[p2p-research] Issue of bullying within private p2p-f communication

Sun Aug 15 15:00:21 CEST 2010

Alex,

this is a voluntary organisation around a shared goal and both the peer
governance of the community and the democracy of the formal foundation have
certainly their place; at the same time, autocracy has no place, and
everybody has a right to build influence and trust through proven
contributions. This is what I have tried to do myself, and as we can see
from the last few weeks, I have no independent power to stop you, and have
not taken any administrive measures to stop you, because I can't (first I
didn't want though now I think we do need some protections against hostile
takeovers)

you certainly have the right to communicate and to share your vision with
others

it is also a special project of which I'm the founder, and we're at a
delicate stage of moving towards a more collective project,

there are two visions at stake, as I see it,

a pluralist vision where multiple views are possible honouring each other
through mutuality, and where code is subordinated to the creation of
knowledge; and where procedures are secondary to prior effort at consensus
and conflit resolution through dialogue and accepted community arbitrage

and the way I see it, a vision which claims to know what p2p is, wants to
create tools to enact it in practice, and a very activist board that aims to
steer this effort and does not leave room for other views, which it seeks to
displace and dominate; certainly that is the way I see my experience in the
last few weeks and months

indeed, in your practice, in the past few months, I see the following, you
enacted code and were insensitive to any challenges to your vision of it,
you created policy documents given the impression of officialdom without
acknowledging their private proposal status, and you have a habit of
bullying  and insulting the people who disagree with you, in the private
emails that accommpany the public debate .. you fight to win and dominate
and behaved like an autocrat

none of the problems would have arisen if you had been more modest about
your actions, acknowledged differences graciously, and acknowledged me as a
peer with some influence because of the prior work I have done here. I have
four years of practice to prove that I have never imposed my views

instead, you sought dominance and power, create code and policy which aims
to dislodge plurality, and openly declare that you are in the game to oust
me

in theory, yes, this is legitimate, but given the strategy of the coucou you
have been following, I cannot accept, not the challenge, but the fact that
it would consume a large amount of destructive energies, and that there is
someone on board who does not respect the plural vision, the mutuality
required by cooperation

I'm assuming that seeking dominance for you is second nature, and I am not
sure that you are even aware that you do it, neverthless, imposing and
dominating is what you attempt to do, and you use process and democracy to
hide behind it

Since you cannot accept the slightest challenge to your all-knowing
certainty about the direction of the p2p foundation, and in my view see it
as a direct attack on the ego, what your call for democracy in reality
means  is a promise for endless scheming and opposing my ideas and vision ..

It is not that they cannot be challenged, but there must be a certain amount
of acceptance of the road ahead as well, in order to have some form of
commonality amongst our diversity,

so, peer governance will evolve, and you've seen it in action, we talk
amongst ourselves about the best way forward and how to deal with the
conflict, no one has been barking orders and it has been through the
presentation of the evidence of your actions in the past few weeks

and we will also have a new board, discuss about the process to nominate its
members, and install democratic procedures

but, I cannot accept someone who vows to destroy my work, has indeed made it
very hard in the last few weeks to progress on, and vows to continue until
he wins,

you're win-loose propositions and mentality are in my view not the proper
way to engage with the P2P Foundation, and I reserve the right to make this
known, and to oppose it.

here's a contribution below that expresses better than myself, what I think
happened, and why you are so fond of democracy and procedure, and are
writing an endless stream of policy pages.

Again, I'm  normally opposed to psychologizing differences, since they can
be used to prove superiority, yet since it is my conviction that it is
central for what happened between us, I will share it, and to explain my
opposition to your use of democracy as  means to dominate and take over the
P2P Foundation. Not that I believe you will succeed, but because I believe
you will create further damage in the process, and I'm loathe to resume
productive work, without being drained by an endless conflict.

This is why I'm asking you to retract your democratic threat to do all in
your power to take over this community and to fight me until I'm reduced to
total powerlessness as a user. I already have been in the position of user
vis a vis your imposed new rules and information architecture, I know how
much you have respected my rights to disagree, and I can no longer accept
this, and don't want such a regime to dominate all the good work we have
done so far.

