Independent Submission D. Crocker

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.

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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

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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

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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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RFC 7704 Diversity & Conduct November 2015

[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>.

Crocker & Clark Informational [Page 17]

RFC 7704 Diversity & Conduct November 2015

[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: [email protected]

Narelle Clark
Pavonis Consulting
C/- PO Box 1705
North Sydney, NSW 2059
Australia

Phone: +61 412297043
Email: [email protected]

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