Re: Harassment, abuse, accountability. and IETF mailing lists

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Friday, June 3, 2022 09:24 -0500 Pete Resnick
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 3 Jun 2022, at 6:30, Lars Eggert wrote:
> 
>> On 2022-6-3, at 13:38, Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> On 2022-06-03, at 09:19, Lars Eggert <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> They can always contact any AD, the IESG as a whole, or the
>>>> IETF  Chair.
>>> 
>>> (One problem with such a broad recommendation is that a
>>> newcomer will  have no way to know who in the IETF
>>> organization colludes with whom.   We may think it is a job
>>> requirement for an AD to be able to act like  an ombudsman,
>>> but how does the newcomer know that.)
>> 
>> which is why there is an ombudsteam?
> 
> (Speaking without hats)
> 
> Let's be clear about the division of labor here: RFC 7776
> anticipates that common disruptive behavior on a WG mailing
> list is handled by the chair of the WG, and then escalated to
> the AD, IESG, etc. as needed. The ombudsteam process is
> normally reserved for the kinds of harassment that can't be
> dealt with that way. While the ombudsteam has been completely
> open to advising people (both participants and chairs) on
> cases of straightforward misbehavior (and in fact recently was
> asked to speak at a WG meeting in order to deal with such
> behavior), I would personally not be too keen on the default
> position for every concern to be brought to the ombudsteam;
> that's a recipe for the ombudsteam to become the
> good-behavior-enforcement-body in the IETF, which IMO would be
> a very bad thing (let alone against what RFC 7776 says). The
> default should always be to bring it to the person(s) leading
> the discussion, which in the case of WGs is the chair(s).
> 
> For non-WG mailing lists, there is an IESG statement:
> https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/statements/disruptive-p
> osting/. It's pretty clear that for non-WG lists, the
> administrator deals with disruptive posters. But I just happen
> to know about that IESG statement because Iwas on the IAB when
> an appeal caused that statement to be written. A newcomer
> probably would not know that non-WG list administrators are
> expected to deal with disruptions. More importantly, as John
> and others have said, finding the identify the list
> administrator is not trivial. Somewhere, in an easy to find
> spot, anyone should be able to discover the procedures for
> dealing with disruptive behavior and the names of the humans
> who handle it.

Let me add to Pete's remarks above.  I concur with his belief
that the first point of contact should be a WG Chair or list
administrator, not some more centralized body like the
ombudsteam, IESG, or even individual ADs.  The latter might be
appropriate where there is some specific reason to avoid the
list administrator or WG Chair, but that should be a rare case.
I think it would be reasonable to allow WG Chairs, with AD
approval, to assign the "list administrator" job to someone
else, or to designate one of their number to handle such
inquiries but then the relevant pages should clearly identify
the person in that role and their contact information.  And, if
a WG Chair or list administrator is not willing or able to do
the job or get it done, that should, IMO, be considered
important enough to be grounds to require ADs to replace them.

Finally if we really wanted to centralize the function of
responding to inquiries or complaints about inappropriate
behavior, I think we should be taking a clue from the ombudsteam
and treating initial contacts as an opportunity for education
rather than about punishment.  That suggests the first point of
contact would be the Guides effort or the EMO Directorate, not
ADs, the IESG, or the Ombudsteam.  Personally, I think we are
better off keeping it decentralized, but...

best,
   john