Dear TF members,

Here are the draft minutes from our first call. Let me know if any corrections are needed.

Cheers

Ant

Draft Minutes - Code of Conduct TF: First Call
1 October 2020, 16:00-17:00 (UTC+2)

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

1. Introductions
Leo asked if the session could be recorded. As any people joining the call would not have given advance permission, it was agreed that this could be clarified ahead of the next call if recordings were required. Antony noted that he was generally able to produce detailed minutes.

There was a round of introductions:

Leo Vegoda, said he had a long background in the industry, starting with the RIPE NCC before moving to ICANN, and he was currently working for Peering DB. He had volunteered to join the task force mostly due to his personal view that people should be treated fairly. However, he also had a more self-interested motive – he thought that if RIPE was unable to ensure it provided an acceptable environment for participants, it would undermine the sustainability of the community.

Brian Nisbet, said he had worked at HEAnet (the Irish NREN) for the past 19-years, and he had been one of the voices pushing for a CoC in the RIPE community. As part of this, he had been part of the Diversity TF.

Denesh said he’d been in the industry since the 90s, and throughout that time, he had been of the opinion that there needed to be more equality in the industry. Of course, people today got where they were due to the help of others in the industry – but over time it seems like those opportunities had disappeared, and nowadays it seemed like there might even be less diversity. He saw the CoC and the Diversity TF as ongoing efforts – but he wanted to see something that helped people to feel included, which was his motivation for joining the TF.

Athina said she was Chief Legal Officer at the RIPE NCC. She had been with the company for 11 years. A big part of her job was to make sure that the RIPE community and the RIPE NCC were strong, so that the wider self-regulatory system could help to defend itself externally against the likes of governments or national authorities that might question its legitimacy. As part of her work in the RIPE Accountability TF, she felt that a diverse community was a strong community, and it was important that people felt included and able to express themselves. Part of this meant a strong code of conduct for the community.

Antony said he’d been with the RIPE NCC for eight years, first as a Communications Officer and currently as Acting Communications Manager. He said a big part of his work in the community, including on the Accountability TF, had been in terms of his writing background – helping to explain things clearly – and this was how he was approaching the CoC TF.

2. Context

Athina noted that the RIPE NCC had only really gotten started with the TF in an official sense since their impact analysis had been published. While some staff members had participated in the Diversity TF, it was important to note that they had done so in an individual capacity.

Brian gave some of the backstory. Around the time of the RIPE 67 in Athens, the RIPE Chair and the RIPE NCC Managing Director had started moving on an initial code of conduct – which was a relatively light “aspirational” statement. The Diversity TF formed later (at RIPE 74) and while they weren’t formed specifically to create a CoC, they thought this was something that could be improved on. They managed to produce a draft document that was heavily drawn from the CoC used by the Python community. However, there was a lot of pushback in terms of the RIPE NCC’s impact analysis and from the community. So Hans Petter eventually proposed that the document be split into three separate parts, as they were now doing via the CoC TF. He thought their task now was to get this across the line, and to make iterations for the most part. He thought was part of the ebbs and flows of getting a CoC in place.

3. Review scope of work

Leo asked if the group thought the TF needed to heavily review the document or if it just needed a bit of spit and polish.

Denesh said the last time he'd looked over the MLs, from memory he thought there was a bit to do with the "crossing the T's and dotting the Is."

Antony said from his review, most of the community’s concerns were really about enforcement and the proposed CoC Team itself.

Brian said there were people for whom the RIPE community was very important – they met twice each year and their old friends/frenemies, etc. and among some of those people there was a fear that they could do something that could cost them their place in the community or have career implications. They felt that the idea that this could happen on the basis of something they didn’t understand was wrong. He added that people might have differing ideas regarding what constituted ‘robust discussion’ and were concerned they might be censored.

Athina said RIPE was a community that was made up of diverse cultures – even within Europe – and some people were worried that the CoC could be used to shut down voices with differing opinions. She added that this was a challenge with codes of conduct in general.

Denesh said Brian said much of this did seem to be about ‘white CIS males’ being concerned that they would be kicked-out, not understanding that people would only be kicked out at the end of a very long road. He asked if they were asking the younger generation what they thought about the meeting – perhaps they should be seeking wider feedback. In addition to that, they were no longer doing physical meetings, and increased virtual aspects made this much wider than their service region.

Leo tried to summarise: he was thinking there was pushback from people who were concerned they might be accused of unacceptable behaviour and would be punished in ways that affected their career. When he read through this, he saw a mismatch between what the RIPE community was trying to achieve, and what the draft CoC said. The RIPE Meeting was about consensus, but he didn't see anything in there about having some kind of mediation or an ombudsman to attempt some form of mediation. If this was like the wider legal system, the police wouldn't be the ones responsible convicting the person they capture, but all of this seemed to be bundled together in the document. He also thought there were implementation details to look at in terms of what the RIPE NCC could do to educate people.

Brian agreed on the first part – separation of processes was the right approach for the community. The one thing that he would say was that if they talked about a five-day RIPE Meeting, they needed to be very careful about something like an ombudsman process. People kept comparing the CoC to a legal process, but it wasn't. In the case of a RIPE Meeting, it was a five-day event – and while a formal investigation was being conducted, the person would remain at the meeting. He added that at various points he’d seen people try to engage with the RIPE Meeting, only to hit a wall and walk away, which was what had happened with a member of the Diversity TF.

Athina said she wanted to speak about implementation. Indeed, they didn't need a CoC for criminal matters. However, they needed something that could allow for immediate action - if someone was misbehaving on Monday, they might need to be gone by Tuesday. One concern she noted was that the CoC TF volunteers would not be professionals. She agreed with Leo's point about the need for investigation, but what about cases where actions needed to be taken immediately?

Antony asked if the TF might want to align on some pointed questions that they wanted to ask the community sooner rather than later (ahead of the document being published). He also highlighted that presenting fresh text to the community (even if the underlying meaning was the same) might have some benefit – as it would show that this was not going to be the exact same draft simply split into three.

Leo said he could be happy to volunteer to propose a structure and circulate that on the list – they could always squish things back down.

Brian said he could see Antony’s point, but he thought a lot of the existing text was good and he didn't think they should re-draft. He supported the idea of restructuring the document.

Denesh agreed with Leo and Brian.

Leo said he would like to place an action on the RIPE NCC to examine what an implementation plan might look like.

Antony said he did want to caution that when Leo talked about “educating people” it was important to keep in mind what was realistic. There was plenty they could do to make the CoC more visible, and could look at developing materials etc. However, to a certain extent a lot of this would also depend on how willing people were to engage with the topic.

Leo said at ICANN they had to go through some mandatory training by watching a video and interacting with a quiz – that was somewhat like what he was imagining.

Athina said that for now they could go away and put together some ideas and options around how they imagined the implementation might look. She added that from a legal/enforcement point of view, it was more straightforward to frame things in terms of “Do not”.

Brain thanked Leo for adding some structure to this and for proposing the next steps. He noted that they now had four weeks to develop something.

Leo said he would also work with Antony to schedule the next meeting and work with him to add/compress sections and text.

Brian noted that he would not be available for a call next week, but would try to make whatever date they agreed on the week after that.