[diversity] CoC Draft & Action Items

Sasha,

We absolutely don’t want people nit picking and wordsmithing by committee just about works, it doesn’t by community.

I think we can put it out there and solicit a response, but it will have to be framed as something that is happening, and while it will be an open discussion, nor will every point be addressed, but we as a TF (it’s absolutely not all on you at all!) need to be able to justify our decisions.

So a lot of it will be, “Please provide any feedback, which will be considered and possibly included in a 2nd draft.” I’m happy to lead that process on the mailing list, as others may be?

For me, the mandate will come from a general consensus of the community. The accountability… to the RIPE Chair and (soon to exist) Vice-Chair? Or to the Exec Board? I’m hoping others might have some thoughts here as well.

There does have to be some appeal (and the groups above might work, with the Vice-Chair position in existence it might cover some of the problems with a potential Chair being in violation of the CoC?), but I haven’t got anything better than the existing structures and all of them have some issues, so which are the least bad.

I’m very worried, given it’s the Friday before the meeting, that really presenting this at RIPE78 is going to be difficult. But given there were no objections, I think what I can do today is formally present the text as is to HPH and see what he reckons. (It doesn’t have to be me, at all, but I’m happy to do it.)

Thanks,

Brian

Brian Nisbet
Service Operations Manager
HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network
1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin D01 X8N7, Ireland
+35316609040 brian.nisbet at heanet.ie www.heanet.ie
Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270

From: diversity <diversity-bounces at ripe.net> On Behalf Of Sasha Romijn
Sent: Tuesday 14 May 2019 19:51
To: diversity at ripe.net
Subject: Re: [diversity] CoC Draft & Action Items

Hi Brian,

I think these are good next steps. I am a bit concerned about how to handle the response from the wider community. We indeed don’t want dozens of e-mails nitpicking every word, and this is a document where that risk is more significant than your average RIPE document. Also because there is a limited amount of time and energy I can put into responding and explaining things - responding to comments from 8 people on this list is still quite doable, but if there’s going to be 40 people commenting on the RIPE list, there’s limits to what I can and will do. Unless someone starts funding my work.

So, some thought in advance about how we could smoothen this process would be useful. I have no ideas.

Regarding the CoC team structure, mandate, process, etc., there will be questions if we circulate the text without this covered, so we’d need to explain that work on that is still ongoing. I expect this may be a more controversial point for the community, because it creates a new power structure that does not entirely fall under existing structures.
Someone also raised, in the google doc comments, concerns about an option for reconsideration of a decision by different people, if someone feels the decision of the CoC team was unjustified.
As I said in my recent e-mail, I have some early ideas about the team layout - those are in no way fixed. But I don’t really have any ideas on mandate, accountability, and at the same time guaranteeing independence, preventing excessive bureaucracy or fights on ripe-list about every CoC decision. We do need to start working on this to have any chance of putting something into operation by RIPE79.

Sasha


On 10 May 2019, at 10:51, Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet at heanet.ie<mailto:brian.nisbet at heanet.ie>> wrote:

So, my thoughts on how we should proceed on all of this. These are just thoughts btw.


  *   Present the full text to the RIPE Chair and discuss next steps
  *   Circulate the text to the community
  *   Possible LT at RIPE78
  *   Further input from the community
  *   Into operation for RIPE79

What I certainly don’t want is wordsmithing by the community, nor would I expect the WG Chairs or the PC to be the CoC team.

This is all pretty high level, but it’s a notion? I think we would need Mirijam or Amanda to make sure that HPH has some cycles to look at this over the next few days, without rushing him?

