On 14/08/2020 18:42, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 10:30:14AM -0700, Christian Huitema wrote:
On 8/14/2020 9:44 AM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
Thanks Paul. Well, said.
Despite the long history of the IETF discussion list being awful, I've
felt an obligation to stay on it. However, it has now become so bad
that I can longer do so.
I would like to thank the IESG for creating the last call list so
that it is still possible to participate in the business of the IETF
without being part of this toxic environment. I'll see you there
and in the WGs.
There is something systemic here. We see that behavior too many times. I
was at the receiving end of similar abuses during the RFC-ED discussions
last year and I feel the pain for Alissa, but there are many more
examples. The IETF list functions as some kind of general assembly, but
without any rules of order. The loudest voices dominate the stream and
skew the consensus, which encourages a loudest-voice behavior and
discourages consensus building.
The question is, what to do?
The IETF way would seem to be to write up several drafts with various
proposals and solicit comments. Options could include:
- just shut it down
- rate-limit all posters
- create a new role specifically tasked with deescalation and
consensus-building
- your idea here
Ben
The IETF way is also to fire up mailing lists to address a particular
topic, which may or may not result in a WG, an I-D, a change in
behaviour and so on. With hindsight, this topic should have been
switched to a different list at the latest by the beginning of August
with the SAA saying discussion here is now out of order, go there
instead or I will suspend you, which, I think, would have gained more
support than the actions that the SAA took.
The main IETF list has had these cytokine storms many times, although I
cannot recall people leaving the list before, so I expect they will
happen again so someone, IETF Chair, SAA or such like should have a
finger on the pulse and be ready to act, to divert the traffic to
another list next time that it happens.
I go back to to the start of all this. Look again at
"The IESG believes the use of oppressive or exclusionary language is
harmful. Such terminology is present in some IETF documents, including
standards-track RFCs, and has been for many years."
Of all the posts I have seen since that one, I find none as offensive as
this one; can you see it? Can the IESG see it?
It says that oppressive or exclusionary language is present, no
explanation, no evidence, we say it is so it is so, here are the tablets
of stone (perhaps in text I have written, who knows?)
Wow, want to start a firestorm, well that is how you do it. The IETF
often describes itself as organised bottom up and the IESG is not what I
would call the bottom.
I speculate that something happened in the IESG to trigger this but have
no idea what that would be but that statement, to me, was always going
to trigger aggressive responses but why the statement was worded as it
is I cannot tell but it may be something for the IESG to reflect on.
Tom Petch
-Ben
.
