I absolutely believe the cited messages display a pattern of
unprofessional commentary in a manner disruptive enough to warrant a
PR-Action. Please put me in the "support" column.
Building on what others have said elsewhere in this thread, I'd like to
speak very frankly on the impact of this /kind/ of behavior on
community. Some may have noticed that I went fairly directly from being
an Area Director to being mostly absent on most mailing lists. I've been
participating in the IETF in various capacities since 1997 -- frequently
in areas that were unrelated to my day job -- because I believe in open
standards, free standards, and standards in general. I like the stated
ethos of the IETF, as described in the Tao and elsewhere. I have poured
many thousands of hours of work into the IETF over the past 25 years.
Dan's behavior is an extreme example of a pathology that I've seen grow
in the IETF over the past decade or so: while the magnitude of his
actions is exceptional, the general direction they're taken in is sadly
less so. It's not the sole reason, but I'd attribute most of my
near-absence from the IETF to the pattern -- from some small but growing
minority of participants -- of personal attacks, hostility, apparently
intentional misinterpretation of good faith statements, transparently
feigned offense, backlash against efforts to be more inclusive and
welcoming, and various other misanthropic behaviors.
Gentle attempts by working group chairs and the ietf@xxxxxxxx Sergeants
at Arms (SAAs) to provide feedback about these behaviors don't seem to
have been effective. Far more often than not, I've seen such gentle
reminders met with even worse behavior -- often quite abusive towards
the chairs or SAAs -- and a continuation of the pattern of problematic
messages. What's even worse is that a lot of this behavior comes from
people who are giants in their field, who have contributed great
technologies to the IETF and the Internet over the past 50 years, and
who should be serving as role models for others in the community rather
than pulling at the fragile threads that hold that community together.
The local tragedy here is that Dan isn't a nobody: he's done good
technical work for a long time in the IETF. The systemic tragedy is that
we've somehow reached a point where he AND OTHERS feel that they have
some kind of permission (or at least entitlement) to abuse people trying
to get work done in the IETF.
PR-Actions are big hammers. I don't like seeing them used. Gentle
reminders about the IETF code of conduct clearly don't work, and appear
to do more harm than good (aside from the administrative effect of
setting down a fossil record for future actions as necessary). I don't
know what the answer is, and I spent a lot of my two terms on the IESG
thinking about how we might make this better. Maybe we could build out a
culture where violation of our code of conduct is swiftly called out as
inappropriate by everyone -- and I mean everyone -- who sees it, so that
the offenders can clearly see that their behavior is not appreciated by
a majority of their colleagues. Maybe we build smaller, more nimble
sticks into the system than only having a huge ban-hammer that takes
years to swing. I'm not sure how to make any of these happen, though,
and I have very little will left to function in the hell-pit that this
small percentage of IETF participants who choose to be assholes has
created. So I'm not around much any more, and I don't expect that to
change much until the IETF, as a community, figures this out. If you
have ideas, feel free to reach out -- I'll help work on any plausible
approaches. Barring that, though, the toxicity is just too much for me
any more. And if it's too much for an old-timer, imagine what this all
looks like to newcomers.
But getting Dan Harkins off the mailing lists is at least a good first step.
/a
On 9/29/22 06:15, IETF Chair wrote:
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
In the IESG's opinion, this individual has a history of sending emails that are
inconsistent with the IETF Guidelines for Conduct (RFC 7154) and thereby
"disrupt the consensus-driven process" (RFC 3683). Among these are contributions
that:
* Express racism in the form of denying, belittling, and ridiculing anti-racist
sentiment and efforts
* Are rude and abusive, and often amount to insulting ridicule
(Links to examples of such emails sent to the lists above during the last two
years are provided at the end of this email.)
Multiple attempts have been made to enter into a private discussion with this
individual, both by IESG and community members, to communicate disquiet with his
conduct on the lists. These attempts to restore respectful and courteous conduct
on the lists have been rebuffed with communication that can be considered both
antagonistic and hostile, and the pattern of behavior observed has continued.
The IESG also notes that the following actions have already been taken in
response to the individual's actions:
* Two I-Ds were removed from the public archive due to their offensive nature:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-les-white-intersectional-dots
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-les-white-tls-preferred-pronouns
(following these links displays the tombstone notice explaining their removal)
* His posting rights were restricted on the admin-discuss mailing list:
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/admin-discuss/ZANH2VPN-U8VMvvOWLb5l03FdCs/
* A final public warning was issued on the gendispatch mailing list:
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/68a4amMa1aiaRUPzPGgXdiY9gHg/
None of the attempts to discuss his participation style or warn the individual
have led to any improvements. The IESG therefore believes that a PR action is
the correct response to his continued problematic behavior across a number of
different lists.
The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits final
comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
last-call@xxxxxxxx mailing lists by 27 October 2022. Exceptionally, comments may
be sent to iesg@xxxxxxxx instead. If sending private feedback to the IESG,
please indicate if you would be open to having your comments anonymized and
shared in a summary.
Please note: Comments should be limited to the criteria described in BCP 83,
notably on whether the individual in question has engaged in postings that are
"unprofessional commentary, regardless of the general subject" in a manner
disruptive enough to warrant this action.
Lars Eggert
IETF Chair, on behalf of the IESG
–-
Examples of problematic emails during the last two years include:
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/zdq3F0PV40Cyw5ooj0orOWaYyUw/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/i-d7HlWgrkmrVlC7JZQSXDwIJCQ/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/YhPI9zZ_3xfidt5V-ORRnET36yY/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/B33zk8VfOYt4b4Cj-kIHXG3AXdg/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/d3iDS4WNkCJA3aMFnX2HjP4tsps/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/-On8AHrdnnCMlJOOyb1M1nlYMpk/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/terminology/n6UMvDuYLKmmvpP1ajICFvf634M/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/terminology/QCdjDbokmlARcwVqQ1TV3Rlz7eQ/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/terminology/X6OF0MBKAzyLhYaAfAxS6srXRNw/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/terminology/idJhG1MsLmKHyRlaAafcW2JF6Z8/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ipsec/LoGSVatZ4EsYRq4K52rmvRZTndk/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/pl2lVqhtF4Z-0YuTjhCOmdyi1qE/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/DFgnF_j8py_eMBGI1IUFdMahTKw/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/terminology/T3oCpY3BbTNLXWAWsCnFvahRLUQ/
* https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/admin-discuss/xLuz4WTCm5ibIiMVN5ID8OWsCI0/
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