RE: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants

["Rob Wilton \(rwilton\)" <rwilton=40cisco.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Keith,

 

From: Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 20 June 2022 19:36
To: Rob Wilton (rwilton) <rwilton@xxxxxxxxx>; ietf@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants

 

On 6/20/22 13:28, Rob Wilton (rwilton) wrote:

Hi Keith,

-----Original Message-----

From: ietf <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Keith Moore

Sent: 18 June 2022 02:45

To: ietf@xxxxxxxx

Subject: Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants

On 6/17/22 21:11, Wes Hardaker wrote:

A nice aspect about the IETF is that new drafts and proposals require

others to agree to its merits and approach before it will be adopted.

Thus, if someone doesn't have the time to write a constructive review of

an idea, then the saying "if you don't have something nice to say, then

don't say anything at all" actually works.

I disagree, at least as a general statement.  Of course, not every

participant who understands why something is a Bad Idea needs to take

the time to write a constructive review.   But expecting that someone

else will write a constructive review is approximately like asking a

large group of people "will somebody do this <unpleasant and thankless

task>?"   The chances are good that most or all of that group will see

that task as Somebody Else's Problem.

I'm trying to understand what you are really expecting IETF newcomers to know or do.

It's a hard problem.   Before my first IETF I had already read through the relevant RFCs and drafts on the subjects I was interested in.   But the Internet was smaller and less diverse then.   It wasn't hard to know enough about email, ftp, lpr, telnet, etc. to usefully participate in a discussion.   These days you have to know a lot more to participate usefully than you did 30 years ago.

This is perhaps true, it does also depend on what part of the area of WGs the newcomers are trying to participate in.

 

I've occasionally thought that IETF should maintain an Internet 101 course for newcomers, outlining the basics of core Internet protocols, some of the fundamental principles and design decisions, etc.   Such as why IP addresses aren't assigned geographically, or why the Internet uses packet switching rather than circuit switching.   Then at least if someone's arguing for a significant change, they should understand what they're up against.

Yes, I think that something like this would be brilliant, and I would be entirely supportive of any efforts in this area.

  

I presume that you are not asking them to review 20+ years of email/discussion across multiple WGs before they post a new idea?  Am I also right to presume that you agree that it would be wrong to have harsh reviews and criticism directed at them just because they lack the historical knowledge that there seems to be no easy way for them to obtain?

Reading this, the question that comes to my mind is why in the world we expect people who have very little knowledge and experience of Internet protocols, to be able to participate meaningfully in IETF?

 

I don’t think that you have actually answered my question.  But the newcomers that we are trying to encourage to participate probably do have some knowledge and experience of Internet protocols but are perhaps not experts and almost certainly won’t know the history of why the protocols have evolved the way that they do, path not taken, etc.

 

Answer: we don't.   Just because there's no entrance exam to participate in IETF, doesn't mean we don't expect people to know what they're talking about.

And it clearly doesn't scale to expect experienced people to spend significant amounts of their time explaining basic things about the Internet to newcomers.

As we have both alluded to, the most effectively way to minimize experienced people spending significant amounts of their time explaining basic things to newcomers is for some of them to help prepare material that the newcomers can consume.  But given that the more experienced individuals are presumably older (to have time to gain that experience) and will presumably stop participating in the IETF at some point in the future (unless there are some significant medical advances in aging treatments) then one of the most useful things that the experienced participants can do is helping teach and encourage and train the new blood who will be responsible for maintaining and evolving the IETF into the future.

Truth is, IETF has had this problem to some degree ever since I've got involved circa 1990.   But the ratio of newcomers to experienced people might be higher now than it used to be.

I also agree with PHB's comments, that ideas that have been dismissed in the past may have been so for many different reasons and re-evaluating an approach may reasonably come to a different conclusion.

I've also said something similar, which is that conditions change over time, and the conditions that once compelled a particular decision may have changed enough since then to warrant revisiting that decision.

