]> Mozilla

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Cisco Systems

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The IETF will treat people with kindness and grace, but not endless patience. This document describes the creation of a moderator team for all the IETF's various contribution channels. Without removing existing responsibilities for working group management, this team enables a uniform approach to moderation of disruptive participation across all mailing lists and other methods of IETF collaboration. About This Document The latest revision of this draft can be found at . Status information for this document may be found at . Discussion of this document takes place on the mod-discuss Working Group mailing list (), which is archived at . Subscribe at . Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at .

Introduction This document proposes the creation of a moderator team for all the IETF's various contribution channels. This moderator team is modeled after, and subsumes, the moderator team for the IETF discussion list . This memo is applicable to all IETF participation channels.

Background The IETF community has defined general guidelines of conduct for personal interaction in the IETF , and the IESG has defined an anti-harassment policy for the IETF for which the IETF community has defined anti-harassment procedures , empowering an ombudsteam to take necessary action. Dealing with disruptive behavior, however, is not part of the role of the ombudsteam. tasks the chairs of each IETF working group with moderating their group's in-person meetings and mailing lists, and an IESG statement describes additional guidance to working group chairs about how — but not when — to moderate their lists. For IETF mailing lists not associated with a working group, another IESG statement clarifies that the list administrators are tasked with moderation. And the IETF list for general discussions has, mostly for historic reasons, a team of moderators that are not list administrators and operate by a different set of processes . Note that the term "moderation" can refer both to preemptive moderation, where moderators review attempted participation before it occurs (such as reviewing messages to a mailing list), and reactive moderation, where moderators intervene after problematic participation has occurred. The IETF historically mainly practiced reactive moderation, with a spectrum from gentle reminders on- and off-list, all the way to suspension of posting rights and other ways of participating or communicating. It is up to the moderators to decide which mix of preemptive and reactive moderation to employ as part of their processes. In addition, defines a process for revoking an individual's posting rights to IETF mailing lists following a community last-call of a "posting rights" action (PR-action) proposed by the IESG, often in response to complaints from the community. Experience and community input suggests that an evolution of the existing processes is necessary (see ).

General Philosophy The cornerstone of our philosophy is first and foremost the individual, whose responsibility is to further the goals of the organization in a manner consistent with the policy laid out in . The IETF is an open standards organization. Engaged, respectful discussion that is within the scope of a forum should not be considered abuse, nor should someone be considered abusive solely because they are outside the rough consensus. Disagreement and diverse points of view within any standards organization are to be expected, and are even healthy. However, when someone crosses the line into disruptive behavior, some action must be taken in order to maintain decorum of the community. The moderation policy goals are as follows:

• Apply consistent, fair, and timely moderation of communication across all IETF channels without regard to one's position or previous contributions;
• Disagreements about moderation actions are addressed through appeals;
• Balance transparency against both privacy of individuals involved and further disruption to the community;
• Allow moderators to reconsider decisions; and
• Provide the broadest possible latitude to moderators, so that they may have the flexibility to address a broad range of individuals and circumstances.

Questions about processes detailed below should be answered through the lens of these aims. The goal is explicitly not punishment, but to maintain an open, welcoming, non-hostile environment in which all may participate on an equal footing, regardless of their position or past contributions.

Conventions and Definitions The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted in their normal English sense; they are shown in uppercase for emphasis and clarity.

IETF Moderator Team This document proposes a different, uniform approach to moderating the IETF's various participation channels: a moderator team for the IETF. The creation of this team intends to address the issues identified in the previous model and the principles described in the introduction.

Composition The moderator team consists of no less than five individuals. The IESG appoints and replaces moderators. In selecting members, the IESG will take into account geographic coverage, expected and unexpected absenses, and team diversity. The moderator team may expand or contract based on operational experience. Apart from appointing and replacing moderators, the IESG SHALL refrain from the day-to-day operation and management of the moderator team. The moderators MAY decide to consult with the IESG when needed. Because the IESG and IAB are in the appeals chain for moderator team decisions (see ), the IESG MUST NOT appoint a moderator who is serving on the IESG or IAB. Individuals serving on other bodies to which the NomCom appoints members, such as the IETF Trust or the LLC Board, as well as LLC staff and contractors SHALL also be excluded from serving on the moderator team. If a moderator is assuming any such role, they SHALL step down from the moderator team soon after.

Team Diversity Due to the global nature of the IETF, the membership of this team SHOULD reflect a diversity of time zones and other participant characteristics that lets it operate effectively around the clock and throughout the year. Ideally, the moderators should be able to respond to issues within a few hours. Team diversity is also important to ensure any participant observing problematic behavior can identify a moderator they feel comfortable contacting.

