IETF Chair wrote on 29/09/2022 17:15:
Following community feedback after various incidents, as documented below, the IESG has initiated a posting rights (PR) action that would restrict the posting rights of Dan Harkins, as per the procedures found in BCP 83 (RFC 3683). Specifically, his posting privileges to these lists would be suspended: * admin-discuss * gendispatch * ietf * terminology
There's been a number of occasions over the last couple of years where I've been tempted to unsubscribe from ietf@ due to the degree of toxic content posted there by a number of people, one of whom is Dan Harkins. I'm not subscribed to these other lists, but a cursory glance suggests that they also contain rude, abusive and aggressive content too, including from him.
I've read the emails listed in this email, and have also read both draft-les-white-intersectional-dots and draft-les-white-tls-preferred-pronouns. They display a pattern of continuous, unapologetic rudeness and abusiveness towards others.
It's completely possible to professionally disagree with someone else, while being polite, respectful or even just being plain civil. Dan had this option open to him at all times for all of his interactions on IETF mailing lists. No-one forced him or anyone else to be either rude or abusive.
It's regrettable that there is a need for this action to be proposed, but the alternative is to live not just with this toxicity, but with its downstream effects: lack of engagement from existing ietf contributors, people leaving mailing lists, no new people getting on board, a hostile environment for people who are not caucasian male, and a perpetuation + acceptance of this hostile environment.
I support the action that was proposed, for the reasons that it was proposed.
His email from of 11:53:22 -0700 confirms that this is the least harmful course of action in this situation.
Nick -- last-call mailing list last-call@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/last-call
