On 10/3/22 18:22, John C Klensin wrote:
Brian, while I agree about the "pattern of behavior" my understanding of the BCP, Marshall's intent at the time, and what we have done since, Dan (or anyone else similarly sanctioned) could participate on other mailing lists and in other activities but only as long as the maintainers of those lists felt his behavior was appropriate to their work and either represented a change of behavior from the behaviors cited in the PR-action proposal. If they concluded they were seeing the same patterns of disruption-causing behavior that caused the PR-action for the IETF list and other lists, they could ban him there too and do so without further warnings, etc.
John,
I don't intend to single you or this message out specifically, but I'm starting to be uneasy about an insistence from several people on prohibiting "disruption-causing behavior" along with the vagueness inherent in that term.
I certainly believe that one should avoid insults, accusations of
malice, and other inflammatory statements that essentially demand
a defensive response that is likely to derail productive
discussion. And yet, such interpretations and reactions often
result from genuine misunderstandings rather than any intention of
insult or malice. A quick clarification or apology usually
suffices to avoid further derailment, but it doesn't always work.
I fear, for example, that some people consider it "disruptive" to
merely express an unpopular opinion, or an opinion that conflicts
with one that some people consider sacred or unquestionable, or
perhaps only seeking to clarify one's opinion or its relationship
to others' opinions. I've received some private replies to this
thread accusing me of such disruption because I'm "in the rough"
(their words), as if I have an obligation to be silent just
because several other people have expressed support for this PR.
Not only do I believe it's not wrong to express an unpopular
opinion (indeed, sometimes it's an obligation), consideration of
divergent and outlying opinions is fundamentally necessary to
establishing even a rough consensus. If such opinions are
suppressed due to either rules or social pressure, there's no real
consensus, only the illusion of consensus. And the outlying
opinions are often useful to consider when gauging the degree of
consensus reached.
I have sometimes been accused of endlessly repeating the same
argument, when I was actually trying to refine and clarify the
argument, attempting to improve it over time based on feedback.
That's exactly what you do when trying to build consensus, but
some people seem to presume that they get to decide quickly which
opinions might eventually win consensus versus which opinions
won't. We all have opinions about that, I suspect, but not all
of us think we have the right to use those opinions to dictate
others' behavior.
It's hard to avoid the impression sometimes that some people want
to silence opinions with which they disagree, or perhaps silence
persons whom they consider bad actors, without actually bothering
to try to understand those people's opinions. Or to put it more
charitably, attention is a precious quantity and our processes
require a lot of it.
BCP83 itself says:
(emphasis mine)For example, if a working group is unable to reach consensus, this is an acceptable, albeit unfortunate, outcome; however, if that working group fails to achieve consensus because it is being continuously disrupted, then the disruption constitutes an abuse of the consensus-driven process. Interactions of this type are fundamentally different from "the lone voice of dissent" in which a participant expresses a view that is discussed but does not achieve consensus. In other words, individual bad faith should not trump community goodwill.
It's not bad faith to disagree. It is not bad faith to try to clarify one's position or contrast it with others' positions in an effort to find common ground.
It is bad faith to try to keep a group from coming to a conclusion (rough consensus or otherwise) by endlessly repeating points that had already been raised repeatedly, without providing new information or insight that might be useful in developing a consensus. It is bad faith to attack everyone, or the opinion of everyone, who lends support to an emerging conclusion that's not the one you want. It is especially bad faith to delay or hamper a working group because its work, while sound, threatens to harm one's employer's products or market position. (And anyone who has been around here for a while has seen it happen.) It is also bad faith to repeatedly make personal accusations against a contributor in an effort to distract from the technical points being discussed. (That includes, BTW, accusations of acting in bad faith.) It's even bad faith to amplify one or more divergent opinions in a deliberate attempt to delay or prevent consensus. There are lots of kinds of bad faith, but it's hard to reliably tell when someone is acting in bad faith.
(As this discussion relates to this Last Call, it appears to me that several of Dan's messages were reacting to inflammatory messages from others, and Dan is being blamed for responding to them. It's harder to establish that the messages being responded to were "disruption-causing behavior", but to some degree that depends on how you define it and how you interpret those messages.)
I also think that even under the best of conditions, convergence often takes time and requires patience, and is more aided by thoughtful responses (which often take time) than by quick ones. A disturbing trend that I see is people insisting that speakers recognize what they call "consensus" very quickly, without allowing time for more thoughtful views to emerge, or for a variety of views to converge.
I wonder if we'd be more productive if we didn't try to resolve everything in a hurry.
Keith
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