Dear TF members,

Here are the draft minutes from last week's call.

Cheers

Ant

***

Draft Minutes – CoC TF Seventeenth Call

22 October 15:30 (UTC+2)

Attendees: Denesh Bhabuta, Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Leo Vegoda, Salam Yamout

Scribe: Kjerstin Burdiek

Summary: The TF discussed the relevance of the Python community’s CoC and what they could borrow from this. They discussed what might constitute a conflict of interest for a member of the CoC Team and agreed that it might be wise to have someone from the RIPE NCC’s Legal team available if an impartial voice was needed. The TF also decided that having a few investigators rather than a single individual might be the best approach for quick decision-making. The TF discussed the role of WG chairs in cases where violations took place on a mailing list. The TF concluded that input from the WG chairs could inform an investigation but the CoC Team itself must make the decision. The issue of acceptable evidence in a case was also brought up, and Athina advised that publicly available records were permissible as well as private records. Finally, the TF considered whether an escalating process of consequences would be useful and decided that it would be best to have a list of consequences that did not have to occur in sequence. Leo said he would draft a proposal for the CoC Team process that he would share with the rest of the TF for discussion.

1. Minutes

The minutes from last meeting were approved.

2. Agenda

There were no changes to the agenda.

3. Actions

- (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.

- TF to review RIPE NCC Arbitration Panel, ICANN Ombuds, and other relevant comparative process documents

Leo asked for thoughts on the process documents that were shared at the last meeting.

Salam said she was in favour of the Python community document.

Leo said he found that was more practical than some of the others. The book Brian had recommended was also useful. He marked this action as complete.

4. Process

Leo said the goal of the meeting was to get a feeling for possible steps in the process and timeframes. As an example, he referenced the multi-step process in the Python document.

Denesh asked if the RIPE NCC’s legal team needed to be involved when evaluating conflicts of interest.

Athina said that parties with conflicts of interests would typically highlight this in advance so it could be evaluated.

Salam said she agreed, but she thought conflicts of interests had to be investigated on a case-by-case basis. This was essentially a situation where a person on the CoC Team felt they had a conflict, such as a family member being involved, and this was then reviewed.

Denesh agreed that conflicts had to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. However, he suggested that the RIPE NCC’s Legal team might need to be involved, to evaluate potential conflicts of interest for candidates during the CoC Team selection process.

Leo said that they needed a fit and proper person for that.

Salam asked Denesh to clarify, as he seemed to be saying that anyone on a the team would need to be evaluated for a conflict of interest. She asked what would constitute a conflict of interest that made someone unfit and if they were considering ethical judgments as part of that evaluation.

Denesh said that he meant a legal risk management assessment should be done when determining who could be on the CoC Team to evaluate the potential legal consequences of conflicts of interest.

Salam asked if he meant that there should be a de facto legal professional on the CoC Team.

Denesh said there should be a legal professional either on the team or as a liaison. He asked what Athina thought.

Athina said this was a complicated topic. Sometimes there were clear rules regulating conflicts of interest, such as when selecting an association’s Executive Board members, but that in this case, there were no such regulations. Instead, they should focus on what would make the CoC Team strong and trusted. In the arbitration process, it was up to the arbiters to evaluate whether there was a conflict of interest, and the same was true of the RIPE NCC Executive Board. A lawyer’s input would provide more certainty but was not necessary.

Leo said they were discussing two different things here. One was what the requirements for serving on the CoC Team should be. The other was whether a person on the team should be involved in a particular report. Salam was asking about criminal background checks being conducted on candidates for the CoC Team, and she had asked what would happen in the case of a family member being a potential conflict of interest. The Python process covered this by pointing out that although someone might not have named all of their family members from the beginning, if such a situation were to arise, they must acknowledge that they could not be impartial. He asked if there should be an iterative conflict of interest process, where the first person to receive the report was the ‘triage’ who either handled the case themselves or passed it on if they had a conflict of interest. Or should reports go to the whole team, and people with conflicts of interest then step back for that investigation?

Antony said a conflict of interest would probably have more to do with who was involved in a report rather than the details of the case.

