On 7/16/19 5:55 AM, Dave Cridland wrote:
On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 at 23:04, Keith Moore <
moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 7/15/19
12:32 PM, Jacob Hoffman-Andrews wrote:
> To reinforce what Melinda's saying: I
dedicate less time to IETF work
> than I otherwise would, specifically
because of the hostile and alien
> nature of debate here. I have colleagues
who feel the same way, and
> other colleagues who refrain entirely from
participating at the IETF
> because of it.
I believe you. But could you drill down a bit
into (i.e. define more
precisely) "hostile" and/or "alien"? Because I
suspect these words
mean different things to different people.
Almost certainly the precise meaning taken
differs, but the essential meaning here is that
some IETFers choose to be blunt, and this drives
others away.
Could you be more precise about what it means to be
“blunt”? Because I’m not sure that I know what you mean.
I can think of several possible alternatives:
Would "unnecessarily aggressive" be clearer? Perhaps
simply "unwelcoming" is enough to cover it.
"unnecessarily aggressive" is still kind of vague, but at least I
can agree that being unnecessarily aggressive is probably
counterproductive.
"unwelcoming" is trickier. I can certainly understand that a
newcomer to IETF might not understand the conventions for
discussion that are appropriate to and supportive of IETF's
work. But it has generally seemed to me that newcomers to IETF
are treated with a bit more deference. The reason a newcomer
feels unwelcome might be more due to the newcomer's observation of
more experienced persons' behavior toward one another, than to the
way newcomers are treated. (I will admit I have no supporting
data for this.)
- let’s say (for the sake of example) that my
informed technical opinion is that NATs pose a grave
threat to the security and stability of the internet and
to the internet’s ability to support diverse
applications. [*] Is it too “blunt” of me to say so?
Or am I obligated to pretend, for the sake of
“politeness” that NATs are somehow more virtuous than
that, because others believe that they are? In other
words, do I have an obligation to be dishonest for the
sake of protecting others’ egos or their employers’
products?
[*] note: this is just an example; my current
position on NATs is more layered and nuanced than that.
[...]
Politeness surely isn't a bad thing that needs careful
protection with scare-quotes. Surely if you're not polite,
you're being impolite? I don't see how that is a useful
strategy for either persuasion or encouraging debate.
I put "politeness" in quotes because it's dangerously
ambiguous. Not only can it mean a lot of different things, many
of those things are actively harmful to IETF's work. Politeness
is not about intent, it's about adhering to social conventions.
Many social conventions are actually harmful - sometimes in the
sense of being detrimental to technical work, sometimes in the
sense of perpetuating harmful prejudices, sometimes even in the
sense of supporting abuse and protecting abusive people.
I doubt that many IETFers would support forms of "politeness"
that they know have such negative effects, but often people have
become so conditioned to harmful social conventions that they
don't question them or even realize that they exist. Politeness
also varies from one culture to another, and is often dependent on
things like status and gender which, if followed, would deter us
from behaving as peers.
It's for these reasons that I don't think IETF should define
appropriate behavior in terms of "politeness".
There are alternatives that are more defensible. As examples,
it's always appropriate to have genuine respect for others, and
being considerate is always an appropriate motivation (though it
can backfire).
There's another problem with the notion of "politeness" that I
should mention - it's the convention that when someone else
violates one's notion of politeness, one has license to disregard
that person, dismiss their input out-of-hand, and/or be critical
of them personally (either publicly or privately).
But look at what you're doing here - isn't the premise of
your paragraph here is that I am suggesting, in a debate
over how to encourage people to express opinion, that they
should not express their opinions?
I suspect you and I are approximately on the same page with this,
but I don't have the sense that everyone who has been
participating in this discussion is on the same page.
There's a figure named Cassandra from ancient Greek mythology.
She had the gift of prophecy but it came with a curse: The more
accurate her prophecies, the more fervently they would be
disbelieved. I think the ancient Greeks were wry observers of
human nature, that they incorporated such observations into their
myths, and Cassandra's curse is a good example.
I've often seen a form of this curse operating in contemporary
experience. It looks something like this: The more that a
particular observation or suggestion or bit of foresight
challenges people's presumptions, the more they disbelieve it
and/or resist it. Quite often, they see that observation or
suggestion or foresight as impolite or even offensive. And the
truer the observation, and the more clearly it is stated, the more
fervently people are inclined to resist it. (Though I should
caution, the fact that people see something as offensive doesn't
mean it's true.)
I will assert that engineers and scientists and people who make
laws and policies, especially, need to cultivate the discipline of
looking past their presumptions, and to make sincere efforts to
ask themselves whether a challenging observation or suggestion or
potential bit of foresight might actually be true.
