Hello all, At the last RIPE meeting, we talked about our Code of Conduct. I offered to send a good example. I’ve since also actually reported a CoC incident in the RIPE community, and want to share some thoughts on that experience. Sending a CoC example took some time, as I’ve been refactoring and improving the CoC for the Write the Docs community. Our new CoC is: http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct/ http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct-response/ And these are the most significant changes: http://www.writethedocs.org/blog/new-community-coc-2019/ I’m happy to further explain the decisions behind it, if you have any questions. I will not share the full details of the incident I reported in the RIPE community, because I prefer not to be identified as the reporter. About four months have passed since my report, and I have not received any reply from the wg chairs or the RIPE chair, who are the designated contacts, other than two notes that it was being worked on. I initially reported to the relevant working group chairs, and then escalated to the RIPE chair, as documented in the RIPE community CoC. To my knowledge, no action has been taken. My general impression is that none of the people listed as CoC contacts in any part of the RIPE community are able to effectively take action on a CoC incident. Either because this is explicitly not part of their task (trusted contacts) or, I suspect, they lack any kind of resources or possibly time to handle an incident. That is *not* a failure on the part of any of these people individually, but rather caused by a flawed and mostly absent process and mandate to act. In addition, confidentiality of CoC reports is violated in every single report. Both wg chair mailing lists and the trusted contacts address are moderated by NCC staff, which means an unknown person(s) can also see the report, and reporters are not made aware of this in advance. This can have severe consequences, and makes reporting unsafe. The RIPE chair doesn’t seem to have any publicly listed contact address at all. Personally I feel that the ability of the RIPE community to handle a CoC incident is so abysmal, that we would be better off not publishing one at all, as we are now creating a false sense of security. I should also note that this was a fairly minor incident, pretty much the most trivial kind of incident a CoC contact has to deal with. The consequences of the lack of ability to respond properly could be very severe in case of a more serious incident - which have taken place in the RIPE community as well. The updated Code of Conduct for Write the Docs, along with our response guide, handles many of these concerns specifically, so I suggest you have a look at it, and see how it can be adopted for the RIPE community. However, in order to have an effective CoC process, it will also require setting up one or more response teams, which can be contacted privately, with publicly listed membership, and most importantly, a mandate to act. Including, if needed, immediate removal of a community member, including those in a position of power. From my personal experience, this is a quite rare measure, but it needs to be on the table for the CoC to be effective. I’m not sure what the process would be to continue with this, or how others feel - I’m curious to hear your ideas. But the apparent fact that the RIPE community is currently unable to handle even the most trivial CoC reports, makes it inherently unsafe. Sasha
You raise some very important questions. When we introduced the Code of Conduct in the first place, strong voices said that we do not need this. I still hear voices to the same respect, but not as strong. We are making progress but we still have a long way to go. I will have to appologise for my late reply from your escalation of the matter. That is clearly not acceptable and I will work on ways to improve that. (If you did not get my response, I am happy to resend) My response does however not change the substance of your message. I think you point to some important improvements that should be disscussed and implemented. Eager to hear what the other TF members think. Hans Petter On Mon, 11 Feb 2019 at 17:53, Sasha Romijn <sasha@mxsasha.eu> wrote:
Hello all,
At the last RIPE meeting, we talked about our Code of Conduct. I offered to send a good example. I’ve since also actually reported a CoC incident in the RIPE community, and want to share some thoughts on that experience.
Sending a CoC example took some time, as I’ve been refactoring and improving the CoC for the Write the Docs community. Our new CoC is: http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct/ http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct-response/ And these are the most significant changes: http://www.writethedocs.org/blog/new-community-coc-2019/ I’m happy to further explain the decisions behind it, if you have any questions.
I will not share the full details of the incident I reported in the RIPE community, because I prefer not to be identified as the reporter. About four months have passed since my report, and I have not received any reply from the wg chairs or the RIPE chair, who are the designated contacts, other than two notes that it was being worked on. I initially reported to the relevant working group chairs, and then escalated to the RIPE chair, as documented in the RIPE community CoC. To my knowledge, no action has been taken.
