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

Dear TF members,

Here are the minutes from our last call.

Cheers

Ant

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*Draft Minutes – CoC TF Eleventh Call*

23 April 2021, 16:30 (UTC+1)

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

*Summary: *The TF discussed how the (future) CoC Team would interact 
with the WG Chairs. This would best be seen as an ongoing relationship 
supported by regular communication rather than something defined by 
strict rules. As part of this, it was noted that the CoC Team should 
operate on the basis of reports, rather than proactively policing 
community discussions. The TF discussed how to respond to feedback 
objecting on the basis that this led down the path of socialism. It was 
agreed that this should be referred to the RIPE Chair team as it was out 
of scope for the TF. The TF discussed feedback from the community on its 
draft CoC (v4), noting that some people wanted more detail and examples 
while others preferred a focus on general principles. The tension 
between these points will be discussed in a BoF with the community at 
RIPE 82. The current draft also stated that the PCs of regional 
communities such as MENOG, ENOG and SEE would determine whether/how the 
CoC was implemented in their communities. It was agreed that no one 
appeared to want this, and so there should be a single CoC for all 
meetings organised by the RIPE NCC (perhaps with some implementation 
differences, such as local/regional CoC Teams).

*1. Minutes*

The minutes from the previous meeting were approved without changes.

*2. Agenda*

Leo noted that he had added an item to the agenda regarding an email 
they had received on the CoC Task Force mailing list the day before and 
how they should respond.

*3. Actions*

*- RIPE NCC to review reporting requirements to inform a process of 
improvements to the CoC (likely tooling and legal analysis).*

Antony said he and Athina had been looking at this. They had thought 
about the steps that would need to happen (report made, CoC Team 
informed, report archived, etc.) and then listed the legal 
considerations for each step (who can access reports, GDPR 
considerations, etc.) They had then tried to anticipate what would be 
needed in terms of implementation. Once the document was ready, they 
could share this with the group for feedback before approaching their 
technical colleagues within the RIPE NCC to get input from them.

*- TF to think about how the CoC Team and WG Chairs would work together 
to manage discussions on MLs. *

Leo noted that Mirjam had shared some guidance on this recently and 
asked if everyone had read this.

Brian said he’d talked to Mirjam about this. He thought it needed to be 
the case that the CoC Team shouldn’t be able to order the WG Chairs 
around. At the same time, the WG Chairs should not be able to ignore the 
CoC Team. It needed to be about cooperation.

Leo said this probably needed more thought. He thought this would be a 
relationship that would need to be sustained.

Denesh asked if there could be something to support an ongoing dialogue 
between the CoC Team and the WG Chairs (perhaps a mailing list or a chat 
channel). That way, if something came up on the lists, the CoC Team 
could raise the issue with the relevant WG chairs before it became an 
issue.

Brian said he was all for more communication between the two groups, but 
he didn’t think they should set an expectation that the CoC Team would 
be proactively looking for issues – it should operate on the basis of 
reports. However, he agreed that it would be a relationship and there 
would need to be a dialogue. The chairs couldn’t take a “My WG – my 
rules” approach. He wanted to be careful to ensure they didn’t create a 
strict set of rules for this, as it was better to have a loose and 
ongoing relationship that was maintained by both sides.

Denesh agreed and thought this was why they might want a real-time 
channel, as it would allow an agreement to be reached much quicker.

Leo said he did like the idea of WG chairs having the ability to ask 
questions from other people to get broader input. Having someone they 
could trust to look out for the community’s best interest would be 
helpful, and having some kind of tooling along these lines would be 
good. He added that this could use some more thought, and so he would 
keep it on the agenda for the next meeting. It could also roll back into 
the tooling action item above.

Brian suggested (possibly after RIPE 82), they might want to have a 
group call with the RIPE Chair Team before they started handing things 
over to a CoC Team.

Leo said it would be good to have that on the agenda for their next 
discussion with the RIPE Chair Team. He added that when Denesh and he 
had met them last time, they discussed that as the TF was quite small, 
they were happy to meet with the entire TF (the only reason not to do 
this was in terms of the coordination of diaries).

*- TF to think about the appropriate level of process that would allow 
improvements to the CoC. *

Leo said they needed to get the balance right between formal/informal. 
If they wanted to repeat the current [TF] process to make future 
improvements to the CoC, it would take quite a lot of time. On the other 
hand, if an alternative approach was too lightweight, it might be easier 
to make mistakes.

