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rfc:rfc7704

Independent Submission D. Crocker Request for Comments: 7704 Brandenburg InternetWorking Category: Informational N. Clark ISSN: 2070-1721 Pavonis Consulting

                                                         November 2015
        An IETF with Much Diversity and Professional Conduct

Abstract

 The process of producing today's Internet technologies through a
 culture of open participation and diverse collaboration has proved
 strikingly efficient and effective, and it is distinctive among
 standards organizations.  During the early years of the IETF and its
 antecedent, participation was almost entirely composed of a small
 group of well-funded, American, white, male technicians,
 demonstrating a distinctive and challenging group dynamic, both in
 management and in personal interactions.  In the case of the IETF,
 interaction style can often contain singularly aggressive behavior,
 often including singularly hostile tone and content.  Groups with
 greater diversity make better decisions.  Obtaining meaningful
 diversity requires more than generic good will and statements of
 principle.  Many different behaviors can serve to reduce participant
 diversity or participation diversity.  This document discusses IETF
 participation in terms of the nature of diversity and practical
 issues that can increase or decrease it.  The document represents the
 authors' assessments and recommendations, following general
 discussions of the issues in the IETF.

Status of This Memo

 This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
 published for informational purposes.
 This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other
 RFC stream.  The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at
 its discretion and makes no statement about its value for
 implementation or deployment.  Documents approved for publication by
 the RFC Editor are not a candidate for any level of Internet
 Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
 Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
 and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
 http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7704.

Crocker & Clark Informational [Page 1] RFC 7704 Diversity & Conduct November 2015

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
 document authors.  All rights reserved.
 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
 publication of this document.  Please review these documents
 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
 to this document.

Table of Contents

 1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
 2.  Concerns  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   2.1.  Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   2.2.  Harassment and Bullying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
 3.  Constructive Participation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   3.1.  Access  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   3.2.  Engagement  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   3.3.  Facilitation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   3.4.  Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   3.5.  IETF Track Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   3.6.  Avoiding Distraction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
 4.  Responses to Unconstructive Participation . . . . . . . . . .  14
 5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
 6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
 Acknowledgements . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
 Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18

Crocker & Clark Informational [Page 2] RFC 7704 Diversity & Conduct November 2015

1. Introduction

 This document discusses IETF participation, in terms of the nature of
 diversity and practical issues that can increase or decrease it.  The
 topic has received recent discussion in the IETF, and the document
 represents the authors' assessments and recommendations about it, in
 the belief that it is constructive for the IETF and that it is
 consonant with at least some of the IETF community's participants.
 The Internet Engineering Task Force [IETF] grew out of a research
 effort that was started in the late 1960s, with central funding by
 the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA,
 later DARPA) employing a collection of research sites around the
 United States, and including some participation by groups of the US
 military.  The community was originally restricted to participation
 by members of the funded research groups.  In the 1980s,
 participation expanded to include projects funded by other agencies,
 most notably the US National Science Foundation for its NSFNet
 effort.  At around the time the IETF was created in its current form,
 in the late 1980s, participation in the group became fully open,
 permitting attendance by anyone, independent of funding, affiliation,
 country of origin, or the like.
 Beyond the obvious effects of the resulting technology that we now
 enjoy, the process of producing today's Internet technologies through
 a culture of open participation and diverse collaboration has proved
 strikingly efficient and effective, and it is distinctive among
 standards organizations.  This culture has been sustained across many
 changes in participant origins, organizational structures, economic
 cycles, and formal processes.  However, maintenance of the IETF's
 effectiveness requires constant vigilance.  As new participants join
 the IETF mix, it is increasingly easy for the IETF's operation to
 gradually invoke models from other environments, which are more
 established and more familiar, but often are less effective.
 Historically, participation in the IETF and its antecedent was almost
 entirely composed of a small group of well-funded, American, white,
 male technicians.  No matter the intentions of the participants, such
 a narrow demographic demonstrated a distinctive group dynamic, both
 in management and in personal interactions, that persists into the
 current IETF.  Aggressive and even hostile discussion behavior is
 quite common.  In terms of management, the IETF can be significantly
 in-bred, favoring selection of those who are already well-known.  Of
 course, the pool of candidates from which selections are made suffer
 classic limitations of diversity found in many engineering
 environments.  Still, there is evidence and perception of selection
 bias, beyond this.