My general impression is that none of the people listed as CoC contacts in any part of the RIPE community are able to effectively take action on a CoC incident. Either because this is explicitly not part of their task (trusted contacts) or, I suspect, they lack any kind of resources or possibly time to handle an incident. That is *not* a failure on the part of any of these people individually, but rather caused by a flawed and mostly absent process and mandate to act.
In addition, confidentiality of CoC reports is violated in every single report. Both wg chair mailing lists and the trusted contacts address are moderated by NCC staff, which means an unknown person(s) can also see the report, and reporters are not made aware of this in advance. This can have severe consequences, and makes reporting unsafe. The RIPE chair doesn’t seem to have any publicly listed contact address at all.
Personally I feel that the ability of the RIPE community to handle a CoC incident is so abysmal, that we would be better off not publishing one at all, as we are now creating a false sense of security.
I should also note that this was a fairly minor incident, pretty much the most trivial kind of incident a CoC contact has to deal with. The consequences of the lack of ability to respond properly could be very severe in case of a more serious incident - which have taken place in the RIPE community as well.
The updated Code of Conduct for Write the Docs, along with our response guide, handles many of these concerns specifically, so I suggest you have a look at it, and see how it can be adopted for the RIPE community. However, in order to have an effective CoC process, it will also require setting up one or more response teams, which can be contacted privately, with publicly listed membership, and most importantly, a mandate to act. Including, if needed, immediate removal of a community member, including those in a position of power. From my personal experience, this is a quite rare measure, but it needs to be on the table for the CoC to be effective.
I’m not sure what the process would be to continue with this, or how others feel - I’m curious to hear your ideas. But the apparent fact that the RIPE community is currently unable to handle even the most trivial CoC reports, makes it inherently unsafe.
Sasha _______________________________________________ diversity mailing list diversity@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/diversity
-- -- Hans Petter Holen Mobile +47 45 06 60 54 | hph@oslo.net | http://hph.oslo.net
Just want to throw my two cents in, I do not have any clue what actually happened but if what Sasha says is correct, then I do feel like this is an issue that needs to be addressed. And regarding confidentiality it is important that the CoC incident report emails just go to the people responsible, and that irrelevant staff etc do not have the ability to see these emails. The RIPE community is large and I do feel that there needs to be an effective CoC incident reporting procedure. Kind regards, Cynthia On 2019-02-11 19:20, Hans Petter Holen wrote:
You raise some very important questions. When we introduced the Code of Conduct in the first place, strong voices said that we do not need this. I still hear voices to the same respect, but not as strong. We are making progress but we still have a long way to go.
I will have to appologise for my late reply from your escalation of the matter. That is clearly not acceptable and I will work on ways to improve that. (If you did not get my response, I am happy to resend) My response does however not change the substance of your message.
I think you point to some important improvements that should be disscussed and implemented.
Eager to hear what the other TF members think.
Hans Petter
On Mon, 11 Feb 2019 at 17:53, Sasha Romijn <sasha@mxsasha.eu <mailto:sasha@mxsasha.eu>> wrote:
Hello all,
At the last RIPE meeting, we talked about our Code of Conduct. I offered to send a good example. I’ve since also actually reported a CoC incident in the RIPE community, and want to share some thoughts on that experience.
Sending a CoC example took some time, as I’ve been refactoring and improving the CoC for the Write the Docs community. Our new CoC is: http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct/ http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct-response/ And these are the most significant changes: http://www.writethedocs.org/blog/new-community-coc-2019/ I’m happy to further explain the decisions behind it, if you have any questions.
I will not share the full details of the incident I reported in the RIPE community, because I prefer not to be identified as the reporter. About four months have passed since my report, and I have not received any reply from the wg chairs or the RIPE chair, who are the designated contacts, other than two notes that it was being worked on. I initially reported to the relevant working group chairs, and then escalated to the RIPE chair, as documented in the RIPE community CoC. To my knowledge, no action has been taken.
