[ripe-list] repeated and continued PDP violation - WG chairs delaying or denying proposal publication - new policy proposal "Ensure Neutrality of PDP Appeals Procedure"

JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via ripe-list wrote on 07/02/2021 13:05:
> Briefly, in several situation I've written policy proposals, and the
> chairs of the WG, tried to convince me to not publish it, or actually
> decided not to publish it, or delayed it.

Jordi,

without prejudice to any of the proposals that you've submitted to 
various working groups over the years, one of the jobs of a working 
group chair is to make a call on whether or not a proposal is suitable 
for their working group.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but the one of the generally 
accepted responsibilities of any chair is to ensure functional 
communication within a group and ensuring that the communication within 
the group is relevant and on-topic.  So, a chair is within their rights 
to decline to take on a proposal if they feel it's unlikely to achieve 
consensus, or if it's been discussed extensively already without 
consensus, or if it contains - in their opinion - proposals which would 
be highly unlikely to gain consensus, or if they feel that the proposal 
was inappropriate or out of scope for their particular working group, 
and so on.

In other words, regardless of whether or not it's stated explicitly in 
the PDP, the WG chair has leeway to accept or reject a proposal, as they 
see fit.

If a RIPE WG chair rejects a proposal, the PDP allows the proposer to 
forward the proposal to the RIPE Chair.  This would trigger an 
examination of the WG chair's decision.  External review always causes 
us to examine our actions more seriously, so it seems unlikely that a WG 
chair would reject a proposal lightly, as they can be held to account 
for their decision.

Incidentally, the duty to manage discussion isn't something specific to 
RIPE WG chairs - it's a general accepted principle about the rights and 
responsibilities of all chairs, regardless of what they're chairing. 
There's nothing unusual about the RIPE WG chair duties in this respect.

Nick