Feedback on Mailing List/Board Election Issues
Dear members, Those of you following this mailing list may have noticed some disruption as we approached the last GM. Many of you shared your concerns, either on this list or by emailing the board directly - thank you. At the last GM, we promised to follow up with more details. With the election out of the way, we can now discuss whether changes are needed to avoid repeats of this behaviour in the future.
From the feedback we received, we can identify three main areas of concern:
1. Contact information was taken from the RIPE Database and/or the list of RIPE NCC members and was used to spam members with unsolicited emails. 2. Actions on this list were not in line with expectations outlined in the RIPE community's Code of Conduct and were generally unacceptable. There were also concerns that this behaviour, along with some of the allegations made on the mailing list, were damaging to the RIPE NCC's reputation. 3. The person responsible for the above behaviour was able to stand as a candidate in the RIPE NCC Executive Board elections. There were some voices asking for a process to exclude this candidate from the elections. In this email, I would like to look at issues #1 and #2 individually (#3 will be covered in a separate email after further discussion by the board). 1. ABUSE OF MEMBER CONTACT INFORMATION Many of you will recognise that this is not exactly uncommon. In the past there have been a number of instances where third parties (usually vendors or IPv4 brokers) have spammed RIPE Database contacts. When notified, the RIPE NCC follows what is generally considered common practice in these cases: it notifies the responsible party that they are violating the terms of the database and asks them to stop. The RIPE NCC reserves the right to pursue further legal action, though warnings have generally been enough to stop the behaviour. No one likes spam, and we appreciate that many of you want the RIPE NCC to do more, especially as this is a violation of your data protection rights. As long as the RIPE Database remains an open and public database, we expect that this may continue to be an issue. Perhaps this is something for members to raise with the RIPE Database Requirements Task Force on an individual basis. Individual members are also within their rights to report cases to their local data protection authorities where their personal information has been abused (the RIPE NCC is not able to do this on their behalf). 2. UNACCEPTABLE MAILING LIST BEHAVIOUR / DAMAGE TO THE RIPE NCC'S REPUTATION Regarding mailing list behaviour, in most cases this should not be complicated. The board is responsible for this list and it is within our remit to moderate or remove members from the list if we believe they are acting inappropriately. However, in this case the person who was abusing the mailing list was a candidate in the board elections. This led to concerns that we might be exposed to legal claims that we had attempted to influence the outcome of the election through any actions or statements in relation to this behaviour. Given the number of complaints we received, the board eventually took the decision to put the mailing list into moderation. One board member who was not up for re-election and one RIPE NCC staff member made the decisions on what to moderate, and an unmoderated archive allowed for a transparent record of what was removed: https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss-unmoderated/2020-May... Regarding the concerns about damaging the reputation of the RIPE NCC: while there is a provision in the Standard Service Agreement (SSA) that allows for the agreement to be terminated in the event that the RIPE NCC's reputation is damaged, in this case no one seemed to believe the claims, so no actual “damage” occurred. It therefore appears that the only issue that requires further investigation is how the board can ensure appropriate conduct on this mailing list when the person in question is a candidate in the board elections. The board would like to know your thoughts: - Should the same approach be used next time (moderation + unmoderated archive for transparency)? - Does the membership feel confident with moderation being overseen by the Executive Board and RIPE NCC staff, or would you prefer an alternate arrangement - Is there value in a task force of members to examine these issues? 3. ABILITY TO STAND AS A CANDIDATE IN BOARD ELECTIONS As mentioned above, the board is giving special attention to this issue. We plan to discuss this in a separate email in the near future. Kind regards Christian Kaufmann Executive Board Chairman RIPE NCC
Christian, thanks for taking the time to give a response here, much appreciated. I think the RIPE board were stuck between a rock and a hard place, in light of more of the facts being available I think the approach that the board took was probably the most prudent one available. While one could argue the censorship angle - you managed this sensibly by keeping the unmoderated posts available while managing the noise level in here mostly well enough.
- Should the same approach be used next time (moderation + unmoderated archive for transparency)?
I can't see a better approach really except perhaps being more transparent on who was doing the moderation - its nice that you went into more detail after though to close the loop though.
