Hi Jay,
On 12-Jun-24 10:22, Jay Daley wrote:
John
On 11 Jun 2024, at 19:52, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:
And, btw, I think we need to be very careful about proposals for
blanket bans as well. We have several examples in the history of the
IETF of people who have regularly been unprofessional, obnoxious, and
disruptive but who have still made important technical contributions,
maybe ones that no one else could have made.
Without meaning to criticise you for holding this view, I do want to note that I’ve heard this same claim in different fora for 20+ years and it’s clear to me that this a particularly pernicious form of survivorship bias.
I'd say that both the viewpoint you express, and the viewpoint John
expressed, can be true, and it's unfortunately a judgment call in each
particular case. I do agree that we should set the dial pretty
firmly against tolerating disruptive and obnoxious.
I also think that's why BCP 83 explicitly empowers individual list
managers to apply, or not to apply, the ban. If somebody really is the
world's leading expert on bunglesplat algorithms, maybe one WG will
want to hear from them, even if they are banned for good reasons
from every other IETF list.
Brian
To explain - people who are unprofessional, disruptive, and obnoxious create a toxic culture that actively drives people away. In my experience there are always people in that excluded group who would be more valuable than the person doing the excluding, but we rarely get to know that because of the exclusion and instead see the contribution of the person who survived the very toxic culture they themselves helped to create. It’s no wonder that history and modern corporate culture is littered with examples of mediocre talents who intentionally create a toxic culture to ensure their own elevation.
There’s a famous quote I’m fond of - "The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate". In the case of the IETF, the "leader" is the community through consensus and so long as the community tolerates and defends the worst behaviour, then it is actively shaping a culture that it simultaneously laments.
Jay
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