Announcing the Results of the 2025 RIPE Code of Conduct Survey

The 2025 RIPE Code of Conduct Survey opened on 1 October and remained open through RIPE 91 closing on 31 October, 2025. The purpose of the survey was to help us answer two important questions:

• How safe do community members feel at RIPE Meetings?
• How likely are community members to report breaches of the Code of Conduct?

The survey was anonymous and we encouraged anyone who had attended at least one RIPE Meeting since RIPE 86 to complete it.

All in all, 93 people responded to the survey which consisted of the following questions:

1. What is your gender? (Male, Female, Prefer not to say)
2. Have you ever experienced behaviour at a RIPE Meeting that was not in line with the RIPE Code of Conduct but you decided not to report it to the Code of Conduct Team? (Yes, No)
3. If Yes, can you say why you decided not to report this behaviour to the Code of Conduct Team? (Freeform response)
4. Do you think you would report undesirable behaviour to the Code of Conduct Team should you experience it? (Freeform response)
5. Finally, on a scale of 1 (Very unsafe) to 10 (Completely safe), how safe do you feel at RIPE Meetings? (Scale 1-10)

In this article we present our overall findings, analysis, and recommendations. We have included a detailed breakdown of all the responses into categories and numbers in the last section, "Detailed results”.

Outcome and discussion

Overall, we are very pleased that the majority of respondents feel safe at RIPE meetings - the median response was a 9 out of 10. This is an encouraging result.

Three times more men than women responded to the survey, loosely matching our community composition. Breaking down the responses by gender we find that overall men feel safer during meetings. No man reported a value below 7 and the average was 9.4. Women and those not choosing to disclose their gender still averaged 8.2 and 8.5, respectively. Amongst all respondents, the average was 9.03 out of 10.

While the overall results look good, there were five responses with a safety feeling of 6 or below. Looking at the free form answers for these responses, they can all be summarised as the respondent having no faith in a good outcome of the CoC process.

Our community’s faith in the CoC team and process is crucial for it to fulfil its function. In this case, none of the five responses raised specific concerns that led us to question the more positive feedback expressed by the remaining 88. That said, it's important to be clear that we are always open to further input - which you can either send to us as the CoC Team or to the RIPE Chair Team - and we're very eager to understand how we can improve the situation for everyone.

For Question #2, 29% of respondents - 11 men, 12 women, 4 who preferred not to say - reported that they had witnessed or been the target of misconduct and did not report it to the Code of Conduct Team.

Question #3 was a freeform question to contextualise those answers. We carefully went through all free form responses and manually categorised them into the following categories:

• Lacked faith in a good outcome (7)
• Resolved without the CoC Team involvement (4)
• Someone else reported it (4)
• Reported, but did not receive a response from the CoC Team (1)
• Unknown/Other (1)

If we disregard incidents already reported by someone else, those resolved without the CoC Team involvement, and Unknown/Other, eight replies remain, (so about 8% of all replies). These are the responses we need to focus on if we want to improve.

Concerning the single person who reported that they did not get a response from the CoC Team, we do not have enough information to evaluate this. We do encourage people to follow up with their report if they do not receive a response.

For Question #4, only 63% of respondents said they would report misconduct they witnessed to the Code of Conduct Team. 7% (2 male, 2 female, 4 preferring not to say) are unwilling to report incidents of misconduct, while 23% (13 male, 6 female, 6 preferring not to say) are unsure. This is not a very encouraging result.

15% of female respondents and 66% of non-gendered participants reported they would not, or maybe would not, report an incident to the CoC Team compared to 5% of male survey participants. The gender disparity is significant, but the actual raw numbers are not that high so it is difficult to draw deeper significance from this data.

While the majority of respondents to Question #5 indicated they felt safe at RIPE meetings, the disparity in standard deviation between men and others is interesting. It displays a consistency in feeling safe that is exclusive to male respondents. The minimums are also telling. Three times more men than women responded to the survey - yet the lowest answer given to Question #5 by a man was 7, while the lowest answer given by a woman was 3, and the lowest answer given by respondents who preferred not to reveal their gender was 2.

No gender break down was performed for Question #3 since the number of responses per category were too small to be statistically significant.

Conclusion

If we read the results of this survey as representative then overall participants feel safe at RIPE meetings and are more often willing to report incidents to the CoC Team than not.

Given that RIPE meeting participants are predominantly male and those participants reported a high level of safety, it is logical to concentrate on less-represented gender groups to gain insights.

It is clear from the results of the 2025 Code of Conduct Survey that the RIPE Community can and should do more in order to make women and others feel safe at RIPE Meetings.

This iteration of the survey does not teach us how to achieve this. There are likely a multitude of underlying reasons and we would require more input from the community to better understand them all. Options range from in-depth interviews with volunteers, to more detailed surveys, to a feedback round with the RIPE Chair team, to guided public discussions. The CoC Team is interested in hearing from the community how we can facilitate more discussion and progress on this issue.

The CoC Team believes we can only build greater trust with the community by continuing to treat every incident we receive with thoughtful care and professionalism. We believe the best way we can convince community members to engage with us is if we demonstrate that their issues will be taken seriously.

The Code of Conduct Team looks forward to discussing the results and analysis of this survey at RIPE 92.

Detailed results

93 people responded to the survey. The survey had five questions. This section will list each question and show its results.

1. What is your gender? (Male, Female, Prefer not to Say)

The responses were 66% Male, 22% Female, and 13% Prefer not to Say.

2. Have you ever experienced behaviour at a RIPE Meeting that was not in line with the RIPE Code of Conduct but you decided not to report it to the Code of Conduct Team? (Yes, No)

29% of respondents answered Yes to this question. Broken down by gender; 12(60%) of women answered Yes, 11(18%) of men answered Yes, and 4(33%) of Prefer not to Say answered Yes.

3. If Yes, can you say why you decided not to report this behaviour to the Code of Conduct Team? (Freeform response)

All 27 respondents that answered Yes on Question #2 also responded to this question. The survey allowed respondents to answer with as little or as much text as they wished. Some respondents provided a short phrase while others gave multiple paragraphs of text. All responses were read by the Code of Conduct Team and coded into the following categories by humans.

4. Do you think you would report undesirable behaviour to the Code of Conduct Team should you experience it? (Freeform response)

This question permitted freeform input, but most respondents responded with a short Yes or No. Some also provided additional input. All responses were read by the CoC Team and coded into Yes, No, or Maybe by a human.

Below we see the responses for Question #4 broken down by respondent gender:

5. Finally, on a scale of 1 (Very unsafe) to 10 (Completely safe), how safe do you feel at RIPE Meetings? (Scale 1-10)

All 93 respondents provided an answer to this question. The median response was 9 with a mean of 9.03 and a standard deviation of 1.46. The minimum was 2 and the maximum was 10.

Below we see the responses for Question #5 broken down by respondent gender.

For more background on the 2025 RIPE Code of Conduct Survey see the October 2025 RIPE Labs Article that announced the survey. For more background on the RIPE Code of Conduct and the Code of Conduct Team see our page.