[diversity] On the RIPE community CoC

You raise some very important questions.
When we introduced the Code of Conduct in the first place, strong voices
said that we do not need this.
I still hear voices to the same respect, but not as strong.
We are making progress but we still have a long way to go.

 I will have to appologise for my late reply from your escalation of the
matter.
That is clearly not acceptable and I will work on ways to improve that.
(If you did not get my response, I am happy to resend)
My response does however not change the substance of your message.

I think you point to some important improvements that should be disscussed
and implemented.

Eager to hear what the other TF members think.

Hans Petter


On Mon, 11 Feb 2019 at 17:53, Sasha Romijn <sasha at mxsasha.eu> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> At the last RIPE meeting, we talked about our Code of Conduct. I offered to
> send a good example. I’ve since also actually reported a CoC incident in
> the
> RIPE community, and want to share some thoughts on that experience.
>
> Sending a CoC example took some time, as I’ve been refactoring and
> improving
> the CoC for the Write the Docs community. Our new CoC is:
> http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct/
> http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct-response/
> And these are the most significant changes:
> http://www.writethedocs.org/blog/new-community-coc-2019/
> I’m happy to further explain the decisions behind it,
> if you have any questions.
>
> I will not share the full details of the incident I reported in the RIPE
> community, because I prefer not to be identified as the reporter. About
> four months have passed since my report, and I have not received any reply
> from the wg chairs or the RIPE chair, who are the designated contacts,
> other than two notes that it was being worked on. I initially reported to
> the relevant working group chairs, and then escalated to the RIPE chair,
> as documented in the RIPE community CoC. To my knowledge, no action has
> been taken.
>
> My general impression is that none of the people listed as CoC contacts in
> any part of the RIPE community are able to effectively take action on a CoC
> incident. Either because this is explicitly not part of their task
> (trusted
> contacts) or, I suspect, they lack any kind of resources or possibly time
> to handle an incident. That is *not* a failure on the part of any of these
> people individually, but rather caused by a flawed and mostly absent
> process
> and mandate to act.
>
> In addition, confidentiality of CoC reports is violated in every single
> report.
> Both wg chair mailing lists and the trusted contacts address are moderated
> by
> NCC staff, which means an unknown person(s) can also see the report, and
> reporters are not made aware of this in advance. This can have severe
> consequences, and makes reporting unsafe. The RIPE chair doesn’t seem to
> have any publicly listed contact address at all.
>
> Personally I feel that the ability of the RIPE community to handle a CoC
> incident is so abysmal, that we would be better off not publishing one at
> all, as we are now creating a false sense of security.
>
> I should also note that this was a fairly minor incident, pretty much the
> most
> trivial kind of incident a CoC contact has to deal with. The consequences
> of
> the lack of ability to respond properly could be very severe in case of a
> more
> serious incident - which have taken place in the RIPE community as well.
>
> The updated Code of Conduct for Write the Docs, along with our response
> guide,
> handles many of these concerns specifically, so I suggest you have a look
> at it,
> and see how it can be adopted for the RIPE community. However, in order to
> have
> an effective CoC process, it will also require setting up one or more
> response
> teams, which can be contacted privately, with publicly listed membership,
> and
> most importantly, a mandate to act. Including, if needed, immediate
> removal of
> a community member, including those in a position of power.
> From my personal experience, this is a quite rare measure, but it needs to
> be
> on the table for the CoC to be effective.
>
> I’m not sure what the process would be to continue with this, or how others
> feel - I’m curious to hear your ideas. But the apparent fact that the RIPE
> community is currently unable to handle even the most trivial CoC reports,
> makes it inherently unsafe.
>
> Sasha
> _______________________________________________
> diversity mailing list
> diversity at ripe.net
> https://mailman.ripe.net/
>
-- 
-- Hans Petter Holen Mobile +47 45 06 60 54 | hph at oslo.net |
http://hph.oslo.net
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