I will further assert that expecting or conditioning people to be
"polite" is counterproductive to this, and that the likely
principal effect of expecting people to be "polite" (without being
more specific) is to encourage mediocrity in IETF, and to
discourage participation of people with keen powers of observation
or unconventional points-of-view.
- or am I supposed to treat every technical proposal
or decision as if it’s a good one, and refrain from
pointing out flaws, or refrain from attempting to
express just how harmful a proposal or decision appears
to me to be? If I think that launching the spacecraft
in below-freezing weather will significantly risk
killing the crew, or that a proposed bridge design is
likely to fail in a heavy wind, with potential loss of
life, am I expected to say that in veiled terms like “I
recommend against that”?
You should read up on Crew Resource Management, which
discusses this kind of behaviour (often with the same
examples, so I suspect you know of it) in intricate detail,
but the summary is "no". Pointing out serious issues,
assertively, and explaining why you feel these are serious,
should be welcomed. Treating every technical proposal or
decision as if it's made in good faith, though, is good -
and if everyone does that, your warnings of doom should be
more heeded, not less.
I hadn't thought of it in the context of this discussion, but CRM
is an excellent example of adopting different standards for
behavior in situations for which social conventions were actually
harmful. Thanks for mentioning it.
(especially since it has fair amount of research behind it, maybe
we could actually use CRM as a starting point for a better notion
of IETF etiquette)
But most of what I'm concerned about isn't shielding the
leadership likely to make decisions, but encouraging
newcomers to engage - inevitably, as newcomers, the stakes
are much much lower, and the need for feedback less urgent,
so you can deliver the message needed in a calmer way.
- or am I supposed to avoid technical discussion of
details of a proposal or decision that might embarrass
the person making the proposal or decision?
You're supposed to discuss technical details and
decisions in a way that avoids the embarrassment of the
person making the proposal or decision.
One should not deliberately try to embarrass. But neither, I
submit, should IETF participants feel compelled to describe
problems with an idea or decision vaguely in order to avoid
bruising the egos of the people who proposed them. (Hyperbole
doesn't help either, of course.)
And make no mistake, this *is* a choice,
and I've only ever seen long-time, "senior",
IETFers defend that choice publicly.
It may be that very experienced and competent engineers
are more likely to understand the value in it. IETF was
blessed to attract a lot of extremely competent people
in its early days.
I think it's more likely that most people who have spent
a significant period of time on these mailing lists are the
ones who have grown used to it and consider it normal, or at
least can be comfortable with it.
Perhaps they also understand why it's useful or even necessary
sometimes.
When I joined my first IETF list nearly 25 years ago, I
was one of the younger ones. I think I still am. While I
appreciate the way the IETF keeps me feeling young, I'm not
entirely convinced this is an overall positive outcome for
the IETF.
This means avoiding being blunt when we
offer our opinions, as well as trying to tease
out the useful opinion from the bluntness of
others.
I disagree with that generality. I don’t think it’s
welcoming to people to not take them seriously. One way
to not take someone seriously is to humor them when they
make bad suggestions and act as if they were good ones.
That’s not to say that I think they should have to
endure scathing criticism of their ideas (and certainly
not of themselves). But sometimes it is necessary to be
clear.
Yes, you're right. The point I was trying to make was
that an opinion delivered aggressively, or with sarcasm, or
whatever remains an opinion. We are of course free to
disagree with it, but as readers, we should try to
understand the actual opinion and disagree with that. I
didn't intend to suggest that all opinions are equally
correct, but it is often useful to understand others'
viewpoints and why they hold them. After all, it allows one
to construct more persuasive arguments against them. It is
that utility that I meant by "useful".
Certainly agree with that.
To put it another way, we should be
conservative in what we send, and liberal in
what we accept from others. Just like that
principle, it should not bar us from noting
and rejecting bad input - but we shouldn't let
that be the cause of a fatal error.
I had started to cite that principle myself but found
too many cases for which it produced bad results. At
least we agree that we should be able to reject “bad
input”.
Sorry, this was not as clear as I'd have liked.
I actually intended the "bad input" to mean stripping out
the aggressiveness or whatever and rejecting that, so as to
concentrate on the substance. But again that's unclear,
since I don't mean to suggest we cannot reject poor
arguments, invalid statements, and so on. We not only can,
we should.
Agree with that also.
b) Rather than call out that choice of
words but answer the essential points, the
organisation chose instead to chastise the
sender publicly and leave the points
unanswered - unwittingly shutting down the
discussion.
Different people will have different opinions, and I
don’t want to add fuel to that particular fire, but my
analysis of that conversation was somewhat different.
Sorry. "Shutting down" was an unwarranted exaggeration.
But I think it did indeed reduce constructive participation.
I certainly agree that constructive participation was thwarted,
though you and I might disagree as to why. (or not)
Keith
