--On Friday, March 13, 2015 12:55 +0200 Jari Arkko
<jari.arkko@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The IESG has noted the recent discussions on this document. It
> is my intent as the sponsoring AD to let the discussion
> continue so that we can reach a reasonable conclusion, ask the
> authors to submit a new revision, and then perform a brief new
> last call around those changes to ensure that we didn't miss
> anything.
Jari,
I agree with others that the intentions behind this draft are
worthwhile and probably overdue. I also share many of the
concerns that have been expressed about details and remedies,
but am comfortable enough with the way those concerns have been
expressed by others to not feel a need to repeat them.
However, the responses by a few IESG members to comments about
the IESG's exempting itself (and other parts of the leadership
[1]) from the provisions seems to call for additional comment
and probably a few more issues for the list of topics needing
addressing.
(1) Having the IESG act as judge / approval body for proposed
procedural changes that would have impact on the IESG is not the
best possible idea. In addition to bad optics, it is inevitable
that people who are comfortable sitting on the IESG are less
sensitive to issues involving requirements for organizational
support, time commitments, meeting attendance, etc., than people
who have been prevented from volunteering and serving by those
same conditions. Similarly, IESG members who know how the
system works and how to keep it working more or less smoothly
are likely to be more resistant to changes that would affect
those things than members of the community who are affected
negatively by existing arrangements. Several proposals (ones
that got to the I-D stage and a few with WG development and
backing, not merely comments on mailing lists) to make changes
along those lines have gotten nowhere, apparently because the
IESG has been unwilling to consider them even to the point of
allowing a Last Call. When the IESG says "we (and others we
designate as 'in a management position') are the one set of
people in the IETF who are exempt from a major portion of the
anti-harassment procedures", there is a very unfortunate
perception of the same type of abuse of power to protect the
incumbents and those like them.
The observation that the IETF (and IESG) Chair appoints the
Ombudsteam membership at his or her personal discretion and can
remove members without explanation (unless an action against the
Chair is already pending) just aggravates the problem by
creating a significant risk that only those people will be
appointed who are IESG-friendly. I trust your discretion and
intelligence in such matters, but it is hard to predict the
behavior of your successors and, again, the optics are bad.
I'm not persuaded that it is a good solution for this case, but
this is the sort of issue that led the community to put key
parts of the Nomcom and Recall team appointment processes in the
hands of the ISOC President.
Even if exempting the IESG (or others in "IETF management
position(s)") were a good idea (I am not convinced, in part for
the reasons below, that it is) it may be that this proposal
demonstrates that the IESG should not be the review and approval
body for process change proposals and that the question of
approval mechanisms needs to be addressed first.
(2) To the extent to which the reasoning is that the recall
procedure (i.e., "existing mechanisms within IETF process for
the removal of people..." [2]) should be used instead, we need
to recognize that, unless we believe that there has never been
someone in a recall-able position whose behavior justified the
intense community review that only a recall can provide, we
don't have an effective recall procedure. This is particularly
problematic for harassment issues involving newcomers or remote
attendees -- neither is likely to be eligible to initiate a
recall process under current rules and they are less likely than
long-term regular participants to be able to round up 20
Nomcom-eligible people to sign petitions. The recall process
model is also extremely long in terms of calendar time, a
condition that is inappropriate if harassment is a serious
problem. In addition, the recall signature process does not
contain any anti-retaliation provisions equivalent to those in
this document. Since we have never seen a recall progress
beyond preliminary efforts to gather signatures, there may be
other issues that practice would expose. If the intent is to
rely on recall procedures rather than allowing the Ombudsteam to
take direct action against a member of the leadership, then, _at
least_, this document should modify the recall procedure to
allow the Ombudsteam to initiate the recall review directly,
bypassing the petition process and its restrictions.
(3) The definition of "IETF Participant" in the document clearly
includes individuals whose participation does not involve
regular attendance at f2f meetings. Prior discussions on the
IETF List suggest that group is demographically different from
the norm for regular attendees, more likely to actually be
individuals rather than organizationally supported, and so on.
That does not make them exempt from harassment. Those
differences strongly suggest that there should at least be an
opportunity for someone with the experience of that population
to be on the Ombudsteam and perhaps even a requirement for such
a member. That would obviously be inconsistent with the current
requirement that "Each member... is expected to be present at
the majority of IETF meetings and to be available for
face-to-face discussions" so, if the community agrees that kind
of representation is appropriate, some tuning is needed.
best,
john
[1] This is a nit relative to the more general issues above (and
it may have been spotted in a message I missed), but I am
unclear what "a IETF management position" actually is. IESG
members clearly qualify. IAOC members may or may not be -- they
are generally recall-eligible (although some are not), but what
they manage is not the IETF. IAB members are not generally
thought of as having IETF management responsibility, even the
IAB Chair in his or her IESG capacity. One can argue either way
about the Secretariat, the IAD, and the RFC Series Editor, none
of whom are subject to recall. Whatever the document intends,
it needs to be significantly more clear than "IETF management
position". It also appears to me that, even if one completely
accepts the current model, no one for whom there are no
"existing mechanisms within IETF process" should be exempt from
any action the Ombudsteam might otherwise choose to take.
[2] Of course, the other "existing mechanism" is to wait for the
next Nomcom or other process that appoints the relevant position
and then complain. If we believe harassment to be an important
issue that needs to be dealt with in a timely fashion, that is
not an appropriate mechanism.