Dear RIPE List-ers, Hope this email finds you in good health! Please see my comments below, inline... Thanks.
Le vendredi 7 juillet 2023, denis walker <[email protected]> a écrit : > Hi Mirjam > > Sorry for yet another long email, but this is an important issue. > > Hi Denis, Thanks for raising such interesting issues, brother. > [...] > > The bottom line is that encouraging staff to speak openly and publicly > with the community has both benefits and risks. [...] > ...agreed! > [...] don't need to be involved. If a staff member is a WG chair can they > operate completely independently from any collective company view, > even if that means opposing a company view if that is in the best > interests of the WG, without any penalty? > > How to address this risk? > Encouraging staff to be more involved in RIPE community activities is > a sensitive issue for the staff. It needs more than a couple of > paragraphs and some vague principles. This document looks to have been > written from a community perspective, "welcomed by the RIPE > community". Is it welcomed by the staff? Has anyone asked them? Works > Council or Senior Management? Or has it just been assumed the staff > welcome being in both camps? > A good opportunity to test the assumed *principle*. > Do staff want to be able to put forward > an idea, argue strongly in favour of it, implement it, then take the > blame if it is not right? I've been there and done that and it's not a > nice place to be. > > ...i'm not a RIPE NCC Staff! i'm curious to know their answers; even an anonymised version would suffice. > Finally I would like to comment on the principles in this document. I > have said many times...wording in RIPE documents is important. I am a > native English speaker and an analyst with OCD, so I do see things in > words more easily. But the NCC has a whole team of professional, > English speaking, communications experts. Perhaps they are not used > now to review these docs. Your principle No 2 "RIPE NCC staff > expertise is valuable to and welcomed by the RIPE community." cannot > be a recommended principle. It can be a supporting fact. But if you > recommend, as a principle, that staff expertise is welcomed by the > community, this becomes an instruction to the community that they must > welcome this expertise. That is what these words actually say. > > ...i welcome it! but i expect a RIPE NCC Staff to be both protected and prevented to put the RIR org in danger; while acting selfishnessly. Training and capacity building would certainly be of great help here, i agree. > > Lastly, your principle No 1 may have unexpected consequences. "RIPE > NCC staff are part of the community and may participate in RIPE > activities on the same terms as anyone else.". You make no exceptions > here, "same terms as anyone else". So a RIPE NCC staff member can be > part of a task force, be a WG chair, be the RIPE chair (if it is no > longer a full time, paid position), be a member of the next NomCom, > make policy proposals, argue for or against policy proposals. So > consider this possible scenario. A staff member could make a policy > proposal. Other staff members could argue strongly in support of this > proposal. Consensus could be declared by a WG chair who is a staff > member. Any appeal would end up with the RIPE chair who could also be > a staff member. The policy will then be implemented and enforced by > the RIPE NCC staff. All of these people could be influenced by RIPE > NCC internal company policy and allowed time within working hours to > do all this. They are all FTEs paid for by the RIPE NCC membership and > expected to be following RIPE activities anyway, perhaps more closely > than FTEs of member companies. This is a theoretical scenario. > Indeed, it's sadly an unexpected & undesirable side effect! at least for me :'-( How to, safely, prevent it to happen? > But it does raise the question of how independent and neutral will the RIPE > NCC be seen as, if it's staff can be so involved in the bottom up > policy process at every level, to the point of dominating and > controlling, considering the often lack of other community member > involvement. > > ...for me, quantity alone would not satisfactorily address the issue. Where, quality & appropriate *safeguards* would likely achieve the objective, imho! But! which *safeguards*? that's a question i would like to get answers from others with more clue... :-) > I think some more thought is needed for this document. > > ...i actually agree too! Thanks for your useful and detailed explanation of the issues raised, dear Denis. Shalom, --sb. > cheers > denis > co-chair DB-WG > member of RIPE community > former RIPE NCC staff member > former chair RIPE NCC Works Council > (for full disclosure) > > > On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 at 12:00, <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email protected]> > > > > [...] > > > > [1] RIPE NCC Staff Participation in the RIPE Community > > https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-documents/other-documents/ > ripe-ncc-staff-participation-in-the-ripe-community > > > > [...] > > -- Best Regards ! __ baya.sylvain[AT cmNOG DOT cm]|<https://cmnog.cm/dokuwiki/Structure> Subscribe to Mailing List: <https://lists.cmnog.cm/mailman/listinfo/cmnog/> __ #LASAINTEBIBLE|#Romains15:33«Que LE #DIEU de #Paix soit avec vous tous! #Amen!» #MaPrière est que tu naisses de nouveau. #Chrétiennement «Comme une biche soupire après des courants d’eau, ainsi mon âme soupire après TOI, ô DIEU!»(#Psaumes42:2)
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