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 In the case of the IETF, the style of interaction can often
 demonstrate singularly aggressive behavior, including singularly
 hostile tone and content.  In most professional venues, such behavior
 is deemed highly unprofessional, or worse.  Within the IETF, such
 behavior has had long-standing tolerance.  Criticizing someone's
 hostility is dismissed by saying that's just the way they are, or
 that someone else provoked it, or that the person is generally well-
 intentioned.  Further, anyone expressing concern about the behavior
 is typically admonished to be less sensitive; that is, a recipient of
 an attack who then complains is often criticized or dismissed.
 As the IETF opened its doors to participation by anyone, its
 demographics have predictably moved towards much greater variety.
 However, the group culture has not adapted to accommodate these
 changes.  The aggressive debating style and the tolerance for
 personal attacks can be extremely off-putting for participants from
 more polite cultures.  And, the management selection processes can
 tend to exclude some constituencies inappropriately.
 Recently, members of an informal IETF women's interest group, called
 "systers", organized a quiet experiment, putting forward a large
 number of women candidates for management positions, through the
 IETF's "NomCom" process.  NomCom is itself a potentially diverse
 group of IETF participants, chosen at random from a pool of recent
 meeting attendees who offer their services.  Hence, its problematic
 choices -- or rather, omissions -- could be seen as reflecting IETF
 culture generally.
 Over the years, some women have been chosen for IETF positions as
 authors, working group chairs, area directors, Internet Architecture
 Board [IAB] members, and IETF Administrative Oversight Committee
 [IAOC] members.  However, the results of the systers experiment were
 not encouraging.  In spite of their recruiting a disproportionately
 high number of female candidates, not a single one was selected.
 Although any one candidate might be rejected for entirely legitimate
 reasons, a pattern of rejection this consistent suggested an
 organizational bias.  The results were presented at an IETF plenary,
 and they engendered significant IETF soul-searching, as well as
 creation of a group to consider diversity issues for the IETF
 [Div-DT] [Div-Discuss].
 Other activities around that same time also engendered IETF
 consideration of unacceptable behaviors, generally classed as
 harassment.  This resulted in the IESG's issuing a formal IETF anti-
 harassment policy [Anti-Harass].

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 Changing an organization's culture is difficult and requires not only
 commitment to the underlying principles, but also vigilant and
 sustained effort.  The IESG has taken essential first steps.  What is
 needed is going beyond the position papers and expression of ideals,
 into continuing education of the entire community, and immediate and
 substantive response to unacceptable behaviors.

2. Concerns

2.1. Diversity

 Diversity concerns the variability of a group's composition.  It can
 reasonably touch every conceivable participant attribute.  It
 includes task-related attributes, such as knowledge and experience,
 as well as the usual range of "identified class" attributes,
 including race, creed, color, religion, gender and sexual
 orientation, but also extends to all manner of beliefs, behaviors,
 experiences, preferences, and economic status.
 The factors affecting the quality of group decision-making are
 complex and subtle, and are not subject to precise specification.
 Nevertheless, in broad terms, groups with greater diversity make
 better decisions [Kellogg].  They perform better at diverse tasks
 both in terms of quantity and quality, and a great deal of research
 has found that heterogeneity often acts as a conduit for ideas and
 innovation [WiseCrowd] [Horowitz] [Stahl] [Joshi].  The implicit
 assumptions of one participant might not be considerations for
 another and might even be unknown by still others.  And, different
 participants can bring different bases of knowledge and different
 styles of analysis.  People with the same background and experience
 will all too readily bring the same ideas forward and subject them to
 the same analysis, thus diminishing the likelihood for new ideas and
 methods to emerge, or underlying problems to be noted.
 However, a desire to diligently attend to group diversity often leads
 to mechanical, statistical efforts to ensure representation by every
 identified constituency.  For smaller populations, like the IETF and
 especially for its small management teams, this approach is
 counterproductive.  First, it is not possible to identify every
 single constituency that might be relevant.  Second, the group size
 does not permit representation by every group.  Consequently, in
 practical terms, legitimate representation of diversity only requires
 meaningful variety, not slavish bookkeeping.  In addition, without
 care, it can lead to the negative effects of diversity where
 decision-making is slowed, interaction decreased, and conflict
 increased [Horowitz].

