On 7/15/19 10:50 AM, Keith Moore 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.
Several months ago a draft was posted to a WG I don't normally
contribute to. I had relevant deployment experience, and also wanted to
ask questions to better understand the topic. However, the first post
was one WG regular telling the author "You are insane to propose
<technical thing>."
I have better things to do with my time than potentially being called
insane by strangers, so I didn't join, didn't post, and instead has a
useful offline conversation with some trusted coworkers. That's a
concrete example of how uncollegial behavior discourages participation.
A more useful post would have said "I'm against <technical thing>. It
would break X because Y, and would also break Z."
On 7/15/19 1:51 PM, Dave Cridland wrote:
Yes - and I note that a public chastising can very easily be a
personal attack of sorts, too.
As a moderator this is a tough needle to thread. On the one hand, giving
feedback privately is kinder to the recipient and the feedback is more
likely to be considered rather than defensively rejected. On the other
hand, what we say publicly creates norms. Sometimes it's important for a
community to see people say publicly "we don't do that here." Both
approaches have their place in a healthy community, based on the situation.