- Does the membership feel confident with moderation being overseen by the Executive Board and RIPE NCC staff, or would you prefer an alternate arrangement
I think there were no issues in this particular case - I think the only potential point of discussion would be around ensuring transparency, impartiality and no conflicts of interest if the process needs to be repeated
- Is there value in a task force of members to examine these issues?
I don't have a particular position here at this time, Data protection violations and spam quiet frankly are a pain in the ass - but I get it for everything these days - not just IP brokers.... my spam filter just keeps them going to that special place reserved for nigerian bankers of dead relatives and pharma companies :) - I would say that it would be good to give clarity/visibility to this issue like you did but also to perhaps refine the process for lodging said complaints, perhaps also its time for RIPE to start getting tougher on offenders? Thanks -----Original Message----- From: members-discuss <members-discuss-bounces@ripe.net> On Behalf Of Christian Kaufmann Sent: 12 June 2020 11:37 To: members-discuss@ripe.net Subject: [members-discuss] Feedback on Mailing List/Board Election Issues Dear members, Those of you following this mailing list may have noticed some disruption as we approached the last GM. Many of you shared your concerns, either on this list or by emailing the board directly - thank you. At the last GM, we promised to follow up with more details. With the election out of the way, we can now discuss whether changes are needed to avoid repeats of this behaviour in the future.
From the feedback we received, we can identify three main areas of concern:
1. Contact information was taken from the RIPE Database and/or the list of RIPE NCC members and was used to spam members with unsolicited emails. 2. Actions on this list were not in line with expectations outlined in the RIPE community's Code of Conduct and were generally unacceptable. There were also concerns that this behaviour, along with some of the allegations made on the mailing list, were damaging to the RIPE NCC's reputation. 3. The person responsible for the above behaviour was able to stand as a candidate in the RIPE NCC Executive Board elections. There were some voices asking for a process to exclude this candidate from the elections. In this email, I would like to look at issues #1 and #2 individually (#3 will be covered in a separate email after further discussion by the board). 1. ABUSE OF MEMBER CONTACT INFORMATION Many of you will recognise that this is not exactly uncommon. In the past there have been a number of instances where third parties (usually vendors or IPv4 brokers) have spammed RIPE Database contacts. When notified, the RIPE NCC follows what is generally considered common practice in these cases: it notifies the responsible party that they are violating the terms of the database and asks them to stop. The RIPE NCC reserves the right to pursue further legal action, though warnings have generally been enough to stop the behaviour. No one likes spam, and we appreciate that many of you want the RIPE NCC to do more, especially as this is a violation of your data protection rights. As long as the RIPE Database remains an open and public database, we expect that this may continue to be an issue. Perhaps this is something for members to raise with the RIPE Database Requirements Task Force on an individual basis. Individual members are also within their rights to report cases to their local data protection authorities where their personal information has been abused (the RIPE NCC is not able to do this on their behalf). 2. UNACCEPTABLE MAILING LIST BEHAVIOUR / DAMAGE TO THE RIPE NCC'S REPUTATION Regarding mailing list behaviour, in most cases this should not be complicated. The board is responsible for this list and it is within our remit to moderate or remove members from the list if we believe they are acting inappropriately. However, in this case the person who was abusing the mailing list was a candidate in the board elections. This led to concerns that we might be exposed to legal claims that we had attempted to influence the outcome of the election through any actions or statements in relation to this behaviour. Given the number of complaints we received, the board eventually took the decision to put the mailing list into moderation. One board member who was not up for re-election and one RIPE NCC staff member made the decisions on what to moderate, and an unmoderated archive allowed for a transparent record of what was removed: https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss-unmoderated/2020-May... Regarding the concerns about damaging the reputation of the RIPE NCC: while there is a provision in the Standard Service Agreement (SSA) that allows for the agreement to be terminated in the event that the RIPE NCC's reputation is damaged, in this case no one seemed to believe the claims, so no actual “damage” occurred. It therefore appears that the only issue that requires further investigation is how the board can ensure appropriate conduct on this mailing list when the person in question is a candidate in the board elections. The board would like to know your thoughts: - Should the same approach be used next time (moderation + unmoderated archive for transparency)? - Does the membership feel confident with moderation being overseen by the Executive Board and RIPE NCC staff, or would you prefer an alternate arrangement - Is there value in a task force of members to examine these issues? 3. ABILITY TO STAND AS A CANDIDATE IN BOARD ELECTIONS As mentioned above, the board is giving special attention to this issue. We plan to discuss this in a separate email in the near future. Kind regards Christian Kaufmann Executive Board Chairman RIPE NCC _______________________________________________ members-discuss mailing list members-discuss@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/members-discuss Unsubscribe: https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/options/members-discuss/anthony.somerset%40cl...