  I'm not saying that we should relitigate every idea forever, but I suspect that many new ideas that IETF ends up working on are variations of similar ideas that have been considered in the past, we are protocol designers and engineers and the vast majority of decisions that we make are technical compromises between competing requirements, and just because an idea has historically worked reasonably doesn't necessarily mean that it is still the best approach today.

Agree, it doesn't.   And yet, IETF's job is to develop and encourage standardization, and that's almost the opposite of doing the same thing in N different ways.   Failure to resolve fundamental design decision is one of the IETF's big problems these days, IMO.

 

If a new draft is an obviously naïve idea, then normally it shouldn't take more than a few sentences to explain why that approach doesn't work. 

I think that's more wishful thinking than reality.   Some subjects are VERY subtle.

 

Then it becomes even more important to document those subtle issues.  Storing design considerations in collective memory is not an effective long-term solution.

I don't think that anyone is saying that we shouldn’t provide that feedback, but the observation is that if we provide that feedback in a very negative way then it is likely to drive that person away, whereas if we try and provide that feedback in a more constructive way then there is a possibility that we inspire the individual to participate in the IETF even though the original idea/reason that they came to the IETF might not be so great (perhaps due to the lack of experience and domain knowledge).

We REALLY need to get past the notion that Bad People Discouraging Newcomers are the problem with IETF.

 

Who has this notion?  Certainly, it is not mine.  I don’t see any of the folks arguing for constructive/polite feedback saying that the small number of folks who are apparently resistant to providing constructive comments are bad people.  You seem to be drawing a connection here that I don’t think that it is justified.

 

 

   I'm 100% serious.   Our problems are MUCH deeper than that, and that kind of argument is inherently divisive because it encourages efforts to get rid of and/or marginalize the supposed Bad People. 

 

No, it doesn’t.  Nobody is trying to get rid of anyone.

 

 

  That kind of thinking is toxic, and utterly incompatible with building consensus.

 

There is already IETF consensus that the expectation is for IETF participants to extend respect and courtesy to their colleagues at all times. [BCP 45]

If a given WG keeps receiving the same ideas again and again, then maybe the WG members could arrange a hackathon before the next IETF meeting to write up a quick wiki explaining commonly presented ideas and the reasons why those ideas have been rejected previously.  This would seem to help both educate the newcomers and perhaps reduce some of the apparent animosity towards newcomers in some WGs?

But, for me:

- If the IETF stops being open to new ideas and sensible evolution of existing protocols then overtime it will likely become less relevant.  Communities will form together and develop their ideas elsewhere, and the IETF eventually becomes obsolete.

Agree with this much.   But neither can IETF expect to have a monopoly on Truth or Goodness or Rightness or whatever other virtue in Internet protocols.   There will always be groups that try to do things in different ways than IETF does, and sometimes their efforts will be successful.  

- Similarly, if we continually discourage newcomers from participating in the IETF (e.g., because their expectations of reasonable conduct and communication are apparently incompatible with some of the older IETFers) then the numbers of participants will dwindle as the older IETFs retire or find other things that they want to spend their precious time on.

Shall we rather drive away many of our experienced participants along with their wisdom?  Or only accept wisdom from people who adhere to the arbitrary Niceness Standards of the Politeness Police?

Nobody is trying to drive anyone away.

Personally, I am more likely to take onboard criticism and feedback when given in a polite and constructive way, i.e., it is simply a more effective way of communicating.  Further to that I have a lot more respect from the older more experienced folks who spend the time and energy to provide constructive feedback.

 

    For a whole lot of reasons, that's ridiculous (actually I'm being imprecise here, but offhand I can't think of any words for it that wouldn't be seen by some as insulting to the mentally ill).   First and foremost, the Politeness Police aren't even remotely value neutral - they have their own technical, political, and/or economic agendas, and they don't hesitate to use accusations of "impoliteness" (or worse) to suppress opinions that are inconvenient to them for any reason at all that serves their interest.   Secondly, truth hurts sometimes.   Sometimes others' ideas really are better, sometimes reality doesn't really lend itself to creating the world some of us want, etc.   Promoting denial is inconsistent with IETF's mission.

There is no “Politeness Police”.  There is no suppression of inconvenient opinions.  There is no hidden agenda.

