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Draft Minutes – CoC TF Thirteenth Call
by Antony Gollan 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

Dear TF members, Here are the minutes from the call before last. Cheers Ant *** *Draft Minutes – CoC TF Thirteenth Call * 14 May 16:30 (UTC+2) *Attendees:* Denesh Bhabuta, Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Brian Nisbet, Leo Vegoda, Salam Yamout *Summary:* The TF discussed its upcoming BoF at RIPE 82. Based on feedback from the community, the TF considered whether the CoC should contain examples of positive/negative behaviour, or whether this should be published in a separate document. After some discussion, the group agreed that this should be contained in the CoC itself, recognising that there was a fairly standard format to CoCs that included lists of behaviour, and they didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Leo shared that he had received an email from a community member who asked why he did not get a response to his feedback – Leo explained that the TF was there to listen, and its updated draft would essentially be the TF’s response to community feedback. It was also noted that the TF might need to consider additional communication efforts when it published its draft, to walk people through the details of what had changed. *1. Minutes* The minutes from the meeting before last (23 April) were approved. Salam asked if the minutes could more clearly indicate where a decision was made. Leo said he would try to summarise the discussion at the end of each section where possible. *2. Agenda* Leo said he’d updated the agenda with an AOB to note that he’d received an email from Hank Nussbacher. Leo said he wanted to keep the call straightforward, as the focus would be on the RIPE Meeting next week. He had cut all of the examples from the CoC, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t add some of them back in if the group disagreed with this approach. Salam suggested some of the parts that had been cut could be covered in a separate FAQ along with other details. This way the CoC could remain a high-level document. *3. Actions* *- (Ongoing) RIPE NCC to review reporting requirements to inform a process of improvements to the CoC (likely tooling and legal analysis).* Antony said they were still working on this. *- (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* Brian said he would have something to share around the end of May. *- (Ongoing) TF to think about the appropriate level of process to allow further improvements to the CoC.* Leo said a lot of this would probably be informed by the feedback from their BoF next week. *- Leo to draft slides for BoF * Leo said this was done. *- TF to review Mailing List Guidelines for RIPE Working Group Chairs * Brian clarified that the WG chairs would pick one of two moderation options – chairs could either get access to the moderation admin or let the RIPE NCC handle this. It was up to each WG to decide which option it preferred. Leo said he thought there could be a third option, which he had seen in an IETF WG that had gotten out of hand. In that case, the chair had enabled moderation for the entire mailing list and let through all messages that weren’t abusive at a set time each day. This slowed everything down, but it affected everyone equally and the slower pace drove a more considered discussion. It had also taken some of the heat out of the space. Brian said that was covered under the first option (placing the entire list into emergency moderation). Leo suggested that could be clearer, as it could be interpreted in a number of ways. Brian added that this was essentially what the RIPE NCC Executive Board had done with the Members Discuss mailing list. He had also warned the Anti-Abuse WG list that he might do this if people didn’t behave. Denesh said what he understood by “emergency moderation” was that someone would review every message and let them through (more-or-less in real time), but not slow things down as Leo had described. Brian said they could improve the language there. Leo said it was good that they’d had this discussion, as it gave them awareness of the various options that were available. *2. BoF* Leo shared his draft slides. He said it was possible that they would get a lot of input and wouldn’t have time to make it through all the questions. He would let Olaf decide, because if they got a lot of helpful feedback that identified different strands of thought within the community, then that told them they might need another intersessional BoF or something similar. Denesh said he wasn’t seeing anything about their timeline in the slides. Leo said that in his message to RIPE List, he had said they would like to publish an updated CoC by the end of June. He would rather get it right, so if it had to be later that was fine. He said he would mention that June was the target in the BoF. Salam asked if they could break out into separate sessions during the BoF. Perhaps they could cover all of the questions that way. Leo said that might not be practical, as they were using Meetecho and only had an hour. If they did something intersessional in the future, they could look at breakout rooms, though this would require more effort overall – as they’d need to have multiple people chairing/noting what was discussed. Leo said he wouldn’t give a date for the process or CoC Team documents in the BoF. This was because it would largely depend on the community’s feedback. Denesh suggested they make it clear during the BoF that they were there to listen to the community. Leo said he would do that and would also mention that this was why they had invited Olaf to chair the BoF (so they could focus on listening). *3. Updated CoC Doc* Leo said he had tried to incorporate the feedback they’d received so far by removing all of the bullet points from the draft, as there had been some discussion that this was too much. This was part of the tension between those in the community who wanted a focus on principles and those who wanted examples. The question was how much of this to put back in. Denesh said he thought they could keep it as-is and say that these were a few examples but it was not an exhaustive list. They could refer to another document with an FAQ or a longer list. He didn’t think they would ever get the balance right or cover everything, but they could give some examples and update this when needed. Leo said he liked the idea of having a very brief CoC overall with more detailed informational that was separated out. He asked if Antony or Athina could give some guidance about how this could be managed – both from an editorial and a procedural perspective (in terms of the