My general impression is that none of the people listed as CoC contacts in any part of the RIPE community are able to effectively take action on a CoC incident. Either because this is explicitly not part of their task (trusted contacts) or, I suspect, they lack any kind of resources or possibly time to handle an incident. That is *not* a failure on the part of any of these people individually, but rather caused by a flawed and mostly absent process and mandate to act.
In addition, confidentiality of CoC reports is violated in every single report. Both wg chair mailing lists and the trusted contacts address are moderated by NCC staff, which means an unknown person(s) can also see the report, and reporters are not made aware of this in advance. This can have severe consequences, and makes reporting unsafe. The RIPE chair doesn’t seem to have any publicly listed contact address at all.
Personally I feel that the ability of the RIPE community to handle a CoC incident is so abysmal, that we would be better off not publishing one at all, as we are now creating a false sense of security.
I should also note that this was a fairly minor incident, pretty much the most trivial kind of incident a CoC contact has to deal with. The consequences of the lack of ability to respond properly could be very severe in case of a more serious incident - which have taken place in the RIPE community as well.
The updated Code of Conduct for Write the Docs, along with our response guide, handles many of these concerns specifically, so I suggest you have a look at it, and see how it can be adopted for the RIPE community. However, in order to have an effective CoC process, it will also require setting up one or more response teams, which can be contacted privately, with publicly listed membership, and most importantly, a mandate to act. Including, if needed, immediate removal of a community member, including those in a position of power. From my personal experience, this is a quite rare measure, but it needs to be on the table for the CoC to be effective.
I’m not sure what the process would be to continue with this, or how others feel - I’m curious to hear your ideas. But the apparent fact that the RIPE community is currently unable to handle even the most trivial CoC reports, makes it inherently unsafe.
Sasha _______________________________________________ diversity mailing list diversity@ripe.net <mailto:diversity@ripe.net> https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/diversity
-- -- Hans Petter Holen Mobile +47 45 06 60 54 | hph@oslo.net <mailto:hph@oslo.net> | http://hph.oslo.net
_______________________________________________ diversity mailing list diversity@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/diversity
Hi Sasha, On 11/02/2019 17:53, Sasha Romijn wrote: [..]
In addition, confidentiality of CoC reports is violated in every single report. Both wg chair mailing lists and the trusted contacts address are moderated by NCC staff, which means an unknown person(s) can also see the report, and reporters are not made aware of this in advance. This can have severe consequences, and makes reporting unsafe.
Just to clarify the point above: two of the trusted contacts are RIPE NCC staff members. The list moderation is set up such that only these people can see and moderate mails sent to the list. I am sorry if this is not clear from the moderation message you received. Regarding mails sent to WG chairs: Everyone who is subscribed to the mailing list of a specific WG can send mail to the WG chairs list of that WG without moderation. Kind regards, Mirjam
Sasha, First off, thanks for this email, but also I'm sorry you had to write it. This response is partially on my own behalf (the bit at the beginning) and part of it is on behalf of the wider TF, based on conversations in Amsterdam and more recently. From a personal point of view, as a human, a RIPE Community Member and a WG Chair, I'm very sorry that this has happened, both the incident and the experience reporting. It's good that Hans Petter will take action now, but obviously it would be better if such a prompt wasn't needed and the process was greatly improved. I think it very much shows that the point of evolution we've reached with the CoC, which is an evolution from where it was, it not close to far enough. Now, moving away from the purely personal to respond more on behalf of the TF (which is a nebulous beast, but still...): I do know, not that it helps you or reduces the issues you and possibly others have had with the process, that there have been some issues reported that have worked through the system in a far "better" fashion. I say this not to minimise your experience or the problems, rather to say that the failure is not total across the board. However it does highlight that there is far, far too high a risk of failure for a number of reasons, not limited to individual reactions and a range of other points that you've raised. Again, this is a point of note, nothing more. Now for the concrete actions and points! My notes from what the TF agreed in Amsterdam are: RIPE CoC: - Trusted Contacts received training from Hubert Consult, Vesna to send the details to the list - Need to review and improve at this point in