An IETF with Much Diversity and Professional Conduct
RFC 7704

quot;, 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

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   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.

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   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,
              <https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards>.

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   [GeekFeminism]
              Geek Feminism Wiki, "Conference anti-harassment: Adopting
              a policy", <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/
              Conference_anti-harassment>.

   [Har-Bul]  UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development,
              "Harassment and bullying at work", January 2015,
              <http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/
              harassment-bullying-at-work.aspx>.

   [Horowitz] Horwitz, S. and I. Horwitz, "The Effects of Team Diversity
              on Team Outcomes: A Meta-Analytic Review of Team
              Demography", Journal of Management, Vol. 33 (6),
              p. 987-1015, DOI 10.1177/0149206307308587, December 2007.

   [IAB]      "Internet Architecture Board", <https://www.iab.org/>.

   [IAOC]     "IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC)",
              <https://iaoc.ietf.org/>.

   [IEEE-Cybul]
              IEEE, "IEEE CODE OF CONDUCT", June 2014,
              <https://www.ieee.org/about/ieee_code_of_conduct.pdf>.

   [IETF]     IETF, "The Internet Engineering Task Force",
              <https://www.ietf.org/>.

   [Joshi]    Joshi, A. and H. Roh, "The Role of Context in Work Team
              Diversity Research: A Meta-Analytic Review", Academy of
              Management Journal, Vol. 52, No. 3, 599-627,
              DOI 10.5465/AMJ.2009.41331491, 2009,
              <http://www.ilo.bwl.uni-muenchen.de/download/
              unterlagen-ws1415/josh-roh-2009.pdf>.

   [Kellogg]  Kellogg Insight, "Better Decisions Through Diversity:
              Heterogeneity can boost group performance", Kellogg School
              of Management, Northwestern University, Oct 2010,
              <http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/
              better_decisions_through_diversity>.

   [L-H-Cybul]
              LinkedIn, "LinkedIn Professional Community Guidelines",
              2015,
              <https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/34593>.

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   [MB-Misuse]
              Rachel Burger, R., "Three Common Ways Libertarians Misuse
              Myers-Briggs Part 2: Misunderstanding the Feeling
              Preference", July 2013, <http://thoughtsonliberty.com/
              three-common-ways-libertarians-misuse-myers-briggs-part-2-
              misunderstanding-the-feeling-preference>.

   [NetHui]   InternetNZ, "Kaupapa and code of conduct", NetHui 2015,
              <http://2015.nethui.nz/code-of-conduct>.

   [Prevention]
              WorkSafe Victoria, "Workplace bullying - prevention and
              response", October 2012,
              <http://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/
              pdf_file/0008/42893/WS_Bullying_Guide_Web2.pdf>.

   [SC-Cybul] Scouts Canada, "Bullying/Harassment Policy", May 2012,
              <http://www.scouts.ca/cys/
              policy-bullying-and-harassment.pdf>.

   [Signs]    Workplace Bullying Institute, "Employee Resource Council:
              20 Subtle Signs of Workplace Bullying", November 2013,
              <http://www.workplacebullying.org/2013/11/10/erc/>.

   [Stahl]    Stahl, G., Maznevski, M., Voigt, A., and K. Jonsen,
              "Unraveling the effects of cultural diversity in teams: A
              meta-analysis of research on multicultural work groups",
              Journal of International Business Studies 41, 690-709,
              DOI 10.1057/jibs.2009.85, May 2010,
              <http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jibs/journal/v41/n4/
              full/jibs200985a.html>.

   [Wiki-SexHarass]
              Wikipedia, "Sexual harassment", November 2015,
              <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/
              index.php?title=Sexual_harassment&oldid=689426449>.

   [wikiHow]  WikiHow, "How to Deal with Workplace Bullying and
              Harassment", November 2015, <http://www.wikihow.com/
              index.php?title=Deal-with-Workplace-Bullying-and-
              Harassment&oldid=18828395>.

   [WiseCrowd]
              Wikipedia, "The Wisdom of Crowds", November 2015,
              <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/
              index.php?title=The_Wisdom_of_Crowds&oldid=689201384>.

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   [Workplace]
              "Workplace Bullying", YouTube video, 12:30, posted
              by "QualiaSoup", February 2013,
              <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAgg32weT80>.

   [Y-H-Cybul]
              Google, "Harassment and cyberbullying - YouTube Help",
              2015, <https://support.google.com/youtube/
              answer/2801920?hl=en&rd=1>.

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

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