On 4/17/21 10:28 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
Indeed, that is at least a key part of the problem -- and a
problem that I believe Andrew, myself, Randy, and probably Brian
were trying to address from our different perspectives. It is
the part of this problem that I think has gotten worse in the
last decade or so. It is one that the anti-harassment
procedures and guidelines for conduct developed during that
period either do not address or have proven inadequate to
prevent or remedy. I suggest that guidelines for improved
terminology will not help either. People can jump down the
throats of others (or snarl at them) for departing from
homogeneous opinion or the preference of leadership in a WG (or
even in other contexts) without violating any specific rules
(even though it is fairly clear from RFC 7154 that it is bad
behavior) with impunity.
Part of the failing is that passive aggressive behavior is tolerated in
my experience. But outright hostility is certainly tolerated way too
much too. Just because you aren't couching something as an ad hominem
doesn't mean that you aren't being aggressive. Part of the problem is
passive working group chairs and that AD's don't scale to deal with
that. Indeed, if you're an AD about the last thing you want on your
plate is wg chairs behaving badly I would think. Essentially you're
talking about taking the time to get the back story for somebody who can
only keep loose tabs on the tech, let alone how the wg is being run and
its day to day operation.
Who needs that kind of grief? Especially when you're not
getting paid to take it.
Exactly.
I don't see any way to stop that behavior -- and stop it from
driving people away from those WGs at least and probably the
IETF more generally -- unless:
(1) The IESG, perhaps borrowing ideas for other SDOs, will not
tolerate (i.e., charter or allow to continue) WGs whose
participation represents only a narrow range of interests.
(2) The IESG and community will not tolerate WGs (or other
groups) in which shutting down dissent or questions that differ
from the opinions of WG leadership (including de facto
leadership by those you describe as manor lords) is a regular
practice.
Dang it, I knew my spelling looked suspect for manor :)
(3) The community has effective ways to push back on individuals
who exhibit that sort of shutting down or snarling behavior
regularly, whether it is confined to one WG or not.
It often becomes just a war of attrition until you ask why you're doing
this. For a newbie that question gets asked a lot sooner rather than later.
Of course a WG should not need to tolerate someone who raises
the same questions or proposals repeatedly after they have been
fairly considered and rejected, but that is disruptive behavior
and we have many years of mostly-successful experience in
dealing with it.
Right, I'm not talking about religitation on an individual basis. But it
can be really hard from the outside to understand why various decisions
were made and frankly I don't know of any other way to do that than just
ask. Do we record hums and/or working group consensus calls and what
they represent? Even that would go some way to help get up to speed. The
document is the distillation of what the protocol is, but the back story
of *why* it is the way it is is often just as important.
Independent of the impact on feelings and participation, the
behavior you describe damages the credibility of the IETF and
its work if a cabal, especially one with shared commercial
interests, can take over (or initiate) a WG, push documents into
and through IETF Last Call, and then successfully claim IETF
consensus and standards status for the results.
What change was that?
And none of the above would likely be meaningful or effective
unless there is also a mechanism for reporting problems and
having them considered that does not put the reporter at risk
for further abuse. In that regard, the recent IESG statement
about Last Calls may be a step backward. If someone feels a need
to make a Last Call comment identifying ways in which claimed
consensus (in a WG, on a mailing list, etc.) is invalid because
those who disagreed were silenced or driven away, it should be
possible to make that comment to the IESG with the same degree
of anonymity associated with the Ombudsteam process. More
generally, someone should be able to make such a report to an AD
or the whole IESG at any time and have it taken seriously
without disclosing the identity of the reporter. At least for
Last Calls, that seems to be precluded by the new process
description.
This of course has the same AD scaling problem as above. Real Supreme
Courts spend considerable time and effort with themselves and their
staff to scale up, and that's their day job. AD have no such staff and
working group squabbles are hopefully not a significant portion of their
day job.
Mike
