On 11/4/21 8:05 PM, Bron Gondwana wrote:
Sometimes, a message about "conduct" is sent to a mailing list to ask
each side to pause the discussion instead of pushing for an opinion
which is completely at odds with the other side.
There is another issue with asking for discussions to slow down, which is that mailing lists have people from many different timezones and with other things going on in their lives. It's quite unfair for those who aren't awake at the time for the conversation to move on so fast that they don't get a chance to have any input.
I agree. But I think that looks like having a convention for
mailing list discussions that looks like: "nothing is settled
until N days have elapsed". Because people aren't only from
different time zones, they also have different holidays, some take
days off work, there are illnesses, the occasional car wreck, and
other interruptions to life.
So it's quite reasonable to say "you're allowed to send up to three messages per day and then back off and let somebody else speak". This is more obvious in an in-person meeting, where it's pretty clear if a couple of people are monopolising the room and not giving anybody else a chance to speak.
I've occasionally, but rarely, seen this kind of monopolising happen. But sometimes when an in-person conversation is between a couple of people, those are exactly the people who need to be sorting out the issue, and the fact that they can rapidly exchange ideas (with an occasional other participant adding a point) is what allows the working group to make speedy progress while still taking a variety of views into account. This, IMO, is the best kind of result that an in-person meeting can produce - though sometimes the conditions simply don't permit such a result.
I understand why the microphone queue was instituted - to better accommodate remote participants. But I found it hugely detrimental to in-person meetings. It used to be that in-person meetings were where WGs could get convergence on issues that were difficult to sort out over mailing lists. These days, it's almost impossible to use in-person meetings in that way. The microphone queue isn't the only problem - room arrangement is another part of the problem (when you have to wiggle through a line of closely-seated people just to say something, or arrive early to grab a seat next to a microphone), and in-room wifi is another part of the problem (when a significant plurality of those in the room aren't actually participating in the discussion, it makes it seem as if most of the WG doesn't care about what's being discussed). Another part of the problem is use of PowerPoint and similar tools which kill interactive discussion unless used with great care. IETF in-person meetings were more productive when we used write-on transparencies projected onto a screen.
I don't think it's really the case that someone sending email messages takes away time or bandwidth available for others to send messages, but I admit that there's a psychological effect of seeing a screenful of unread messages in a thread and thinking "ugh, I don't have time to sort through all of this right now". Part of what surprises me about this is that we used to do fine with long conversations over email, so I wonder what has changed. One explanation might be that it's a lot more tedious to read email on handheld devices as compared to a computer screen. One explanation might be that inline quoting and responding (mixing portions of subject message and reply) has fallen out of fashion and isn't well-supported by modern user agents. One explanation might be that email has become the dumping ground for tremendous amounts of low-value information, so every email seems more annoying than it used to.
I suspect that per-day message quotas wouldn't actually reduce
the burden for readers, because participants would just batch up
their responses. And I don't think that discouraging
participation is really what IETF needs. I keep looking for ways
for us to collaborate more effectively and more quickly.
Likewise, if a couple of people are yelling at each other in an in-person meeting, the body language of everybody else makes it quite clear that they are getting out of line - but a similar escalation of emotionality on a mailing list doesn't have that real-time dampener effect of the audience feedback you get in a real room - so a more explicit "let's take a pause, go away and think about what's important here" does need to happen.
I strongly disagree with the idea that "everybody else" (however
communicated) defines (or should define) what is "out of line".
Herd mentality is counterproductive. It's vitally important to
listen to outliers, at least to those who know what they're
talking about. Sometimes all it takes to prevent a launch of a
Challenger space shuttle is a lone voice who everybody else is
trying to silence.
The problem, and I think you identify it well here, is when that "let's take a pause" is used with an underlying "and hopefully you'll just go away because I don't like the point you're trying to make".
Using a pause as a way to make people go away is not cool - but using it to stop somebody saying the same thing over and over, forcefully, and not waiting for others (who might not be awake or paying attention right now) to have a chance to contribute to the conversation first - that's reasonable. Conversations shouldn't be dominated by those who have the time to write a lot of email at all hours of the day.
In some sense, I agree with the first part of this. If someone
has already stated their position clearly they shouldn't have to
keep repeating it to be heard. And they shouldn't keep saying
the same thing over and over. Unfortunately, sometimes people
won't pay attention the first time something is said, but two or
three times at most should suffice. People should try to realize
when they're looping and just say "I think we're looping and I
don't know what else there is to say that hasn't been said
already."
It seems to me that the most effective use of a "pause" is to get all participants to stop talking, or maybe to only message one another privately, and think about things a bit and see if they come up with something new.
Keith
