On 8/24/22 12:58, Joel Halpern wrote:
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.
Joel,
Please understand that I can disagree with the moderators' actions, and
believe that they're counterproductive, without supporting or agreeing
with the post that they reacted to. I can also think that such actions
set a poor precedent for the future and that the sooner those actions
are discouraged or reduced in effect, the better.
For a lot of people it's an axiom that wrongdoing must be punished. To
me it sometimes appears that the punishment exacerbates the original
problem, or creates a worse problem than it can hope to solve.
Often, the best reaction to an insult is not to try to suppress the
person making the insult. Sometimes constructive engagement is
better. And sometimes the best reaction is to ignore it entirely.
Especially when it's devoid of substance and therefore easily dismissed.
Insults will soon be forgotten, but the detrimental effect of
suppressing open discussion in IETF will last a very long time. Be
careful what you wish for.
Keith