future CoC Team wanting to update this). Antony said his first thought was that if version control and history was important, then it was best to publish this as a RIPE Document. If they were more flexible, then it could be a web page and they would take care to manage it properly. Neither approach would be very hard to manage on the RIPE NCC’s side. Brian said if they didn’t publish the examples as RIPE Documents, people would wonder why. His assumption was that all three documents they would develop would be published as RIPE Documents – and what they were discussing was essentially a fourth document. Denesh agreed with Brian. Leo said he was thinking of this in terms of the RIPE NCC’s training material. Here, the community developed RIPE Documents with its policies, and then trusted the RIPE NCC to use its own judgement when communicating this information in other formats. The RIPE NCC would have experience over multiple meetings and mailing lists, and so perhaps they could entrust this document to the RIPE NCC. Antony said he was thinking of people who might be worried about the CoC being weaponised. This would essentially be a list of the reasons why someone could be excluded from the community, and the idea of this being updated on an ad hoc basis could concern them. Another option could be something similar to RIPE NCC procedural documents, which were published by the RIPE NCC but handled in the same way as RIPE Documents in terms of version control. Brian said they should involve the RIPE Chair Team if they decided to go in this direction. This was the community’s document and he thought the community should own it and be invested in it. He also wanted to avoid the perception that the RIPE NCC was somehow gaining power or bringing down the ban hammer. This was similar to how they said the RIPE NCC was not the Internet Police – they didn’t want it to become the community’s police either, which was why they would have a CoC Team. Leo said it was important that Brian had brought this up. What he had inferred from Salam’s comment was that this would not be a policy document – it would be something to help people understand the policy. They could identify positive/negative behaviours and add them to the FAQ to support understanding. He wasn’t suggesting a RIPE NCC-managed policy document, he was thinking more in terms of the RIPE NCC’s training material. Salam said this was roughly what she was thinking. She asked if the current list included all the relevant aspects of identity – an earlier version wasn’t much longer, but it had covered this well. She suggested they could include positive behaviour in the CoC and have an FAQ with negative behaviours that could expand over time (without version control). Athina said if the TF or the community felt strongly that certain behaviours were unacceptable, they should be identified in the document. If this was left to the RIPE NCC, it might not be as strong, or could be subject to doubt, especially as they had seen some comments from the community that this effort was politically motivated. She thought they should have a list of behaviours written down clearly, and then perhaps they could say that this list would be clarified by the actual evaluation of reports done by the CoC Team, and that in the future this team might come up with examples in a publication later on. And they could leave it there. Perhaps the team would come up with an anonymised list of behaviours that were a violation along with behaviours that were reported but were not a violation. Denesh said he thought the TF would initially develop this list of behaviours and, as it would be published as a RIPE Document, the CoC Team could add to it over time (in addition to people within the RIPE NCC and other community members). This could be a living document and because it would be separate, it would avoid making the CoC overly long. Leo asked for thoughts from each person on whether they should separate the CoC from a document that would contain examples or, alternatively, if they should go for one all-inclusive document. Salam thought they needed to have one document – the CoC. This could be accompanied by other peripheral documents such as training materials or FAQs. For the list within the CoC, she would add intimidation, bullying and harassment, and instead of aggressive communication, she would say aggressive behaviour (or communication and behaviour). Brian said there was a fairly standard format to CoCs across communities and they all included lists of encouraged and unacceptable behaviour. He didn’t think they needed to reinvent the wheel. They had good examples there, and he really thought they should take the prior examples that were out there and include them in the main document. They should publish this as a RIPE Document and should stick with three documents instead of four. Denesh said he was on the fence. His earlier comments were intended to keep the CoC from becoming too long and could allow the examples to be updated independently. It depended on whether they wanted to keep the CoC short or not. Athina said she agreed with Brian. Leo said in that case, he thought they should add the examples they had before, perhaps with some wording to clarify that they were only examples and subject to change. Salam agreed with that approach. Leo said in that case he would add the list back in. *4. AOB* Leo said he wanted to note that he had received an email from Hank Nussabacher asking why he hadn’t received a response to his comment on the mailing list, which noted that the CoC should list things like spam, sharing malware, etc. In Leo’s reply to Hank, he had said they were not planning to reply to everyone and were taking feedback on board – their updated draft CoC would essentially act as their response. He had also noted that most of Hank’s examples were already illegal and referred him to the section in the existing draft that dealt with illegal behaviour. Leo said that when they published their updated draft, they might need to do something extra (such as a webinar) to walk people through what had changed and explain their rationale. Brian reiterated that the examples in Hank’s email were illegal behaviour. He said it was worth clarifying these kinds of things out in their communication when they shared their updated draft. * **5. Actions* Leo said he saw two actions coming out of the above discussion – to update the draft CoC (adding the examples back in) and to work with Antony on communicating the draft CoC once it was ready to publish. *Action: Leo to update draft CoC (adding examples of behaviours back in). ** ** **Action: Leo to work with Antony on communicating the updated draft CoC. ** *