I have my own flaws, you have your opinion on it which you generously shared
and  I'm sure others can say more, but, I'm pretty sure that there is no
inkling of a desire for autocracy

so, here is the anonymous quote, that sets behaviour into context:

(send privately)

Alex, believe me, you'd be so much happier if you stopped trying to be the
boss and to push other people down, you have great skills and abilities, you
would naturally rise through your contributions, and were, if you had not
sought and thought that you needed to push others away in order to achieve
your goals ... there was place for everybody here

Michel

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 7:21 PM, Alex Rollin <alex.rollin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Michel, the energy behind your threat is associated with my stated
> intentions to expel you from the board.  I said in private that I want to
> vote you off the board.  I don't see a problem with this intention.  This is
> how democracy works.
>
> To me, this is about democracy, and this is good.  Voting for and against a
> position or for a representative is a good thing.
>
> Maybe this is the subject we should talk about?
>
> If this was a democracy I would vote you off.
>
> I say I have a right to critique your use of authority and the decisions
> you make.
>
> I want users to have rights.  I want users to be represented on the board.
>
> I see democracy as an important part of a community.
>
> I have a right to contact others. I have a right to learn from their
> concerns and to share information with them.
>
> Alex
>
>   On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 7:43 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>>   I want to report on an issue that I had communicated privately, to
>> honour my own promise to restrain myself, but given Sam Rose's reply which
>> I'm not copying in without his permission, confirms that private bullying
>> has gone on much more systematically. I must admit I find it hard to adopt
>> this restraint, since I feel the very survival of what I have tried to
>> build, with others, is at state, and people need to know also what happens
>> 'behind the scenes'. As you will see from the development below, private
>> communication can be used as a weapon, and it's part of the equation and the
>> power play
>>
>> People who have been following this controversy know that it started from
>> increasing frustration that my concerns were not heard, and replies like
>> "read the f ..ing manual". A whole attitude of superiority and dismissal of
>> concern. As you'll see below, I'm literally for Alex "a little man", as well
>> as an "old man" who has to learn to share. I may be a little and old man
>> (I'm 52), but I do not think that I need any lessons in sharing.
>>
>> I also reported on the habit of bullying, but perhaps underestimated how
>> persuasive this was. While I have seen examples, I was unaware that similar
>> communication had been directed to other people who expressed support here.
>>
>> I have also another deeper reason for this. James, who like me has a
>> conciliatory and mediating personality (in this of course, I have not kept
>> up that habit), tells me he does not wish to take any specific measures. My
>> problem is that this means only certainly the following scenario unfolding,
>> and bear with me for the explanation:
>>
>> - in the coming weeks, we will collect candidacies for the new board,
>> present it to this list, and see who else wants on, and decide on a process
>> for the nomination. Almost certainly, Alex will pose his candidacy, since he
>> has openly declared that he wants in, and use his position to start a
>> campaign for my ouster. As I indicated, I feel this is inaceptable at this
>> stage of the budding life of the P2P Foundation as something more than a
>> knowledge commons. Permanent 'civil war' will almost certainly dissipate the
>> positive energies needed to continue construction of the movement. This
>> means, that were his candidacy accepted, he would have won. It also means
>> that all the changes that are meant to mold the foundation to his own image,
>> would succeed. This would mean working under a regime that I would abhor,
>> the construction of the P2P Foundation as an authorititarian cult. I accept
>> that Alex has good intentions, but I also strongly believe that there is a
>> lack of self-reflection and that he is not aware of his bullying manner, and
>> prisoner to a conviction of righteousness. To use a historical analogy, when
>> Stalin took over the power structure in Russia, he did not say, I'm an evil
>> man who wants power and send everyone to the Gulag, but draped himself in
>> righteousness, billed the others as enemies, used this righteousness as the
>> standard, and send them to the Gulag. Of course, no such thing could happen
>> in a voluntary organisation, but I want to indicate a similar process. As
>> the policy documents produced by Alex indicate, the Board would consist of
>> ultra-committed advocates, with only one thing in mind, i.e. they would be
>> righteous, they would swear allegiance to his pledge of commitment, and a
