RE: Sam's text and way forward on the last call of draft-farrresnickel-harassment-05.txt

["Adrian Farrel" <[e-mail]>]

I completely support the aims of Sam's text, but doubt the practicality.

For example, if the Ombudsteam decides to remove someone from a WG chair
position, how will this actually work? Will they tell the AD "this person is no
longer a WG chair" and will the AD be supposed to say "Ah, that was the
Ombudsteam speaking, so I had better react by, for example, not instantly
reappointing them"?

The -05 text had...

     The Ombudsteam can recommend, but can not
      impose, that a Respondent who is in a IETF management position be
      removed from that position.  There are existing mechanisms within
      IETF process for the removal of people from IETF management
      positions that may be used as necessary.

I stand by that text and I believe it achieves everything that is desired
without:
- needing any changes to existing processes
- needing any more lapses in confidentiality than Sam's proposal.

It is, of course, vague. But let's look at some cases:

1. Document editor.
"Hello WG chairs, we are the Ombudsteam and we ask you to remove Adrian from
editing draft-ietf-foo."
The WG chairs will know what that means and don't need to know any more details.
What is the difference between this and Sam's proposal?
- We do not need to update the text about who hires/fires document
   editors
- We have to trust WG chairs to understand that the Ombudsteam would not
   ask if there wasn't good reason.

2. WG secretary.
Ditto case 1

3. WG chair
"Hello AD, we are the Ombudsteam and we ask you to remove Adrian from chairing
the FOO WG."
The AD will know what that means and doesn't need to know any more details.
What is the difference between this and Sam's proposal?
- We do not need to update the text about who hires/fires WG chairs
- We have to trust ADs to understand that the Ombudsteam would not
   ask if there wasn't good reason.

4. IESG, IAB, IAOC
Here I think a little more is needed.
Requiring a 20 person petition requires that 20 people know of the case and
possibly agree with the Ombudsteam.
That is a possibly a step too far.
I think we should allow 
- the Ombudsteam to directly petition the ISOC President
- the fact of the petition to be published
- the recall committee to listen to the Ombudsteam and trust them, maybe
   asking for an outline, but not demanding full details

I *do* agree that asking someone to resign is a good first step. I am slightly
suspicious that someone who harasses to the extent that this remedy is judged
appropriate would probably not choose to resign. But running code will expose
that.

Thanks,
Adrian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Jari Arkko
> Sent: 19 March 2015 10:04
> To: IETF Discussion List
> Subject: Sam's text and way forward on the last call of draft-farrresnickel-
> harassment-05.txt
> 
> I wanted to recap where we are with respect to the topic
> of incidents handled by the ombudsteam affecting roles
> that people have in the IETF.
> 
> First off, I think we have broad agreement that we need
> to deal with this better than version -06 of the document
> does, and that misbehaving leadership needs to be
> removed. The debate has been about the specific
> mechanics of doing that, and clearly -06 was not up
> to the task, as well as leaving a bad impression.
> I'm sorry. We are now in the process of seeing how to
> correct that.
> 
> I would like to get to the specific proposals. Sam
> suggested one way of dealing with this, copied below.
> 
> I personally like this text. There are some variations of
> the general approach, I think Pete argued for a similar
> treatment of WG chairs and nomcom-appointed
> positions. I could live with that as well.
> 
> However, there is clearly another class of approaches
> to solving this. We could specify the mechanics of
> ombudsteam initiating or running the recall process,
> or providing the ombudsteam the authority to terminate
> appointments. I think this type of an approach is also
> possible, but would tie into our nomcom and recall
> processes in a quite close manner. The details would
> have to be specified, and of course, the resulting system
> should still be workable, safe, etc. from overall IETF
> perspective. Does anyone have a proposal in this
> space, or believe we should take this path?
> 
> Or are there other approaches not listed in this
> e-mail?
> 
> So at this point I would like to ask if people are
> comfortable with Sam's proposal or if other
> proposals are forthcoming and/or people believe
> that another approach is needed. Concrete
> text proposals would be appreciated.
> 
> Here's Sam's proposal:
> 
> > I'd like to take a stab to see if I understand what we do have consensus
> > on:
> >
> > old:
> > (The Ombudsteam can not impose that a Respondent
> >      who is in a IETF management position be removed from that
> >      position.  There are existing mechanisms within IETF process for
> >      the removal of people from IETF management positions that may be
> >      used as necessary.)
> >
> > new:
> > The Ombudsteam MAY ask a respondent to consider resigning from an IETF
> > management position.  The Ombudsteam May remove a respondent from a
> > working group  or document editor position.  While this document does
> > not create additional procedures permitting a nomcom appointee be
> > removed, the Ombudsteam can exclude a respondent from meetings and
> > mailing lists and other activities, making it impossible for them to
> > carry out their appointed tasks.
> >
> > Rationale  for the above:
> >
> > I think we should split handling of chairs and wg-level positions from
nomcom
> stuff.
> > The discussion to date seems to have focused on nomcom-level
> > appointments, and we apparently don't have consensus to make changes to
> > that in this document.
> > However, I think we should carefully ask ourselves how we handle chair
> > harassment.
> > Recommending to the AD seems like the wrong approach.  The AD isn't
> > going to be in a position  to know the facts, the AD is not going to be
> > trained in harassment.  As a manager I've sometimes been told by HR that
> > I had to take certain actions; sometimes I agreed, sometimes I wished I
> > had other options.  However, sometimes the interest of (in that case the
> > company, in this case the IETF) to avoid harassment are more important
> > than an individual manager's preference.
> > So, I'd like to float the idea that the Ombudsteam is in the best
> > position to make harassment-related removals at that level.
> >
> > I've removed the sentence saying that the Ombudsteam cannot make
> > leadership removals because it's too easy to read that as an affirmative
> > statement against leadership removals.  Instead, I've floated a specific
> > instantiation of the idea that the Ombudsteam does have the power to
> > make it impossible for a leader to do their job.  I think it's important
> > to confirm we have consensus on this point.  It would be a huge mess for
> > the Ombudsteam to try and do that and to discover we didn't have
> > community support for that.  In effect I'm arguing that it's important
> > enough to make sure we're on the same page here that we float specific
> > text for this issue and confirm it doesn't attract unresolvable
> > objections.  Pete has said on-list and in private discussions that he
> > believes their is support for the Ombudsteam choosing remedies like
> > this.
> >
> >
> >