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Draft Minutes – CoC TF Twelfth Call
by Antony Gollan 31 May '21

31 May '21

Dear TF members, Here's the draft minutes from our call back in April. There's two more sets to come, I'll try to get them all sent this week. Cheers Ant * * *** ** *Draft Minutes – CoC TF Twelfth Call * 30 April 16:30 (UTC+2) *Present:* Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Brian Nisbet, Leo Vegoda *Summary:* The TF agreed to put together a discussion document on how the CoC Team will work with the WG Chairs. It was noted that this would require communication between the two groups, and it would be hard to create a detailed operational procedure until a CoC Team was in place. The TF discussed that there would need to be a way to update the CoC in the future; ideally this would not require another TF (depending on the nature of the change). The group agreed to try condensing or removing some of the lists of examples in the current draft. Looking at technical requirements, the TF discussed whether the RIPE NCC should maintain the system to receive/archive reports or if it would be better for a third-party to manage this. It was noted that the same confidentiality issues would exist with a third-party and the TF thought the RIPE NCC could be trusted to operate such a system. The TF discussed the upcoming BoF at RIPE 82 and agreed this should focus on topics relating to the process and CoC Team. The TF also agreed to seek a neutral party to moderate the discussion. *1. Minutes* Approval of the minutes was moved to the next call. *2. Agenda* There were no changes to the agenda. *3. Actions* *- (Ongoing) RIPE NCC to review reporting requirements to inform a process of improvements to the CoC (likely tooling and legal analysis).* Leo shared the document the RIPE NCC had been working on with the group. Antony explained they had been thinking of the steps that would need to happen and whether there were any legal concerns associated with them. Then they tried to anticipate how this could translate into an actual process – this latter part was where they had made the most assumptions and likely would have gotten things wrong. Once they had the document finished, the TF could let them know what parts of the process should change. *- (Ongoing) TF to think about how the CoC Team and the WG Chairs would work together to manage discussions on mailing lists.* Brian said he had been thinking in terms of active collaboration. It was important to make sure the CoC Team wasn’t compromised by a WG chair deciding arbitrarily that something wasn’t a CoC issue. At the same time, chairs shouldn’t have to make a report or go through some process before they could moderate someone on their mailing list. This would require communication when these conflicts came up. They could put things down on paper, but it would be hard to set an operational procedure until they had a CoC Team that could actually sit down with the WG Chairs Collective. He wanted the TF to avoid binding the CoC Team to a particular way of working. The CoC Team would also need the ability to escalate the issue if cooperation with the chairs didn’t work. Brian volunteered to draft something on this. Athina said she saw three steps here. The first was a report and whether this should go via the CoC Team or the WG chair first, in which case they should have the first level of filtering to decide where the issue went. The next step would be the evaluation, and whether this would be done by the CoC Team or together with the chair. The third step was the execution – here they should understand if the WG chairs would execute whatever evaluation came from the CoC Team or whether they had some discretion. Leo suggested there was an initial step where the WG chair could proactively manage the mailing list (by highlighting inappropriate behaviour). Waiting for a complaint was probably not the best approach and guiding people towards good behaviour might be better. Brian said he liked Athina’s three stages. He could use that as a framework for the document he would put together. One key principle was that anyone in the community should be able to go to the CoC Team directly, without barriers or prerequisites. *Action: Brian to draft discussion document on cooperation between the CoC Team and WG Chairs.* *- (Ongoing) TF to think about the appropriate level of process to allow further improvements to the CoC.* Leo said what they produced would not be perfect and they had a responsibility to provide some guidance on how the document could be further improved and updated. Doing this via another TF was probably not ideal. He was thinking they could ask the community for input on this at their BoF. Antony said maybe they could have some sort of periodic interaction where the CoC Team reported to the community at a defined interval. As part of this, it could make recommendations based on its experience implementing the CoC. Simple recommendations could go ahead straight away (making CoC Team contact details more prominent, for example), while more complicated ones could be handled through a more appropriate process, such as a TF. Athina asked if the PDP could be useful here. Brian said he would like it if changes could be made with less difficulty and process than their current approach, within reason. The idea he had was the CoC Team could speak to the RIPE Chair team and a decision could be made corresponding to the size of the change. Basic things like contact details could go ahead, while more substantial changes could take a more formal process. But if they encountered a problem or potential loophole, he would prefer it didn’t take six months or longer to fix. Leo said it was important to separate the code from the implementation. Adjusting the implementation should be relatively easy, while making changes to the CoC should be more difficult. Brian said it was one of those things that affected everyone. For a change to the charter of his WG, it was only the WG that had to agree. Bigger things like this needed to be decided on by the wider community/RIPE plenary. Athina said if they had a CoC that was based on principles, future changes might introduce other principles or more clarity – so they could amend the document and add details. Alternatively, they could say that previous decisions created a jurisprudence and, based on those examples, specific behaviour was/was not a violation. Antony asked if a jurisprudence approach relied on knowing the specifics of past cases, while in a CoC situation this would not be so transparent. Athina said they had something like this with their arbitration panel, where they published a summary of each case that was sufficiently broad and anonymised. Leo said he liked the idea of guiding precedent. His only concern was if that would make it difficult to provide confidentiality to people. And if the summaries were broad, they might not be enough for a different CoC Team in the future to draw from (as it might lack a memory of the case). What made a precedent work was that you could read the report – which might not be the case here. Brian said this was generally how code of conducts evolved. It wasn’t that they needed to be able to find the details behind the judgement, it was that the situation had created new needs. The case he had referenced to on their previous call (an attendee reacting in an insulting way to someone who was themselves harassing someone else) was explicitly identified as not a violation of the CoC. Making this kind of change didn’t require knowledge of the details. It was also important to note that they might want to update their CoC proactively in response to issues from other communities that they wanted to avoid in RIPE. Leo said Brian had a point there – they might need to react to a situation that hadn’t yet emerged in the RIPE community. *- Leo to draft slides for BoF (see agenda item below)* Leo said he had received feedback from the RIPE Chair Team. They