time - Especially in regards to the procedure around dealing with reports and who can take the action to remove someone from the meeting? - Sasha has a template for a possible changes to/rewrite of the CoC - Sasha will send an email to the list with the JangoCon Europe information and we can file off the relevant serial numbers - TF to consider how to make updating the CoC and associated procedures easier - Brian & Shane to inform the PC and WG Chairs that this work is ongoing So I think the TF is already agreed on a lot of what you've said, we just need to get going on it. It feels wrong at this point to put the work of the template and the communications with JangoCon back on you, but we do also want to find the best material for the CoC. Perhaps the Write the Docs CoC might be a better starting point at this time? Certainly I would be very happy to work on adapting this with you or others, but there's no question it is already an agreed action of the TF and we've flagged it to the PC and the WG Chairs. Importantly in this will be consequences for violations, something which is clearly missing at present. I think that we, as a TF, can ask the Trusted Contacts now and in the future to prepare a report after each meeting, which would, at a suitable level of obfuscation, given information on reports made. It's possible this can also encompass reports made between meetings or based on other RIPE community events or for a, that's something we can determine. The TF will also (and again, I don't think I'm deviating hugely from our decisions in Amsterdam or more recent conversations) work with the WG Chairs and the RIPE Chair to have CoC related text included in the WG Chairs job description and work with the NCC to provide training for them in regards to upholding the improved CoC. I think we need to look at how we can do the same for the Programme Committee. I hope this is useful to you, but obviously your input (and everyone else's!) is vital in pushing this forward in the right way for the community. Amanda is going to take a look at arranging a TF VC soon to discuss this further in real time and I'm very much hoping you can join that call. Thanks, Brian Brian Nisbet Service Operations Manager HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network 1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin D01 X8N7, Ireland +35316609040 brian.nisbet@heanet.ie www.heanet.ie Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270
-----Original Message----- From: diversity <diversity-bounces@ripe.net> On Behalf Of Sasha Romijn Sent: Monday 11 February 2019 16:53 To: diversity@ripe.net Subject: [diversity] On the RIPE community CoC
Hello all,
At the last RIPE meeting, we talked about our Code of Conduct. I offered to send a good example. I’ve since also actually reported a CoC incident in the RIPE community, and want to share some thoughts on that experience.
Sending a CoC example took some time, as I’ve been refactoring and improving the CoC for the Write the Docs community. Our new CoC is: http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct/ http://www.writethedocs.org/code-of-conduct-response/ And these are the most significant changes: http://www.writethedocs.org/blog/new-community-coc-2019/ I’m happy to further explain the decisions behind it, if you have any questions.
I will not share the full details of the incident I reported in the RIPE community, because I prefer not to be identified as the reporter. About four months have passed since my report, and I have not received any reply from the wg chairs or the RIPE chair, who are the designated contacts, other than two notes that it was being worked on. I initially reported to the relevant working group chairs, and then escalated to the RIPE chair, as documented in the RIPE community CoC. To my knowledge, no action has been taken.
My general impression is that none of the people listed as CoC contacts in any part of the RIPE community are able to effectively take action on a CoC incident. Either because this is explicitly not part of their task (trusted contacts) or, I suspect, they lack any kind of resources or possibly time to handle an incident. That is *not* a failure on the part of any of these people individually, but rather caused by a flawed and mostly absent process and mandate to act.
In addition, confidentiality of CoC reports is violated in every single report. Both wg chair mailing lists and the trusted contacts address are moderated by NCC staff, which means an unknown person(s) can also see the report, and reporters are not made aware of this in advance. This can have severe consequences, and makes reporting unsafe. The RIPE chair doesn’t seem to have any publicly listed contact address at all.
Personally I feel that the ability of the RIPE community to handle a CoC incident is so abysmal, that we would be better off not publishing one at all, as we are now creating a false sense of security.
I should also note that this was a fairly minor incident, pretty much the most trivial kind of incident a CoC contact has to deal with. The consequences of the lack of ability to respond properly could be very severe in case of a more serious incident - which have taken place in the RIPE community as well.