Scope The IETF moderator team is responsible for establishing processes to address moderation needs across all IETF fora, both present and future, including, but not limited to, mailing lists, chat channels, and discussions in other systems that the IETF or WGs have chosen to employ, such as GitHub repositories, Wikis, or issue trackers. The moderators are authorized to moderate all non-working group fora, including the IETF discussion and last-call mailing lists and all non-WG mailing lists, as well as area mailing lists. This also includes non-WG IETF-sponsored chat mechanisms. Interactions with WGs are discussed below. It is not expected that the moderators will be monitoring every IETF channel, but rather that participants MAY and chairs SHOULD flag concerns about disruptive behavior to the moderators. However, the moderators SHOULD actively monitor a small set of key participation channels, including, for example, the IETF discussion and last-call mailing lists or the IETF plenary chat channel. The moderators should decide which channels are in this set based on their own judgment and community suggestions. (Note that some participation channels, such as the examples given in the previous sentence, have no chairs or other community leadership, so the moderators MUST handle those.)

Non-IETF Communication Channels And Private Communications Excluded It is important to note that the moderator team only moderates public IETF participation channels. Their mandate does not extend to problematic behavior in private channels, such as private chat channels, direct messages, or conversations or other interactions outside of meetings. In such cases, the Ombudsteam should be approached.

IETF Working Groups The management and moderation of participation channels associated with various IETF groups, including their mailing lists, chat channels and in-person, remote, or interim meetings remains primarily a task of the relevant group's management, such as WG chairs. However, moderators are available for consultation and assistance should issues arise, and they MAY proactively confer with the group management over potential patterns of behavior. Group participants MAY and chairs MUST alert the moderators to problematic behavior that rises to the level that some action is needed. Similarly, when moderators observe or are alerted to problematic behavior on such channels, they MUST consult with the group's management to jointly determine an appropriate response. Only when necessary MAY the moderators take actions against someone in a working group setting, but they MUST inform management of relevant groups, including WG chairs and area directors, when they do so. If working group management and moderators have a disagreement about how to proceed in any given circumstance, before any further action is taken, the matter should be taken up with the responsible area director(s) for resolution, and, when more than one area is involved, with the IESG. It is anticipated that such disagreements will be exceedingly rare. The moderators should respect the views of the group management in such cases, and the group management should respect the moderators' task of upholding an overall IETF-wide uniformity for moderation.

Operations of the Moderator Team and Transparency Within the bounds of the policies set within this memo and with the approval of the IESG, the moderator team SHALL define any additional processes and moderation criteria necessary to execute their role. Those processes and criteria SHALL be developed with community input and made public, but need not be documented in the RFC series. The intent of this memo is to provide the widest possible freedom of action to the moderators, with a few constraints. Examples of actions that could be taken include:

• Automated rate limiting mechanisms;
• Review and approval of submissions/messages;
• A private or public admonishment;
• Temporary or permanent bans in one or more fora.

We stress that these are only examples, and not in any way prescriptive. The moderator team is free to decide on these actions. The expectation is that the minimal action necessary to maintain the comity of a forum will be attempted. The moderator team is responsible to the IESG. The IESG MAY create or designate a forum to facilitate discussion about moderation, and refer interested parties to that forum. All actions taken by the moderator team SHALL be reported to the IESG, as well as to those against whom those actions are directed. All bans longer than fourteen (14) days SHALL be reported to the forum in which the person was banned, and in the case of a ban that spans more than one forum, to the community in a manner decided by the IESG. Content removal or redaction from IETF archives are not moderation actions, and are therefore beyond the scope of this memo.

Training The IETF is committed to providing and/or funding training for appointed moderators as necessary. The IESG will negotiate any required funding or resources with IETF Administration LLC .

Appeals Because the moderator team serves at the discretion of the IESG, any moderation decision can be appealed to the IESG by anyone, per . Disagreements with a decision by the moderator team can be brought to their attention. If this does not lead to a resolution, a decision by the IESG can be appealed to the IAB as described in .

Reinstatement People and circumstances change. Individuals who have been banned from a forum may request to be reinstated. That request must be directed to the entity that made the decision (e.g., moderation team, working group chair, etc) or their successors, and that party may at their discretion reinstate someone, conditionally or unconditionally. Decisions to not reinstate someone may not be appealed. Requests for reinstatement may be entertained only a year after the initial decision, and then only annually. A ban imposed prior to this process shall be reconsidered only in accordance with the processes in place at the time of the ban, even if the corresponding RFC has been formally obsoleted.

