On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 3:43 PM Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 26-Mar-19 10:13, Stan Kalisch wrote: > > > > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019, at 5:00 PM, Keith Moore wrote: > >> Different people have different ideas about what "unpleasant" means. > > > > They do, but what is significant is the common, shared subset of those ideas within a community. That subset alone can significantly determine who is part of a community, and who is not. > > That's true. And as we have seen more people from non-Anglo-Saxon and then non-European cultures participate, the meaning of "unpleasant" has continued to change, and probably to fragment. I had the good fortune to start my professional life in the particle physics community, where being brutally frank about a colleague's technical errors was normal, so the traditional IETF culture was no surprise to me. But I have often seen it (by body language) to be an unpleasant shock to new participants. Some people get used to it, but some don't. So while I've known Keith long enough to simply say "You're wrong, Keith" and be sure he wouldn't take it as an insult, I hope I would always be more careful with a new participant until I know them better.. (For clarity, in this case, Keith's not wrong.) > > There's a reason the ITU and ISO tend to use very diplomatic language and very formal procedures. I'm not saying we should do that, but it isn't OK to just ignore the issue of different cultural expectations. In my life, I have been very empowered by the idea of clear, and frank discussions. The oft-brutal game of "Dealer", at Xerox PARC, the only mandatory meeting, where the participants were encouraged to go at each other with every form of technical criticism - and then go have a beer - made for good code. Also, I have found "kelly johnson's rules" to be very effective. Notably, in ietf context: "The designers of the airplane should be on the shop floor while the first ones are built." What george carlin damns as "soft language" in (NSFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY infests the ietf today. In order to be successfully implemented, a specification MUST be short, clear, and unambigious. "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman > Brian > -- Dave Täht CTO, TekLibre, LLC http://www.teklibre.com Tel: 1-831-205-9740