wanted them to use the BoF to focus on issues relating to implementation – processes and the makeup of the CoC Team – especially in the context of having the same CoC for other meetings. For example, would they want separate teams? And what sort of volunteer requirements would be needed? They might also ask about the level of detail needed in the document. Brian asked if Leo was talking about moving some of the lists in the CoC elsewhere. Leo said that had been suggested (moving the examples currently in the CoC to the document on process). Brian said his concern was that people would only read the process document when making a report. People might miss something or wonder why this was not in the first document. It ultimately came down to what this looked like. Leo said he could appreciate that, however, the longer the document was, the less likely people were to read it. If they went from limited understanding to appreciable understanding, he thought that was a success. Brian said it depended on how much shorter this made the document and what would be removed. Leo said they could float this idea at the BoF and say that this was what they were looking at. If people wanted more illustrative examples, they would know to include them. The danger was that in doing so, you were creating a detailed list of behaviour and the incentive was to keep adding more examples. *Action: Leo to draft BoF slides* *Action: Leo to merge some of the illustrative examples in the CoC to make the document shorter* Antony said with the examples they had at the moment – they had two categories – one was positive/aspirational and the other was negative. Only those negative behaviours could constitute a violation. If they wanted to reduce the document, perhaps they could focus on condensing the first category. Leo said he was tempted to do the opposite. His concern was that every time they added a negative behaviour, they ran the risk of people saying that because another behaviour wasn’t in the list of examples, it was not a violation. An extremely short list might be a better indicator that it was illustrative rather than a complete list. Athina said she had always been in favour of being explicit about what was not tolerated and what was a violation, because this created clarity. Positive behaviours offered guidance, but she wondered if they could lead to reports on the basis of failing to show positive behaviour that were not ill intended (such as not adequately showing appreciation of someone’s work). They didn’t want to have to address one another as “excellencies” and they were often direct as a community, which was fine. But they should not be racist, harassing, insulting, etc. These were the absolute “no’s”. Leo said he would take a shot at making this less specific. For example, one of the sections talked about discrimination based on identity, and then listed a lot of identities such as “immigration status” which might be less of an issue outside of America. There might also be aspects they had missed, such as caste issues in South Asian communities – was it better to specify this or just say “anything related to identity”? Antony added that when he was editing the document, he had been tempted to remove a lot of this detail. He thought it wouldn’t be too hard to remove a lot of it while keeping a precise meaning. *- TF to review Mailing List Guidelines for RIPE Working Group Chairs * Leo said they could keep this on the agenda for the next meeting. *- TF to think about practical ways to help WG Chairs and CoC Team members collaborate to effectively support positive discussion on mailing lists, e.g. a shared Mattermost channel* The group agreed this could be merged with the above action. *4. Guidelines, collaboration, tools* Athina suggested they should use the document she and Antony had prepared and take it from there. Leo said he’d read the draft, though he didn’t want to give a lot of feedback on it now as it wasn’t final. One question he’d seen was about whether the tools/operating system should be hosted by the RIPE NCC or hosted externally. His personal feeling was that if he was making a report, he’d prefer it was hosted by the RIPE NCC and subject to some kind of technical audit rather than hosted by someone else who, while well-meaning, might not be as capable. Antony said here they had been thinking that if it was maintained by their IT department, then they would have some kind of access to the system and thus the reports themselves. The question was whether the community preferred for this to be hosted by a third party or if it was happy including their IT department within the “circle of trust” for this system. Athina added that if something happened within the community, their IT team would often be present at the meeting and would know community members. Perhaps this could make people feel uncomfortable, especially if they were present at the meeting. Leo said the fact that someone had super user access to a system did not mean they were constantly browsing through it. He thought a sophisticated organisation like the RIPE NCC could have logging to show if someone was reading the cases, and if there wasn’t a legitimate reason for them to do so, it could be a career-limiting move. Personally, he trusted the RIPE NCC to set things up appropriately. If they used a third party, they would need a lot of contracts or independent auditing to create some level of trust, or they just needed to hope that they were trustworthy. He thought the cost of generating that trust via the RIPE NCC was lower, though others might see that differently. Brian said this problem was inevitable and there were ways to mitigate these risks. He trusted the RIPE NCC and assumed it had contracts with its employees that could cover these things, and he liked that things like GDPR applied to the RIPE NCC. Leo said perhaps the RIPE NCC could do a brief presentation to show how the system was hosted and explain the controls they had in place – being open and transparent about it could support trust and allow people to raise any concerns. Athina said that was a good suggestion. *5. BoF* Leo said he had shared his slides and gotten some feedback from the RIPE Chair Team. They had suggested the BoF could gather feedback on the process steps and the CoC Team (including what would be required from volunteers and whether they would need to undergo training). Another aspect was making sure that they found the right balance between something that was fair but workable, including having some sort of appeals process. Feedback on this would be useful and could help with the next part of their work. They had also suggested finding a neutral party to chair the BoF, and had suggested Olaf Kolkman. Leo asked if the group had any thoughts on this. Brian said that all sounded good. He agreed especially with the idea of having a neutral chair for the session. From previous experience, even if the moderator remained neutral, as a member of the TF it became oppositional by nature. A neutral party sounded like a good idea. Leo said this wouldn’t be someone who was trying to progress the work and wouldn’t have an interest in moving things in a particular direction. He thought it might be good to just be able to get out his pen and take notes. He said he would ask Olaf to see if he was available. *Action: Leo to ask Olaf if he can chair BoF at RIPE 82* Leo added that they had received a request from the RIPE NCC for an agenda. He said he would share something on the list and hopefully they would agree on that by the end of next week so he could pass it to the meeting team. The updated BoF slides would essentially form the agenda. *6. Actions* *Action: Brian to draft discussion document on cooperation between the CoC Team and WG Chairs** ** **Action: Leo to draft BoF slides/create agenda** **** **Action: Leo to merge some of the examples in the CoC to make the document shorter** ** **Action: Leo to ask Olaf if he can chair BoF at RIPE 82*

