On 4/2/21 1:27 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:
Now regarding the 2 deleted drafts. One would have to believe that they were serious to consider them violations of the code of conduct.
I don't think this is quite right. I would say instead that one would have to have good reason to believe that they were malicious, or insulting to one or more specific persons, to consider them violations of the code of conduct.
As I read these drafts, I don't think either of those considerations applies to any of them.
It's not wrong to express concern about possible ill effects of censorship and/or language policing. It's not wrong to express concern about possible negative effects of privilege/intersectionality calculus. It's not wrong to express concern about the difficulties associated with rules of social interaction that require us to remember, for each person, how they would prefer to be addressed and referred to.
(I personally favor trying to remember how each person wishes to be addressed and referred to, despite the obvious difficulty, because I believe it's far more important to respect people as individuals than as members of groups - especially groups that others might pigeonhole them into. And offhand, I don't immediately know of a better solution. But it's not wrong to question whether there is a better way to interact while still respecting people as individuals.)
(Here's a question: suppose IETF started optionally printing each participant's preferred pronouns on face-to-face meeting badges? Would that be more inclusive or not? Granted that the proposed TLS extension is intended to be silly. But the problem of learning people's preferred ways of being referred to is real, and such a problem exists in some cultures for slightly different reasons.)
What is wrong (at least for IETF) is to insist that certain opinions are sacred and beyond question, or to act as if certain people deserve so much privilege that their opinions cannot be questioned. That is a great way to create an echo chamber and promote a culture of incompetence. IMNSHO it has no place in an engineering organization.
One could reasonably ask whether these expressions are within a reasonable interpretation of the scope of IETF activity. Certainly Internet-Drafts are not intended for general commentary on society or culture, and IETF is under no obligation to permit that channel to be used to comment on any subject whatsoever. But if there's even a small possibility that IETF is headed in any of these directions, clearly they should be within scope for IETF discussion. And the reaction of IESG clearly indicates that at least the concern about censorship and language policing is well-founded.
Keith