The only goal is to try and encourage IETF participants to use constructive/polite language because aggressive/argumentative/rude discussions and feedback drives people away.  Quite a few participants have unsubscribed from this mailing list.  I haven’t seen anyone say that they have unsubscribed because this list was constructive and friendly, but quite a few have explicitly stated the opposite.   No one has ever said that they are choosing not to participant in the IETF because it is too polite and friendly.  And I believe that this is a particular issue for younger folks (that we need to attract and engage with) who have different expectations of what reasonable constructive discussion looks like – and when they don’t like what they see they choose to walk away and spend their precious time elsewhere.

I have colleagues (the smart experienced kind who would probably be perfect at the IETF) who are apprehensive about presenting to the IETF not because they cannot handle criticism, but because they fear that some IETFers will just be mean/dismissive, or will make a point just to show how much more experienced and knowledgeable they are.  This is not good for the long term health of the IETF.

 

I will repeat this as often as is necessary: You cannot make IETF more inclusive by trying to exclude people you don't like.  It's an oxymoron.   If that's what someone is trying to do, they should at least have the decency to admit that what they're really trying to do is promote arbitrary prejudice as if it were a virtue.  It's not.

Nobody is trying to exclude anyone.  They are just asking all participants to be polite and constructive with their comments and interactions.

And sometimes Bad Ideas start to get traction from inexperienced people,

after which it becomes fairly difficult to slow them down.

Perhaps the inexperienced people are not presenting a "Bad Idea" at all, but it is actually now a "Good Idea", but instead it is older experienced IETF folks who are resistant to change.

Yes, and I said something very similar myself.

I see this as sort of a structural problem with IETF.    Most people

don't like to deliver bad news.

Hum, I thought that the origin of this thread was that some IETF participants are only too happy to deliver bad news, and it is the way that there are delivering that feedback that is putting off some, perhaps many, new participants.    

For reasons stated above, I emphatically disagree with, and object to, that characterization. 

 

Okay, perhaps my statement was slightly incorrect to say origin of this thread … but I will note this previous remark on this thread at the point that the title was changed:

 

“On the other hand, is it really a negative when someone is snarky with a

snot-nosed kid who doesn't appreciate being told that their "great new

idea" is a retread of something folks learned not to do decades ago?”

 

I.e., there are some voices on this thread that seem to condone and encourage such behaviour.

 

Can we please dispense with the ageist prejudice?  

 

There is no ageist prejudice.  I’m not asking older folks to be polite and constructive.  I’m asking everyone to be polite and constructive.

Lack of attention is a different problem than lack of clue. Truly Bad

Ideas sometimes find significant popular support.

If those ideas are gaining significant popular support (i.e., consensus) then perhaps that is because they are not necessarily a bad idea at all, and perhaps those ideas are finding significant popular support because the technical arguments against trying that idea or approach are weak or subjective.

No, gaining significant popular support isn't at all the same thing as consensus.   Not even close.  Sometimes a few people "in the rough" are actually right, and that's why IETF isn't a popularity contest.

Sorry, I should have been clearer, the ideas are gaining consensus amongst those folks giving significant popular support.

 

Fundamentally it's incorrect to assume that just because a lot of people want to do something, that it's the right thing to do.

Yes, but equally, just because an idea has come from someone new and not an experienced IETF participant doesn’t automatically mean that it is the wrong thing to do.  If there is popular interest in the idea then it should be discussed politely and constructively on its technical merits.

I do believe that some of the drafts brought to the IETF are not particularly useful and are unlikely to further the IETF’s goals but having an open draft submission policy means that we have to accept that there is a cost to allowing anyone to submit their ideas.

Regards,
Rob

I don't think there's any way to get around it:  Sometimes we need

people to object to popular but Bad ideas, and sometimes those

explanations will not satisfy the supporters of Bad Ideas. And we need

to NOT rely on only those with appointed positions to do those jobs.

This sounds remarkably like "RFC 8962: Establishing the Protocol Police" to me.

It's closer to the opposite.

Keith