[ripe-list] RIPE Discussion Mailing List Moderation and Archives
- Previous message (by thread): [ripe-list] RIPE Discussion Mailing List Moderation and Archives
- Next message (by thread): [ripe-list] RIPE Discussion Mailing List Moderation and Archives
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Markus de Brün
markus at mxdomain.de
Sat Sep 3 12:30:20 CEST 2022
Mirjam, thank you for your explanation and your suggestions. This seems like a reasonable way forward to me, especially having a discussion on this in the community plenary. I was wondering: If you have to remove an email from the archive for legal reasons, why would this be different for an unmoderated archive? Regards, Markus On 02.09.22 09:02, Mirjam Kuehne wrote: > Dear colleagues, > > In light of recent events on this mailing list, I have put together some > thoughts on moderation and a proposed way forward. I will put this topic > on the agenda for the RIPE 85 Community Plenary. > > Context > > On 22 July, a highly offensive racist email was sent to the RIPE > Discussion List. This mail clearly violates the RIPE Code of Conduct. > After discussion with the RIPE NCC, we decided to enable moderation on > the list. > > On 23 July, people who had responded to the offender, notably myself, > the RIPE NCC’s Chief Community Officer, and another RIPE community > member, were sent further offensive mails by this person and were > subjected to ‘subscription bombing’ attacks (many thousands of mailing > list subscription requests sent to our inboxes). > > List Moderation > > All mails sent to <ripe-list at ripe.net> have been held for moderation > since this incident. They are reviewed by either Niall O’Reilly or > myself (as the RIPE Chair Team) before they are allowed through to the list. > > The RIPE community has always been open to everyone and it has a > demonstrated ability to self-govern. We therefore view our decision here > as quite a severe one. Nevertheless, we have received a lot of support > from community members for these actions. With that support in mind, we > propose that we continue with moderation of the list until at least RIPE 85. > > The moderation queue will be reviewed at least once a day, and together > Niall and I will decide how to proceed. If one of us is unavailable, we > will coordinate with other community members to ensure that we always > have more than one person available to moderate the list. > > I will also provide a transparency report to keep the community informed > of activities and decisions ‘behind the scenes’ (i.e. whether mails have > been held/rejected and how many). > > So far, no mails have been rejected without us first contacting the > original sender. This helps to increase understanding of the process. > However, it will ultimately be the moderators who decide if a mail is > rejected or not. > > Offensive or Illegal Mails > > We will remove the mail from 22 July from the RIPE List archives. This > message has no content beyond its aim to cause offense. Modifying > archives is not something we do lightly. In this case, we believe it is > important to avoid the implication that this kind of language is > acceptable to us as a community, especially for anyone reading the > archives in the future. > > Rather than simply removing the mail, I asked the RIPE NCC to move the > content of the URL in question and replace it with an explanation that > makes it clear that a message has been taken out and why. This would > also apply to another mail sent in response, as it quoted the offensive > mail. > > We also understand that the offensive email is illegal under Dutch law. > Because the RIPE NCC maintains the public archives of our mailing lists, > it is regarded as a hosting provider and with this comes an obligation > to remove unlawful content from its public infrastructure. > > Future Archives > > Some community members have suggested that we set up an ‘unmoderated > archive’, which is similar to how the RIPE NCC Member Discussion List is > currently set up. I agree that this is a workable solution that supports > transparency. It means that the complete archives, including any > rejected mails, will be available under a different URL that is separate > from the regular RIPE List archives. > > We propose not indexing these unmoderated archives so they do not appear > in search engines. We will also add a warning to this page so that > people are informed that they might find rude or offensive content in > the unmoderated archives. > > We believe such an approach is important for transparency, while at the > same time avoiding receiving offensive emails that undermine the > important work of our community. > > Kind regards, > Mirjam Kühne > RIPE Chair > > >
- Previous message (by thread): [ripe-list] RIPE Discussion Mailing List Moderation and Archives
- Next message (by thread): [ripe-list] RIPE Discussion Mailing List Moderation and Archives
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]