Leo said this was a good point.

Athina said this was connected to the question of whether this should be done by a committee or by one person. In the arbitration process, there was a panel of arbiters, but only the arbiter at the top of the list of panellists’ names would get the case and issue the ruling. They could not apply a similar method if there was a group of people making the ruling.

Antony said they might want at least one other person involved for oversight.

Salam said they should decide how many people would be making the decision and how those people were chosen.

Leo said that at the last meeting they decided it was necessary to have a diverse group of people on the team to maximise (linguistic and cultural) understanding. This requirement might not work with Athina’s suggestion to imitate the arbitration process.

Salam said whatever they decided was fine, as Athina could adjust it as needed. She agreed with the need for diversity and suggested having seven CoC Team members. She asked if the team member on a case would be chosen round-robin or if there would be a subcommittee of two or three people. They had agreed that they would have a pool of diverse and ethical individuals to choose from, but they had not agreed yet who of these people would work on a case.

Antony said the RIPE NCC arbitration process was not time-critical and so could take as much time as needed to evaluate conflicts of interest. They could not do the same at meetings. He asked what they would do if there was only one CoC Team member present and this person had a conflict of interest that prevented them from handling a report at the meeting.

Salam agreed that the urgency issue was a good point to consider.

Leo said, given that, it might be important to have a professional from the RIPE NCC, such as a person from Legal or HR, who was more likely to be impartial in such a situation.

Salam asked if he meant as part of the team or as the investigator.

Leo said he meant someone from the RIPE NCC should be available. It was not necessary to decide their exact status right now.

Salam asked how many people should perform the investigation. She suggested three.

Leo said he preferred an odd number of people for effective decision-making.

Athina said they could have a secretariat to solve these issues and get the advice needed from the RIPE NCC (on any matter, not just conflicts of interest). The number of investigators might be relevant to the number of people available at a meeting. An odd number was a good decision, and furthermore it was important to require a certain number of these people to be present at a meeting.

Leo said they needed to consider two things. One, an issue might not happen at a meeting but at an in-between meeting or on the mailing lists. Two, the WG chair might need to act in such a situation if it happened on their WG’s list. The CoC Team would then have more people to draw on to assist, but the RIPE NCC might therefore need to provide some training and guidance to WG chairs for these situations. However, the WG chairs might not have anticipated getting involved in these kinds of disputes.

Salam asked if there was someone in charge of every mailing list.

Leo said WG chairs were responsible for their mailing lists. There was now documented guidance on how to manage those lists. However, non-WG mailing lists were managed by the RIPE Chair.

Salam said there was also someone in charge of the venue at a meeting. The group investigating a case should therefore be made up of three people: the secretariat, the person investigating, who could be a WG chair if the issue took place on their list, and a person from the group of people trained to be CoC Team volunteers.

Athina said if the ruling were to come from the CoC Team, then all three people should be from the Team. Any extra advice from other professionals could be taken into consideration but not be part of the ruling itself.

Salam agreed that this made sense.

Leo said this element was crucial. He said they might want WG chairs to remind people about following the CoC but should not ask the chairs to be involved in investigating a report. If someone thought a serious breach had occurred, then it would go to the CoC Team.

Salam said the investigator(s) from the CoC Team could ask the WG chair for their opinion, but the WG chair would not make the decision.

Leo said this sounded good. If a breach occurred on a mailing list, there would be a record. The same was true for a video at a RIPE Meeting or a Zoom intersessional meeting. He asked what the rules were for accessing that record and any other related information.

Athina said that if it happened in public, the records were publicly available. This was true for the cases Leo mentioned. If something happened in a private setting, but the reporter had evidence of it, they could still submit that evidence for the case. This would include personal information about the person who committed the violation even if that person were to argue this information was intended to be private. She and Antony had been looking at the issue regarding the data protection implications for someone accused of a CoC violation. The solution could be having waivers in which the waiver signee gives permission to share such private information should they be accused of a violation. This could be given to any attendee agreeing to the CoC and the process around it.

Salam asked for a recap of the items they had covered in the Python community process.