Brian

Brian Nisbet
Service Operations Manager
HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network
1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin D01 X8N7, Ireland
+35316609040 brian.nisbet at heanet.ie<mailto:brian.nisbet at heanet.ie> www.heanet.ie<http://www.heanet.ie/>
Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270

From: Sasha Romijn <sasha at mxsasha.eu<mailto:sasha at mxsasha.eu>>
Sent: Tuesday 7 May 2019 14:43
To: Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet at heanet.ie<mailto:brian.nisbet at heanet.ie>>
Cc: diversity at ripe.net<mailto:diversity at ripe.net>
Subject: Re: [diversity] CoC Draft & Action Items

Hi,

The draft is waiting for me to merge some more suggested changes and fix some things raised in the thread.
If all goes well, I can wrap that up this week.
Based on the responses on the draft, we seem to mostly agree on it otherwise.

As Amanda said, there is still the question of the CoC team, which handles CoC incidents, and how they get a mandate. I have some rough thoughts on that.

As I’ve argued before, I think this role should not rest with the WG chairs or with the RIPE chair. The best option is likely a specific CoC team. Considering the structure of this community with a mix of online spaces and conferences, my first thought is one team, of which at least 4 people should be present and available at any RIPE meeting. Attending (all) RIPE meetings should not be a requirement, as RIPE meetings are not accessible to all, so it would be exclusionary. Having a single team helps some continuity, ongoing development, and consistency.
I’m not sure whether we should retain the trusted contacts as a separate team. I guess that could be very confusing.

The team needs to have an independent mandate, which includes measures like banning of a person from a conference, or terminating an ongoing talk.

Regarding who should be in it, I’m not sure how to work that out within the governance models of the RIPE community. In Django, the first CoC committee was formed ages ago, and mostly consisted of people involved in introducing the CoC at the time. The committee self-governs, asking for new volunteers when needed. The committee has a mandate from the board of the Django Software Foundation, and is also accountable to them. That board is in turn elected by the membership of that foundation. So in general there is self-management and delegation of mandate, but with accountability and reporting. The board can intervene if needed. I believe the Python Software Foundation has or is working on a similar model.

CoC team members also need to know what they’re getting into, and ensure they have sufficient availability. Especially on-site at a meeting, action may need to happen fast. Which means being reachable and able to change plans suddenly. Also, CoC work can be emotionally intense. Sometimes it’s really hard to decide whether it’s a violation and what should be done, sometimes incidents occur that are very serious and have a heavy impact. A lot of empathy work is involved. It also means your own behaviour is under the heaviest scrutiny of pretty much anyone at the conference, because as a team member you set the example of what is acceptable. This extends to every interaction related to the conference. It means you absolutely can not get a bit drunk at the party and blurt out a few sexist jokes - if we fail to set an example, the process falls apart (the #1 reason for me not to report incidents is because I don’t trust the response team). And, not everyone will like every decision you make, so especially team members from minority groups are at an increased risk of abusive behaviour from others.

For training my first choice: https://otter.technology/code-of-conduct-training/
I have not followed this training myself yet, but I have universally heard good things about it.
(And CoC team members should not be required to pay out of pocket for this, as that would be exclusionary.)

So, a big question is: within the processes of the RIPE community, how does a CoC response team get a mandate? To whom is it accountable and how? Can it self-manage members?
And also essential: we should prevent the CoC team from being dragged into months of discussion for every decision, just because one or two people who don’t like it stir up discussion on a mailing list - I do see this as a potential risk in the RIPE community due to its structure. Also, no process may depend on a single person.

(I will not be attending RIPE78 btw)

Sasha



On 7 May 2019, at 15:00, Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet at heanet.ie<mailto:brian.nisbet at heanet.ie>> wrote:

Folks,

I'm just wondering, where do we, collectively, believe the action item (or similar) lies at present with the draft for the new CoC.

From my reading there was an amount of feedback provided, but is the draft at a point where it can be officially shared with HPH, other stakeholders and the community, or is there more work to do? We have under two weeks before RIPE78 begins and I worry that we aren't in a good place to share our work (while absolutely noting that people might be waiting for me to do something?).

Thanks,

Brian

Brian Nisbet
Service Operations Manager
HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network
1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin D01 X8N7, Ireland
+35316609040 brian.nisbet at heanet.ie<mailto:brian.nisbet at heanet.ie> www.heanet.ie<http://www.heanet.ie/>
Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270


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