It is always heartbreaking to hear stories like this, and it must be very, very hard to share them, so thank you Leslie. It definitely helps in understading how bad it can get, especially for those of us things like this don't happen to, and may still not be aware how frequently they occur.
While not anywhere near as bad as this, I do have a tiny story of my own. My first experience speaking in public happened to be at RIPE. I was fresh out of college, nervous as hell, and very glad I managed to stammer through presenting my work. One of the first comments on the microphone was a petty insult, with no constructive criticism, and seemingly only intended to burn me down. Or so it definitely felt. Had it not been for the community to pick me up right there and then, I might very well have decided that public discussion and public speaking wasn't for me. I am very glad now it did not go in this direction, and like to think I have gotten pretty good at it by now. But it was the RIPE community that helped me get there, and I am convinced the RIPE community wants things to be better, both for small things like microphone etiquette and big ones such as sexual harassment. I have read this CoC and support it. Having said that, I do have a few small suggestions and comments, some of which also in response to earlier comments made. - I have seen the issue mentioned that the process for handling complaints isn't defined well enough, mainly in the case where severe sanctions are applied. I think 'conduct' is such a broad scope, that a specific process cannot be hard-defined, outside of the first few steps (acknowledge, declare conflict-of-interest, determine what happened, decide on followup, if any). Would it help to have this spelled out more explicitely, like, say, the Python community does (they have a separate document for that, outside of the CoC itself: https://www.python.org/psf/conduct/enforcement/)? - I personally do not share the worry of the CoC team pushing political agenda's and silencing people, but if this a common concern, I think some checks and balances can be added there as well, though i'd be a bit wary of adding too much process in general (also goes for previous comment, btw). - Regarding hard sanctions, there is already a mention that these are disccused with the RIPE chair and the NCC, but I think it should also specify who gets to take the final decision there (which may be all of them together). Kind regards, Jelte own hat
