[ripe-list] RIPE Discussion Mailing List Moderation and Archives

Hi Markus,

Thanks for your feedback.

Regarding your question: illegal content will also have to be (re)moved
from the unmoderated archives. However, there can be many other reasons
for moderating/rejecting a mail. Illegal content will hopefully be a
very rare exception. The unmoderated archives are there to provide
transparency into that process and the decisions made by the moderator.

Kind regards,
Mirjam

On 03/09/2022 12:30, Markus de Brün wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>>