Dear TF members,

Here is the third set of minutes.

Cheers

Ant

***

Draft Minutes - Code of Conduct TF: Tenth Call

5 March 2021, 16:30-17:30 (UTC+1)

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

Summary: The TF discussed whether it would have time to get its draft CoC in place before the upcoming RIPE 82 meeting (assuming the community’s feedback was positive). It agreed that it was best to wait for a future meeting, once the process and CoC Team was ready. The TF discussed the content of its update at RIPE 82, noting that it would not want to invite feedback on the updated CoC if it had already been agreed by then. The process elements it thought they would want feedback on included how the WG Chairs and the RIPE CoC Team would work together, how the CoC could be updated in the future, and a framework for the CoC Team to report back to the community.

1. Minutes

Leo said they could approve these on the next call.

2. Agenda

Leo said he had added an agenda item to discuss the upcoming RIPE 82 meeting.

There were no further changes.

3. Actions

- RIPE NCC to prepare draft CoC for publication

Leo said their draft had been sent to the list and they were now receiving feedback.

- Leo to check with RIPE Chair Team to see if they are willing to accept anonymous feedback

Leo said they had done this and updated the relevant text in their announcement.

4. Timeline

Leo said it would obviously depend on the community’s feedback, but he was wondering if it would be possible to have their CoC in place for RIPE 82. He asked if the RIPE NCC could walk them through what was involved.

Antony said he’d checked with Martina and all that was needed was an update to the RIPE Meeting terms on ripe.net and the RIPE CoC on the RIPE Meeting website. This was very straightforward and could be done almost immediately. That was assuming there were no legal complications.

Athina said the existing CoC was not part of the terms and conditions; this was partly because the current terms were stronger than the CoC. For example, the RIPE NCC already had the right to remove attendees from the meeting. If they had a new CoC, they would have to review the terms to ensure they were compatible.

Antony asked if this might be a case of simply adding a line that attendees agreed to adhere to the CoC.

Athina agreed. 

Brian said he would like to see that, and he assumed the RIPE NCC could change its terms and conditions relatively quickly. His concern was if their draft brought in elements of process that they were not yet ready to deal with. For example, their current draft said that processes and the CoC Team were covered in separate documents that were not yet ready.

Athina said they could have the CoC for the upcoming meeting as something that didn’t have any teeth. The teeth would be in the existing provisions of the meeting terms and conditions.

Denesh asked if they would have enough time from when registration opened.

Antony said he had checked that – if they allowed one month for community comments on the draft, that would leave one week for implementation. Martina had said that was plenty of time, given there wasn’t much needed.

Antony said that as they already had a RIPE CoC, he was wondering if they really needed to touch the terms and conditions at all. Perhaps they could simply swap the existing CoC for their updated one (once accepted). They could then make changes to the meeting terms ahead of a future meeting once they had the other elements ready.

Athina said what they had at the moment was a very short CoC and a review team (Trusted Contacts). If they updated this, did it mean the Trusted Contacts were responsible for handling complaints in the context of the new CoC? If so, perhaps it was better to wait until they had the new system in place.

Denesh agreed with Athina. 

Brian said he was torn – on the one hand, this had already taken much longer than he would’ve liked. However, he also didn’t want to stumble at the final hurdle. He didn’t want to get this into place and then have people point out that they had no way to process reports and make it work. The whole point of the process was to make people feel safe to attend RIPE Meetings, and he didn’t want the Trusted Contacts to be confronted with a much bigger document. He thought it was more important to get this right for their next physical meeting, and to be proactive about telling people that this was what they were trying to do here.

5. RIPE 82

Leo said it would be good to get clear on what they wanted from the RIPE community at RIPE 82, and what they wanted to say. There was both a communication and a listening component to this. They also needed to think about how much time to allow. If they wanted a discussion, they would need a meaningful amount of time for this.

Denesh thought at RIPE 82, they should focus on what the RIPE CoC was going to be. They wouldn’t be able to ask for feedback, as the comment period would already be finished by then. So they would need to focus on saying that this was the CoC that would be coming into place, and they would now be working on the process document.

Antony said it might be difficult to fill an entire plenary slot with that. He wondered if it would be better to do a lightning talk, and then have a wider discussion about how they were approaching processes in a BoF.

Denesh suggested that they do something more like a Brian and Sasha did in Rotterdam.

Brian said he agreed with Denesh – they didn’t want to say that this was their proposed CoC. That should be done by RIPE 82 (assuming everything went well). They could say that this was the CoC, encourage everyone to read it, and hopefully they would have published the other process documents and could ask for feedback on these. It was important to allow people to give feedback, but they shouldn’t reopen discussion on the CoC itself.

Denesh said he was thinking in terms of a quick summary of where they were at, and what they were looking for.

Athina said they might have some specific questions by the RIPE Meeting and could get some answers there.

Leo said one thing Salam had talked about on a previous call was how they applied the CoC to WG mailing lists. This might be something the community could give input on – whether this was handled exclusively by the CoC Team, or if they thought the WG Chair should take the lead here. He asked if there were other questions people could think of and if this might affect how they would work – for example whether they should work on the process ahead of the CoC Team document.

Athina said more questions would probably emerge as they worked on the documents.

Brian said the WG chairs were a key part of the conversation. However, they were not the rulers of their WGs – the community was – and so the chairs had to be guided by that. They should be able to ask the community those kinds of questions without having to seek the full agreement of the WG chairs.

Leo said he definitely didn’t think they should be asking for permission to ask questions.

Brian agreed but said there might be some who thought the chairs should be asking their WGs for input. But it was important to be clear that they were asking the RIPE plenary, which was the correct way to do it.

