Dear TF members,

Sorry for the delay here. Below are the mintes from our last call.

As always, corrections welcome.

Cheers

Ant

***

Draft Minutes - Code of Conduct TF: Fifth Call
4 December 2020, 16:30-17:30 (UTC+1)

Present:
Denesh Bhabuta, Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Brian Nisbet, Leo Vegoda, Salam Yamout

Summary:
The TF reviewed feedback from the Trusted Contacts on the reports it has received. The group noted that the CoC should make it clear that discussion/mediation was the ideal outcome. At the same time, the community needed something for cases where this wouldn’t be enough. The group agreed that data handling information should be covered in the CoC  documents rather than referenced separately. The group discussed feedback from the RIPE Chair Team on the role of a future CoC Team within RIPE NCC Executive Board Elections. This is not an absolute requirement and it might be that another group performs this role. There was some discussion on scope, and it was noted that this would always be a complicated issue in terms of corner cases. The TF agreed to review and make comments on the draft first document, and to then decide whether this was ready to share with the community.

1.     Minutes

The draft minutes from the previous call were accepted without changes.

2.     Agenda

Leo noted that he had updated the agenda slightly from what he had sent to the list. There were no further changes suggested by the group.

3.     Actions

-       RIPE NCC to request statistical information from trusted contacts

Antony shared some statistics with the group, sorted by year. In total, the Trusted Contacts had received eight reports since 2018; all relating to behaviour during RIPE Meetings. Of these, three involved mailing list behaviour, three involved offensive comments at RIPE Meetings, one involved social media content, and one involved behaviour alongside the meeting venue.  

Antony said there was no formal record-keeping (mainly due to privacy concerns) and so things became hazy further back than this. He referenced a couple of other cases he knew of. He noted that this excluded one person who had recently caused a lot of disruption on the mailing lists for an extended period.

In terms of estimated workload, the Trusted Contacts had said this was difficult to answer. This was because their role was different from what they hoped the role of a future CoC Team would be. The current Trusted Contacts had received training on how to comfort people who were in distress and were there to provide advice. They did not conduct investigations or perform interviews, which was something they thought the CoC Team would probably do. The Trusted Contacts had also noted a lack of clarity around roles often made things complicated – it was sometimes unclear if it was the Trusted Contacts, WG Chairs, or other parties who should be responsible for dealing with inappropriate behaviour.

Leo said one thing that came through clearly was that there was a distinction between formal and informal reports. This was something they might want to look at later in the process when they considered things like record-keeping and tools.

Athina said this also highlighted a lack of structure around the CoC, as the Trusted Contacts didn’t have something to base their actions on. This was something that could be addressed. Another thing she noticed was that in some cases there had been a discussion as a result of the report. She thought this was a good solution. The CoC Team didn’t have to default to a legalistic approach; it could also be a mediator and seek to resolve misunderstandings by bringing people together.

Denesh agreed with Athina and related back to his point from an earlier call – if they were going to be prescriptive, they would have to be careful to define the terms they used. Terms like “acceptable behaviour” and “respect” could be subjective depending on someone’s background.

Brian said any CoC Team should seek to mediate first. This was the core piece and they needed to this make clear to the community. In many cases, people could talk with one another and reach an agreement. But the other side was that they were also seeking something that went beyond mediation, for cases where this was needed. He added that they needed to be careful with the cultural element, because people could often use this as an excuse, and there was a line.

Salam said she agreed with these comments. She wanted to differentiate between the CoC, which could address elements of what Athina had spoken about, and other awareness or educational efforts that were separate from the CoC but could promote understanding around what good behaviour was. She wasn’t sure if this was something for the Diversity TF or the CoC TF to look at.

Salam said she wanted to know more about how much time it was taking the Trusted Contacts to serve in their roles right now.

Antony said he understood this was what they were after and had approached the Trusted Contacts with this in mind. However, they had found it hard to give an answer – as it could vary depending on the cases that were reported. He said he could go back to them again. He noted that much of this was also based on recollection.

Action: RIPE NCC to request more detail from the Trusted Contacts on workload.

Leo said it might be fair to say the workload would be highly variable.

Athina said they saw this with the RIPE NCC Arbiters Panel – some years they had relatively few cases while in others there were a lot. Individual cases could also vary in terms of how much work was required. It was difficult to predict.

-       TF members to review document and provide comments on structure

Leo said everyone had looked at this and made comments, so they could mark it as complete.

