On 11/10/2016 7:53 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
I would say that the notion of a truly opinion-neutral facilitator will
not work in most cases, especially during a debate on a divisive topic.
So...
For a facilitator to work, there are a number of conditions that need to
be met:
* There has to be a clear understanding of the role of a
facilitator. I think Brian's phrase "opinion-neutral" gets at one of
the core requirements. There are others about how that neutrality is
applied and when. Facilitation is a profession, with lots of associated
documents and training. But starting with a simple, factual
"opinion-neutral" seems like a good foundation to me.
* There needs to be an institutional commitment to the exercise of
that role. That's more than just naming some folk. The relatively easy
part is that it means ensuring that facilitators have the skillset and
it means training others to appreciate that skillset. But 'training' is
not enough, but there also needs to be the application of leverage over
those who contribute in a fashion that works against the facilitation.
Unfortunately, the IETF has a deep and persistent unwillingness to apply
such pressures. So folk who misbehave persistently do not, themselves,
get trained to change their behavior. (Folk are likely to disagree with
this assessment, especially because of various, recent documents and
discussion --as well as the very rare interventions along the lines of
"folk, we can do better" spread amongst multiple contributors privately
or an entire list publicly, although such interventions have no training
effect, long term -- but the fact that people continue to feel
permission to attack others, on a regular basis, serves as a visible
counter.)
* The role needs to be exercised extremely actively. And this is,
indeed, an enormous amount of work. Worse, the nature of email and the
fact of 7/24 traffic on IETF list email, make the need for immediate and
continuing facilitation especially daunting. And the fact that the
trigger for that need can happen at any time, even more so. One
possible aid might be to get other participants to solicit facilitation
as soon as they see the need. This means we all have to have a sense of
the conditions that warrant making the request.
and so on...
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net