Relation to the Ombudsteam The moderator team SHALL complement the efforts of the IETF ombudsteam , whose focus on anti-harassment and operation SHALL remain unchanged. The moderator team and ombudsteam are expected to work together in cases that may involve both disruptive behavior and harassment; they may determine the most effective way to do so in each case. For example, the ombudsteam MAY decide to have one of their members serve as a liaison to the moderator team. The ombudsteam has strict rules of confidentiality. If a moderation case overlaps with an ombudsteam case, confidential information MUST NOT be shared between the teams.

Relation to the IETF LLC The Board of Directors of the IETF Administration LLC (IETF LLC) has fiduciary duty for the overall organization, which includes the duty to protect the organization from serious legal risk that may arise from the behavior of IETF participants. This protection MAY include the need for the IETF LLC to take emergency moderation actions. These emergency actions are expected to be taken only when the IETF LLC has received legal advice that such action is necessary, and therefore extremely rare in frequency. Some examples of where this might be necessary are:

• Someone making credible threat of harm to other IETF participants.
• Someone using IETF mailing lists and/or websites to share content where publishing that content on IETF lists and/or websites brings serious legal risk.
• Someone making credible threats of legal action where any form of interaction with them on IETF mailing lists may have serious legal consequences for the IETF.

If any such action is taken, the IETF LLC SHOULD, except where limited by legal advice to the contrary, inform the IESG as soon as possible, providing full details of the subject of the action, nature of the action, reason for the action and expected duration. The IETF LLC SHOULD also inform the moderator team and IETF community, except where it receives legal advice to the contrary. As such an action would be taken by the IETF LLC in order to protect the IETF according to its fiduciary duty, then it cannot allow that to be overridden by a decision of the moderation team or the IESG. The subject of any such action may request a review by the IETF LLC board, as documented in section 4.7 of Any such action taken by the IETF LLC under this section of this policy, is not subject to the rest of the policy in this document.

Relation to the IRTF The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is a peer organization separate from the IETF that is governed by its own set or rules and processes. Sections , and of discuss rules for participating in the IRTF and moderation of IRTF participation channels.

Changes to Existing RFCs Creation of the IETF moderator team requires some changes to existing RFCs and also requires the IESG to update a number of their statements. This section describes these changes.

Security Considerations The usual security considerations do not apply to this document. Potential abuse of the moderation process for the suppression of undesired opinions is counteracted by the availability of an appeals process, per . The actions of the moderator team are intended to limit the likelihood of disruptive behavior by a few IETF participants from discouraging participation by other IETF participants.

IANA Considerations This document has no IANA actions.

Acknowledgments This document is based on two individual Internet-Drafts, draft-ecahc-moderation authored by Lars Eggert, Alissa Cooper, Jari Arkko, Russ Housley and Brian E. Carpenter, and draft-lear-bcp83-replacement authored by Eliot Lear, Robert Wilton, Bron Gondwana and John R. Levine. Many of the ideas in this document originated in those I-Ds. Robert Sayre authored draft-sayre-modpod-excellent, which also originated ideas reflected in this WG document. These individuals suggested additional improvements to this document:

• Alissa Cooper
• Chris Box
• Eric Rescorla
• Jay Daley
• Joel Halpern
• Melinda Shore
• Michael Richardson
• Rich Salz
• Robert Sayre
• Brian Carpenter

