[coc-tf] Draft Minutes – CoC TF Fourteenth Call

Dear TF members,

Here's the draft minutes from our last call in May.

Cheers

Ant


***

*Draft Minutes – CoC TF Fourteenth Call*

28 May 16:30 (UTC+2)

*Attendees:* Denesh Bhabuta, Antony Gollan, Brian Nisbet, Leo Vegoda

*Summary: *The TF discussed the BoF at RIPE 82. This had not gone as 
well as hoped - they had gotten stuck at certain points and an hour was 
probably too short for an in-depth discussion. However, two pieces of 
useful direction had out from this: 1) The TF shouldn't reinvent the 
wheel and could borrow working examples from other communities. 2) The 
CoC Team could review its implementation of the CoC (perhaps with input 
from the RIPE Chair), and this would not require the same heavy process 
as if it were updating the CoC itself. The group discussed changes to 
the draft CoC following the BoF and agreed to make a consensus call on 
the document in mid-June, aiming to publish around the end of the month. 
The TF agreed that an article on RIPE Labs to explain the changes was a 
good approach and a webinar could also be held to answer any questions 
people had. The RIPE Chair could then make a consensus call after the 
comment period. The TF also agreed that if there were objections to 
certain parts of its updated draft, it could remove those parts that was 
keeping them from reaching consensus – recognising that it was best to 
move ahead with something that broadly worked and could be improved in 
the future.

*1. Minutes*

It was agreed to approve the minutes on the next call.

*2. Agenda*

There were no changes to the agenda.

*3. Actions*

*- (Ongoing) RIPE NCC to review reporting requirements to inform a 
process of improvements to the CoC *

Antony said he and Athina had spent more time on the document. However, 
they needed a little more time to finalise this. However, he thought 
they already had enough that the TF could start looking at this in parallel.

The TF agreed to save discussing the document for a call that Athina 
could attend, so she could answer any questions on the legal aspects.

*- (Ongoing) TF to think about how the CoC Team and the WG Chairs would 
work together to manage discussions on mailing lists. Including tools 
e.g. Mattermost channel.*

Brian said he needed a few more weeks for this.

*- (Ongoing) TF to think about appropriate level of process to allow 
further improvements to the CoC.*

Leo said they had gotten some feedback on this at the BoF. He suggested 
they return to this when they discussed the BoF later on the call.

*4. BoF*

Leo asked if TF members had any impressions from the BoF or other 
feedback to share.

Brian said he didn’t think the BoF had gone as they had hoped and hadn’t 
made too much progress. There was still a lot of uncertainty there. He 
was quite disappointed to see a few comments that were still questioning 
whether they should be doing this, though obviously they had a lot of 
consensus to move forwards. Overall, he thought people just wanted the 
TF to get on with it and stop talking about the process.

Denesh said noted Randy’s comments in the Friday plenary and his 
subsequent mail to RIPE List. He thought that as much as they had been 
open and transparent about what they were doing, it was clear that 
people weren’t reading their minutes and other parts in any depth. Part 
of this was that people are also just tired, and he thought they might 
see more of this. He thought Leo had been very clear that the purpose of 
the BoF was to discuss the process and yet they had still gotten 
questions about why they were talking about that rather than what they 
were doing. In terms of the feeling that they should just get on with it 
– that’s what they had been doing – but they also had to be transparent 
about things. Whatever they did, it would be hard to find a middle 
ground, but being open and transparent would help them in the future. In 
terms of the BoF itself, he didn’t think it was long enough. There was 
only so much they could do in an hour, and it made it hard to have the 
in-depth discussions they wanted. He added that it was great to have an 
independent person chairing the session and he thought they should 
consider that for next time as well.

Antony said he was a little disappointed that it was mostly his RIPE NCC 
colleagues who had commented. He wanted to have a read through the 
comments to see if there was more from the community there. He agreed 
that it was hard to discuss so many topics in depth when there wasn’t 
enough time.

Leo said he agreed with a lot of what had already been said. He thought 
the BoF time was essentially “family time” for the EMEA region, which 
meant that people without a direct professional interest in the topic 
were less likely to participate. This might account for the 
participation by RIPE NCC staff. He added that if the RIPE NCC wanted to 
provide a document with its perspective as an organisation, that would 
be fine.