The updated Code of Conduct for Write the Docs, along with our response guide, handles many of these concerns specifically, so I suggest you have a look at it, and see how it can be adopted for the RIPE community. However, in order to have an effective CoC process, it will also require setting up one or more response teams, which can be contacted privately, with publicly listed membership, and most importantly, a mandate to act. Including, if needed, immediate removal of a community member, including those in a position of power. From my personal experience, this is a quite rare measure, but it needs to be on the table for the CoC to be effective.
I’m not sure what the process would be to continue with this, or how others feel - I’m curious to hear your ideas. But the apparent fact that the RIPE community is currently unable to handle even the most trivial CoC reports, makes it inherently unsafe.
Sasha _______________________________________________ diversity mailing list diversity@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/diversity
Hello all, On 11 Feb 2019, at 19:20, Hans Petter Holen <hph@oslo.net> wrote:
I will have to appologise for my late reply from your escalation of the matter. That is clearly not acceptable and I will work on ways to improve that. (If you did not get my response, I am happy to resend)
Yes, I did get your response. But most importantly, I consider this a failure of process, not of individuals involved. On 12 Feb 2019, at 14:31, Mirjam Kuehne <mir@ripe.net> wrote:
Just to clarify the point above: two of the trusted contacts are RIPE NCC staff members. The list moderation is set up such that only these people can see and moderate mails sent to the list. I am sorry if this is not clear from the moderation message you received.
That is much less of a concern then. However, it’s not very inviting as a first reply to a report. Considering the low number of people otherwise affected by spam, perhaps it would make sense not to moderate it at all?
Regarding mails sent to WG chairs: Everyone who is subscribed to the mailing list of a specific WG can send mail to the WG chairs list of that WG without moderation.
That’s peculiar, because I’m fairly sure I was subscribed at the time, and my mails were still moderated. Still, people should also be able to report safely if they’re not a member of the list, so this needs some kind of change. On 12 Feb 2019, at 18:19, Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet@heanet.ie> wrote:
I do know, not that it helps you or reduces the issues you and possibly others have had with the process, that there have been some issues reported that have worked through the system in a far "better" fashion. I say this not to minimise your experience or the problems, rather to say that the failure is not total across the board. However it does highlight that there is far, far too high a risk of failure for a number of reasons, not limited to individual reactions and a range of other points that you've raised. Again, this is a point of note, nothing more.
It’s good to hear that it has worked well in other cases :)
It feels wrong at this point to put the work of the template and the communications with JangoCon back on you, but we do also want to find the best material for the CoC. Perhaps the Write the Docs CoC might be a better starting point at this time? Certainly I would be very happy to work on adapting this with you or others, but there's no question it is already an agreed action of the TF and we've flagged it to the PC and the WG Chairs.
So, for DjangoCon Europe 2018, I was on the organising team, and restructured much of the CoC. I now adopted most of that work into the new Write the Docs CoC. The latter is probably a better starting point, because the DjangoCon CoC is focused at supporting one particular event, during a temporary time, with one single CoC team responsible for all reports. Write the Docs is a community with a number of meetups run by local organisers, a number of conferences where core team members are deeply involved, a number of conferences where most work is done by local organisers, and a number of online spaces. So, the WTD community is more similar to the RIPE community, and therefore is a better starting point.
Importantly in this will be consequences for violations, something which is clearly missing at present.
Yes, specifying possible consequences is an essential part of a CoC. In the WTD CoC response guide, we also provide some guideline on appropriate responses (but never hard rules).
I think that we, as a TF, can ask the Trusted Contacts now and in the future to prepare a report after each meeting, which would, at a suitable level of obfuscation, given information on reports made. It's possible this can also encompass reports made between meetings or based on other RIPE community events or for a, that's something we can determine.
Yes, these are generally called transparency reports, I co-authored this one last year: https://2018.djangocon.eu/news/coc-transparency/ As noted in incident #2 in that report, it is essential to prioritise anonymity above detail, so in some cases the report remains very vague. But even then it can still help, as it shows that we have been active, and makes visible what kind of actions we’ve taken and the lessons learned.
