On Sun, Oct 15, 2023 at 7:08 PM Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 10/15/23 14:10, Carsten Bormann wrote: > > > There were two responses, both from people who (17+ years later) I believe weren’t exactly enthused about the additional transparency this created. > > Calling this "transparency" is about as accurate as calling a curvy > funhouse mirror an accurate reflection of the person looking at it. I initially applauded the concept of a code of conduct across most of our profession, to improve diversity, and inclusion, and boiled down essentially to "be nicer to each other". The problem is, most of them, it seems, do not also include an obligation to tell the truth. None, include prohibitions against too-common rhetorical techniques like argumentum ad baculum, proof by intimidation, thought terminating cliche’s, Single cause fallacies, regression fallacies, proof by repeated assertion, and argument from authority. This has become my theme song of late: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGzUTrnqEDA Doing engineering in a fact free environment is impossible. A civil engineer relies on the concrete for his bridge meeting the spec, and people die, if it doesn't. It often takes a seriously traumatic event, like the Challenger disaster, or the first Starship launch, to get an organisation to recognize and correct for the all too human tendency to soft-pedal unpleasant facts as they traverse up the organization. Language at large has become Orwellian. Even with specs of easily defined meanings, not backed up by the actual implementation. Recently I kind of lost my temper at apple's fq_codel having no codel in it, as a funny tasting PB&J with no J in it: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7118969694987935744/ And also at bing's "Large Lying Model", so softening what I had said about it, to nearly reverse my meaning. There are very few facts of which I am sure, anymore, because of this slow erosion of ethical and truth-seeking behavior in the world, and as engineers, I wish we could at least, among ourselves, adopt a truth-telling code of ethics, and cast out those that lie. > > But most IETFers are probably capable of judging for themselves what > value, positive and/or negative, these bot postings provide, and most > IETFers are probably capable of filtering those postings. (In > Thunderbird it takes about 5 minutes.) For that matter, most IETFers > are probably capable of computing these statistics themselves without > much difficulty, if they cared enough to do so. > > I guess the other factor is that the current IETF list is very different > than it was in 2006, and a consensus that held under 2006 conditions may > no longer exist under current conditions. > > In 2006, the IETF list was sort of a central discussion for the IETF > community. That was long before IETF management decided to disrupt that > sense of community in various ways, so that management would have a > greater ability to resist community pushback on their actions. It was > also before the "moderators" were directed to micro-police the IETF list > in order to enforce arbitrary made-up posting criteria with no > transparency, and also before moderators (as far as I knew) routinely > tried to discourage participation by individuals who (for unknown and/or > arbitrary reasons) management did not like. The IETF list, and IETF, > are in my estimation much more hostile to community participation today > than they ever were back then. > > But different people have different ideas about what "hostility" and > "inclusion" means, and some people will insist that the only way to make > the list "inclusive" is for the list to be hostile to participation from > people whom they don't like. > > My current opinion is that the bot postings have long been > inappropriate, arbitrarily discriminatory, harmful in some ways, > generally in poor taste, and a longstanding low-level irritation that > has endured for far longer than it was useful, if it was ever useful. > But they're nowhere nearly as harmful as some other things that > management supports these days. If I were trying to make the IETF list > more useful, getting rid of the bot posts would not be the most > important things on my list. > > Keith > > -- Oct 30: https://netdevconf.info/0x17/news/the-maestro-and-the-music-bof.html Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
