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No that's ridiculous. Take measures based as though the complaints are made in good faith. If you assume them true then you would act as if the investigation
by Cogito 9y ago
No that's ridiculous.
Take measures based as though the complaints are made in good faith.
If you assume them true then you would act as if the investigation has already taken place, and determined that they are true. If you're going to act like that why would you need an investigation?
If complaints or concerns are raised in good faith then you have no need to mistrust the representation and instead can look to the facts and context of the situation.
Believing someone is not important, understanding the sequence of events that led to them speaking up is.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- abritinthebay 9y agoYou literally just said "believe" because that's exactly what assuming the complaints are made in good faith is
- Cogito 9y agoI replied down thread to a similar point you made - I think you are redefining "believe" to the point where it loses value. Responding as if someone is acting in good faith means that - you believe that - they believe that - they are true On the other hand, if you believe someone it means that - you believe that - they are true Using "believe" to mean the first situation only makes everyone's meaning less clear.
- abritinthebay 9y agoAs I said in response: I don't really care what HN thinks about the term: the experts in the field recommended it. That should give you pause when you claim (incorrectly) that a such a narrow usage of language is correct.
- camelite 9y agoAs speakers of English, we ARE the experts in the field, and the vast majority of us don't agree with you.
- sgift 9y agoThat's more like "take them serious" on the "believe" (i.e. "It's true, do something!") - "take them serious" (i.e. that could very well have happened, let's check this out) - dismiss (i.e. yeah, yeah, let them talk, could never have happened) spectrum. All three points lead to different actions and the one in the middle seems to be the most appropriate.
- joshuamorton 9y ago>Take measures based as though the complaints are made in good faith. Which is to say, do more than just investigate. Take action as though the complaints are true, although not necessarily all the action you would take if you knew the complaint to be exactly factual. You should always investigate, even if (to borrow your formatting) you believe that they believe that their statements are false and are making a bad faith accusation. It would still be correct to investigate if that was your belief. If you believed that the accusations were entirely factual, then perhaps the immediate step would be to fire someone. But if instead you simply believe that the person is accusing someone of something in good faith, something has already gone wrong and there is a problem. Even if no one did anything wrong. To put it in terms that might be more familiar, every complaint is an incident and should involve a (blameless) postmortem that asks how the system failed such that someone felt the need to complain. And action should be taken in response. Sometimes, the system failed in such a way that it allowed a malicious actor to do a bad thing, and that malicious actor should be reprimanded, independent of the postmortem. Believe the accuser when writing the postmortem, and begin incident response as soon as possible. Investigate fully before reprimanding a potential malicious actor.
- MichaelGG 9y ago>as though the complaints are true >though not ... exactly factual What's that supposed to mean?
- joshuamorton 9y agoIt was badly worded, restated might be "as though the complaints are made in earnest though cannot be relied on as 100% factual". Which is to say, they should be taken seriously, and immediate action should be taken when possible, but insofar as all memories are fungible and witnesses unreliable, things should be verified when possible before certain measures are taken.