On 10/6/22 10:51, Bless, Roland (TM) wrote:
There have been repeated hints from various sides that the postings in question (may) have been hurting the feelings of IETF participants (or have been disturbing at least and clearly lacking respect for IETF participants).
With respect, I disagree that this is a valid reason for censoring this individual. I also disagree that his postings were malicious or clearly lacking respect for IETF participants. What's also clear is that this effort is a personal attack on Dan, and that many of Dan's supposedly-offending posts were his reactions to what he perceived as personal attacks on himself or on the community. While everyone would do well to avoid resorting to ridicule out of anger at being attacked, that's an important part of the context that many people seem to be missing.
These comments are IMHO along the lines of a typical perpetrator-victim reversal.
I disagree, and I think it's kind of a cheap shot, as if Dan were
guilty merely by accusation. Note that in any conversation that
gets out of hand, it's not unusual for multiple parties to have
some culpability, or to contribute unnecessarily to the heatedness
of the discussion.
Essentially, your argument amounts to an argument that it's okay for the IETF leadership to attack individuals whose opinions they do not like, or that it's okay for IETF leadership to amplify individuals whose opinions are offensive to some, and for defensible reasons.
First of all, expressing racism is not the same thing as expressing an "unpopular opinion". Racism is simply not tolerable and I see that the
leadership has an obligation to act upon that, therefore it is not about
suppressing opinions that IETF leadership does not like.
I agree with those statements, but I do not agree that Dan has
"expressed racism", at least in the cited messages. Or if he
has, I haven't seen it, and I've read each message, along with
predecessor messages in each of their threads, several times.
It's of course possible that I missed something - even with the
archives it's sometimes hard to understand the context behind each
message. But if I've missed something I don't think it's due to a
lack of due diligence.
"racism", or calling someone a "racist", or even calling their
documents "racist", are very serious charges, and publicly making
such charges without strong evidence seems to me bordering on
defamation or libel. I realize that some people believe that to
question at all the validity of some theories of racial disparity
is a kind of racism, but I respectfully disagree. I haven't seen
Dan advocate any kind of prejudice against any people of color,
ethnic group, or culture. I can't make the same statement for
all of the other speakers in the referenced conversations. Nor
have I seen Dan question that racial prejudice exists and is
common and harmful.
Second, even if
we leave racism aside, it is clear from Dan's postings that he is
discriminating against people of groups that the IETF should not
exclude (and human dignity is non-negotiable). His ridiculing and
belittling postings show a clear lack of respect for individuals of
these groups and it is unprofessional if the community repeatedly
requested to stop that behavior, but he nevertheless still continues.
Having a different opinion on how to deal with diversity and inclusion
is ok, but disturbing and disrupting the IETF consensus-driven process
by repeatedly posting offensive messages is not.
I haven't seen that he's done that, at least from the messages that IESG chose to cite as examples.
Keith
-- last-call mailing list last-call@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/last-call