Leo said sharing something that had been properly considered was important. They would only have so much time, so it would be good to share their question along with their thinking/rationale. The community could then suggest things they might not have considered.

Leo said he was hearing that they should be thinking of the process element ahead of the composition of the CoC Team. And they were thinking of process elements especially in terms of WG mailing lists, and they might need an element about updating the CoC itself. It seemed that the process they were currently in was quite heavy. Expecting the community to go through the same TF process for future updates might be a bit much; they might need a timelier method for future updates.

Brian agreed. He thought that once they had a CoC Team, that group would likely be the kind of people that cared about the CoC and would have ideas for improvements. They would also likely encounter issues where things needed to change based on experience.

Leo said that to some extent, if they were going to use input from the CoC Team, they would need some kind of reporting framework. They would need to ensure there was a solid factual basis for improvements. He also thought this would need some attention from Athina, to ensure they handled this information sensitively.

Leo summarised and said he had noted that at RIPE 82 they would be telling people that this was basically the new RIPE CoC and they were now working on the implementation. They were now interested in hearing from the community how it should be implemented and had specific questions that they needed feedback on. These included: 1) how the WG chairs work with the RIPE CoC Team to ensure mailing list discussion is appropriate, 2) how to update the CoC in light of the CoC Team’s experience, on the basis of 3) a transparent reporting framework that has undergone the appropriate legal review.

Leo said these were three agenda items for upcoming meetings that would need a lot of thought. The reporting framework would need some input from the RIPE NCC on tools and legal aspects. He didn’t know how much time and effort that would take, it would require Athina and Antony to check internally and come back with a timeframe for a proposal. All of them would need to think of the other two items.

Antony asked if there would need to be some degree of separation when it came to the CoC Team proposing changes to the CoC.

Brian said he didn’t think the CoC Team should be able to make changes unilaterally with no room for comment – that certainly wasn’t a very “RIPE” approach. But he did want them to be engaged and interested in making changes to the CoC.

Leo said he imagined those proposals would need to be reviewed, discussed and approved by the RIPE community. But that process also shouldn’t be so complicated and make it too difficult to reach a consensus that important changes were held back.

Brian clarified that the CoC Team shouldn’t be in any privileged position; they should essentially be like regular community members in this process. But he thought they would likely be the type of people who were engaged and interested in improving the CoC.

Antony asked if they could think about this in connection with any reporting requirements the group might have. So, for example, if the CoC Team reported back every two RIPE Meetings (or whatever) on how implementing the CoC was working – they could combine this with highlighting any issues with the CoC itself. The community could then run with this.

Leo asked if he was thinking in terms of sharing PDP experience.

Antony said what had made him think of that was something he’d seen relating to their yearly transparency report where they shared the number of LEA requests they had received. He imagined if there was an expectation that the CoC Team would report back on a periodic basis, then you already had a defined space (and an associated habit) where they could also share any issues relating to the CoC. This might avoid the CoC Team having to reinvent the wheel in terms of considering how to raise a potential change with the community.

Athina said there was an analogy with the RIPE NCC’s Arbiters Panel. At every RIPE Meeting they had a meeting with themselves where they shared experiences, and every year they had a larger meeting where they asked for legal advice and came up with suggestions for improvements to the process. Of course, in the Articles of Association, this process was quite defined. The Executive Board then decided if the proposed changes should be implemented and this was brought to the RIPE NCC General Meeting for a vote. She thought they could come up with some kind of structure that was similar.

Leo said they didn’t need to come to a conclusion on this call.

6. AOB  

Denesh said he wanted to raise one procedural point: if any TF members responded to feedback on the mailing list, they should consider that this might be seen as speaking on behalf of the entire TF. They should therefore make it clear that any comments were made on an individual basis. Any responses on behalf of the TF should be agreed with the rest of the group first.

Leo also said that if they wanted to respond early in the discussion period, it might seem like they were trying to shut down discussion. If they wanted to respond, they might consider doing so off-list, to avoid creating this impression.

Denesh asked if that meant they should try to refrain from responding on the list.

Leo said they should act as individuals based on what they thought was best. But it was just something they should be aware of – in terms of how others might interpret this.

Denesh also noted that a comment on the list made him think of a common notion that people often shared – which he thought of as “those were different times.” The idea was that things hadn’t been such a problem in the past because “those were different times.” But that was largely because back then, people hadn’t raised the issue or come forward. He thought they should think of a response to this point when it was raised, not necessarily something combative, but just to note that people now thought these problems needed to be addressed.

Athina noted that the RIPE NCC Executive Board had asked the Executive Board Elections Task Force to act as the CoC Team for the upcoming elections. Many of the TF members had agreed and this would be announced soon. This meant they had a CoC and CoC Team for this that was totally independent from the CoC TF’s work. 

Leo asked if this was something they should mention in their RIPE 82 update.

Athina said the RIPE NCC would be publishing information about this ahead of the GM, so there was no need.

Brian said he didn’t think this was something they needed to comment on. He thought they should keep the two processes as separate as possible.

Antony asked if he should let any emails sent to the TF mailing list through moderation or if he should hold these in future.

Leo said the list was publicly archived and they had communicated this. He preferred they err on the side of letting things through rather than stopping them.

7. Actions

Action: RIPE NCC to review reporting requirements to inform a process of improvements to the CoC (likely tooling and legal analysis).

Action: TF to think about how the CoC Team and the WG Chairs would work together to manage discussions on mailing lists.

Action: TF to think about the appropriate level of process to allow further improvements to the CoC.

Action: 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.

End of call.