[coc-tf] Draft Minutes - Code of Conduct TF: First Call

Dear TF members,

Here are the draft minutes from our first call. Let me know if any 
corrections are needed.

Cheers

Ant

*
*

*Draft Minutes - Code of Conduct TF: First Call
1 October 2020, 16:00-17:00 (UTC+2)*

*Present:
*Denesh Bhabuta, Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Brian Nisbet, Leo Vegoda

*1. Introductions*
Leo asked if the session could be recorded. As any people joining the 
call would not have given advance permission, it was agreed that this 
could be clarified ahead of the next call if recordings were required. 
Antony noted that he was generally able to produce detailed minutes.

There was a round of introductions:

Leo Vegoda, said he had a long background in the industry, starting with 
the RIPE NCC before moving to ICANN, and he was currently working for 
Peering DB. He had volunteered to join the task force mostly due to his 
personal view that people should be treated fairly. However, he also had 
a more self-interested motive – he thought that if RIPE was unable to 
ensure it provided an acceptable environment for participants, it would 
undermine the sustainability of the community.

Brian Nisbet, said he had worked at HEAnet (the Irish NREN) for the past 
19-years, and he had been one of the voices pushing for a CoC in the 
RIPE community. As part of this, he had been part of the Diversity TF.

Denesh said he’d been in the industry since the 90s, and throughout that 
time, he had been of the opinion that there needed to be more equality 
in the industry. Of course, people today got where they were due to the 
help of others in the industry – but over time it seems like those 
opportunities had disappeared, and nowadays it seemed like there might 
even be less diversity. He saw the CoC and the Diversity TF as ongoing 
efforts – but he wanted to see something that helped people to feel 
included, which was his motivation for joining the TF.

Athina said she was Chief Legal Officer at the RIPE NCC. She had been 
with the company for 11 years. A big part of her job was to make sure 
that the RIPE community and the RIPE NCC were strong, so that the wider 
self-regulatory system could help to defend itself externally against 
the likes of governments or national authorities that might question its 
legitimacy. As part of her work in the RIPE Accountability TF, she felt 
that a diverse community was a strong community, and it was important 
that people felt included and able to express themselves. Part of this 
meant a strong code of conduct for the community.

Antony said he’d been with the RIPE NCC for eight years, first as a 
Communications Officer and currently as Acting Communications Manager. 
He said a big part of his work in the community, including on the 
Accountability TF, had been in terms of his writing background – helping 
to explain things clearly – and this was how he was approaching the CoC TF.

*2. Context*

**Athina noted that the RIPE NCC had only really gotten started with the 
TF in an official sense since their impact analysis had been published. 
While some staff members had participated in the Diversity TF, it was 
important to note that they had done so in an individual capacity.

Brian gave some of the backstory. Around the time of the RIPE 67 in 
Athens, the RIPE Chair and the RIPE NCC Managing Director had started 
moving on an initial code of conduct – which was a relatively light 
“aspirational” statement. The Diversity TF formed later (at RIPE 74) and 
while they weren’t formed specifically to create a CoC, they thought 
this was something that could be improved on. They managed to produce a 
draft document that was heavily drawn from the CoC used by the Python 
community. However, there was a lot of pushback in terms of the RIPE 
NCC’s impact analysis and from the community. So Hans Petter eventually 
proposed that the document be split into three separate parts, as they 
were now doing via the CoC TF. He thought their task now was to get this 
across the line, and to make iterations for the most part. He thought 
was part of the ebbs and flows of getting a CoC in place.*
*

*3. Review scope of work*

Leo asked if the group thought the TF needed to heavily review the 
document or if it just needed a bit of spit and polish.

Denesh said the last time he'd looked over the MLs, from memory he 
thought there was a bit to do with the "crossing the T's and dotting the 
Is."

Antony said from his review, most of the community’s concerns were 
really about enforcement and the proposed CoC Team itself.

