[diversity] [ripe-list] Towards a more inclusive community

Hello Jim,

On 21 Oct 2019, at 10:37, Jim Reid <jim at rfc1035.com> wrote:
> The TF need to consider other options. A range of sanctions are possible.

A range of resolutions (the proposed CoC does not use the term “sanctions”) are already in the document.

Perhaps it helps as well if I offer some context. From my personal experience being on several CoC teams, and seeing reports from other teams, over the last several years, I’d say that 80-90% of reports I’ve been involved with are resolved with what the draft calls a private reprimand. We contact the person, tell them that what happened is not acceptable and explain why. They understand, apologise, and don’t do it again (as far as we know). The reporter is almost always happy with that resolution as well, so the situation is resolved.

I have dealt with reports where more serious resolutions were decided upon. One form is intentional escalation, where the person continues and escalates their behaviour intentionally. The other common form are reports which are so serious that a more serious resolution is needed.

To share a few examples where a more serious action than a simple reprimand was taken:
- Someone who was permanently denied participation after behaviour was addressed by a private reprimand, and they continued to escalate up to the point of making death threats to a CoC team member.
- Someone who caused several separate incidents due to severely excessive alcohol use, was warned that any further incident would lead to permanently being denied participation to further conferences. That person improved their behaviour and is still an active member of that community. In fact, they were, and continue to be, very grateful that our team forced them to confront a serious drinking problem.
- Someone who vandalised a poster with a hateful message calling for genocide on a particular demographic. I would have been strongly in favour of permanently denying participation. Unfortunately the person was never identified. I also can’t say for sure whether that would have been the team’s consensus, as we never progressed to that discussion.
- Someone who made death threats against a conference organiser (which was more severe than the first example, as when both parties may be at the conference, the threat has much more credibility).
- Someone who made repeated statements to the organisers that they were not planning to follow the CoC, but had not made any serious violations. The person was informed that the CoC was not optional, and that if they felt unable to follow the CoC, they would not be able to participate in the community. However, it was stressed that they were still entirely welcome in the future otherwise. The person indicated they were not interested in participating any further. 

I don’t know if the ratios in resolutions map to the RIPE community as well, as the other communities in which I’ve done this work had already made much more progress in diversity and inclusivity than the RIPE community.

In this context, I continue to be surprised that the idea that someone may be, in theory, denied further participation, appears to be so controversial in this community. Does this community honestly believe that in the cases above, denying participation is excessive? And as Brian and I said in our RIPE79 session, doing nothing will also deny people participation - we’ll just be denying participation to their targets instead.

Sasha