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Comment by jshevek

7 years ago

I have trouble imagining truly complete anonymity being helpful. This is an invitation to abuse the system. Abuse could result from personal conflicts and office politics, or even people who wish to undermine the system itself by entering bad data.

6 comments

jshevek

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XorNot  7 years ago

The point of an anonymous system is to encourage people to speak up without a first-mover problem, because in every case of ongoing sexual harassment there is never just 1 victim - it's always a pattern of behavior.

Someone receiving exactly 1 report is probably not a problem. Someone who accumulates reports continuously as team members change probably is.

  • jshevek  7 years ago

    > Someone who accumulates reports continuously as team members change probably is.

    No. If the system is truly anonymous, then people outside the team can submit reports. Continuous accumulation would not indicate there is probably a problem with the accused, given the motive and opportunities for abuse of the reporting system.

    Elsewhere in this thread the difference between anonymous and private is discussed, along with semi-anonymizing strategies for achieving privacy protection, which I believe would be helpful for the outcome you describe.

  • JPKab  7 years ago

    This is a good point. What about a person who has a pattern of accusing multiple people over time? If each of the accused individuals are all not accused by others, would this undermine the accusers credibility?

    I wish this was hypothetical, but I once worked with a person that had 3 individuals over 2 years fired for this. Eventually they went too far and HR had to come to grips with an obvious mental illness being the root cause. This person was a great engineer and a good friend, which made it even harder for me and others to admit to ourselves the delusional nature of the claims.