Leo said they had covered the first four items of the Python CoC document and were now on the step relating to who would be involved in the CoC process. He put an action on himself to write up a brief text and share it with the mailing list for discussion.

Salam said they should decide if they wanted to model themselves after the Python community’s CoC document. Then they could make a parallel process, and Athina could share everything at once on the CoC mailing list.

Leo asked if she was saying that Athina should write a proposal for who should be part of the team that conducts an investigation. He asked how Athina felt about this.

Athina said she thought Salam was suggesting someone take this structure and write up a similar process for the CoC Team. She asked Salam if this was correct.

Salam said it was. She asked if they should decide now whether they should create a similar process and adapt it as needed. Someone would need to propose such a process and then share it for discussion among the TF and on the mailing list.

Leo said he would create a draft and send it to Athina and Antony for some adjustment. They would then send it to the mailing list for discussion. The Python community document was a sound structure but needed to be slightly adapted.

Salam said the structure was acceptable but there was no information about who could access or publish a report. They would need to add this. She and Leo had had a previous conversation about it.

Leo said they had discussed not publishing individual reports but instead reporting about their themes and statistics. They had also spoken about the RIPE NCC needing to maintain records for implementing decisions, such as when someone is temporarily banned from posting on a mailing list.

Salam said they needed to add a 12th step for archiving decisions as necessary, and then Athina could add simple explanations to adapt it for their case.

5. Ladder

Leo said the ladder of consequences was interesting because it focused on a software development community and had restricting tool access as one of its consequences. The tool access aspect was not relevant for them, but for them it could be mic access, for example. He asked if they also wanted to implement an escalating process that began with revoking permissions and culminated in banning, for instance, in the case of violations.

Athina said the escalation made sense, but they needed to consider the different platforms where the violation could happen, such as on the mailing list or at an event. In the mailing list, they could restrict people from sending messages for a certain period of time and escalate to banning them if needed. Regarding events, they already had an option to ban people from the meeting but no restriction of permissions during the meeting. The justification for the ban came from the terms and conditions, but it would be possible to have an escalation process before that. They needed to discuss how to actually implement those other steps before a ban.

Salam agreed that escalation was important to make clear this was a process. Several small violations were as bad as one big one. They should think critically about restricting access to tools because attendees were mostly from democratic countries and also paid for the meetings. She asked Athina how they should address a violation if it were to happen somewhere private in the venue outside of the meeting.

Athina said they could count this as part of the meeting.

Antony asked if it would be better to have a ladder with levels or to list what different consequences would entail. The aspects of the ladder that might be relevant for them were verbal warning, restriction from the list, and banning from meetings.

Leo said they needed it to make it clear that anything in the escalation process was just an example, and the people involved needed to use their judgment to decide an appropriate solution. For example, if someone acted badly at a social event, they could be banned from social events, but maybe not from the whole meeting.

Athina said she was confused about what they meant by escalation. She said that although there were different levels of punishment, one did not need to pass through all of them and could go straight to a more serious punishment.

Antony agreed that you could skip levels.

Athina said, in that case, banning people from mailing lists may be as bad as or worse than banning them from a meeting. They needed to consider the forum as well. Maybe they should not present these as different levels of punishment but just as different punishments.

Denesh said this was true. Banning people from the mailing lists was as severe as banning from them meetings, as the lists were where most discussion took place.

Salam asked if they agreed there should be a list of consequences, but not necessarily levels.

Leo said there should be examples of consequences and that punishments did not have to go from the first example to the second. Novel consequences would be fine if they were justifiable.

6. AOB

Salam asked who would write the levels of consequences.

Leo said they should make that into one or two action items. He would draft some text to send to Antony and Athina. Then they would have a draft proposal to discuss, but not necessarily to stick to. Regarding the last meeting’s minutes, Mirjam Kühne had responded to them by suggesting they look at the IETF process. He would do this when putting together the draft proposal. He had also asked Athina to come up with ideas for how CoC members could be legally protected from retaliation, as inspired by the arbitration process. He would put this on the next agenda.

7. Actions

- Leo to draft a proposal for the process and share it with Antony and Athina before sending it to the mailing list