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

Hi all,

Here's the second set of minutes.

Cheers

Ant


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*Draft Minutes - Code of Conduct TF: Ninth Call *

18 February 2021, 16:30-17:30 (UTC+1)

*Present:*Denesh Bhabuta, Brian Nisbet, Ulka Uthale, Leo Vegoda, Salam 
Yamout

*Summary:*The TF agreed that it was ready to publish the draft CoC and 
ask the RIPE community for feedback. The approach for how to develop the 
next two documents was discussed. The TF noted that it would need to 
think about how the future CoC Team would interact with other parts of 
RIPE, such as the WG Chairs. The TF discussed how it would respond to 
feedback on its draft CoC; it agreed to focus on collecting input rather 
than responding to every point on the mailing list.

*1. Minute**s*

The minutes from the previous call had not yet been sent and Leo said 
they could move this to the next call.

*2. Agenda*

There were no changes to the agenda.

*3. Actions*

*- RIPE NCC to finalise and share draft CoC for publication*

*- Leo to draft and share announcement text for draft CoC*

Leo said Antony had shared an updated draft CoC and updated the draft 
announcement – so these two actions were completed.

*4. Publish?*

Leo noted that Antony had added a few editorial comments and made some 
changes to the draft CoC and ran through them. He asked if anyone wanted 
to make any further changes or if they were ready to publish and make 
any required changes at a later point.

The TF agreed that it was ready to publish the draft document.

Leo said he was a little wary of publishing a document that was too 
final and indicated that they weren’t open to comments. So even if there 
were imperfections, this might not be a problem.

Leo said he would work with the RIPE NCC to get the draft document 
published.

*Action: RIPE NCC to publish draft CoC on a webpage to share with the 
RIPE community. *

*5. Upcoming Meeting*

Leo said it would be good for them to think about planning the next two 
documents, especially as they would have at least a month while the 
community gave feedback on their updated CoC draft.

Leo said there would be some dependencies between the process and the 
CoC Team, and some interactions between the CoC Team and, for example, 
RIPE WG Chairs. They would need to think about this. There would also be 
requirements for tooling, which the RIPE NCC was already thinking about. 
And there would be some data governance aspects about how reports were 
managed, and this might interact with tooling that was provided to WG 
Chairs – for example, if one potential outcome was to ban someone from 
posting to mailing list while allowing them to continue receiving emails.

Brian noted that managing and moderating mailing lists was already an 
active discussion between the Working Group Chairs Collective and the 
RIPE NCC. He agreed that they would need to think about what they were 
responsible for as a TF. Maybe in some cases they would simply be 
pointing out questions that needed answering, and working out who the 
responsible party was.

Leo thought there was definitely an onus on them to work out who the 
responsible party was. He didn’t think they needed to define a list of 
actions that needed to be taken in response to a CoC violation. He 
thought it would be good if there could be some guidance given to the 
RIPE NCC in terms of potential outcomes, to avoid last-minute software 
changes being needed.

Salam said it was up to them to write what needed to be done – and this 
would be not only the principle but the tooling. As RIPE NCC staff were 
part of the group, they could then decide what was practical.

Leo said he didn’t think they would need to look at specific tooling 
requirements. But he thought it might be worth listing what kind of 
actions/procedures might be needed. The RIPE NCC could then integrate 
this into its systems. He imagined the RIPE NCC’s tooling could change 
over time – this was fine, so long as they specified what mailing lists 
needed to do (for example). But there was more to it than that, there 
was an interaction between the process and the CoC Team. The more 
specific the process document became, the more impact this had on the 
CoC Team, and they also needed to think about how this might affect the 
selection process. One of the things they had discussed on an earlier 
call was that they needed to allow space for the CoC Team to make its 
own decisions and not make the process overly defined or legalistic. He 
thought they should focus on what agenda items they needed to look at. 
He imagined this would take some back-and-forward, because none of them 
would come up with all of the answers on their own.

Denesh asked whether the first step would be to ask the RIPE NCC what 
their current processes related to this were.

Leo said that would be helpful, and they’d already had some of that in 
terms of the report from the Trusted Contacts, but there was the element 
of what was involved if the CoC Team banned someone from a RIPE Meeting. 
This would involve some form of interaction between the CoC Team and the 
RIPE NCC’s meeting software. So, getting some feedback from the RIPE NCC 
on what was currently possible would be helpful.

Salam said she wasn’t clear on what Leo was after. She also didn’t see 
the relation between the CoC Team and the WG Chairs.

Brian said as a WG Chair he had sometimes removed people from the 
mailing list for misbehaviour, on the basis of the CoC. He could imagine 
cases in the future where someone made a complaint to the CoC Team 
instead of the WG Chair. It would be interesting to think about what 
happened if the CoC Team decided that a violation had occurred and the 
WG Chair disagreed. As a community they would need to think about this, 
as it created a second root to some degree. This somewhat already 
existed with the Trusted Contacts, but the updated CoC would make this 
more explicit. There could also be issues with in-person WG sessions, 
which took place within the larger RIPE Meeting context. So, while there 
were things that WG Chairs and the CoC Team could do, there was a lot of 
potential for interaction and also for disagreement there.

Salam said if she misbehaved in a WG session, it would be either the WG 
Chair or another meeting attendee that would report her to the CoC Team. 
A certain process would then start, and it would reach a decision on her 
behaviour. This would result in an action – whether she was barred from 
the RIPE Meeting, given a warning, or whatever. She couldn’t see the 
role of the WG Chair in this process, unless they were part of the CoC 
Team or were questioned as part of its investigation.

Brian said this was where it became interesting. He might say he was 
making a decision as WG Chair to ban someone from the mailing list 
without referring them to the CoC Team.

