On 6/13/22 12:46, Barry Leiba wrote:
The sort of ignorant stupidity in your statements is what's causing
the IETF to lose credibility -- and productive, smart participants who
are no longer willing to deal with such nonsense. It really makes me
wonder whether there's any thinking behind it at all.
Yes, it's easy to contrive statements that even Keith would regard as
objectionable :)
And just in case that wasn't clear, I'm not saying that IETF
participants should be free to send obviously insulting statements.
But I do think it's tricky to draw the line. I've long thought that it
should be okay to criticize ideas, but not okay to criticize people who
suggest those ideas, and I still think that's about right. But I
recognize that in practice, strong criticism of ideas can be hard to
distinguish from strong criticism of the person suggesting those
ideas. Sometimes people really do make poorly-informed suggestions,
and sometimes the best criticism of such suggestions is to point out how
they're not well-informed. However, labeling such a suggestion as
"ignorant", even if 100% accurate, does little or nothing to inform the
debate.
And I also recognize that working in IETF is likely to be frustrating
from time to time, especially among those who are passionate about the
Internet and/or their own protocols. I think we need to realize that
such frustration and/or passion are going to be evident sometimes, and
there's nothing wrong with that. We need passionate people in IETF.
Now, I hope that made you, Keith -- and everyone else reading it --
blanch. I hope that everyone agrees that it's inappropriate, even if
it were then backed up with citations of studies that refute your
claims. And I hope that if I had been saying that for real, and not
to make a point, I would be admonished for it. For the record, I have
plenty of respect for Keith and consider him a fine, intelligent
colleague.
But I also think that my first paragraph is never a useful way to
engage in discussion in the IETF nor in any other context, and serves
only to inflame and to squelch discussion -- as Jay says. Perhaps,
Keith, you're thick-skinned enough that if my first paragraph had been
a real part of the discussion, you'd have just blown past it and not
really been bothered.
I do think that a certain degree of skin thickness is very helpful when
participating in IETF. It helps to realize that when there's no
substance in someone's criticism - they haven't offered any real support
for their claims of someone else's ignorance, stupidity, or whatever, or
that the only support they can offer is their own claim of expertise,
there's a very good chance that the critic doesn't know what they're
talking about.
And I've often seen statements in IETF that were every bit as belittling
as your example above, but which were couched in "polite" terms. The
tactic of contrasting one person's statement with statements from
"productive, smart participants" (or similar) is quite common. I don't
think such statements are any more acceptable. A statement can be very
insulting without ever using offending words.
But I can tell you, based on the number of
people who have told me that they either left the IETF entirely or
significantly reduced their participation because they were tired of
being treated to such rhetoric, that*not* shutting that down is much
more damaging to the IETF than allowing it because we don't want to
limit people's right to speak their minds.
I am not sure that I agree. I can certainly see how what you describe
could happen. But the Politeness Police have themselves discouraged
participation in IETF, at least in part because some of them were every
bit as arrogant and demeaning as your example statement above, and
worse, AND they had the backing of the organizational leaders.
At some point you inevitably end up choosing which group you want to
favor - do you want to favor the passionate people whose frustration
sometimes shows, or do you want to favor the "polite" people who don't
get as frustrated because they have less personal investment in the
Internet or their protocols? Neither approach can be described as
"inclusive".
So, while I'm very happy to try to find a way to say it that we can
all (yes, likely) agree is clear enough and that eliminates vagueness,
I absolutely believe that we have to make it clear, as a community,
that speaking to each other that way is NOT acceptable.
I think we can certainly make things clearer than they are. But I have
doubts about the desirability of rigid sanctions for most cases of
infringement. And I think we would do well to work more at encouraging
and modeling productive means of feedback, and less at trying to
identify, marginalize, and exclude "bad" participants.
Keith