Brian said he thought they should approve three documents and then the 
TF should disband. They would then have a CoC Team, and these would be 
the best people to drive the process. Maybe there would be a need for a 
future TF if that process broke down, or if huge changes were needed, 
but otherwise he thought it should be that team that was responsible for 
this. He thought their work as a TF was going well – but it had also 
gone very slowly. There were valid reasons for this – it was the nature 
of the RIPE community and the various legal and other interests involved.

Leo said he shared Brian’s understanding that the TF would disband at 
the completion of their third document. His intention was that they 
provide some level of guidance in their documents on how to update those 
documents. If they didn’t provide some guidance on the process, it could 
become chaotic, and that would not be to anyone’s advantage.

He thought they should give this some thought and so he would carry over 
this action item.
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**- TF to think about their schedules between April/June and consider 
changing call times. This can be coordinated via the ML to allow a new 
schedule before April.*

Leo said they had meetings booked until the end of June, so they could 
close this item.

*4. Feedback*

*- Responding to Rolf*

Leo said he had two questions: 1) whether Rolf’s request was within 
their scope, and 2) what they should do. He thought Rolf was talking 
about RIPE rather than the RIPE NCC (as in his email) and he noted that 
it he addressed his email to the Diversity TF. He noted that Rolf said 
he wanted them to move away from socialist ideas and adopt an apolitical 
stance. He found it difficult to think about how to reply to the email. 
He read it as: “I don’t like what you’re doing, so please don’t do it.”

Denesh said the way he read it, it seemed like he was protesting change 
– i.e. “This is how things used to be, they worked well – so why 
change?” He agreed that this was out of their scope, and it should go to 
the RIPE Chair Team. He didn’t understand the political aspect that Rolf 
was talking about, he assumed he was concerned with political 
correctness, but it wasn’t about that – it was about the community 
addressing issues.

Brian said he’d seen a lot of this reactionary stuff in response to 
diversity and inclusion efforts that assumed all of this led to Soviet 
Russia. He was actually surprised they hadn’t gotten more of this, but 
agreed this wasn’t for the TF to deal with.

Leo said he would ask Mirjam and Niall to handle this, as he didn’t 
think it was within their scope – especially since it addressed the 
Diversity TF and they couldn’t have impact on the charter of another TF.

*- Tension between calls for additional details in lists and calls for 
less detail with greater focus on general guiding principles*

Leo said there were two items he had pulled out for discussion. The 
first was the tension between the request for more specific details on 
one side, and those who wanted less detail and more focus on general 
principles on the other. To give examples, it seemed Jordi wanted a lot 
more detail, while Randy wanted less detail and more focus on 
principles. They could go with one approach or the other – otherwise 
they could make slight adjustments and stick with the balance they 
currently had.

Denesh said they would always get a pull between these two perspectives. 
They had started with general principles and a small list, but had added 
more detail to avoid ambiguity. And now people wanted both more and less 
detail. He thought they would never resolve this completely.

Brian agreed with Denesh. He was on Randy’s side on this and thought it 
was not possible to please everyone. As a community of engineers, they 
were liable to ask why they couldn’t map a specific example against the 
document. It was impossible to cover everything, and the more precise 
they got, the more likely it was that people could argue that something 
not explicitly identified in the CoC was allowed. He thought they should 
continue as they were.

Leo asked Athina if there were advantages or disadvantages with either 
approach from an implementation and enforcement perspective.

Athina said if they could agree on certain negative behaviours that were 
unacceptable, there was no harm in providing a non-exhaustive list. It 
was impossible to provide a full list. Even in legal codes, you had 
general principles and some general rules, and you tried to make these 
as broad as possible to fit specific situations. It was perfectly 
acceptable to provide a non-exhaustive list. They could look at some of 
the feedback and see if there were any points that were valid and 
created a new principle that they should include. She suggested they 
could make a table with a list of the points made and for each item say 
why they thought the draft should be amended (or not).

Leo said he was on the side of general principles. Even though they had 
tried to be careful with their language to make it clear that these were 
non-exhaustive lists, they could give the wording more attention when 
they reviewed the draft.

Leo noted that their BoF at RIPE 82 had been approved. He said he could 
draft some slides for this with some alternatives and they could use 
this to get feedback from the community.

Action: Leo to draft slides for RIPE 82 BoF to support discussion with 
the community on the balance between precise definitions vs general 
principles.

*- CoC TF and ENOG, MENOG, and SEE.*

Leo asked if there was any view within the RIPE NCC on this.