Salam said she understood. In a perfect world, they would keep these 
separate – if a chair had a problem with the behaviour of someone in 
their WG, they could report them to the CoC Team and let that process 
take its course.

Brian said there could be a point where someone reported a mail to the 
CoC Team, who decided they should be banned. Did that mean that he (as 
chair) was bound by the CoC Team’s decision? It was entirely possible 
that he should be – but he could anticipate some people objecting to 
this kind of structure being forced onto the WGs.

In response to Brian’s point, Denesh said that things were evolving over 
time, and perhaps WGs needed to change as part of this and become more 
structured.

Leo said that until now, the Trusted Contacts had mostly been 
responsible for doing things during a RIPE Meeting. However, they were 
changing the scope to “everything RIPE.” This meant the CoC Team might 
be called to do things between RIPE Meetings, if there was a vigorous 
discussion on a mailing list, for example. They would need to think 
about this, as they put together the CoC Team document. They needed to 
set expectations for the people who would volunteer for the role. While 
it was likely that they would always have a RIPE NCC staff member on the 
CoC Team, that person might not be in a position to make all of those 
decisions – and relying on the RIPE NCC’s staff to manage the RIPE 
community might put them into a difficult position. He thought it was 
worth starting this discussion now and perhaps sharing agenda items on 
the TF mailing list over the next few weeks.

Leo noted that he had the initial structure document and it would be 
helpful for TF members to review this and decide where content should 
sit and what might need to be added/removed. This document was simply 
intended to spark discussion and feedback.

Salam asked where it said that the WG Chairs function was to monitor 
their mailing lists.

Brian noted that in the Working Group Chair Job Description and 
Procedures (ripe-692), it said that WG Chairs were responsible for 
guiding mailing list discussions, though this didn’t mention moderation 
specifically. He added that there were currently discussions among the 
chairs that they might improve the tools/workflow to allow them to 
enable moderation more easily.

Leo said it might be that they needed to recommend an update to other 
documents, and it might be that the WG Chair job description needed 
changes.

Salam asked if they should consider making all WG chairs part of the CoC 
Team.

Leo said he didn’t know if every WG chair needed to be trained. He noted 
that Jordi had been talking about the need for every chair to be 
selected in the same manner, as they all developed policy. Leo had asked 
the RIPE NCC’s Policy Officer for numbers on how many policies went 
through the different WGs. This was very heavily weighted towards the 
Address Policy WG, and dropped off quite abruptly when looking at other 
WGs. This made him think that some WGs had different focuses – some were 
more focused on organising face-to-face meetings, others were geared 
towards facilitating mailing list discussions. He wondered if it made 
sense to have one job description for all of them.

Brian said he’d spent a lot of time in the past trying to come up with a 
unified procedure for selecting WG Chairs after Rob had asked him to do 
this. This hadn’t gotten far, as there was significant resistance, 
especially from those who strongly believed that a WG must come up with 
its own processes in a bottom-up way. He thought they should have a 
single procedure, but he was wary of the TF forcing the WG Chairs to do 
certain things, and thought it was better for them to invest their 
energies elsewhere.

Leo said if they were going to have RIPE WG Chairs involved in making 
decisions related to the CoC, they would need to be aware that there 
would be some work required between RIPE Meetings. That was all he was 
trying to suggest there. Leo said they needed to think about how 
ambiguous they wanted to be – as they wanted to allow space for 
flexibility – though they wanted to be understandable.

Salam agreed with Leo’s approach, but thought it was a matter of 
principles. The CoC Team was a disciplinary body that would do an 
investigation and judge an individual’s conduct, and apply punishment if 
someone violated the CoC. So, she thought they should not blur the line 
between this body and other roles, such as WG Chairs. So, as a matter of 
principle, any disciplinary action should come from the CoC Team 
according to its processes – and not from WG Chairs.

Leo said he thought they had achieved what he had intended under this 
agenda item – to start thinking about what they wanted to discuss. He 
said he would create an action on him to share the structure document on 
the list, and for TF members to propose agenda items on the mailing list.

*Action: Leo to share draft structure document. *

*Action: TF members to propose agenda items on the mailing list. *

*6. AOB*

Brian asked how they would share their draft with the community – 
whether they would just publish it and leave it for the community to 
comment, or whether they should take a more engaged approach and 
actively discuss it with the community, as with the PDP.

Salam said that was a good question. She asked if they should respond to 
any questions as individuals or if they should coordinate this via a 
dedicated person.

Denesh thought they should just put it out there with a deadline. They 
would get a range of views, but it was their role as a TF to review the 
feedback and work out what was usable and what was not.

Leo thought they should prepare a summary of all the messages that came 
in, and share this with the community. Here, they could clarify what 
changes they would make to address these points. Otherwise they could 
say that they had worked with the RIPE Chair Team and this was now the 
CoC for RIPE.

Brian agreed with this approach. However, he said they should make it 
clear how this was going to work – because people might be expecting 
something more interactive like the PDP. They should make it clear that 
they were gathering input and would not be responding to individual 
comments as they came in.

Leo said that allowing for anonymous feedback was good and it might be 
best if people shared this with the RIPE Chair Team directly.

Brian said he had been thinking more in terms of “private” than 
“anonymous”. It was about allowing a solution for people that wanted to 
raise a concern without having to do this via a public forum. But he 
supported this approach, provided the RIPE Chair Team was happy with it.

*7. Review actions*

*Action: RIPE NCC to publish draft CoC on a webpage to share with the 
RIPE community. *

*Action: Leo to share draft template/structure document. *

*Action: TF members to propose agenda items on the mailing list. *

*Action: Leo to check with RIPE Chair Team to see if they are willing to 
accept anonymous feedback. *

*Action: Leo to work with the RIPE NCC to modify the announcement email 
as required. *

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