>> process would be in place to enforce a p2p orthodoxy that would go in the
>> sense of what has been described. Even if no blood would be shed, the
>> atmosphere would not be that of a congenial and convicial voluntary
>> organisation, but that more akin of a cult, driven by a righteous leader.
>> True all of this is now only visible in seed form, and most of you may not
>> see this, but it is there already if you can see it.
>>
>> Needless to say, I do not want to be part of such an organisation, not of
>> course, because I am against commitment, but because such a vision of p2p-f
>> sees it not as a movement based on come and go voluntary contrbutions, but
>> as something altogether different. I have indicated before that Alex'
>> vision, however legimate as one choice within the p2p sphere, is entirely
>> monological, since he things he can positively describe singular p2p
>> principles and hold people accountable to them. My problem is NOT with that
>> vision, but with the effort to impose that singular vision on the whole of
>> the p2p-f and to make the work of us that disagree, subservient to that
>> monological vision. If Alex has a vision of text as code, however legitimate
>> as a hypothesis and belief, then he simply enacts it, refuses to  take into
>> account any objections, and implicitely forces all of us to go along. If
>> Alex has a vision of the P2P-F as an idealized cult of p2p monks, he writes
>> up policy documents that if accepted, would be the basis to attack those
>> that diverge from that idealized vision.
>>
>> In other words, if nothing happens, Alex comes on the Board and I refuse
>> to enter it under those conditions, this is far from being only a personal
>> matter only. I will have to create another vehicle for my work, and make
>> sure that next time, there are minimum protective measures that can counter
>> any strategy of the coucou, as we have just witnessed. The rest of you,
>> those that do no wish to act against the imposition of a singular vision,
>> will ultimately also live with the consequences. I expect that most of you
>> would leave once they see the real consequences of the change, but others
>> may come, who like the direction of a stern father figure telling them of
>> the one way to salvation. In the process though, four years of work will
>> have been hijacked, and morphed into something that goes against the orginal
>> spirit.
>>
>> From your experience here, through the wiki, blog and mailing list
>> discussion, you must already be aware of the counter-vision that I have
>> proposed and enacted, with faults and warts but nevertheless as a sincere
>> attempt,  that of the foundation as a pluralistic platform, with mutual
>> respect, and where different visions can co-exist. Such co-existence can
>> also include that of Alex, if he retracts his promise for a permanent civil
>> war, and if he would learn to take his place as a peer instead of imposing
>> his singular vision of everybody else. I have personally lost any confidence
>> and trust that Alex would be capable of this, but would still accept it in
>> the name of due process and giving everybody extra chances. But I won't be
>> happy to work in a context where I have to fight constantly, be bullied. Why
>> would I, since for me as well this is a voluntary engagement, and the new
>> lord does not pay me to undergo this particular treatment.
>>
>> OK then, exhibit one:
>>
>> "it is a user regime.  it always will be, no matter how confused little
>> men like you are.  you old people will have to learn to share, especially
>> since you need the techs in order to do anything.
>> [8/12/2010 7:15:28 PM]
>>
>> (Alex does not see the contradiction of advocating a user regime, while
>> wanting to sit in the board and demote me as a user ... the new regime will
>> not be a user regime, but a board-driven authoritarian organisation, where
>> petty rules (the literarlly hundreds of pages are being produced as we
>> speak) will drive process; what alex has in mind is not just the formal
>> rules of the wikipedia but also it's power structure of powerful admins,
>> that have successfully halted the growth of it)
>>
>>
>> Exhibit two, a for now anonymous confirmation of my intuition:
>>
>> - You were more than justified. Alex went well into the realm of
>> personal attacks, harassment and bullying towards you in these
>> exchanges. I think the only way you were going to see it stop was to
>> hold up a mirror for him, so that he could see how he was acting.
>>
>> Yes, this is just a waste of time at this point. I see this as
>> bullying, because he's putting pressure on you in an abusive way to
>> try and trip you up, then use this against you.
>>
>> When someone starts doing stuff like this, there's no need to extend
>> the regular respect and patience that you might extend to most others.
>> They don't deserve it.
>>
>>
>> I really hope that other people will hear this, and take steps to avoid
>> the metamorphosis of this project.
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>>
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