Antony said what he and Athina had originally intended was not 
necessarily to say that the PCs of these communities had any role “as 
PCs”, but as representatives of their communities that they could easily 
contact and have a discussion with. Thinking of the mailing lists for 
these communities, it was unlikely that a mail sent there would get a 
response, for example. He understood that at least one of these PCs had 
indicated they weren’t interested in speaking on behalf of their 
community in this way.

Leo said he understood they had been using “PC” as a stand-in for 
“independently organised.” In his discussions with the RIPE Chair Team, 
he understood that the RIPE NCC was the organiser of the meetings for 
these communities. When they had started discussing this as a TF, they 
hadn’t properly understood what the organisational status of these 
communities was. He thought they needed clarity on this – whether they 
were separate communities or activities of the RIPE community that were 
organised by the RIPE NCC.

Athina said she thought they should clarify whether they were talking 
about whether these communities would “adopt” the RIPE CoC or whether 
they were talking about how they would implement the CoC. For example, 
the same CoC might be implemented, but with different regional CoC Teams 
making any determinations. She understood they were talking about the 
latter case.

Brian said the message they’d gotten from the community (that was paying 
attention and engaging on the topic) was that they didn’t understand why 
the TF was asking the question. With the RIPE Chair Team and the RIPE 
NCC Managing Director seemingly behind the idea of a single CoC for all 
of RIPE, it seemed they should be able to do this. He’d prefer they had 
one CoC that was implemented by regional CoC Teams, and if communities 
wanted logistical support or funding from the RIPE NCC, they would need 
to abide by it.

Leo said one of the advantages of the approach they’d taken was that 
they’d asked and no one had requested that the CoC not apply to their 
community. Because they hadn’t received this feedback, if they now 
changed the wording to something along the lines of “Wherever there is a 
RIPE NCC event that is not a RIPE Meeting, it will use this CoC unless 
there is another CoC that provides a viable alternative.” This made it 
an implementation problem. He was thinking about this from a volunteer 
perspective – if they had this being used for all of the various RIPE 
NCC meetings (including the various governmental meetings as well as 
regional meetings), that might create quite a burden on a single CoC 
Team. But if they’d moved from “Are we going to do this?” to “How are we 
going to do this? – then that was process. Based on the nodding heads on 
the call, he said that the agreement was that the CoC would apply to all 
events organised by the RIPE NCC and they would next need to think about 
how this would work.

Brian said if they updated the text, they might need to consider 
specifying who made the decision (about how/whether the CoC was 
implemented).

Leo said he was thinking the approach could be to say that the CoC 
applied unless there was another CoC that was just as good. He was 
thinking in terms of various financial regulations that allowed an 
equivalent regulator in another country to act as a substitute for the 
one in the home country.

Brian asked who decided whether an alternative CoC was just as good.

Leo said that was an implementation question. There were people within 
the RIPE NCC who might be able to look at this. As they would be the 
ones organising the event, perhaps it would be preferable for them to 
assess this. He asked Athina if he had just dumped something big on them.

Athina asked who they (the RIPE NCC) were to impose the CoC on another 
community?

Leo said as long as they weren’t aware of an alternative CoC, he didn’t 
think they should worry about it at this stage.

Athina agreed and added that it would be good to have this clarify in 
the scope.

Leo said they would have some time to agree on the wording.

*5. AoB*

Brian noted that in another community they were currently dealing with 
the weaponisation of a CoC. This essentially came down to someone 
claiming another person had used insulting language against them. They 
were right, but this had been in reaction to threatening communication 
from the person making the complaint. He was mentioning this because in 
their CoC, they talked about aggressive communication and being 
accepting of disagreement. He thought this was right, but they needed to 
consider what happened if someone reacted to another person who broke 
the CoC with language or behvaiour that itself broke the CoC.

Leo said this was about making it clear that they should rely more on 
principles than lists of behaviour, and making it clear that they were 
relying on the CoC Team to use its good sense.

Brian said he was aware of some good wording from another source and he 
would share it with the group.

Brian noted that the BoF at RIPE 82 would require strong moderation, as 
people could start ratholing. People would need to be able to voice 
their opinion, but it would be important to keep the session on track.

Leo said he thought they were right, and they would need to plan this 
correctly.

*6. Action Items*

*Action: TF to review ML guidance from Mirjam **
**Action: TF to think about implementing a method for WG chairs could 
get advice about implementing the CoC in their WG**
**Action: Leo to draft slides for RIPE 82 BoF to support discussion with 
the community on the balance between precise definitions vs gen*eral 
principles
*Action: Leo to include an updated agenda to ensure a correct balance 
between communicating and listening from the community*


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