Leo said he had heard two things at the BoF that were very useful. The 
first was a comment that they shouldn’t reinvent the wheel and there was 
already good stuff out there they could use. That piece of direction 
meant they didn’t have to suffer from “not invented here syndrome”. They 
could take something like the Python code and tweak it. Another point 
was guidance that the code itself should be reviewed like a RIPE 
Document and he thought the schedule he was given was a two-year 
schedule, which wasn’t too bad. The CoC Team, perhaps in cooperation 
with the WG Chairs or the RIPE Chair Team could look at how it 
implemented this through its processes – so there could be a separation 
between the implementation and the principles. That meant it was fine 
for the CoC Team to implement something without needing to involve the 
entire community. And if people found that it didn’t work, then they 
would definitely let the CoC Team know. That was good news from his 
perspective.

Brian said in terms of updating the document, he wanted to reiterate 
that he wanted to avoid binding the CoC Team unnecessarily – for example 
by saying the document should be updated every X years while the CoC 
Team might prefer a different approach.

Antony said every time there had been a CoC discussion, perhaps going 
back to before the Diversity TF, one community member asked consistently 
asked to know where the decision was made to have a CoC in the first 
place. It seemed that they were thinking more in terms of what that 
decision was based on/its legitimacy. He didn’t think he had ever seen 
them receive a clear answer to that question. Perhaps it was simply a 
case of the RIPE Chair clearly stating that this would go ahead, but he 
wondered if this was something to consider.

Brian said, if nothing else, this question had been answered in 
Rotterdam. There had been questions, but nobody had said that it 
shouldn’t happen. He thought some people weren’t aware of their 
influence in the community and how these kinds of questions were 
perceived. At Rotterdam, Hans Petter [as RIPE Chair] had said he was 
doing this and it was going to happen, because it was the right thing to 
do. There might not have been total consensus there, but there had at 
least been rough consensus.

Denesh said this was related to the point he had made on a previous 
call, about people who asked why the community needed this now, when it 
hadn’t been an issue in the past. The answer was that it had been an 
issue in the past, and no people wanted to address it.

*5. Updated CoC Doc *

Leo ran through the updated draft document. He had added a paragraph at 
the beginning, which clarified that any lists of examples were 
non-exhaustive. He had also added a line that referred to the “Trusted 
Contacts or the CoC Team”. If they published this as a RIPE Document and 
a CoC Team was later formed, he thought it would be straightforward to 
update the RIPE Document without a huge amount of process.

He had also added to the line on under “CoC and Law” which said that 
victims of crime would have full control over whether and how to make a 
report. This was just an initial guess and would need to be reviewed by 
Athina. She could make whatever edits she thought were appropriate there.

Following the discussion at their last meeting, he had put the full list 
of behaviour back in. Based on Salam’s comments, he had also added 
“Aggressive or intimidating behaviour” as an example of behaviour that 
violated the CoC. He asked what TF members thought about the current 
state of the document.

Brian said he liked the that the examples were back in. His only concern 
was related to what he’d sent to the TF list – about reactions. For 
example, if he told someone to F-off after they had been aggressive or 
violated the CoC in some way, that person should not have cause to make 
a counter-report. He thought they shouldn’t miss an opportunity to have 
this in their CoC, especially as it was being addressed in other 
communities’ codes.

Leo said they could definitely add that in. When they published their 
updated version, they could point out that they had included this 
aspect. He had promised was to highlight what had changed when they 
published their updated version and explain why. Perhaps they could do a 
webinar for people to ask questions. They could then put this out to the 
list, there could be a call for consensus and Mirjam could make a 
determination. If there was a strong pushback on an aspect of the text, 
they could remove the part that was keeping them from consensus – with 
the understanding that agreement on 80% of the text was better than 0%.

The group agreed with that approach.

Leo said he therefore had an action to add text about weaponising the 
CoC. He would copy-paste the relevant text from GeekFeminism rather than 
reinvent the wheel. He thought they should aim for an internal consensus 
at their next TF meeting in mid-June. This would put them in a position 
to publish at the end of June. They could then give people a week or two 
to read it, with an accompanying RIPE Labs article explaining the 
changes, followed by a webinar to explain and discuss this with the 
community.

The group agreed with this approach.

*Action: Leo to add text on weaponising the CoC from GeekFeminism wiki.**
**
**Action: Leo to check which TF members can make a meeting on 11 June to 
decide if there is consensus on the updated document. **
*
Leo said if they took a consensus call, they either needed to do it 
during a call or on the TF mailing list.

*6. AOB *

Leo noted that Antony had added a link to their mailing list archives on 
the main TF page. They had also added a list of their engagement with 
the community so far. This made it much easier to find their list 
discussions.

*Actions**
**
**Action: Leo to add more history/background to the CoC introduction.**
**
**Action: Leo to add in text about weaponising the CoC from GeekFeminism 
wiki. **
**
**Action: Leo to check who can make a meeting on 11 June to decide if 
there is consensus on the updated document.**
**
**
*
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