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Updated draft for review
by Leo Vegoda 28 May '21

28 May '21

Dear TF, I have updated our working draft <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iXJan95dPTOrM9TduPmhXA-rd5Bk625EtMUEzcV…> based on today's meeting. Our goal is to agree on an updated draft in mid-June, so the RIPE NCC can publish it before July. Please review the draft and either leave comments there or send a message with anything to be discussed. Many thanks, Leo

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Draft agenda for upcoming meeting
by Leo Vegoda 23 May '21

23 May '21

Dear TF, I have drafted an agenda for our meeting this Friday. Please share suggestions for changes to the agenda if you have any. Thanks, Leo Title Who What Time Outcome Minutes TF Review the draft minutes of the last two meetings. Identify any changes. Finalize. 5 mins Minutes Agenda TF Review agenda and adjust as needed. 5 mins Agenda Actions All Review status of actions from the previous meeting: - (Ongoing) RIPE NCC to review reporting requirements to inform a process of improvements to the CoC (likely tooling and legal analysis). - (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 - (Ongoing) TF to think about the appropriate level of process to allow further improvements to the CoC. - Leo to draft slides for BoF (see agenda item below) - TF to review Mailing List Guidelines for RIPE Working Group Chairs <https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/wg/wg-chairs/mailing-list-guidelines-…> 10 mins Status BoF All Share thoughts on what we heard at RIPE 82 BoF 15 mins Discuss Updated CoC doc All Review updated document <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iXJan95dPTOrM9TduPmhXA-rd5Bk625EtMUEzcV…> and agree where to keep or make further changes 15 mins Decide AOB All Any other business 5 mins - Actions NCC Review actions agreed during the meeting 5 mins Action list

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Draft slides for RIPE Community Plenary
by Leo Vegoda 20 May '21

20 May '21

Hi, I have drafted and attached slides for the RIPE Community Plenary on Friday. Please let me know if you'd like changes by the end of Thursday, so I can get them ready in good time for Friday morning's session. Slide #6 has the feedback. 150+ people attended - The team should have more than 3 people to be diverse and resilient - We do not need to reinvent the wheel and can learn from other communities - Support for structured continuous improvement I've also included the address for our list and the RIPE Discussion List on the last slide, so people know how they can contact us and where they can discuss further. I'll try and remember to remind people that the coc-tf(a)ripe.net archive is already public, so they shouldn't send anything confidential there. Kind regards, Leo

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Fw: [diversity] Some examples from other communities about the procedures of the CoC-Teams
by Brian Nisbet 18 May '21

18 May '21

Forwarding with Vesna's permission. Brian Nisbet (he/him) 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(a)heanet.ie www.heanet.ie Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270 ________________________________ From: diversity <diversity-bounces(a)ripe.net> on behalf of Vesna Manojlovic <BECHA(a)ripe.net> Sent: Tuesday 18 May 2021 17:12 To: diversity(a)ripe.net <diversity(a)ripe.net> Subject: [diversity] Some examples from other communities about the procedures of the CoC-Teams CAUTION[External]: This email originated from outside of the organisation. Do not click on links or open the attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe. Here are some examples: Cultural Catalyst Lab (attached) TechInc hackerspace https://wiki.techinc.nl/Dispute_Procedure IETF (please find a link yourself) CCC (please find a link yourself) Another kind of example: Debian https://people.debian.org/~enrico/dcg/ch04s07.html#meta-links-cr And let's look at all the examples provided on this list, mostly by Sasha Romijn. Vesna

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RIPE 82 Code of Conduct TF BoF
by Leo Vegoda 12 May '21