Brian said there were people for whom the RIPE community was very 
important – they met twice each year and their old friends/frenemies, 
etc. and among some of those people there was a fear that they could do 
something that could cost them their place in the community or have 
career implications. They felt that the idea that this could happen on 
the basis of something they didn’t understand was wrong. He added that 
people might have differing ideas regarding what constituted ‘robust 
discussion’ and were concerned they might be censored.

Athina said RIPE was a community that was made up of diverse cultures – 
even within Europe – and some people were worried that the CoC could be 
used to shut down voices with differing opinions. She added that this 
was a challenge with codes of conduct in general.

Denesh said Brian said much of this did seem to be about ‘white CIS 
males’ being concerned that they would be kicked-out, not understanding 
that people would only be kicked out at the end of a very long road. He 
asked if they were asking the younger generation what they thought about 
the meeting – perhaps they should be seeking wider feedback. In addition 
to that, they were no longer doing physical meetings, and increased 
virtual aspects made this much wider than their service region.

Leo tried to summarise: he was thinking there was pushback from people 
who were concerned they might be accused of unacceptable behaviour and 
would be punished in ways that affected their career. When he read 
through this, he saw a mismatch between what the RIPE community was 
trying to achieve, and what the draft CoC said. The RIPE Meeting was 
about consensus, but he didn't see anything in there about having some 
kind of mediation or an ombudsman to attempt some form of mediation. If 
this was like the wider legal system, the police wouldn't be the ones 
responsible convicting the person they capture, but all of this seemed 
to be bundled together in the document. He also thought there were 
implementation details to look at in terms of what the RIPE NCC could do 
to educate people.

Brian agreed on the first part – separation of processes was the right 
approach for the community. The one thing that he would say was that if 
they talked about a five-day RIPE Meeting, they needed to be very 
careful about something like an ombudsman process. People kept comparing 
the CoC to a legal process, but it wasn't. In the case of a RIPE 
Meeting, it was a five-day event – and while a formal investigation was 
being conducted, the person would remain at the meeting. He added that 
at various points he’d seen people try to engage with the RIPE Meeting, 
only to hit a wall and walk away, which was what had happened with a 
member of the Diversity TF.

Athina said she wanted to speak about implementation. Indeed, they 
didn't need a CoC for criminal matters. However, they needed something 
that could allow for immediate action - if someone was misbehaving on 
Monday, they might need to be gone by Tuesday. One concern she noted was 
that the CoC TF volunteers would not be professionals. She agreed with 
Leo's point about the need for investigation, but what about cases where 
actions needed to be taken immediately?

Antony asked if the TF might want to align on some pointed questions 
that they wanted to ask the community sooner rather than later (ahead of 
the document being published). He also highlighted that presenting fresh 
text to the community (even if the underlying meaning was the same) 
might have some benefit – as it would show that this was not going to be 
the exact same draft simply split into three.

Leo said he could be happy to volunteer to propose a structure and 
circulate that on the list – they could always squish things back down.

Brian said he could see Antony’s point, but he thought a lot of the 
existing text was good and he didn't think they should re-draft. He 
supported the idea of restructuring the document.

Denesh agreed with Leo and Brian.

Leo said he would like to place an action on the RIPE NCC to examine 
what an implementation plan might look like.

Antony said he did want to caution that when Leo talked about “educating 
people” it was important to keep in mind what was realistic. There was 
plenty they could do to make the CoC more visible, and could look at 
developing materials etc. However, to a certain extent a lot of this 
would also depend on how willing people were to engage with the topic.

Leo said at ICANN they had to go through some mandatory training by 
watching a video and interacting with a quiz – that was somewhat like 
what he was imagining.

Athina said that for now they could go away and put together some ideas 
and options around how they imagined the implementation might look. She 
added that from a legal/enforcement point of view, it was more 
straightforward to frame things in terms of “Do not”.

Brain thanked Leo for adding some structure to this and for proposing 
the next steps. He noted that they now had four weeks to develop something.

Leo said he would also work with Antony to schedule the next meeting and 
work with him to add/compress sections and text.

Brian noted that he would not be available for a call next week, but 
would try to make whatever date they agreed on the week after that.

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