The TF will also (and again, I don't think I'm deviating hugely from our decisions in Amsterdam or more recent conversations) work with the WG Chairs and the RIPE Chair to have CoC related text included in the WG Chairs job description and work with the NCC to provide training for them in regards to upholding the improved CoC. I think we need to look at how we can do the same for the Programme Committee.
Are the WG chairs actually the best people to handle reports? From what I’ve seen in regards to WG chair selection and process, I’m not sure this is part of the task they are chosen for. And incidents can occur outside of WG spaces - I’m not sure where those would be handled in this model. Another concern is that some information sharing is required. If a person has already received a reprimand for certain behaviour in one WG, and repeats this in another WG, it is important to be aware of the previous incident so that someone can’t keep claiming “I’m sorry, I didn’t know”. To share incident information with all WG chairs would mean sharing it with 27 people, and we haven’t even considered incidents outside WG spaces yet. It’s absolutely vital that details of incidents are kept secret and known to as few people as possible - having them known to 27 people is way too many. So some other structure is required anyways to track repeat violators and general trends, without sharing reports between all WG chairs. I also recommend against having the RIPE chair as the (only) escalation path for CoC issues. CoC processes should not depend on a single person, because: - It makes it more likely that something will be forgotten or overlooked. - The single person can become the target of a CoC-violating action, and should be able to excuse themselves from further handling of that incident. For example, a recent case where I handled communication for an incident resulted in hateful messages being sent to me. At that point, I excused myself from handling the report, and left it to other team members, both for my own well-being, and because anything else could create the perception of a conflict of interest. - The single person can have a conflict of interest in handling a report, for example a report being made by or about a close friend or close business relation, and in that case someone needs to be able to excuse themselves. - The CoC needs to account for the possibility a report being made about a person who is usually involved in CoC handling. I’ve not really dealt with that personally, but even if it never happens, there needs to be a process for it, if only to help build trust in the CoC reporting process. Sasha
Sasha, Thanks for all of this! I think there's much to discuss and it might be easier to do that via voice on our call in early March? I think there's a lot we just straight agree on, but the big complexities/discussion points, for me, are around the role (or lack thereof) of the WG Chairs and the RIPE Chair. I think there has to be some, but as you make clear, it isn't straightforward! So for me, I can respond (as can others!) to both your points and other things, or as I suggested, we can discuss them in a couple of weeks. Thanks again, Brian Brian Nisbet Service Operations Manager HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network 1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin D01 X8N7, Ireland +35316609040 brian.nisbet@heanet.ie www.heanet.ie Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270
-----Original Message----- From: diversity <diversity-bounces@ripe.net> On Behalf Of Sasha Romijn Sent: Thursday 14 February 2019 10:33 To: diversity@ripe.net Subject: Re: [diversity] On the RIPE community CoC
Hello all,
On 11 Feb 2019, at 19:20, Hans Petter Holen <hph@oslo.net> wrote:
I will have to appologise for my late reply from your escalation of the matter. That is clearly not acceptable and I will work on ways to improve that. (If you did not get my response, I am happy to resend)
Yes, I did get your response. But most importantly, I consider this a failure of process, not of individuals involved.
On 12 Feb 2019, at 14:31, Mirjam Kuehne <mir@ripe.net> wrote:
Just to clarify the point above: two of the trusted contacts are RIPE NCC staff members. The list moderation is set up such that only these people can see and moderate mails sent to the list. I am sorry if this is not clear from the moderation message you received.
That is much less of a concern then. However, it’s not very inviting as a first reply to a report. Considering the low number of people otherwise affected by spam, perhaps it would make sense not to moderate it at all?
Regarding mails sent to WG chairs: Everyone who is subscribed to the mailing list of a specific WG can send mail to the WG chairs list of that WG without moderation.
That’s peculiar, because I’m fairly sure I was subscribed at the time, and my mails were still moderated. Still, people should also be able to report safely if they’re not a member of the list, so this needs some kind of change.
