[Internal-cg] Handling process complaints

[Daniel Karrenberg]

On 28.01.15 8:59 , Manal Ismail wrote:
> Thanks Alissa for adding this to the agenda and to enlightening comments
> received so far ..It's crucial that we continue to be transparent
> consistent and predictable throughout the handling of all complaints ..
>
> Having said that, I feel I'm not that clear about a few things and hope
> you wouldn't mind my below questions ..
>
> Generally speaking:
>
> 1.Are we going to forward every complaint, formally, to the relevant
> Operational Community (OC)? Or depend on their accessibility on the web?

We should point the OCs to the forum and sugest that they monitor it and 
pick up any comments relevant to them. This does not prevent us to point 
out any comments we consider relevant. This way we are not in the 
business of filtering and yet we make sure nothing we consider relevant 
is overlooked by the OCs.

> 2.Are we going to reply to the complainer? how his/her complaint was
> considered? reasons for the ICG decision?

If a comment is addressed at the ICG explicitly we should consider it 
explicitly and decide how we act. In that case the procedure should be 
to acknowledge that we are dealing with it and to describe how we do 
that. E.g. "Thank you for your comment; the ICG will discuss it at their 
meeting on .....".

If a comment is general or addressed to an OC we do not need to 
acknowledge it.

>
> More specifically, I think we may run into one of the following situations:
>
> 1.Complaints submitted for the first time directly to the ICG
>
> (My understanding is that those will be forwarded to the relevant OC)
>

yes

> 2.Complaints submitted to the ICG by way of a complaint/escalation
>
> (How to handle? forward formally to the relevant OC? expect an answer
> from the relevant OC? go through the mailing lists and dig the answer? …)

We are not an arbitration body! The only thing such a comment could do 
is raise questions by *ourselves*. This involves a judgement call on our 
part on whether we consider the comment justifying our action.

If we let go of that principle we are muddying the waters and open 
ourselves to all sorets of unpleasantness.

Yes, it means we have to make a decision on whether the comment has 
enough substance for our action. But we cannot avoid that in any case.


> a.Complaints about the substance of the proposal
>
> i.Something overlooked
>
> (My understanding is that those will be forwarded to the relevant OC)

Yes.

>
> ii.Something out of scope (How to handle? Who should decide?)
>

See above. If someone comments an OC proposal is mission creeping this 
should be addressed by the OC. They should say why it is in scope. If 
the conflict persists we have to make a decision on how to resolve that 
in the combined proposal.


> iii.A point of view that did not make it to the submitted proposal
>
> (How to handle? decide whether it gained consensus, as defined by the
> OP? check whether the consensus process was followed? …)

See above. The OC needs to defend their process. We have to evaluate the 
proposal and the process. We can do that without passing explicit 
judgement each and every comment. Again: we are not an arbitration body 
that has to give an opinion to each specific case before it.


>
> b.Complaints about the process followed

is semantically the same as above


> i.Not happy with the process as defined by the OC (nothing we can do)
>

how is this different from above?

> ii.Process was not followed (How to prove? How to handle?)

again the same as above.


I'll try to synthesize in a separate message.

Daniel