12 May '21

Hi, Earlier today, Olaf and Denesh spoke. Olaf has agreed to chair the BoF, which is great news. We can use the BoF as a way to gather input from the community on the next steps of the CoC TF's work. We also need to let people know that the draft document we published is being updated and a new version will be shared soon. I have drafted the message below. I'd like to send a message along these lines to the RIPE Discussion List by Thursday. It does several things: 1. Lets people know when we plan to share the next version of the draft CoC document 2. Lets people know who will make the decision on consensus 3. Sets out the questions we'll be asking at the BoF and guides them to the slides I'd appreciate thoughts on the draft. Thanks, Leo To: RIPE Discussion List Subject: Questions to discuss at RIPE 82 Code of Conduct BoF Dear RIPE community, I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to our recent discussion on the draft RIPE Code of Conduct (CoC). We are using the input to update the draft. We plan to publish an updated version by the end of June. The RIPE Chair will decide if there is a consensus on that version. At next week's BoF, to be chaired by Olaf Kolkman, we want to gather your input on the other two items in our charter. We want your input on three key questions: - What kind of team is needed? - How should we balance process and speed? - What kind of process will be required to update the CoC or its processes? You can see the full set of questions in our slide deck: https://ripe82.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/3-Code-of-Conduct-… Please give these issues some thought ahead of time, as we only have an hour and want to cover a lot of ground. Many thanks, Leo Vegoda on behalf of the Code of Conduct TF

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Draft agenda for upcoming meeting
by Leo Vegoda 09 May '21

09 May '21

Hi, We have a meeting coming up on this Friday, 14 May. Here's a draft agenda for the meeting. Please suggest changes if you need any. Please note the link to the slides below is from the meeting website. I have now uploaded them and would like to draw people's attention to them this week so people have the opportunity to come to the BoF with considered views. Thanks, Leo Title Who What Time Outcome Minutes TF Review the draft minutes of the last two meetings. Identify any changes. Finalize. 5 mins Minutes Agenda TF Review agenda and adjust as needed. 5 mins Agenda Actions All Review status of actions from the previous meeting: - (Ongoing) RIPE NCC to review reporting requirements to inform a process of improvements to the CoC (likely tooling and legal analysis). - (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 - (Ongoing) TF to think about the appropriate level of process to allow further improvements to the CoC. - Leo to draft slides for BoF (see agenda item below) - TF to review Mailing List Guidelines for RIPE Working Group Chairs <https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/wg/wg-chairs/mailing-list-guidelines-…> 10 mins Status BoF All Review uploaded slides <https://ripe82.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/3-Code-of-Conduct-…> and make any final changes 15 mins Decide Updated CoC doc All Review updated document <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iXJan95dPTOrM9TduPmhXA-rd5Bk625EtMUEzcV…> and agree where to keep or make further changes 15 mins Decide AOB All Any other business 5 mins - Actions NCC Review actions agreed during the meeting 5 mins Action list

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Draft Agenda for BoF
by Leo Vegoda 04 May '21

04 May '21

Hi, I hope that everyone who got a May Day holiday was able to enjoy it. I updated the draft slides I shared with you on Friday last week. I have a request from the RIPE NCC to submit the final agenda. I’d be most grateful if you could review the draft slides over the next day and either give a +1 or propose an improvement. Many thanks, — Leo on 📱

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Draft Minutes - Code of Conduct TF: Eleventh Call
by Antony Gollan 30 Apr '21