I do know, not that it helps you or reduces the issues you and possibly others have had with the process, that there have been some issues reported that have worked through the system in a far "better" fashion. I say
On 12 Feb 2019, at 18:19, Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet@heanet.ie> wrote: this not to minimise your experience or the problems, rather to say that the failure is not total across the board. However it does highlight that there is far, far too high a risk of failure for a number of reasons, not limited to individual reactions and a range of other points that you've raised. Again, this is a point of note, nothing more.
It’s good to hear that it has worked well in other cases :)
It feels wrong at this point to put the work of the template and the communications with JangoCon back on you, but we do also want to find the best material for the CoC. Perhaps the Write the Docs CoC might be a better starting point at this time? Certainly I would be very happy to work on adapting this with you or others, but there's no question it is already an agreed action of the TF and we've flagged it to the PC and the WG Chairs.
So, for DjangoCon Europe 2018, I was on the organising team, and restructured much of the CoC. I now adopted most of that work into the new Write the Docs CoC. The latter is probably a better starting point, because the DjangoCon CoC is focused at supporting one particular event, during a temporary time, with one single CoC team responsible for all reports. Write the Docs is a community with a number of meetups run by local organisers, a number of conferences where core team members are deeply involved, a number of conferences where most work is done by local organisers, and a number of online spaces. So, the WTD community is more similar to the RIPE community, and therefore is a better starting point.
Importantly in this will be consequences for violations, something which is clearly missing at present.
Yes, specifying possible consequences is an essential part of a CoC. In the WTD CoC response guide, we also provide some guideline on appropriate responses (but never hard rules).
I think that we, as a TF, can ask the Trusted Contacts now and in the future to prepare a report after each meeting, which would, at a suitable level of obfuscation, given information on reports made. It's possible this can also encompass reports made between meetings or based on other RIPE community events or for a, that's something we can determine.
Yes, these are generally called transparency reports, I co-authored this one last year: https://2018.djangocon.eu/news/coc-transparency/
As noted in incident #2 in that report, it is essential to prioritise anonymity above detail, so in some cases the report remains very vague. But even then it can still help, as it shows that we have been active, and makes visible what kind of actions we’ve taken and the lessons learned.
The TF will also (and again, I don't think I'm deviating hugely from our decisions in Amsterdam or more recent conversations) work with the WG Chairs and the RIPE Chair to have CoC related text included in the WG Chairs job description and work with the NCC to provide training for them in regards to upholding the improved CoC. I think we need to look at how we can do the same for the Programme Committee.
Are the WG chairs actually the best people to handle reports? From what I’ve seen in regards to WG chair selection and process, I’m not sure this is part of the task they are chosen for. And incidents can occur outside of WG spaces - I’m not sure where those would be handled in this model.
Another concern is that some information sharing is required. If a person has already received a reprimand for certain behaviour in one WG, and repeats this in another WG, it is important to be aware of the previous incident so that someone can’t keep claiming “I’m sorry, I didn’t know”. To share incident information with all WG chairs would mean sharing it with 27 people, and we haven’t even considered incidents outside WG spaces yet. It’s absolutely vital that details of incidents are kept secret and known to as few people as possible - having them known to 27 people is way too many. So some other structure is required anyways to track repeat violators and general trends, without sharing reports between all WG chairs.
I also recommend against having the RIPE chair as the (only) escalation path for CoC issues. CoC processes should not depend on a single person, because: - It makes it more likely that something will be forgotten or overlooked. - The single person can become the target of a CoC-violating action, and should be able to excuse themselves from further handling of that incident. For example, a recent case where I handled communication for an incident resulted in hateful messages being sent to me. At that point, I excused myself from handling the report, and left it to other team members, both for my own well-being, and because anything else could create the perception of a conflict of interest. - The single person can have a conflict of interest in handling a report, for example a report being made by or about a close friend or close business relation, and in that case someone needs to be able to excuse themselves. - The CoC needs to account for the possibility a report being made about a person who is usually involved in CoC handling. I’ve not really dealt with that personally, but even if it never happens, there needs to be a process for it, if only to help build trust in the CoC reporting process.
Sasha
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participants (5)
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Brian Nisbet -
Cynthia Revström -
Hans Petter Holen -
Mirjam Kuehne -
Sasha Romijn