[ripe-list] PDP Appeals Process

Mirjam, Niall, WG Chairs,

Thank you for sharing your minutes about the Appeals Review and PDP 
Evolution. As far as PDP appeals are concerned I have the impression 
that the discussion is at the wrong level. We seem to be trying to tweak 
the procedure without fully recognising some significant shortcomings:

- Appeals require a large amount of community resources.
- The process involves too many people.
- The process involves people who have not consciously signed up for it, 
e.g. all WG chairs.
- The process involves significant number of people who feel they have 
to recuse themselves.
- Documentation and Openness of the process leave to be desired.

Trying to apply incremental improvements to the existing procedure will 
not solve these significant shortcomings.
Therefore I suggest to make more fundamental changes that do address 
these shortcomings. Here are three generic suggestions:

1) There should be a higher threshold to make an appeal because appeals 
are costly to the community.

2) Appeals should be handled by a small number of people who commit to 
handling it properly within a defined time line because someone has to 
take responsibility.

3) Appeals should be fully and transparently documented from the first 
submission until the conclusion, because this is the RIPE standard.

I have some implementation ideas already, similar but not identical to 
the RIPE NCC arbitration procedure. However before I get to those I 
would like to have some feedback on the general idea.

Best

Daniel
Full disclosure: RIPE Participant since RIPE 0 and NCC staff from the 
beginning.