Hello, On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 03:59:52PM +0200, anthony.somerset@cloudunboxed.net wrote:
- Is there value in a task force of members to examine these issues?
I don't have a particular position here at this time, Data protection violations and spam quiet frankly are a pain in the ass - but I get it for everything these days - not just IP brokers....
From what I could see and my own point of view, no one was expecting RIPE NCC to engage in legal pursuit of the person who had harvested
I feel like a distinction should maybe be made between random companies that harvest and market to addresses in the RIPE DB and list archives, versus members of our community who do the same. Christian suggested that the current policy really begins and ends at issuing a warning, with the "nuclear option" of legal means being held in reserve. Issues of practicality force that to be the case for third parties that RIPE NCC has no relationship with, but should we not expect members of our community who sign contracts with RIPE NCC to abide by the terms and conditions of RIPE NCC services and the norms of our community? Is there any scope in investigating temporary withholding of service, moderation etc for community members who are breaching the terms and conditions like this? the email addresses and marketed to them. It was more that this person was able to continue interacting with the community after that blatant disregard of its norms. That is something that is in our control is it not? There have been times I have been tempted to also suggest that the ban on autoresponders is enforced by having RIPE NCC staff investigate which subscribed address is causing it and which LIR that address belongs to, disabling that address's delivery and then billing the LIR 100€/hr for the work. But perhaps that is a step too far! Cheers, Andy
Hi all,
- Should the same approach be used next time (moderation + unmoderated archive for transparency)?
My personal opinion is "No" to this question. But the main reason for it is that i don't like everyone on this list was castrated the same, but the problem mainly was coming from one unqiue person. Directly after the moderation the number of messages was reduced and because it took some hours to accept messages also the response to a message again takes hours, so the whole communication was slowed down directly. I personally think that the way this members-discuss is setup is very oldschool. E-mail distributionlists are not the way we should communicate in todays times. There are existing better technologies available. So my suggestion would be: - Replace the system by a more apropriate one (for example a board that allows threaded communication and easy quotation) - if there is someone missusing the system only this participant should be moderated/demoderated, but not the entire group. - There should be a Thumbs up/down system to automatically detect issues with a specific post that does not follow the rules without the need to set everything to moderation - Allow posting and viewing the posts via Web-Interface - Allow setup notification settings by every user seperate (receive an email for every communication, or only a summary per day, or none) - "short answering" via email should still be supported - Make access restricted via RIPE SSO System Michael
On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 06:26:27PM +0200, info@cowmedia.de wrote:
Hi all,
- Should the same approach be used next time (moderation + unmoderated archive for transparency)?
My personal opinion is "No" to this question. But the main reason for it is that i don't like everyone on this list was castrated the same, but the problem mainly was coming from one unqiue person.
This is not correct, the "problem" was both the original poster *and* all those who could not maintain enough discipline to ignore the posting and, instead, spammed the list with their complaints. It is standard practice in moderation to remove an offending post *and* all the followups thereto, which can really only be achieved by moderating everything initially. rgds, Sascha Luck
Directly after the moderation the number of messages was reduced and because it took some hours to accept messages also the response to a message again takes hours, so the whole communication was slowed down directly. I personally think that the way this members-discuss is setup is very oldschool. E-mail distributionlists are not the way we should communicate in todays times. There are existing better technologies available.
