[tor-project] Community council updates (nothing's on fire!)

[Nick Mathewson]

Hello!

Hi!  On behalf of the community council, I'm writing you this status
update to let you know how we're doing.  We haven't done one of these
updates in a while, so we hope it's interesting.

tl;dr: Nothing is currently on fire.

Our activities at present fall into two main categories: reacting to
existing situations that we've been asked to address, and proactively
looking into our policies to see how to improve them in the future.

In the first category, we have three ongoing (but unfortunately
slow-moving) cases. One involves a hacker conference where we are seeking
clarity about their safety policies; two involve people in the broader
hacker community. We hope to have all of these resolved well before the end
of this CC's tenure.

In the second category, we're working in two directions to try to improve
decision-making for future community councils, so that they can do their
jobs more effectively:

  * We're working on a conflict-of-interest policy for community council
    members.  (We don't have any COI cases before us now, but we think
    it's a good idea to get a solid policy written _before_ one comes
    up, to prevent arguments.)

  * We're working on a more formal information-continuity policy for the
    community council.  (At present, the community council does not keep
    permanent records of past cases from one council to the next.  This
    protects privacy, but opens us to misunderstandings and possible
    manipulation as council members rotate.)  We are looking for a
    'sweet spot' to allow us to preserve privacy while ensuring that
    future community councils have a reliable way to reach out to former
    councils for information.

Finally, to anybody thinking of volunteering the community council in the
future: I'd strongly recommend it.  The workload has been quite manageable,
the people have been professional and kind, and the stress levels have been
(so far) comparatively low.

best wishes,
-- 
Nick
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/attachments/20220519/7c2b7e88/attachment.htm>