Fwiw ...
On Mar 19, 2015 9:10 AM, "Adrian Farrel" <adrian(_at_)olddog(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk>
wrote:
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.
So, I also read the -05 version, in addition to a few others.
What was confusing to me, in that text, was " the Ombudsteam can recommend
..."
I asked "recommends to whom?"
My understanding when we were noodling on -05 was that we were really
pushing on maintaining confidentiality, to the point that the Ombudsteam
would not tell a WG chair or individual AD that Spencer-not-an-AD needs to
be removed.
If we are ok with that happening, to the least extent possible, I will stop
asking snippy questions.
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.
Oh, I'd agree. My thought was, that we shouldn't special-case more than we
must, so since we have a recall procedure, (try to) use it at least once
and see what breaks.
I saw a note, and I'd have to look at some email threads to see who else
was cc-ed, doing the math on how long it takes to run a recall through to
"Spencer is no longer an AD", and coming up with an estimate of 3-5 months.
My quick take was that the estimate was likely close.
But if that's the case, I'm not sure why fixing the recall process wouldn't
make about as much sense as special-casing anything here.
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.
Yes, and speaking as a retired process weenie, I'm not sanguine that we
would be coming up with more tweaks that will address the first problem we
encounter in practice. Running code good.
So what I'm wondering, is whether starting with either -05 or -06 is worse
than what we have in place now ...
Thanks,
Spencer
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.