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 Pragmatically, then, concern for diversity merely requires serious
 attention to satisfying two requirements:
    Participant Diversity:   Decisions about who is allowed into the
       group require ensuring that the selection process encourages
       varying attributes among members.  That is, this concerns
       variety in group demographics.
    Participation Diversity:   Achieving effective generation of ideas
       and reviews within a group requires ensuring that its
       discussions encourage constructive participation by all members
       and that the views of each member are considered seriously.
       This, then, concerns group dynamics.
 In other words, look for real variety in group composition and real
 variety in participant discussion.  This will identify a greater
 variety of possible and practical solutions.
 Obtaining meaningful diversity requires more than generic good will
 and statements of principle.  The challenges, here, are to actively:
 o  Encourage constructive diversity
 o  Work to avoid group dynamics that serve to reduce diversity
 o  Work to avoid group dynamics that serve to diminish the benefits
    of diversity
 o  Remove those dynamics when they still occur
 It also requires education about the practicalities of diversity in
 an open engineering environment, and it requires organizational
 processes that regularly consider what effect each decision might
 have on diversity.
 Examples abound:
 o  Formally, an IETF working group makes its decisions on its mailing
    list.  Since anyone can join the list, anyone with access to the
    Internet can participate.  However, working groups also have
    sessions at the thrice-annual IETF face-to-face meetings and might
    also hold interim meetings, which are face to face, by telephone,
    or by video conference.  Attendance at these can be challenging.
    Getting to a face-to-face meeting costs a great deal of money and
    time; remote participation often incurs time-shifting that
    includes very early or very late hours.  So, increased working
    group reliance on meetings tends to exclude those with less
    funding or less travel time or more structured work schedules.

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 o  Vigorous advocacy for a strongly held technical preference is
    common in engineering communities.  Of course it can be healthy,
    since strong support is necessary to promote success of the work.
    However, in the IETF this can be manifest in two ways that are
    problematic.  One is a personal style that is overly aggressive
    and serves to intimidate, and hence unreasonably gag, those with
    other views.  The other is a group style that prematurely embraces
    a choice and does not permit a fair hearing for alternatives.
 o  Predictably, engineers value engineering skills.  When the task is
    engineering, this is entirely appropriate.  However, many of the
    IETF's activities, in support of its engineering efforts, are less
    about engineering and more about human and organizational
    processes.  These require very different skills.  To the extent
    that participants in those processes are primarily considered in
    terms of their engineering prowess, those who are instead stronger
    in other, relevant skills will be undervalued, and the diversity
    of expertise that the IETF needs will be lost.
 o  IETF standards are meant to be read, understood, and implemented
    by people who were not part of the working group process.  The
    gist of the standards also often needs to be read by managers and
    operators who are not engineers.  IETF specifications enjoy quite
    a bit of stylistic freedom to contain pedagogy, in the service of
    these audience goals.  However, the additional effort to be
    instructional is significant, and active participants who already
    understand and embrace the technical details often decline from
    making that effort.  Worse, that effort is also needed during the
    specification development effort, since many participants might
    lack the background or superior insight needed to appreciate what
    is being specified.  Yet the IETF's mantra for "rough consensus"
    is exactly about the need to recruit support.  In fact, the
    process of "educating" others often uncovers issues that have been
    missed.

2.2. Harassment and Bullying

 Many different behaviors can serve to reduce participant diversity or
 participation diversity.  One class of efforts is based on overt
 actions to marginalize certain participants by intimidating them into
 silence or departure.  Intimidation efforts divide into two styles
 warranting distinction.  One is harassment, which pertains to biased
 treatment of demographic classes.  A number of identified classes are
 usually protected by law, and community understanding that such
 biased behavior cannot be tolerated has progressively improved.

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 Other intimidation efforts are tailored to targeted individuals and
 are generally labeled bullying [Har-Bul] [Workplace] [Signs]
 [Escalated] [Prevention].  The nature and extent of bullying in the
 workplace is widely underestimated, misunderstood, and mishandled.
 It is described as follows in a WikiHow article [wikiHow]:
    ...[B]ehavior directed at an employee that is intended to degrade,
    humiliate, embarrass, or otherwise undermine their performance...
    [T]he sure signs of a bully that signify more than a simple
    misunderstanding or personal disagreement... might include:
  • Shouting, whether in private, in front of colleagues, or in

front of customers

  • Name-calling
  • Belittling or disrespectful comments
  • Excessive monitoring, criticizing, or nitpicking someone's work
  • Deliberately overloading someone with work
  • Undermining someone's work by setting them up to fail
  • Purposefully withholding information needed to perform a job

