Mirjam, Niall, WG Chairs,
Thank you for sharing your minutes about the Appeals Review and PDP
Evolution. As far as PDP appeals are concerned I have the impression
that the discussion is at the wrong level. We seem to be trying to tweak
the procedure without fully recognising some significant shortcomings:
- Appeals require a large amount of community resources.
- The process involves too many people.
- The process involves people who have not consciously signed up for it,
e.g. all WG chairs.
- The process involves significant number of people who feel they have
to recuse themselves.
- Documentation and Openness of the process leave to be desired.
Trying to apply incremental improvements to the existing procedure will
not solve these significant shortcomings.
Therefore I suggest to make more fundamental changes that do address
these shortcomings. Here are three generic suggestions:
1) There should be a higher threshold to make an appeal because appeals
are costly to the community.
2) Appeals should be handled by a small number of people who commit to
handling it properly within a defined time line because someone has to
take responsibility.
3) Appeals should be fully and transparently documented from the first
submission until the conclusion, because this is the RIPE standard.
I have some implementation ideas already, similar but not identical to
the RIPE NCC arbitration procedure. However before I get to those I
would like to have some feedback on the general idea.
Best
Daniel
Full disclosure: RIPE Participant since RIPE 0 and NCC staff from the
beginning.
