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:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] 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.