efficiently

  • Actively excluding someone from normal workplace/staff room

conversations and making someone feel unwelcome

 In addition, the Tim Field Foundation [Bully-Ser] lists the traits of
 a "serial bully", paraphrased below:
 o  Jekyll and Hyde nature -- Dr Jekyll is 'charming' and
    'charismatic'; 'Hyde' is 'evil'
 o  Exploits the trust and needs of organizations and individuals, for
    personal gain
 o  Convincing liar -- Makes up anything to fit their needs at that
    moment
 o  Damages the health and reputations of organizations and
    individuals
 o  Reacts to criticism with Denial, Retaliation, Feigned Victimhood
    [Defensive], [MB-Misuse]

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 o  Blames victims
 o  Apparently immune from disciplinary action
 o  Moves to a new target when the present one burns out
 Whether directed at classes or individuals, intimidation methods used
 can:
 o  Seem relatively passive, such as consistently ignoring a member
 o  Seem mild, such as with a quiet tone or language of condescension
 o  Be quite active, such as aggressively attacking what is said by
    the participant
 o  Be disingenuous, masking attacks in a passive-aggressive style
 If tolerated by others, and especially by those managing the group,
 these methods create a hostile work environment [Dealing].
    When public harassment or bullying is tolerated, the hostile
    environment is not only for the person directly subject to the
    attacks.
    The harassment also serves to intimidate others who observe that
    it is tolerated.  It teaches them that misbehaviors will not be
    held accountable.
 The IETF's Anti-Harassment Policy [Anti-Harass] uses a single term to
 cover the classic harassment of identified constituencies, as well as
 the targeted behavior of bullying.  The policy's text is therefore
 comprehensive, defining unacceptable behavior as "unwelcome hostile
 or intimidating behavior."  Further, it declares: "Harassment of this
 sort will not be tolerated in the IETF."  An avenue for seeking
 remedy when harassment occurs is specified as a designated
 Ombudsperson.
 Unified handling of bullying and harassment is exemplified in the
 policies of many different organizations, notably including those
 with widely varying membership, even to the point of open,
 international participation, similar to that of the IETF.  Examples
 include:
    Scouts Canada:
       Bullying/Harassment Policy [SC-Cybul]

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    IEEE:
       Code of Conduct [IEEE-Cybul]
    Facebook:
       Community Standards [F-H-Cybul]
    LinkedIn:
       "Be Nice" in LinkedIn Professional Community Guidelines
       [L-H-Cybul]
    YouTube:
       Harassment and cyberbullying [Y-H-Cybul]
    NetHui:
       Kaupapa and code of conduct [NetHui]
    GeekFeminism:
       Conference anti-harassment: Adopting a policy [GeekFeminism]
 In fact, there is a view that harassment is merely a form of
 bullying, given the same goal of undermining participation by the
 target:
    Sexual harassment is bullying or coercion of a sexual nature...
    [Wiki-SexHarass]
 The IETF has a long history of tolerating aggressive and even hostile
 behavior by participants.  So, this policy signals a formal and
 welcome change.  The obvious challenge is to make the change real,
 moving the IETF from a culture that tolerates -- or even encourages
 -- interpersonal misbehaviors to one that provides a safe,
 professional, and productive haven for its increasingly diverse
 community.
 Here again, examples abound, to the present:
 o  Amongst long-time colleagues, acceptable interpersonal style can
    be whatever the colleagues want, even though it might look quite
    off-putting to an observer.  The problem occurs when an IETF
    participant engages in such behaviors with, or in the presence of,
    others who have not agreed to the social contract of that
    relationship style and might not even understand it.  For these
    others, the behavior can be extremely alienating, creating a
    disincentive against participation.  Yet, in the IETF, it is
    common for participants to feel entitled to behave in overly
    familiar or aggressive or even hostile fashion that might be
    acceptable amongst colleagues, but is destructive with strangers.

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 o  The instant a comment is made that concerns any attribute of a
    speaker, such as their motives, the nature of their employer, or
    the quality of their participation style, the interaction has
    moved away from technical evaluation.  In many cultures, all such
    utterances are intimidating or offensive.  In an open,
    professional participation environment, they therefore cannot be
    permitted.
 o  As a matter of personal style or momentary enthusiasm, it is easy
    to indulge in condescending or dismissive commentary about
    someone's statements.  As a discussion technique, its function is
    to attempt to reduce the target's influence on the group.  Whether
    nonverbal (such as rolling one's eyes), paternalistic (such as
    noting the target's naivete), or overtly hostile (such as
    impugning the target's motives), it is an attempt to marginalize
    the person rather than focus on the merits of what they are
    saying.  It constitutes harassment or bullying.

