals are supported in particular ways by particular forms of institutional scaffolding incidentally cuts through intellectual debates around free will and structuralism. Of course, we don't have complete free will but if we learn more about the structures that shape our behaviour we can gain more freedom.

[mariha]

Kanthaus Constitution, Conflict Resolution by Intervention - I'd suspect this point to be a source of structural violence in Kanthaus living community and consequently in Karrot which originates there.

§10c. Intervention

If reasonable measures to resolve a conflict with Voluntary Assistance prove unsuccessful, Members may intervene as a last resort.
Conflict Resolution by Intervention is decided by Members using the Unanimous Acceptance (8b.) or Score Voting (8c.) procedure, where proposals may include—

• requesting an individual to participate in assisted conflict resolution,
• revoking an individuals' position of Volunteer or Member, or
• instructing an individual to leave the space temporarily or indefinitely.

(bold is mine)

An Intervention of Members who using Score Voting (subjective, centralized, absolute power, no accountability to the rest of the community) decide upon a person's right to stay in the space or not. There is only one side in this conflict. The person is being punished as if they were threatening safety of the whole community.

What happens if there is a conflict with a Member (person in power)?
They could have some extra protection / immunity, so that the community keeps functioning, but they don't need to have an absolute power over others for that reason! Protecting the operations could be separated from resolving personal conflicts of people who ensure that operations.

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Looks like a conflict with a person in power means the other person has to leave, regardless of what that would actually mean for them.

[mariha]

Better conflicts resolution strategies:

• they acknowledge equal right to participate in the community of both sides of a personal conflict
• they do not rely on power, which tends to reproduce itself (old structures)
• they seek to find mutual understanding, for which some sort of reconnection may be needed first

Examples:

• mediation - finding mutual understanding and mutually acceptable solution

• vibes watcher

• listening and trying to understand the other side - misunderstandings do happen quite often!
  (note: violance is not relative; in power abusive situations, this can create even more harm to the less powerful)

• chronological reconstruction of the events to have common picture of the situation, people act upon the information they have

• forgiveness - mistakes can happen, this is the way people learn

• acknowledgement and compensation of the harms - that would need to come from the inside of the person/people who did the harm, requesting it will not help with the conflict / builds walls

• as a group self-protective mechanism, as a last resort strategy, both (all) people involved in a conflict could be expelled. It is not non-volant but at least distributes the responsibility evenly and gives clear signal what is an unacceptable behaviour in the group (rather then strengthening the self-reinforcing power structures by allowing some to participate and expelling the others)

[mariha]

Organisational culture:

• enacting institutional courage as an anti-bulling strategy, described here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bully-wise/202309/workplace-bullying-as-a-form-of-institutional-betrayal