[coc-tf] Draft Minutes – CoC TF Twenty-Seventh Call

Dear TF members,

Here are the minutes from our last call.

Cheers

Kjerstin

***

9 June 16:30 (UTC+2)

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

Scribe: Kjerstin Burdiek

Summary: The TF discussed how it could support WG Chairs in enforcing the CoC by sharing examples with them of ways to remind community members to follow the CoC. The TF also reviewed the feedback at the BoF session that was held during RIPE 84. One concern raised there was about whether the TF could gather a CoC Team that was both large enough and diverse. The TF considered the ideal Team size and settled on five people at a minimum. The group decided these should be community members who regularly attend meetings, but the Team should also be diverse in several respects. The TF discussed how the nomination process should look and agreed that candidates should nominate themselves, and then other community members could express their support. This would eliminate the need for a full background check to assess a candidate’s character. Additionally, the RIPE Chair would have final veto power for selecting candidates. Through this role, the Chair could also help ensure diversity in the CoC Team. The TF addressed how to recruit candidates and found that the best option was a combination of open calls for applications and TF members approaching possible candidates to see if they were interested. Finally, the TF planned its next steps and decided to send another message to the list asking for more feedback in order to produce a final draft of the document.

1. Minutes

The minutes from the last two meetings were approved. 

2. Agenda

There were no changes to the agenda.

3. Actions

- (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

Leo noted that Brian had sent a message to the Anti-Abuse WG that was a good example of how WG Chairs could remind community members to abide by the CoC. Leo suggested sharing a document in the WG Chair Mattermost channel with examples of such messages.

Antony said this sounded good. 

Brian noted that Chairs should still personalise these messages to the situation, but providing sample text to build off of was a good idea.

Leo said giving examples to Chairs would be helpful as otherwise some would not know how to approach sending these messages. He suggested gathering templates from previous WG Chair messages about the CoC and sending this sample text to the RIPE NCC to adjust. 

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

Leo marked this action as on hold until the CoC had been more fully implemented.

3. BoF 

Leo said the feedback at the BoF had been supportive about the process. The few concerns raised were mainly about recruitment, especially regarding the ability to get a big enough team.

Brian agreed this would probably be difficult, but the TF still needed to try to recruit enough people.

Leo said the CoC Team should have at least five members: two main members and a RIPE NCC staff member, as well as a couple support members as backup. Most likely, the Team would end up needing more than five people, but it should not be too large so all members could still feel closely involved.

Antony noted these should be people who regularly attend RIPE Meetings. 

Leo agreed the Team members should attend at least one RIPE Meeting a year. The TF should be wary of people signing up just for free travel to the meetings, as these people would not truly be interested in the work of the CoC Team. Travel funding should be available, but only to facilitate the work of the Team.

Brian said the TF should just set up travel stipends the same way as was done for WG Chairs. Most likely CoC Team members would already be regular RIPE Meeting attendees.

Antony said he had raised this topic with the training consultant, who said it was necessary to have some incentive for people to join the CoC Team as it was a difficult role.

Brian agreed the role was difficult but suggested having something other than a travel stipend as an incentive.

Leo said the TF could address this later if they did not get many volunteers for the Team. He noted that the BoF session also had feedback that the Team should not require background checks. Rather, the nomination should be supported by others in the community vouching for the candidate’s character.

Antony said this was reasonable. 

Brian agreed, as the TF needed more than just self-nomination, and background checks were not a good solution.

Leo asked whether, as suggested at the BoF, the RIPE Chair should have veto power for a nomination.

Antony said the selection process being at the RIPE Chair’s discretion made it easier to reject candidates, as opposed to having strict criteria that could be challenged. 

Brian said that the RIPE Chair was the only viable entity to hold such veto power.

Antony said the training consultant had noted there was no legally airtight way to reject people’s applications, but the TF still needed to come up with some means of doing so even if it was imperfect.