3. Constructive Participation

 The goal of open, diverse participation requires explicit and ongoing
 organizational effort, concerning group access, engagement, and
 facilitation.

3.1. Access

 Aiding participants with access to IETF materials and discussions
 means that it is easy for them to:
 o  Know what exists
 o  Find what is of interest
 o  Retrieve documents or gain access to discussions
 o  Be able to understand the content
 After materials and discussions are located, the primary means of
 making it easy to access the substance of the work is for statements
 to be made in language that is clear and explanatory.  Writers and
 speakers need to carefully consider the likely audience and package
 statements accordingly.  This often means taking a more tutorial
 approach than one might naturally choose.  In speech, it means
 speaking more deliberately, a bit more clearly and a bit more slowly
 than needed with close collaborators.  When language is cryptic or
 filled with linguistic idiosyncrasies and when speech is too fast, it
 is dramatically less accessible to a diverse audience.

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3.2. Engagement

 Once content is accessible, the challenge is to garner diverse
 contribution for further development.  Engagement means that it is
 easy for constructive participants to be heard and taken seriously
 through constructive interaction.
 Within the IETF, the most common challenge is choosing how to respond
 to comments.  The essence of the IETF is making proposals and
 offering comments on proposals; disagreement is common and often
 healthy, depending upon the manner in which disagreement is pursued.

3.3. Facilitation

 In order to obtain the best technology, the best ideas need first to
 be harvested.  Processes that promote free-ranging discussion, tease
 out new ideas, and tackle concerns should be promoted.  This will
 also run to:
 o  Encouraging contributions from timid speakers
 o  Showing warmth for new contributors
 o  Preventing dominance by, or blind deference to, those perceived as
    the more senior and authoritative contributors
 o  Actively shutting down derogatory styles
 It is important that participants be facilitated in tendering their
 own ideas readily so that innovation thrives.

3.4. Balance

 There is the larger challenge of finding balance between efforts to
 facilitate diversity versus efforts to achieve work goals.  Efforts
 to be inclusive include a degree of tutorial assistance for new
 participants.  They also include some tolerance for participants who
 are less efficient at doing the work.  Further, not everyone is
 capable of being constructive, and the burdens of accommodating such
 folk can easily become onerous.
 As an example, there can be tradeoffs with meeting agendas.  There is
 common pushback on having working group meetings be a succession of
 presentations.  For good efficiency, participants want to have just
 enough presentation to frame a question, and then spend face-to-face
 time in discussion.  However, "just enough presentation" does not

Crocker & Clark Informational [Page 12] RFC 7704 Diversity & Conduct November 2015

 leave much room for tutorial commentary to aid those new to the
 effort.  Meeting time is always too short, and the primary
 requirement is to achieve forward progress.

3.5. IETF Track Record

 The IETF's track record for making its technical documents openly
 available is notably superb, as is its official policy of open
 participation in mailing lists and meetings.  Its track record with
 management and process documentation is more varied, partly because
 these cover overhead functions, rather than being in the main line of
 IETF work and, therefore, expertise.  So, they do not always get
 diligent attention.  Factors include the inherent challenges in doing
 management by engineers, as well as challenges in making management
 and process documents usable for non-experts and non-native English
 speakers.
 On the surface, the IETF's track record for open access and
 engagement therefore looks astonishingly good, since there is no
 "membership", and anyone is permitted to join IETF mailing lists and
 attend IETF meetings.  Indeed, for those with good funding, time for
 travel, and skills at figuring out the IETF culture, the record
 really does qualify as excellent.
 However, very real challenges exist for those who have funding,
 logistics, or language limitations.  In particular, these impede
 attendance at meetings.  Another challenge is for those from more
 polite cultures who are alienated by the style of aggressive debate
 that is popular in the IETF.

3.6. Avoiding Distraction

 For any one participant, some other participant's contributions might
 be considered problematic, possibly having little or no value.
 Worse, some contributions are in a style that excites a personal,
 negative reaction.
 The manner chosen for responding to such contributions dramatically
 affects group productivity.  Attacking the speaker's style or motives
 or credentials is not useful, and primarily serves to distract
 discussion from matters of substance.  In the face of such challenges
 and among the many possible ways to pursue constructive exchange,
 guidance includes:
 o  Ignore such contributions; perhaps someone else can produce a
    productive exchange, but there is no requirement that anyone
    respond.

