Thanks Keith,
I agree,
Best Regards,
AB
On Thu, Nov 4, 2021 at 3:45 PM Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 11/4/21 12:13 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> but Keith comes from a locale where that particular tactic and in
> particular the term 'unprofessional' is frequently employed as pretext
> for preventing dismantling of things most people thought were
> dismantled in the 1960s.
Offhand, I don't recall the word "unprofessional" being used this way in
my "locale".
But I was raised in an area (Nashville, Tennessee) that was very
appearance-conscious, and I attended a religious school that was very
appearance-conscious, staffed by people who were very
appearance-conscious. By the time I was 12 or so it was obvious to me
that those people cared much more about appearance than reality. They
were viciously critical of anyone who did not walk the walk and talk the
talk and dress in the very conservative manner common to their religious
sect, often labeling them "sinners" and implying that they were damned
for eternity. The verse most quoted by them was "Abstain from all
appearance of evil". At the same time, they would overlook the actual
behavior of anyone who did keep up appearances, giving them the benefit
of the doubt unless and until the evidence against them was overwhelming.
So yes, that had a profound effect on me, so much that I gave up a
scholarship at Vanderbilt University and attended a state-supported
school instead, at least partially because I didn't want anything to do
with Nashville or Nashville culture anymore.
One of the things that I used to really like about IETF when I got
involved circa 1990, was that it mostly eschewed the trappings of
professionalism. People didn't care much who you were or who you
worked for or where you were from, they cared about whether you knew
what you were talking about and made useful contributions. Which
seemed to me then, and now, to be exactly how they should be.
Another positive aspect about IETF of that time that stood out was the
community's tolerance of different points-of-view and different kinds of
personalities.
By contrast, today, we have people advocating intolerance, and insisting
that IETF must become intolerant of certain people in order to make IETF
seem more attractive to intolerant people. I do not hold with that
view, and it unpleasantly reminds me of the hypocrisy of the environment
in which I was raised and schooled. From recent private mail I
understand that some would not only call such language "uncivil
behavior", they would advocate censorship of individuals using it.
To me that advocation of censorship, and the efforts to marginalize
certain people, are uncivil in the extreme, and I wish people would stop it.
For IETF to function properly, its participants need to be able to speak
their minds. People are only free to speak their minds on any subject
in an environment that is radically open to speech. I agree that
there's some need for comity, and I'm fine with rules that prohibit
insulting of other participants. But censorship needs to be extremely
rare, not used as a mechanism to make less tolerant people feel more
comfortable.
I will not defend descriptions like "stupid" and "garbage" when
describing a protocol, because I think criticism of a protocol is pretty
much unhelpful unless a reader can use it to evaluate whether some
change or other protocol would suit the critic better. But I don't
believe that such descriptions are insulting or uncivil. To the
contrary, I think it's necessary that we be able to criticize protocols,
even in extreme terms sometimes.
I also think it's necessary that we be able to criticize companies, even
in extreme terms sometimes, though again it's more helpful if the
critics say specifically why the company is being criticized. But
predatory companies are unfortunately part of the landscape that we
inhabit, and we do the Internet community a disservice if we refuse to
recognize the elephants in the room out of some misguided sense of
"civility" or "professionalism". IETF cannot do its job properly if it
acts as if it owes fealty to these companies.
What would not be acceptable to me would be using a participant's
employer as a means of disparaging that participant. Everyone has to
decide for themselves what compromises between doing what's ideal or
right, and doing what puts food on the table, they're willing to
accept. We need to respect others' decisions, and realize that there
are good people who are are still trying to do what's right as best they
can, even when their employers may be doing tremendous harm.
And that's another reason why we need to expect individual participants
to use their own best technical judgment, and treat them as if they are
doing so (even though we know that's not always the case) unless there's
very good reason to believe otherwise.
Keith