-       Leo to put together initial text regarding record-keeping

Leo said he had put together some text on record-keeping. He had also changed the structure of the document into three parts: 1) the CoC itself, 2) process, 3) everything else.

Salam asked if this covered data and record-keeping – this could be a document in itself.

Leo said he wasn’t sure if this should be a RIPE Document or a RIPE NCC procedural document. He had wanted to get this down early, because it mentioned controls and tools and he thought they had a responsibility to give the RIPE NCC as much notice as possible, so it could do some thinking. It would be good to know that the RIPE NCC could look at this closely and identify the controls it thought were necessary along with the tools it proposed they use.

Salam asked if the TF would produce three documents or four, and whether the CoC would link to this process information.

Leo said there would be three documents. The first would be the CoC itself. The second would be the CoC Team – how it was recruited, how big it would be, and so on. The third document would cover how to make a report and how reports were handled.

Salam suggested a fourth document on how the data was handled. She thought this information should be there but didn’t think it should be in the CoC itself.

Brian said he disagreed. The data aspects were spread throughout the process document and there would be many places where this came up. If they had this in a separate document, people might interpret it as simply another GDPR statement and their eyes would glaze over.

Salam said she was fine with having this in the process document, she just didn’t want it in the main CoC document.

Denesh asked if all of the information about data handling should be in a central RIPE NCC procedural document. That way anything about data handling in the process document could simply point there.

Athina said if data was kept for specific CoC-related purposes, it made sense for it to be in the CoC documents. The important part about personal data was the purpose – there was not a unified way of handling data.

Denesh said he was thinking if there was a company-wide document, they could say: “This follows the RIPE NCC’s general GDPR principles, which you can find here.” He imagined they could have a single document with all of these different purposes. That depended on how the RIPE NCC wanted to handle things, of course.

Athina said they had their privacy statement for RIPE NCC services, which followed this logic. However, as the CoC would sit outside of this, she thought it needed to be separate. And while the principles were always the same, they were obliged to repeat them every time.  

-       Leo to ask for RIPE Chair Team’s perspective on CoC/RIPE NCC board elections.

Leo said he could report back on this, as he and Denesh had recently met with the RIPE Chair Team. He also noted that other TF members were welcome to join future calls if they wished.

Regarding the issue of the RIPE CoC and RIPE NCC Executive Board elections, the view of the RIPE Chair team was similar to what Athina had said on their last call: the RIPE NCC Executive Board would use their CoC for its elections, but this would be a separate implementation. There was no requirement that the CoC Team had to play a role in this.

Brian said this was great. He asked if they could therefore say that the RIPE CoC Team would definitely not be used in board elections.

Denesh said he thought they had agreed (on their call with the RIPE Chair Team) that it would in fact be a separate team for this.

Leo said they should make sure to communicate this clearly when they published their draft, as it appeared to be something that some people in the community found concerning.

Athina said they had a board meeting next week, and these concerns would be discussed there. What was currently on the table was to have a CoC for the board elections (nothing more), and the evaluation of possible violations would be done either by the Trusted Contacts or another third party that was agreed-upon before the election process began. Perhaps the CoC Team might feel confident performing this role in the future, so she wondered if it was better to leave this open.

Leo asked if they needed to decide this now. He wondered if they might end up with a similar situation to what they had with the NRO NC / ASO AC where you had the same group of people in separate but overlapping roles.

Brian said what he wanted to avoid was people who were discouraged from joining the CoC Team because they want to stay out of RIPE NCC politics. He wanted them to be clear that this was a group for the RIPE community. If the board later created a group ahead of its election, perhaps the same people might volunteer to join that as well. Perhaps in the future they would end up with a situation where the RIPE NCC needed a handful of people for this role, and there were enough people on the CoC Team willing to step forward, and this became more established over time.

Salam agreed with Brian’s point.

Leo said they would make sure it was clear in their communication that these were separate implementations. So, the same people might volunteer to join the board’s process, but it would be separate from the community’s.

Brian said he was fine with that approach for now. If they got some pushback from community, they might want to take a more explicit step.

Leo said the other thing they had discussed was that they were heading into December and might need to think about communication with the community. The RIPE Chair Team was also concerned that the TF would blur the documents together and so he had updated their draft to clearly mark the three separate documents. He asked the TF to think about how much progress they could make and whether they could share something with the community before the end of the year – either they could share a rough draft along with some leading questions, or they could say that they now expected their first draft to be ready in January.