So my suggestion would be:
- Replace the system by a more apropriate one (for example a board that allows threaded communication and easy quotation) - if there is someone missusing the system only this participant should be moderated/demoderated, but not the entire group. - There should be a Thumbs up/down system to automatically detect issues with a specific post that does not follow the rules without the need to set everything to moderation - Allow posting and viewing the posts via Web-Interface - Allow setup notification settings by every user seperate (receive an email for every communication, or only a summary per day, or none) - "short answering" via email should still be supported - Make access restricted via RIPE SSO System
Michael
_______________________________________________ members-discuss mailing list members-discuss@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/members-discuss Unsubscribe: https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/options/members-discuss/ripe-md%40c4inet.net
But the main reason for it is that i don't like everyone on this list was castrated the same, but the problem mainly was coming from one unqiue
This is not correct, the "problem" was both the original poster *and* all those who could not maintain enough discipline to ignore the
Hi Sascha, person. posting and, instead, spammed the list with their complaints.
I t is standard practice in moderation to remove an offending post *and* all the followups thereto, which can really only be achieved by moderating everything initially.
Still this is a discussion list so answering to topics is what you would expect. With using newer technologies it would be possible to pause communication only for one specific thread. Also as most of us have the discipiline they don't answered because other users expressed already their same opinion. Especially in regards of the issue some weeks ago it was mainly a 1:n communication. So if you remove the "1" of this situation you also don't get any other responses and it will get silent very fast. An open and fast communication is I think one of the building blocks of the internet and we should not stop this for all the members, just the ones that do not follow the specified rules. Again, newer technolgies can deliver such possibilites much easier. For example like setting a specific user to a blacklist only for myself and many more other features. Michael Stenz
On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 11:37:21AM +0200, Christian Kaufmann wrote:
The board would like to know your thoughts:
- Should the same approach be used next time (moderation + unmoderated archive for transparency)?
Yes, I think this is the best compromise in this situation, as it keeps the noise off the list and yet allows everyone willing to do so to see what is being censored and to make up their own mind as to whether it was appropriate or not.
- Does the membership feel confident with moderation being overseen by the Executive Board and RIPE NCC staff, or would you prefer an alternate arrangement
This is fine, as long as the Board accepts accountability for those decisions. Although I'd suggest NCC staff act only in an advisory capacity there, they can't be held accountable for conflicts of interest with their *employer*.
- Is there value in a task force of members to examine these issues?
No. Most members aren't even capable of unsubscribing from a ML that annoys them, instead of complaining loudly and incoherently; I cannot think of any value they could add to this process.
3. ABILITY TO STAND AS A CANDIDATE IN BOARD ELECTIONS
As mentioned above, the board is giving special attention to this issue. We plan to discuss this in a separate email in the near future.
I'm going long on popcorn... rgds, Sascha Luck PS: I really wonder how many attempts to unsubscribe me this is going to generate...
On 12-6-2020 11:37, Christian Kaufmann wrote:
The board would like to know your thoughts:
- Should the same approach be used next time (moderation + unmoderated archive for transparency)?
Yes
- Does the membership feel confident with moderation being overseen by the Executive Board and RIPE NCC staff, or would you prefer an alternate arrangement
Yes
Is there value in a task force of members to examine these issues?
No. -- Best regards, Piet -- image002 *E-mail disclaimer* De informatie opgenomen in e-mailberichten van EGP bv kan vertrouwelijk zijn en is uitsluitend bestemd voor de geadresseerde. Indien u een bericht onterecht ontvangt, wordt u verzocht de inhoud niet te gebruiken en de afzender direct te informeren door het bericht te retourneren. EGP is een handelsnaam van Espresso Gridpoint bv en staat ingeschreven bij de Kamer van Koophandel onder nummer 201416590000. *E-mail disclaimer English* The information contained in e-mail messages from EGP bv may be confidential and is intended to be exclusively for the addressee. Should you receive a message unintentionally, please do not use the contents herein and notify the sender immediately by return e-mail. EGP bv is a tradename of Espresso gridpoint bv, registered at the Chamber of Commerce under number 201416590000. -- Dit bericht is gescanned op virussen en andere gevaarlijke inhoud door MailScanner en lijkt schoon te zijn.
participants (6)
-
Andy Smith -
anthony.somerset＠cloudunboxed.net -
Christian Kaufmann -
info＠cowmedia.de -
Piet Honkoop -
Sascha Luck [ml]