Brian pointed out this was an unpaid role, so there was no real legal recourse for rejected candidates to challenge a decision. The RIPE Chair being the ultimate decision-maker was the easiest way of handling this, and the Chair could be challenged through the recall process if necessary. 

Leo said if the TF left this to the RIPE Chair, the RIPE Chair then had a responsibility to ensure the Team members were a balanced mix of different groups. Ensuring diversity was one reason the Chair could reject a particular candidate, at least for the current Team, and that candidate could be re-considered later on once the Team makeup had changed.

Brian agreed that diversity considerations would be important in deciding which candidates to select, reject or defer.

Leo said that based on the discussion at the BoF, ensuring team diversity was a very important aspect of the recruitment process, as a highly diverse group was necessary for the Team to function successfully. 

Antony asked if the TF should clarify in the document that a high level of diversity would be ideal but not necessary, in case they did not receive a diverse group of candidate applications.

Leo noted that the TF was also limited by the diversity of the community itself, but the TF should at least set the goal of having a diverse CoC Team.

Antony shared a comment from the training consultant that this problem might solve itself. People from diverse groups would be more likely to apply since they had more motivation to work toward a fairer, more balanced community.

Brian said in his experience this had been the case.

4. Recruitment

Antony said the consultant had suggested a CoC Team size of five to seven people and had emphasised the importance of having an overlap between Team members of different terms. He had shared with her the Team’s proposed nomination process, where community members expressed support for candidates, and the consultant was in favour but said to make sure rejections were handled in private.

Brian noted this was completely different from the Programme Committee’s (PC) recruitment, where applications were more private. But this proposed method sounded wise for the CoC Team’s recruitment.

Leo said if a team size of five to seven was the goal, this also delimited the amount of possible diversity. The TF could not cover every dimension of diversity but should target certain groups to encourage applications, and it should make sure to consider regional and linguistic diversity. LinkedIn advertising could be one channel for recruitment.

Antony said the group could do LinkedIn ads for the RIPE NCC’s page followers, but the TF should be careful not to cast the net too broadly and look beyond the community. 

Leo agreed that they should only reach out to members of the community, but the TF should not target the most active community members.

Brian said this would be something to discuss with Mirjam. He brought up the example of the PC, where candidates sometimes joined with the intention of only staying for one or two meetings. The TF could also approach people at meetings to see if they were interested. LinkedIn ads had too broad a reach and might portray the position as a job rather than a volunteer position. Ultimately, it would be best to do a combination of open calls and approaching possible candidates, while accepting that some might only join for a set amount of time. 

Leo said asking people if they were interested was indeed a good approach. 

Brian noted that it would be easier now that the TF could ask people in person rather than online.

5. Feedback on Draft

Leo said there had been some comments for a few specific changes, but there had not been enough response to make a decision on the document. The TF needed at least basic support or disapproval.

Antony suggested sending another email asking for feedback and noting that the TF was making a couple changes to the next draft. The email could also have some questions to prompt more response.

Brian said that since they had put the document out several times with little response, the silence suggested approval. People might only react once the document had been implemented. 

Leo said this might indeed be the case, but it would be good to have a little more feedback. The TF should at least clean up the section on data retention. He asked the RIPE NCC to do this.

Antony agreed to do so. 

Leo said he would write a message that included the changes to the draft, a request for feedback and a few leading questions.

Brian noted that overall it might be a good sign that there had been no requests for major changes to the draft. 

6. AOB

The TF members discussed their availability for future meetings. Several were unavailable the following week, and as summer would be a difficult time to meet, the group considered mailing list discussions as a backup if necessary. 

Leo said the next meeting was therefore cancelled. In the meantime, the TF would focus on sending out the message asking for feedback.

7. Actions

-Leo to gather templates for how WG Chairs could remind WG members about the CoC.
-The RIPE NCC to clarify the section about data retention in the process document.
-Leo to draft a message for the list about the document’s revisions and asking for feedback.