Brian said he thought the first document (the CoC itself) was in pretty good shape. Certainly, it was enough to share with the community to show where they were. One change he wanted to see was on the list of unacceptable behaviour – he thought this could be a bulleted list instead of a paragraph as it currently was.

Athina liked Brian’s suggestion. One thing she wanted more clarity on was the scope. She expected questions on whether ENOG/MENOG were covered, or RIPE NCC General Meetings. The same with social media – did the CoC apply only if a discussion took place under a RIPE NCC account, or was it by topic? She thought this could use some clarity.  

Denesh said one of his comments in the document was that it should cover everything related to the RIPE community or the RIPE NCC, and so social media was very much a part of it.

Leo said they he wondered if they could have both the RIPE CoC and the RIPE NCC could have its own for the non-RIPE events that it organised. If ENOG was part of RIPE, then the community’s CoC would apply. If it wasn’t, then the RIPE NCC’s CoC could have this as a separate implementation (based on the community’s CoC). The CoC could end up being a best practice document that was picked up by other groups, such as NOGs.

Athina asked about corner cases. She asked what happened if two attendees ran into trouble at an ARIN Meeting and tried to invoke the RIPE CoC.

Brian said every CoC he had ever seen would say this was out of scope. In some cases, they explicitly stated that this only applied to events they were organising. In his own experience, there were cases where they organised events within larger events for PR. Here, they explicitly stated that the wider event’s CoC applied instead of their own. This was especially important as their own CoC Team wouldn’t be present.

Salam said when she reviewed the document, she thought it applied to people present at RIPE Meetings and related activities, as well as mailing lists. Maybe they could include social media, but that was it. She didn’t see what the issue was here.

Athina said that might have been a bad example. She asked what happened if people got into a very heated discussion in a bar near the RIPE Meeting venue.

Salam said they also had to look at existing behaviour. These people were bound together at a time and place due to the RIPE Meeting, but they would often go to a bar across the street. She asked if they needed to worry about this.

Athina said it might be good to have some examples. She offered to come up with a list.

Brian said there would be a lot of corner cases and they would never answer them all. This was where the emphasis on mediation role of the CoC Team would be important. If two people had an argument in a bar, it would probably not end there and might enter the meeting. This is where the CoC Team could help, and it might become a conversation. The question of whether they CoC Team would then ban one of them from attending the meeting might depend on the guidelines they set for the community.

Antony noted that the previous version had used a lot of inconsistent language in terms of “attendees” and “participants” who were “at” the RIPE Meeting – but the CoC obviously applied in a much wider sense, as it also applied to mailing lists and so there was not really a clear start or end.

Leo said they were trying to reach an agreement on what they meant. They would then rely on him to help them with the wording and make that clear. Their charter was for everything RIPE-related – including things like webinars, Mattermost servers, and so on. They wouldn’t get it right the first time, and the CoC would likely need to be updated as people and society changed over time. But they should not let the pursuit of perfection stand in the way and if they produced something that was better than what they had now – then they had achieved some measure of success.

Leo also referred Athina to the questions document they had looked at earlier in the process, which covered some of her points around scope. He encouraged her to make comments or pose additional questions there, as it would be easier if this was all in one place.  

Action: RIPE NCC to provide some examples of corner cases.

Salam asked if Leo could update the table of contents for the draft to match the new structure of the document.

Leo noted that Brian had already said he thought the document was in pretty good shape. He suggested they work on the document online and make any changes or comments, and discuss on the mailing list when they wanted to send this to Antony to turn into a draft they could work on together. He asked the group to do this by next Friday and then on Monday they could have a mailing list discussion on what they wanted to do. He thought they could then decide “go/no-go” at their next meeting.

Action: TF members to review CoC doc and propose changes.

4.     AOB

The group agreed to have its next meeting on Thursday, 17 December at 16:30 (UTC+1).

Leo said he would prepare a draft update for the community.

Brian said he thought they would know if their document was ready to share with the community in about a week’s time. He thought they had some flexibility in Europe around when people would start shutting down for Christmas. His feeling was that around 15 or 16 December would be an okay time to share an update.  

Action: Leo to draft an update for the community

5.     Review Actions

Action: RIPE NCC to request more detail from the Trusted Contacts on workload.

Action: Athina to provide some examples of corner cases.

Action: TF members to review CoC doc and propose changes.

Action: Leo to draft an update for the community.