On 10/30/21 7:39 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:
Hi Keith,
At 03:53 PM 20-10-2021, Keith Moore wrote:
The aggregate effect of such efforts is to make IETF more like an
echo chamber, in which everyone is expected to "know their place" -
i.e. know to not express views that might conflict with the views of
those in power, or otherwise know the unwritten "rules". This is,
after all, often what is expected of "professionals" in their
workplaces, which is yet another reason why "professional" is a poor
criterion for describing which behavior is appropriate or not in IETF
discussions.
I read comments about the word "professional" in a RFC over the
years. Here is another comment [1] (translated with Yandex):
"Unfortunately, this RFC feels obliged to add that it is necessary
to behave
in a professional manner as if amateurs were avinee brutes and that
it is
only in the context of work that one can be civilized."
The sentence with that word was the "IETF Consensus" when the RFC was
approved for publication. The "know their place" was removed during
the revision of the document. There isn't anything in the RFC which
prohibits a participant from expressing his/her disagreement with an
Area Director's decision.
One of the points which you raised is about "a system in which people
are placed in a series of levels with different importance or
status". The RFC does not establish a system with different levels of
importance or status.
For me a lot of the problem is that the word "professional" has many
different meanings, and is therefore ambiguous.
One interpretation of "professional behavior" seems to be norms of a
corporate workplace. But corporate workplaces have many restraints on
speech and behavior which aren't appropriate for IETF. For example,
publicly criticizing your employer, or its leadership, or its policies,
or its products, can get you fired. But IETF should be open to public
criticism, even by (perhaps especially by) its participants.
Another interpretation of "professional" refers to a group of persons
who are all make their living in the same trade. It can even carry
with it the assumption that "professionals" are privileged somehow.
(There's a joke: "Why don't sharks eat lawyers?" "Professional
courtesy.") But IETF is open to participation by everyone, and its
participants should treat each other as peers, regardless of how they
earn their living or even whether they are employed.
It's hard to escape the impression that some of those insisting on
"professional behavior" are looking for a way to exclude those who they
deem not qualified, so as to get out of the way of the Big Corporations
who want IETF to do what they want it to do.
Anyway, if "unprofessional behavior" is not defined, those in power can
use any deviation from "normal" as an excuse to sanction participants.
But I also realize that maybe this doesn't matter much, as the scope of
this document is limited to the IETF list which is of decreasing
relevance anyway. The IETF list used to serve as the primary forum of
the community, its center, and also its conscience. This draft along
with several other IMO extremely harmful measures that have been taken
in recent years (including the creation of gendispatch) narrows the
scope of the IETF list so much that it effectively destroys most of the
utility that the IETF list used to have, and with it the organization's
core values.
I don't know why people think that the solution to traffic overload is
to keep siloing discussions ad infinitum, and I would argue that one of
IETF's core problems has long been the over-fragmentation of discussions.
Or maybe the fragmentation of the IETF list was part of a deliberate
effort to subvert the IETF into being a forum that only serves the
Internet industry, rather than one trying to serve the broader Internet
community?
The underlying value for some participants is most likely related to
https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does
A participant residing in another country might not have the
background information to understand those participants. It takes
many years to understand all that.
These rules don't really apply to discussions like the IETF list, even
in the United States. Governments within the US are forbidden from
penalizing most kinds of speech. But those restrictions on government
don't prevent the moderation of discussions hosted by non-governmental
organizations such as IETF, or for that matter discussions on social
media sites.
But it may well be true that US citizens and longtime US residents,
accustomed to having few government prohibitions on speech, are somewhat
more outspoken than those from elsewhere.
Keith
