Perhaps we might look through a slightly different lens, when talking
about "culture." Are we perhaps talking about the wrong kind of
cultural norms?
Maybe we should be thinking more in terms of professional culture, or
organizational culture.
Engineering has it's own culture, as does IETF.
In engineering, factuality, critical review, to the point of bluntness,
generally trumps politeness. And engineers have never been known for
social adeptness.
Design reviews, analysis of alternatives meetings, negotiations (e.g.,
over specs, over change orders), can get very adversarial. (As I recall,
in my days at BBN, we treated design reviews as a competitive sport.
Great fun.)
Or think about academic presentations - where folks compete to ask hard
questions, to poke holes in theories & experimental results. And it all
pales beside the cultural norms of lawyers, arguing points in a courtroom.
Perhaps, rather than (just) trying to scope IETF norms to those of
newcomers from different cultures, there should be some expectation that
newcomers can hold their own in "engineering culture" as it's found in
multi-national corporate environments.
Just a thought.
Miles Fidelman
On 3/28/19 9:10 AM, Michael Richardson wrote:
Thank you for starting a new thread.
I particularly liked:
Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> For one thing, politeness differs from one culture to another. What's
> polite in one culture is rude in another.
....
> So if we're trying to make IETF less hostile to newcomers, and/or to
> people who have different presumptions of politeness and rudeness, we
> should talk in terms of specific behaviors and speech patterns rather
> than presume that "politeness" means the same thing to everyone. It
> doesn't.
So let me amend my request.
I would like, as a sometimes WG-chair, and frequent microphone contributor,
specific and directed training on speech patterns and behaviours to avoid
(in technical settings).
(I acknowledge that these probably benefit other areas of my life, and the
list does need to know about my other efforts)
> Also, I've seen so many examples where an expectation of "politeness"
> was used to protect abusive people, and/or to manipulate people into
> agreeing to things that were harmful (including in IETF but not
> exclusively there), that I've become very skeptical of demands for
> politeness.
I would expect training above to highlight such techniques, such that I could
recognize them, identify them, and (politely?) call them out.
I will not repeat the 737MAX discussion, but if it turns out to be true, then
I will be sad. If anything, some of the challenge at the IETF is that we
have a pretty good safety culture of calling out bad ideas; we just haven't
figured out to do so without killing the conversation. Sometimes the work
just goes elsewhere, sometimes we just hold our noses. (Megaco comes to mind)
Matthew A. Miller <linuxwolf+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I feel that some take the call to be professional and civil to mean
> only missives of positivity are allowed. That is not what is being
> asked of us. To be blunt -- it's not what You say, it's how You say
> it.
Keeping this. Again, I am asking for training on how to say it.
A hallway comment to me was that I might be, in adapting my communication
style, mis-judge the culture who I am communicating with. That therefore,
it's better that each contributor bring their own IETF-2-local adapter.
--
Michael Richardson <mcr+IETF@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Sandelman Software Works
-= IPv6 IoT consulting =-
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown
