[coc-tf] Draft Minutes – CoC TF Thirteenth Call

Dear TF members,

Here are the minutes from the call before last.

Cheers

Ant


***

*Draft Minutes – CoC TF Thirteenth Call *

14 May 16:30 (UTC+2)

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

*Summary:* The TF discussed its upcoming BoF at RIPE 82. Based on 
feedback from the community, the TF considered whether the CoC should 
contain examples of positive/negative behaviour, or whether this should 
be published in a separate document. After some discussion, the group 
agreed that this should be contained in the CoC itself, recognising that 
there was a fairly standard format to CoCs that included lists of 
behaviour, and they didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Leo shared that 
he had received an email from a community member who asked why he did 
not get a response to his feedback – Leo explained that the TF was there 
to listen, and its updated draft would essentially be the TF’s response 
to community feedback. It was also noted that the TF might need to 
consider additional communication efforts when it published its draft, 
to walk people through the details of what had changed.

*1. Minutes*

The minutes from the meeting before last (23 April) were approved.

Salam asked if the minutes could more clearly indicate where a decision 
was made.

Leo said he would try to summarise the discussion at the end of each 
section where possible.

*2. Agenda*

Leo said he’d updated the agenda with an AOB to note that he’d received 
an email from Hank Nussbacher.

Leo said he wanted to keep the call straightforward, as the focus would 
be on the RIPE Meeting next week. He had cut all of the examples from 
the CoC, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t add some of them back in if 
the group disagreed with this approach.

Salam suggested some of the parts that had been cut could be covered in 
a separate FAQ along with other details. This way the CoC could remain a 
high-level document.

*3. Actions*

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

Antony said they were still working on this.

*- (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*

Brian said he would have something to share around the end of May.

*- (Ongoing) TF to think about the appropriate level of process to allow 
further improvements to the CoC.*

Leo said a lot of this would probably be informed by the feedback from 
their BoF next week.

*- Leo to draft slides for BoF *

Leo said this was done.

*- TF to review Mailing List Guidelines for RIPE Working Group Chairs *

Brian clarified that the WG chairs would pick one of two moderation 
options – chairs could either get access to the moderation admin or let 
the RIPE NCC handle this. It was up to each WG to decide which option it 
preferred.

Leo said he thought there could be a third option, which he had seen in 
an IETF WG that had gotten out of hand. In that case, the chair had 
enabled moderation for the entire mailing list and let through all 
messages that weren’t abusive at a set time each day. This slowed 
everything down, but it affected everyone equally and the slower pace 
drove a more considered discussion. It had also taken some of the heat 
out of the space.

Brian said that was covered under the first option (placing the entire 
list into emergency moderation).

Leo suggested that could be clearer, as it could be interpreted in a 
number of ways.

Brian added that this was essentially what the RIPE NCC Executive Board 
had done with the Members Discuss mailing list. He had also warned the 
Anti-Abuse WG list that he might do this if people didn’t behave.

Denesh said what he understood by “emergency moderation” was that 
someone would review every message and let them through (more-or-less in 
real time), but not slow things down as Leo had described.

Brian said they could improve the language there.

Leo said it was good that they’d had this discussion, as it gave them 
awareness of the various options that were available.

*2. BoF*

Leo shared his draft slides. He said it was possible that they would get 
a lot of input and wouldn’t have time to make it through all the 
questions. He would let Olaf decide, because if they got a lot of 
helpful feedback that identified different strands of thought within the 
community, then that told them they might need another intersessional 
BoF or something similar.

Denesh said he wasn’t seeing anything about their timeline in the slides.

Leo said that in his message to RIPE List, he had said they would like 
to publish an updated CoC by the end of June. He would rather get it 
right, so if it had to be later that was fine. He said he would mention 
that June was the target in the BoF.

Salam asked if they could break out into separate sessions during the 
BoF. Perhaps they could cover all of the questions that way.

Leo said that might not be practical, as they were using Meetecho and 
only had an hour. If they did something intersessional in the future, 
they could look at breakout rooms, though this would require more effort 
overall – as they’d need to have multiple people chairing/noting what 
was discussed.

Leo said he wouldn’t give a date for the process or CoC Team documents 
in the BoF. This was because it would largely depend on the community’s 
feedback.

Denesh suggested they make it clear during the BoF that they were there 
to listen to the community.

Leo said he would do that and would also mention that this was why they 
had invited Olaf to chair the BoF (so they could focus on listening).

*3. Updated CoC Doc*

Leo said he had tried to incorporate the feedback they’d received so far 
by removing all of the bullet points from the draft, as there had been 
some discussion that this was too much. This was part of the tension 
between those in the community who wanted a focus on principles and 
those who wanted examples. The question was how much of this to put back in.

Denesh said he thought they could keep it as-is and say that these were 
a few examples but it was not an exhaustive list. They could refer to 
another document with an FAQ or a longer list. He didn’t think they 
would ever get the balance right or cover everything, but they could 
give some examples and update this when needed.

Leo said he liked the idea of having a very brief CoC overall with more 
detailed informational that was separated out. He asked if Antony or 
Athina could give some guidance about how this could be managed – both 
from an editorial and a procedural perspective (in terms of the future 
CoC Team wanting to update this).

Antony said his first thought was that if version control and history 
was important, then it was best to publish this as a RIPE Document. If 
they were more flexible, then it could be a web page and they would take 
care to manage it properly. Neither approach would be very hard to 
manage on the RIPE NCC’s side.

Brian said if they didn’t publish the examples as RIPE Documents, people 
would wonder why. His assumption was that all three documents they would 
develop would be published as RIPE Documents – and what they were 
discussing was essentially a fourth document.

Denesh agreed with Brian.

Leo said he was thinking of this in terms of the RIPE NCC’s training 
material. Here, the community developed RIPE Documents with its 
policies, and then trusted the RIPE NCC to use its own judgement when 
communicating this information in other formats. The RIPE NCC would have 
experience over multiple meetings and mailing lists, and so perhaps they 
could entrust this document to the RIPE NCC.

Antony said he was thinking of people who might be worried about the CoC 
being weaponised. This would essentially be a list of the reasons why 
someone could be excluded from the community, and the idea of this being 
updated on an ad hoc basis could concern them. Another option could be 
something similar to RIPE NCC procedural documents, which were published 
by the RIPE NCC but handled in the same way as RIPE Documents in terms 
of version control.

Brian said they should involve the RIPE Chair Team if they decided to go 
in this direction. This was the community’s document and he thought the 
community should own it and be invested in it. He also wanted to avoid 
the perception that the RIPE NCC was somehow gaining power or bringing 
down the ban hammer. This was similar to how they said the RIPE NCC was 
not the Internet Police – they didn’t want it to become the community’s 
police either, which was why they would have a CoC Team.

Leo said it was important that Brian had brought this up. What he had 
inferred from Salam’s comment was that this would not be a policy 
document – it would be something to help people understand the policy. 
They could identify positive/negative behaviours and add them to the FAQ 
to support understanding. He wasn’t suggesting a RIPE NCC-managed policy 
document, he was thinking more in terms of the RIPE NCC’s training 
material.

Salam said this was roughly what she was thinking. She asked if the 
current list included all the relevant aspects of identity – an earlier 
version wasn’t much longer, but it had covered this well. She suggested 
they could include positive behaviour in the CoC and have an FAQ with 
negative behaviours that could expand over time (without version control).

Athina said if the TF or the community felt strongly that certain 
behaviours were unacceptable, they should be identified in the document. 
If this was left to the RIPE NCC, it might not be as strong, or could be 
subject to doubt, especially as they had seen some comments from the 
community that this effort was politically motivated. She thought they 
should have a list of behaviours written down clearly, and then perhaps 
they could say that this list would be clarified by the actual 
evaluation of reports done by the CoC Team, and that in the future this 
team might come up with examples in a publication later on. And they 
could leave it there. Perhaps the team would come up with an anonymised 
list of behaviours that were a violation along with behaviours that were 
reported but were not a violation.

Denesh said he thought the TF would initially develop this list of 
behaviours and, as it would be published as a RIPE Document, the CoC 
Team could add to it over time (in addition to people within the RIPE 
NCC and other community members). This could be a living document and 
because it would be separate, it would avoid making the CoC overly long.

Leo asked for thoughts from each person on whether they should separate 
the CoC from a document that would contain examples or, alternatively, 
if they should go for one all-inclusive document.

Salam thought they needed to have one document – the CoC. This could be 
accompanied by other peripheral documents such as training materials or 
FAQs. For the list within the CoC, she would add intimidation, bullying 
and harassment, and instead of aggressive communication, she would say 
aggressive behaviour (or communication and behaviour).

Brian said there was a fairly standard format to CoCs across communities 
and they all included lists of encouraged and unacceptable behaviour. He 
didn’t think they needed to reinvent the wheel. They had good examples 
there, and he really thought they should take the prior examples that 
were out there and include them in the main document. They should 
publish this as a RIPE Document and should stick with three documents 
instead of four.

Denesh said he was on the fence. His earlier comments were intended to 
keep the CoC from becoming too long and could allow the examples to be 
updated independently. It depended on whether they wanted to keep the 
CoC short or not.

Athina said she agreed with Brian.

Leo said in that case, he thought they should add the examples they had 
before, perhaps with some wording to clarify that they were only 
examples and subject to change.

Salam agreed with that approach.

Leo said in that case he would add the list back in.

*4. AOB*

Leo said he wanted to note that he had received an email from Hank 
Nussabacher asking why he hadn’t received a response to his comment on 
the mailing list, which noted that the CoC should list things like spam, 
sharing malware, etc. In Leo’s reply to Hank, he had said they were not 
planning to reply to everyone and were taking feedback on board – their 
updated draft CoC would essentially act as their response. He had also 
noted that most of Hank’s examples were already illegal and referred him 
to the section in the existing draft that dealt with illegal behaviour. 
Leo said that when they published their updated draft, they might need 
to do something extra (such as a webinar) to walk people through what 
had changed and explain their rationale.

Brian reiterated that the examples in Hank’s email were illegal 
behaviour. He said it was worth clarifying these kinds of things out in 
their communication when they shared their updated draft.
*
**5. Actions*

Leo said he saw two actions coming out of the above discussion – to 
update the draft CoC (adding the examples back in) and to work with 
Antony on communicating the draft CoC once it was ready to publish.

*Action: Leo to update draft CoC (adding examples of behaviours back in). **
**
**Action: Leo to work with Antony on communicating the updated draft CoC. **
*


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