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Caesar's Wife
Apr. 10th, 2015 10:22 pmThis is going to repeat some stuff Ctein has said in the "Violations and Ruminations" thread. I would just like to say that I am genuinely tired of the phrase Caesar's wife, especially when it comes to talking about harassment.
Here's the thing about Caesar's wife. She's not above reproach; she's human. With the best good will in the world, she's going to make mistakes. When we talk about being above reproach, we end up talking about appearance rather than actuality. We worry that we must look impartial and perfect and just, when in fact what we are are a bunch of squishy people trying to deal with messy problems.
Systems must not be designed so that they fail utterly if mistakes are made. Mistakes will be made. If you decide that any mistake is too costly, what you have done is not design a system that cannot fail, but a system that must indulge in obfuscation and cover-up. Any mistakes made must be hidden from sight.
Process is a process. This is not a tautology. A good process comes from thinking carefully about goals and consequences of actions, designing the best system you can, play-testing it as best you can (which often involves a lot of thought experiments), and then putting it live as beta, and seeing what happens. If you've done it right, the system is understandable and transparent, and has an obvious mechanism for feedback, so that when there are holes in the process or errors in input or output, this can be brought to the attention of the maintainers. Who then evaluate the current process, integrate the new data, and respond by either adjusting the process or clearly explaining why the process remains the same. Processes rapidly become outdated, so it's really important that this feedback loop never get closed. What works brilliantly the first couple of times out may actually fail.
We're seeing this with the Hugos, actually. The process of choosing the Hugos is quite old (when did we go to the current system of ranked choice?) and pretty robust. The most recent change, I think, has been on-line voting, which has been pretty darn cool, too. The accusations of the SP/RP slate are provably spurious. But they did manage to break the nomination process. Which is clearly understood, and reasonably transparent. So now people are involved in reviewing the system, trying to understand exactly what happened, how they feel about the outcome, and what, if anything to do next. This is an incredibly robust system, but part of the reason that it is is because it's transparent, understandable, and is constantly accepting input. Ok, actually drafting a resolution and going to the WSFS meeting is a pain in the ass, but that too is useful. It prevents flailing around and making a rules change every ten minutes. Go WSFS.
Back to Caesar's wife. She gets to make mistakes. She will make mistakes. What she needs is a way to acknowledge those mistakes and improve her behavior. Good processes allow that. And people will lie about Caesar's wife, because of her position. Everybody knows this, if they think about it. Look at what the SP/RP assholes have said about the Hugos and how they are awarded. I can't judge how sincere the instigators are, but it seems pretty likely that they have, indeed, persuaded some people of this story. Some of these people won't bother to look at the facts available to them. But because the process is clear and reasonably transparent, anyone who cares to can look at it and develop an informed opinion about how it works. In the end, the reputation of the Hugos is secure because we know what, exactly, it is.
Here's the thing about Caesar's wife. She's not above reproach; she's human. With the best good will in the world, she's going to make mistakes. When we talk about being above reproach, we end up talking about appearance rather than actuality. We worry that we must look impartial and perfect and just, when in fact what we are are a bunch of squishy people trying to deal with messy problems.
Systems must not be designed so that they fail utterly if mistakes are made. Mistakes will be made. If you decide that any mistake is too costly, what you have done is not design a system that cannot fail, but a system that must indulge in obfuscation and cover-up. Any mistakes made must be hidden from sight.
Process is a process. This is not a tautology. A good process comes from thinking carefully about goals and consequences of actions, designing the best system you can, play-testing it as best you can (which often involves a lot of thought experiments), and then putting it live as beta, and seeing what happens. If you've done it right, the system is understandable and transparent, and has an obvious mechanism for feedback, so that when there are holes in the process or errors in input or output, this can be brought to the attention of the maintainers. Who then evaluate the current process, integrate the new data, and respond by either adjusting the process or clearly explaining why the process remains the same. Processes rapidly become outdated, so it's really important that this feedback loop never get closed. What works brilliantly the first couple of times out may actually fail.
We're seeing this with the Hugos, actually. The process of choosing the Hugos is quite old (when did we go to the current system of ranked choice?) and pretty robust. The most recent change, I think, has been on-line voting, which has been pretty darn cool, too. The accusations of the SP/RP slate are provably spurious. But they did manage to break the nomination process. Which is clearly understood, and reasonably transparent. So now people are involved in reviewing the system, trying to understand exactly what happened, how they feel about the outcome, and what, if anything to do next. This is an incredibly robust system, but part of the reason that it is is because it's transparent, understandable, and is constantly accepting input. Ok, actually drafting a resolution and going to the WSFS meeting is a pain in the ass, but that too is useful. It prevents flailing around and making a rules change every ten minutes. Go WSFS.
Back to Caesar's wife. She gets to make mistakes. She will make mistakes. What she needs is a way to acknowledge those mistakes and improve her behavior. Good processes allow that. And people will lie about Caesar's wife, because of her position. Everybody knows this, if they think about it. Look at what the SP/RP assholes have said about the Hugos and how they are awarded. I can't judge how sincere the instigators are, but it seems pretty likely that they have, indeed, persuaded some people of this story. Some of these people won't bother to look at the facts available to them. But because the process is clear and reasonably transparent, anyone who cares to can look at it and develop an informed opinion about how it works. In the end, the reputation of the Hugos is secure because we know what, exactly, it is.
