On 4/16/21 11:03 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
But Randy's other point is, IMO, important too. Suppose we
could adopt a rule that forbade snarling at people until after
they had participated in the IETF for a few years and magically
changed the culture so that everyone observed it, at the same
time declaring open season on people with longer participation
records or at least a couple of RFCs behind them. Whether
because of what Randy describes as having a shred of empathy or
because of the sense that they are likely to be treated
obnoxiously and aggressively about the time they were ready to
make significant contributions, people would still go away after
watching others be mistreated, abused, or dismissed.
It really is time we clean up our acts.
While I do think that we could possibly "clean up our acts" somewhat, I
suspect that we will always need some way of pushing back on Bad Ideas
and maybe even pushing back on participants who persistently promote Bad
Ideas. And that, to a newcomer, such pushing back will be seen as
"snarling" or perhaps even worse, no matter how politely the pushing
back is done.
We can't have an open discussion, one in which anyone is free to speak,
without having Bad Ideas contributed. Nor can we have an open
discussion without the possibility of genuine conflict between
legitimate interests (leaving aside the question of what is
"legitimate"), and also the possibility of misunderstanding. So there
will always be a need for some form of pushback either against bad ideas
or as part of the path toward consensus and/or compromise.
I suspect that such pushback will always be considered rude by
newcomers, people who lack the context to understand the nature of the
conflict, no matter what form it takes: Whether it's a terse "-1"
message, or a longer polite phrase like "I do not believe that this idea
is viable", or if Bad Ideas and their contributors are widely ignored
(but others may still reply thus amplifying the Bad Idea), or if we
continue to let people express such pushback in their own words.
Any of us who has been around for very long has seen tremendous amounts
of expensive time [*] has been wasted trying to deal with Bad Ideas -
ideas that have repeatedly been considered and rejected in the past,
ideas that are hopelessly naive or uninformed by reality, ideas for
which the hazards are obvious to experienced participants but perhaps
not to every participant.
([*] Especially time in f2f meetings which can easily represent hundreds
of thousands of dollars in meeting and travel expense on the part of
participants or their sponsors, and also wasting the time of extremely
talented and knowledgeable people who were hoping to get useful work done.)
***
And sometimes, it should be admitted, the "Bad Ideas" aren't inherently
Bad, but are being rejected for other reasons. Maybe an idea sounds
too much like an idea that has been rejected as Bad, and the difference
is too subtle for people to notice. Maybe the community is simply not
ready to consider the idea. Maybe some people do not like the person
proposing the idea, and wishes to discourage that person. Or maybe
those people are so prejudiced against that person that they can't let
themselves evaluate the idea on its merits. Maybe the idea has
potential, but threatens the interests of too many influential
participants. Or maybe an idea which was formerly rejected as Bad has
been improved, but people once got so tired of discussing it that
they're not willing to invest the effort (and fight the cognitive
dissonance) required to fairly consider it again.
Conditions do change over time, and ideas once considered unworkable may
become more acceptable and/or feasible as a result. I remember when
the general belief was that the web was too large to be effectively
indexed by a search engine because CPUs and link speeds were too slow.
I remember when it was considered infeasible to deploy a new transport
protocol because of all of the different platforms that would have to
change - there are fewer widely-used platforms now. I remember when
the idea of provider-independent IPv6 addresses for non-providers was
heresy.
And sometimes an idea is inherently Bad, and no amount of persistence or
effort will fix it.
But I also realize that sometimes the pushback against an idea is really
not that important. Sometimes it might be displaced discomfort about
something else. Sometimes we argue over trivial ideas and expressions
that aren't likely to have any significant effect. Maybe if we only
had rude-seeming arguments about the ideas that seem to be really
important, the overall perceived level of rudeness would go down. But
there will still be some ideas that are important enough that candor is
more important than playing nice.
***
Every open discussion forum needs a way to push back on Bad Ideas. And
every discussion forum (that wishes to be technically honest) needs a
way to reconsider formerly rejected ideas. How we do each of these is
hugely important. Either we waste immense amounts of time endlessly
discussing Bad Ideas, or we find a way to push back on them. And
either we find a way to reconsider formerly rejected ideas, or we paint
ourselves into corners of technical irrelevance.
Perhaps we can define a better way of giving pushback than snarling.
But I'm pretty sure that we could also do worse than letting people
express their dislike for ideas in their own words. I'd be especially
wary of defining some standard "polite" way of rejecting Bad Ideas that
doesn't let people express themselves. We need some flexibility in how
we give pushback, so that some people can open up doors at least a
little bit, even if other people want to slam them shut.
Maybe it would help to have some concrete suggestions for non-snarling
ways of pushing back on Bad Ideas. As in "if you can't find better
language to use, try one of these boilerplate alternatives".
Keith
p.s. I've definitely been the target of "snarling" and worse, including
overt personal attacks. Unpleasant though it was, I tried to just accept
it as a sign that the community wasn't ready to consider the idea at
that time. I do think we can and should treat one another better than
that. But even if we choose better ways of pushing back, I'm not sure
how obvious the difference will be to newcomers, who may still think
we're being rude.
