On Wed, 24 Aug 2022, Keith Moore wrote:
I was talking about my own experience. I'm not trying to contradict or
discredit others' experiences. When newcomers say they're seeing such
hostility, I believe they're being sincere.
It's more than "being sincere". They are right in what they see as that
is their perception. Your opinion does not change theirs.
Of course, different people witnessing the same interaction can come to
different conclusions about it without either person being wrong.
The word "can" does a lot of work here. In general, the behaviour we are
talking about does in fact seem to be that one of the persons is wrong.
These days I'm not seeing much content at all on the IETF list, rude or
otherwise.
Which was a direct result of the hostility on the list. Years ago, a
large number of people left because of how people were discussing. It
seems you cant have your cake and eat it too. Either the list has to
become less hostile, so people like me (and ekr and a bunch of others
who left during that wave) can think about returning, or you get to keep
the lack of content. The option you don't have is to entice everyone
back without a change in hostility levels.
My impression is that there's been a concerted effort over the
past several years to make the IETF list irrelevant, which I find very
unfortunate because that effort has robbed IETF of a kind of center.
Again, you are making an unsubstantiated claim of "concerted effort". I
can assure you I did not leave as part of an effort. I left because I
was tired of the hostility towards efforts to make the IETF less hostile
(the hrpc draft discussion about being more inclusive and avoiding
certain words discussion).
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.
I have not seen this happen. I are you saying these valuable contributors
have been silenced because they couldn’t rephrase their technical content
in emails without the word “stupid” in it?
Not at all (where did I say that?) Of course, that would be unfortunate
even if that were the case.
It is implied, because the moderation has not been about technical
content, but about presentation of that technical content. No one has
said you cannot discuss IPsec anymore. Or banned talked about putting
something in DNS TXT records. Moderation has been about the presentation
format, not the technical contents.
I'm not able to read the minds of the people whose work is being shut down,
Whose work is being shut down? A person who got their posting rights
restricted for two weeks as warning for targetting insults at
individuals and groups? Those people can come back in two weeks and try
again to present their technical arguments in an IETF inclusive way. I'm
more than happy to help such individuals with formulating words to help
them.
and the people doing the shutting down usually don't state their reasons.
I thought moderators were pretty clear about why, and they are following
a very clear RFC process.
That's part of the problem, after all.
Please elaborate ?
Part of working with a diverse group on protocols is being good at
communicating, in writing drafts but also in interacting with others in a
positive and constructive way.
People have a wide variety of skills and communications styles, and people
can make valuable contributions to protocols even if others don't judge them
"good" at communicating.
I can judge someone "good" at swimming when they drown. That does not
make them objectively good swimmers. There is also a difference between
"not good" and "repeatedly ignoring requests to stop certain verbal behaviour".
If they can discredit someone as being "rude" or "unprofessional", or
"naive", or belittle or discredit them in any way, they'll do that.
This is quite the accusation to “they”.
They'll do anything except argue the issues on technical merits.
Again, quite the accusation to “they”.
Yes, these are serious accusations, and to be clear, not against only a
single person. (despite the common modern usage of "they" as a singular
pronoun)
My point, which I probably did not communicate well, is that such accusations
kind of need some more objective evidence for your claims to be taken into
account. Right now, it can only be interpreted as subjective hearsay. One
such possible step would be to go through the ombuds office we have.
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.
So far, I have seen none.
I wasn't claiming to speak for you, nor was I claiming that this is
happening in every working group. I'm speaking of several years' worth of
history.
Can you point to one or two examples on the list archives of one of
these WGs? I would be very interested in seeing a confirmation of
technical content being rejected via unfair silencing of a critic based
on fake concern of "inappropriate professional behaviour".
Again, personally until I joined the IESG, I had some of these “rude”
people in my /dev/null redirection, so your assumption that rude people
should be allowed to be rude for technical merit still seems to fall short
- there is a higher chance of their merit being heard if they are in fact,
not insulting individuals or groups.
Please don't try to put words in my mouth. (That's both rude and
insulting.) There's a huge difference between arguing that "rude people
should be allowed" and arguing that tolerance is overall a virtue, and that
vague rules for behavior and arbitrary enforcement of such rules are harmful
to consensus building. The very idea (implied) that "rude" people should
(not) be allowed is within epsilon of pure prejudice, and is IMO
indefensible.
Your argument that "tolerance is a virtue" was something you accepted was
not successfull based on for example the newcomer feedback. If you did
not mean "rude people should be allowed", then I am confused about your
objection to the current moderation issue of "a rude person gets a two
week timeout". I would interpret the above paragraph as that you dislike
my phrasing of your desired list behaviour, but that you actually do want
that outcome.
And the organization treats those people as if they're entirely
legitimate, even promoting some of them to positions of leadership.
Could it be that you are in fact in the rough of rough consensus, and that
people who promote inclusiveness and professional behaviour are in fact
the kind of people that our organization wants to see in leadership roles?
No. People shutting down technical discussions without giving reasons are
not behaving inclusively or "professionally" (which is after all another form
of arbitrary prejudice), but quite the opposite.
Let me be more direct that earlier in this email. Please present
evidence to the list, to the ombuds office or via some other way. But
just repeating yourself without presenting evidence is not helpful.
To be clear, your cleam that people shutting down technical discussions
and that those people have been doing so in an "consorted effort" and
have attained leadership positions against the IETF community consensus
implies an elite small group hacked our entire nomcom procedure that
elects those leadership positions.
There's nothing "civil" about their behavior at all.
Again, quite the unsubstantiated accusation in response to an issue where
all the contributor had to do was restate their technical point without
insulting or accusing individuals or certain groups ?
No, you're creating a hypothetical situation and using that to try to
discredit my experience. It's disingenuous and disrespectful.
At this point I have asked you a few times for just a single WG experience
you had that should be clearly visible on at least one mailing list that,
as per your own claim, happens often and regularly. That is not
disingenuous or disrespectful. It is in line with Bertrand Russel's
tea pot defense.
Paul
