>From the threads that I read in the IETF, the WG meetings that I attend, and the conversations that I have with other participants, then out of the 1000's of participants in the IETF community, I can probably name less than 10 people who I perceive of sometimes not participating in the IETF respectively. From my read, the vast majority of IETF participants either support the current moderation policy or otherwise accept that something like the current moderation policy is necessary to encourage new younger participants to show up at the IETF, which I regard as being vitally important to the long-term health of the IETF, Stuart Cheshire gave a better description here: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/last-call/iO9LaRb4y0JeccHG7vhT1xsteiI/ I'm also not aware of anyone arguing that some level of tolerance is important and helpful during conversations. But, for me, I regard not participating in the IETF respectively roughly as: - sending unnecessarily rude or impolite emails on a recurring basis, or - continually making the same arguments repeatedly, particularly when adopting a position [very] in the rough, or - repeatedly bringing back the same topics that have been discussed to exhaustion. In my view, in all of these cases, the key problem is not that the broader community is not listening, the problem is the polar opposite, i.e., these few participants seem to be unwilling or unable to accept conflicting feedback from the community (or leadership). E.g., even if a high percentage of the comments in the conversation disagree with their (normally repeatedly stated) position, then my perception is that they assume that they just need to try harder to explain. Hence, you often see the same position being restated repeatedly, perhaps in only very slightly different ways, or recurring rude behaviour. Unfortunately, in my experience, trying to engage with these participants privately doesn't help either. Sending a polite constructive email (generally the method that I try) or more sternly worded warning seemingly makes no difference, my conjecture being that they are simply not open to listening or receive the feedback. They just see the private conversation as another avenue to explain why their repeatedly stated position is right, and everyone else is wrong. I personally find these repetitive threads both very frustrating and emotionally draining, partly because I have a leadership position and feel like I have some level of responsibility towards the community, who I am failing, but also because I regard these threads as being generally harmful to the IETF and the IETF community, and I'm at a loss to know how we can stop them from continually happening and move discussions on the main IETF mailing list to a better place. I have a few suggestions, which I'm sure some people will have strong opinions against: 1) We create a more effectively process than BCP 83, specifically with some more gradual steps (maybe the initial steps are entirely private without community awareness or review), and also without the public trial aspect currently specified in BCP 83. IMO, a better PR action process would probably involve the feedback being provided privately to the IESG, with only a short community summary of the broad aspects of the feedback received, the number (and optionally names) of people supporting or opposing such an action, and what the final decision was. 2) I think that we should maintain a community curated list of "exhausted topics" for the ietf@xxxxxxxx mailing list, that would only accept new input on a discussion if the input was significantly different from what has been discussed before (and an explanation of how it is different), or otherwise the poster would be moderated using the existing IETF mailing list moderation mechanisms. E.g., I would place "Discussions related to IPv10" in the list of exhausted topics, that the community seems to be fed up repeatedly discussing. 3) Perhaps most contentiously, I would also place "discussing IETF moderation" onto the list of "exhausted topics", at least for the main ietf@xxxxxxxx mailing list. My perception is that the wider community is, like me, also fed up with this endlessly recurring discussion with no possible change in the IETF consensus. However, I fully appreciate that there is need for somewhere within the IETF where moderation can be discussed (aka, who guards the guards), but this could reasonably be hived off to a separate mailing list to spare those members of the community that don't want to hear the same views and positions a hundred times over. But generally, if we really want to have a useful constructive conversation about moderation, then I think that conversation needs to prominently happen in person, e.g., in a side-meeting, and/or via some video enabled interim meetings. Email has repeatedly been shown to not be an effective mechanism to progress this discussion. Obviously, I appreciate the irony of both suggesting that we stop discussing moderation on ietf@xxxxxxxx and at the same time starting a new thread on moderation. To that end, whilst I am happy to provide clarifying comments if requested, I will decline to actively participate in a broader discussion on this topic over email, probably limiting my involvement to reading initial responses, if any, from the broader community. I would be more than happy to participate in a side-meeting (or virtual interims) on this topic if other people believe that this could in any way be a constructive way forward. Kind regards, Rob