30 Apr '21

Dear TF members, Here are the minutes from our last call. Cheers Ant * * **** * *Draft Minutes – CoC TF Eleventh Call* 23 April 2021, 16:30 (UTC+1) *Present:* Denesh Bhabuta, Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Brian Nisbet, Leo Vegoda *Summary: *The TF discussed how the (future) CoC Team would interact with the WG Chairs. This would best be seen as an ongoing relationship supported by regular communication rather than something defined by strict rules. As part of this, it was noted that the CoC Team should operate on the basis of reports, rather than proactively policing community discussions. The TF discussed how to respond to feedback objecting on the basis that this led down the path of socialism. It was agreed that this should be referred to the RIPE Chair team as it was out of scope for the TF. The TF discussed feedback from the community on its draft CoC (v4), noting that some people wanted more detail and examples while others preferred a focus on general principles. The tension between these points will be discussed in a BoF with the community at RIPE 82. The current draft also stated that the PCs of regional communities such as MENOG, ENOG and SEE would determine whether/how the CoC was implemented in their communities. It was agreed that no one appeared to want this, and so there should be a single CoC for all meetings organised by the RIPE NCC (perhaps with some implementation differences, such as local/regional CoC Teams). *1. Minutes* The minutes from the previous meeting were approved without changes. *2. Agenda* Leo noted that he had added an item to the agenda regarding an email they had received on the CoC Task Force mailing list the day before and how they should respond. *3. Actions* *- RIPE NCC to review reporting requirements to inform a process of improvements to the CoC (likely tooling and legal analysis).* Antony said he and Athina had been looking at this. They had thought about the steps that would need to happen (report made, CoC Team informed, report archived, etc.) and then listed the legal considerations for each step (who can access reports, GDPR considerations, etc.) They had then tried to anticipate what would be needed in terms of implementation. Once the document was ready, they could share this with the group for feedback before approaching their technical colleagues within the RIPE NCC to get input from them. *- TF to think about how the CoC Team and WG Chairs would work together to manage discussions on MLs. * Leo noted that Mirjam had shared some guidance on this recently and asked if everyone had read this. Brian said he’d talked to Mirjam about this. He thought it needed to be the case that the CoC Team shouldn’t be able to order the WG Chairs around. At the same time, the WG Chairs should not be able to ignore the CoC Team. It needed to be about cooperation. Leo said this probably needed more thought. He thought this would be a relationship that would need to be sustained. Denesh asked if there could be something to support an ongoing dialogue between the CoC Team and the WG Chairs (perhaps a mailing list or a chat channel). That way, if something came up on the lists, the CoC Team could raise the issue with the relevant WG chairs before it became an issue. Brian said he was all for more communication between the two groups, but he didn’t think they should set an expectation that the CoC Team would be proactively looking for issues – it should operate on the basis of reports. However, he agreed that it would be a relationship and there would need to be a dialogue. The chairs couldn’t take a “My WG – my rules” approach. He wanted to be careful to ensure they didn’t create a strict set of rules for this, as it was better to have a loose and ongoing relationship that was maintained by both sides. Denesh agreed and thought this was why they might want a real-time channel, as it would allow an agreement to be reached much quicker. Leo said he did like the idea of WG chairs having the ability to ask questions from other people to get broader input. Having someone they could trust to look out for the community’s best interest would be helpful, and having some kind of tooling along these lines would be good. He added that this could use some more thought, and so he would keep it on the agenda for the next meeting. It could also roll back into the tooling action item above. Brian suggested (possibly after RIPE 82), they might want to have a group call with the RIPE Chair Team before they started handing things over to a CoC Team. Leo said it would be good to have that on the agenda for their next discussion with the RIPE Chair Team. He added that when Denesh and he had met them last time, they discussed that as the TF was quite small, they were happy to meet with the entire TF (the only reason not to do this was in terms of the coordination of diaries). *- TF to think about the appropriate level of process that would allow improvements to the CoC. * Leo said they needed to get the balance right between formal/informal. If they wanted to repeat the current [TF] process to make future improvements to the CoC, it would take quite a lot of time. On the other hand, if an alternative approach was too lightweight, it might be easier to make mistakes. Brian said he thought they should approve three documents and then the TF should disband. They would then have a CoC Team, and these would be the best people to drive the process. Maybe there would be a need for a future TF if that process broke down, or if huge changes were needed, but otherwise he thought it should be that team that was responsible for this. He thought their work as a TF was going well – but it had also gone very slowly. There were valid reasons for this – it was the nature of the RIPE community and the various legal and other interests involved. Leo said he shared Brian’s understanding that the TF would disband at the completion of their third document. His intention was that they provide some level of guidance in their documents on how to update those documents. If they didn’t provide some guidance on the process, it could become chaotic, and that would not be to anyone’s advantage. He thought they should give this some thought and so he would carry over this action item. * **- TF to think about their schedules between April/June and consider changing call times. This can be coordinated via the ML to allow a new schedule before April.* Leo said they had meetings booked until the end of June, so they could close this item. *4. Feedback* *- Responding to Rolf* Leo said he had two questions: 1) whether Rolf’s request was within their scope, and 2) what they should do. He thought Rolf was talking about RIPE rather than the RIPE NCC (as in his email) and he noted that it he addressed his email to the Diversity TF. He noted that Rolf said he wanted them to move away from socialist ideas and adopt an apolitical stance. He found it difficult to think about how to reply to the email. He read it as: “I don’t like what you’re doing, so please don’t do it.” Denesh said the way he read it, it seemed like he was protesting change – i.e. “This is how things used to be, they worked well – so why change?” He agreed that this was out of their scope, and it should go to the RIPE Chair Team. He didn’t understand the political aspect that Rolf was talking about, he assumed he was concerned with political correctness, but it wasn’t about that – it was about the community addressing issues. Brian said he’d seen a lot of this reactionary stuff in response to diversity and inclusion efforts that assumed all of this led to Soviet Russia. He was actually surprised they hadn’t gotten more of this, but agreed this wasn’t for the TF to deal with. Leo said he would ask Mirjam and Niall to handle this, as he didn’t think it was within their scope – especially since it addressed the Diversity TF and they couldn’t have impact on the charter of another TF. *- Tension between calls for additional details in lists and calls for less detail with greater focus on general guiding principles* Leo said there were two items he had pulled out for discussion. The first was the tension between the request for more specific details on one side, and those who wanted less detail and