Keith, there seem to be two separate issues which your emails appear to be conflating.
On the one hand there is your often-expressed concern that the rules are vague and have been used to suppress opinions with which the leadership disagrees. While I disagree with you about the degree of vagueness, I do understand that concern. It is not good for the IETF to suppress dissenting technical perspectives.
On the other hand, in the particular case you have seized on, we
have an individual participant who has chosen to insult other
individuals and subgroups. He has the perfect right to disagree
with the technical work or technical opinions. But insulting the
participants is not acceptable. And is not good for the IETF
community. But you seem (and maybe I am misunderstanding you) to
be objecting to efforts to prevent such behavior.
Yours,
Joel
On 8/24/22 10:50, Tim Bray wrote:
Yep. My time is limited and ietf@ is no longer a good use of it. The evidence is strongly against the hypothesis that it’s OK to be rude and unprofessional at work.
See, I come to a very similar conclusion - my time is limited and ietf@ is no longer a productive use of it. (Though I'm still trying to save it because I think there's something here worth saving and no likely replacement in sight.)
But the reason that I think that IETF is not a good use of my time isn't that "unprofessional" or "rude" people have been getting in the way of progress. It's that too many people seem to feel entitled to suppress the inputs of those with whom they disagree, using any excuse whatsoever other than a technical argument, or maybe no excuse at all, or any means at their disposal. If they can discredit someone as being "rude" or "unprofessional", or "naive", or belittle or discredit them in any way, they'll do that. They'll do anything except argue the issues on technical merits.
And that's the reason I started calling out people's demands for "professional" behavior, because I'd seen too many occasions when that demand was used as an excuse to distract from technical discussion rather than contribute to it.
And the organization treats those people as if they're entirely legitimate, even promoting some of them to positions of leadership. There's nothing "civil" about their behavior at all.
Keith
