Hi Keith,
At 03:31 PM 30-10-2021, Keith Moore wrote:
For me a lot of the problem is that the word "professional" has many
different meanings, and is therefore ambiguous.
As a point of information, the text was added in December 2013 based
on feedback. I verified whether the change was in accordance with
the "process" documents.
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.
The professional courtesy is not a one-way street. There was a time
when the views of those who were not regular attendees were ignored
during Last-Calls and the Area Directors called it "consensus". To
be fair, there were some Area Directors who did not follow to that practice.
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.
The IETF mailing list is no longer the marketplace of the IETF. It
weakens the IETF.
The shared values is bound to change with newer participants. There
are also changes outside the IETF which influence those 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.
It is probably easier to solve an issue by having a narrow scope. I
assume that some of the mailing list subscribers know the story of
the three blind men and an elephant. It explains what can happen
when by having a narrow scope.
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?
It is better, in my opinion, to focus on whether the IETF is serving
the broader community instead of whether there was a deliberate
effort (or not) to serve the industry only.
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.
Some participants may not be understand why there are debates about
"free speech" in a place where people are expected to discuss
technical documents.
The purpose of this exchange was to understand what the concern was.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