References Normative References This document provides a set of guidelines for personal interaction in the Internet Engineering Task Force. The guidelines recognize the diversity of IETF participants, emphasize the value of mutual respect, and stress the broad applicability of our work. This document is an updated version of the guidelines for conduct originally published in RFC 3184. IETF Participants must not engage in harassment while at IETF meetings, virtual meetings, or social events or while participating in mailing lists. This document lays out procedures for managing and enforcing this policy. This document updates RFC 2418 by defining new working group guidelines and procedures. This document updates RFC 7437 by allowing the Ombudsteam to form a recall petition without further signatories. This memo gives a mission statement for the IETF, tries to define the terms used in the statement sufficiently to make the mission statement understandable and useful, argues why the IETF needs a mission statement, and tries to capture some of the debate that led to this point. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. The IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) was originally established in 2005. In the years since then, the needs of the IETF evolved in ways that required changes to its administrative structure. The purpose of this RFC is to document and describe the IETF Administrative Support Activity, version 2.0 (IASA 2.0). It defines the roles and responsibilities of the IETF Administration LLC Board (IETF LLC Board), the IETF Executive Director, and the Internet Society in the fiscal and administrative support of the IETF standards process. It also defines the membership and selection rules for the IETF LLC Board. This document obsoletes RFC 4071, RFC 4333, and RFC 7691. This memo documents the process used by the Internet community for the standardization of protocols and procedures. It defines the stages in the standardization process, the requirements for moving a document between stages and the types of documents used during this process. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Informative References IESG IESG IESG The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) discussion mailing list furthers the development and specification of Internet technology through the general discussion of technical, procedural, operational, and other topics for which no dedicated mailing lists exist. As this is the most general IETF mailing list, considerable latitude in terms of topics is allowed, but there are posts and topics that are unsuitable for this mailing list. This document defines the charter for the IETF discussion list and explains its scope. This document obsoletes RFC 3005 and updates RFC 3683. This document is an update to RFC 2418 that gives WG chairs explicit responsibility for managing WG mailing lists. In particular, it gives WG chairs the authority to temporarily suspend the mailing list posting privileges of disruptive individuals. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. All self-governing bodies have ways of managing the scope of participant interaction. The IETF uses a consensus-driven process for developing computer-communications standards in an open fashion. An important part of this consensus-driven process is the pervasive use of mailing lists for discussion. Notably, in a small number of cases, a participant has engaged in a "denial-of-service" attack to disrupt the consensus-driven process. Regrettably, as these bad faith attacks become more common, the IETF needs to establish a practice that reduces or eliminates these attacks. This memo recommends such a practice for use by the IETF. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. This document describes the guidelines and procedures for formation and operation of IRTF Research Groups. It describes the relationship between IRTF participants, Research Groups, the Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. University of Glasgow This document describes the code of conduct for participants in the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). The IRTF believes that research is most effective when done in an open and inclusive forum that encourages diversity of ideas and diversity of participation. Through this code of conduct, the IRTF will continue to strive to create and maintain an environment that encourages broad participation, and one in which people are treated with dignity, decency, and respect. This document is a product of the Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG). All RFCs are required to have a Security Considerations section. Historically, such sections have been relatively weak. This document provides guidelines to RFC authors on how to write a good Security Considerations section. This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.

Changes

Since draft-ietf-modpod-group-processes-02

• Rewrite philosophy
• Reinstatement
• Content removal is not moderation.

Since draft-ietf-modpod-group-processes-01

• Update "Relation to the IETF LLC".
• Point to relevant IRTF material.
• Add some text to explain the role of moderators.

Since draft-ietf-modpod-group-processes-00

• Spelling fix
• Initial attempt to balance what the moderator defines and what
• Scope and relationship between WG chairs and moderators
• Fix wording, spelling and capitalization.
• Editorial changes to acknowledgments.

Since draft-ecahc-moderation-01

• Content taken from draft-ecahc-moderation-01. Updated editors. Acknowledge authors of original pre-WG I-Ds.

Problems with the Previous Approach The previous approach to moderation of disruptive participation through chairs, list administrators, and moderator teams, combined with the IESG-led process of PR-actions, has proven to be less than ideal:

• The IETF community has not been able to agree on a common definition of disruptive behavior. Therefore, chairs and list administrators apply individually different criteria when making decisions, and participants have different expectations for when PR-actions are warranted.
• The moderation process that chairs and list administrators need to follow is slow and cumbersome, which makes it ill-suited to situations that escalate quickly. It also assumes that the originator of disruptive behavior is a misguided participant who can be reasoned with and who will change their ways.
• Chairs and list administrators may only enact moderation actions for their single list, which is ill-suited when a pattern of disruptive behavior spans multiple lists. Also, chairs and list administrators may not be fully aware of disruptive behavior that spans multiple lists, due to not being subscribed to some of them.
• PR-actions, which can address disruptive behavior across several lists, are cumbersome and slow, and the community has not been able to agree on a common definition of disruptive behavior. This has led to a situation where PR-actions are rarely used, and when they are used, they are perceived as very heavy-handed.
• For a given mailing list, participants may not feel comfortable reporting disruptive behavior to a chair or list administrator, for various reasons. For mailing lists not associated with working groups, list administrators are not even publicly identified - they can only be contacted through an anonymous alias address. This exacerbates the problem, because participants may not be comfortable reporting disruptive behavior to an anonymous party.
• The IETF offers participation not only through in-person meetings and mailing lists, which are the two channels of participation for which moderation processes are currently defined. IETF business also happens in chat channels, remote meeting participation systems, virtual meetings, wikis, GitHub repositories, and more. How disruptive behavior is moderated in these channels is currently undefined.