Hi Toerless,
On 12-Jun-24 17:18, Toerless Eckert wrote:
How common is it actually that "bad behavior" as discussed here
actually negatively impacted the resulting technical output of the
IETF ?
I'm pretty sure we don't know, because we don't know how many
quality contributors have dropped out because of toxic events,
or failed to join because of a bad reputation.
I can say that that I know of at least one technical RFC author
who quit not long after a conf call in which another RFC author
made an extremely unpleasant 'ad hominem' remark to them. This
was many years ago but has stayed with me, and it was a loss to
the IETF.
Brian
Aka: exclude all the RFC-to-be that attempt to support organizing
the IETF itself, and its processes. Just RFCs that can be implemented
by writing software by and for people who do not even have to understand
what IETF means. Aka: external facing, technical ones.
I can only think of a minority of incidents that did impact those RFCs-to-be,
and i am sure all those cases would have been easier resolved if the
conflicting parties would have been brought together more on channels more
suited to human conflict resolution than email. In-person ideally, or-else
conference call with video. And with mitigators to drive conflict resolution
being present.
In other words: Trying to resolve all our challenge through text-communication
only means is maybe necessary as a worst-case-fallback approach, but please
understand and not ignore that that is rarely the best solution. And at least
make sure that the best possible solution is applied whenever it actually
could impact those external facing IETF work products.
I am saying this, because
i don't think this case we discuss is one of those crucial ones, which is
why it's easy to forget that the processes we discuss would equally impact
those more crucial conflicts.
Cheers
Toerless
P.S.: Very much liked JohnD's characterization of leadership impact,
and if the community is really the leader here (arguable), then it is
quite a broken leader, because the overwhelming part of that community
does not even participate in these discussions, nor do we have good
processes in place to make it easier to poll their opinion more broadly
than we do now.
On Wed, Jun 12, 2024 at 02:57:59PM +1200, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
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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