Crocker & Clark Informational [Page 13] RFC 7704 Diversity & Conduct November 2015

 o  Respond to the content, not the author; in the extreme, literally
    ignore the author and merely address the group about the content.
 o  Offer better content, including an explanation of the reasons it
    is better.
 The essential point here is that the way to have a constructive
 exchange about substance is to focus on the substance.  The way to
 avoid getting distracted is to ignore whatever is personal and
 irrelevant to the substance.

4. Responses to Unconstructive Participation

 Sometimes problematic participants cannot reasonably be ignored.
 Their behavior is too disruptive, too offensive, or too damaging to
 group exchange.  Any of us might have a moment of excess, but when
 the behavior is too extreme or represents a pattern, it warrants
 intervention.
 A common view is that this should be pursued personally, but for such
 cases, it rarely has much effect.  This is where IETF management
 intervention is required.  The IETF now has a reasonably rich set of
 policies concerning problematic behavior.  So, the requirement is
 merely to exercise the policies diligently.  Depending on the
 details, the working group chair, mailing list moderator,
 Ombudsperson, or perhaps IETF Chair is the appropriate person to
 contact [MlLists] [Anti-Harass].
 The challenge, here, is for both management and the rest of the
 community to collaborate in communicating that harassment and
 bullying will not be tolerated.  The formal policies make that
 declaration, but they have no meaning unless they are enforced.
 Abusive behavior is easily extinguished.  All it takes is community
 resolve.

5. Security Considerations

 The security of the IETF's role in the Internet community depends
 upon its credibility as an open and productive venue for
 collaborative development of technical documents.  More diverse
 scrutiny leads to increased rigor, so the quality of technical
 documents will potentially improve.  The potential for future legal
 liability in the various jurisdictions within which the IETF operates
 also indicates a need to act to reinforce behavioral policies with
 specific attention to workplace safety.

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6. References

6.1. Normative References

 [Anti-Harass]
            IESG, "IETF Anti-Harassment Policy", November 2013,
            <https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/
            ietf-anti-harassment-policy.html>.
 [MlLists]  IESG, "IESG Guidance on the Moderation of IETF Working
            Group Mailing Lists", August 2000,
            <https://www.ietf.org/iesg/statement/
            moderated-lists.html>.

6.2. Informative References

 [Bully-Ser]
            Tim Field Foundation, "Introduction to the Serial Bully:
            Serial Bully Traits", <http://bullyonline.org/workbully/
            serial_introduction.htm>.
 [Dealing]  Government of South Australia, "Dealing with Workplace
            Bullying: A practical guide for employees", Interagency
            Round Table on Workplace Bullying, South Australia, 2007,
            <https://crana.org.au/uploads/pdfs/
            SAgov_bullying_employees.pdf>.
 [Defensive]
            Bickham, I., "Defensive Communication",
            <http://www.people-communicating.com/
            defensive-communication.html>.
 [Div-Discuss]
            IETF, "Diversity Discussion List", <http://www.ietf.org/
            mail-archive/web/diversity/current/maillist.html>.
 [Div-DT]   IETF, "Diversity Design Team wiki", 2013,
            <https://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/diversity-dt/>.
 [Escalated]
            Namie, G., "Workplace bullying: Escalated incivility",
            Ivey Business Journal 9B03TF09, November/December 2003.
 [F-H-Cybul]
            Facebook, "Community Standards", 2015,
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Acknowledgements

 This document was prompted by the organizational change, signaled
 with the IESG's adoption of an anti-harassment policy for the IETF,
 and a number of follow-on activities and discussions that ensued.  A
 few individuals have offered thoughtful comments during private
 discussions.
 Comments on the original draft were provided by John Border and SM
 (Subramanian Moonesamy).

Authors' Addresses

 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 675 Spruce Drive
 Sunnyvale, CA  94086
 United States
 Phone: +1.408.246.8253
 Email: dcrocker@bbiw.net
 Narelle Clark
 Pavonis Consulting
 C/- PO Box 1705
 North Sydney, NSW  2059
 Australia
 Phone: +61 412297043
 Email: narelle.clark@pavonis.com.au

Crocker & Clark Informational [Page 18]

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