more focus on general principles on the other. To give examples, it seemed Jordi wanted a lot more detail, while Randy wanted less detail and more focus on principles. They could go with one approach or the other – otherwise they could make slight adjustments and stick with the balance they currently had. Denesh said they would always get a pull between these two perspectives. They had started with general principles and a small list, but had added more detail to avoid ambiguity. And now people wanted both more and less detail. He thought they would never resolve this completely. Brian agreed with Denesh. He was on Randy’s side on this and thought it was not possible to please everyone. As a community of engineers, they were liable to ask why they couldn’t map a specific example against the document. It was impossible to cover everything, and the more precise they got, the more likely it was that people could argue that something not explicitly identified in the CoC was allowed. He thought they should continue as they were. Leo asked Athina if there were advantages or disadvantages with either approach from an implementation and enforcement perspective. Athina said if they could agree on certain negative behaviours that were unacceptable, there was no harm in providing a non-exhaustive list. It was impossible to provide a full list. Even in legal codes, you had general principles and some general rules, and you tried to make these as broad as possible to fit specific situations. It was perfectly acceptable to provide a non-exhaustive list. They could look at some of the feedback and see if there were any points that were valid and created a new principle that they should include. She suggested they could make a table with a list of the points made and for each item say why they thought the draft should be amended (or not). Leo said he was on the side of general principles. Even though they had tried to be careful with their language to make it clear that these were non-exhaustive lists, they could give the wording more attention when they reviewed the draft. Leo noted that their BoF at RIPE 82 had been approved. He said he could draft some slides for this with some alternatives and they could use this to get feedback from the community. Action: Leo to draft slides for RIPE 82 BoF to support discussion with the community on the balance between precise definitions vs general principles. *- CoC TF and ENOG, MENOG, and SEE.* Leo asked if there was any view within the RIPE NCC on this. Antony said what he and Athina had originally intended was not necessarily to say that the PCs of these communities had any role “as PCs”, but as representatives of their communities that they could easily contact and have a discussion with. Thinking of the mailing lists for these communities, it was unlikely that a mail sent there would get a response, for example. He understood that at least one of these PCs had indicated they weren’t interested in speaking on behalf of their community in this way. Leo said he understood they had been using “PC” as a stand-in for “independently organised.” In his discussions with the RIPE Chair Team, he understood that the RIPE NCC was the organiser of the meetings for these communities. When they had started discussing this as a TF, they hadn’t properly understood what the organisational status of these communities was. He thought they needed clarity on this – whether they were separate communities or activities of the RIPE community that were organised by the RIPE NCC. Athina said she thought they should clarify whether they were talking about whether these communities would “adopt” the RIPE CoC or whether they were talking about how they would implement the CoC. For example, the same CoC might be implemented, but with different regional CoC Teams making any determinations. She understood they were talking about the latter case. Brian said the message they’d gotten from the community (that was paying attention and engaging on the topic) was that they didn’t understand why the TF was asking the question. With the RIPE Chair Team and the RIPE NCC Managing Director seemingly behind the idea of a single CoC for all of RIPE, it seemed they should be able to do this. He’d prefer they had one CoC that was implemented by regional CoC Teams, and if communities wanted logistical support or funding from the RIPE NCC, they would need to abide by it. Leo said one of the advantages of the approach they’d taken was that they’d asked and no one had requested that the CoC not apply to their community. Because they hadn’t received this feedback, if they now changed the wording to something along the lines of “Wherever there is a RIPE NCC event that is not a RIPE Meeting, it will use this CoC unless there is another CoC that provides a viable alternative.” This made it an implementation problem. He was thinking about this from a volunteer perspective – if they had this being used for all of the various RIPE NCC meetings (including the various governmental meetings as well as regional meetings), that might create quite a burden on a single CoC Team. But if they’d moved from “Are we going to do this?” to “How are we going to do this? – then that was process. Based on the nodding heads on the call, he said that the agreement was that the CoC would apply to all events organised by the RIPE NCC and they would next need to think about how this would work. Brian said if they updated the text, they might need to consider specifying who made the decision (about how/whether the CoC was implemented). Leo said he was thinking the approach could be to say that the CoC applied unless there was another CoC that was just as good. He was thinking in terms of various financial regulations that allowed an equivalent regulator in another country to act as a substitute for the one in the home country. Brian asked who decided whether an alternative CoC was just as good. Leo said that was an implementation question. There were people within the RIPE NCC who might be able to look at this. As they would be the ones organising the event, perhaps it would be preferable for them to assess this. He asked Athina if he had just dumped something big on them. Athina asked who they (the RIPE NCC) were to impose the CoC on another community? Leo said as long as they weren’t aware of an alternative CoC, he didn’t think they should worry about it at this stage. Athina agreed and added that it would be good to have this clarify in the scope. Leo said they would have some time to agree on the wording. *5. AoB* Brian noted that in another community they were currently dealing with the weaponisation of a CoC. This essentially came down to someone claiming another person had used insulting language against them. They were right, but this had been in reaction to threatening communication from the person making the complaint. He was mentioning this because in their CoC, they talked about aggressive communication and being accepting of disagreement. He thought this was right, but they needed to consider what happened if someone reacted to another person who broke the CoC with language or behvaiour that itself broke the CoC. Leo said this was about making it clear that they should rely more on principles than lists of behaviour, and making it clear that they were relying on the CoC Team to use its good sense. Brian said he was aware of some good wording from another source and he would share it with the group. Brian noted that the BoF at RIPE 82 would require strong moderation, as people could start ratholing. People would need to be able to voice their opinion, but it would be important to keep the session on track. Leo said he thought they were right, and they would need to plan this correctly. *6. Action Items* *Action: TF to review ML guidance from Mirjam ** **Action: TF to think about implementing a method for WG chairs could get advice about implementing the CoC in their WG** **Action: Leo to draft slides for RIPE 82 BoF to support discussion with the community on the balance between precise definitions vs gen*eral principles *Action: Leo to include an updated agenda to ensure a correct balance between communicating and listening from the community*

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