On 7/17/19 3:43 AM, Nick Hilliard wrote:
Keith Moore wrote on 17/07/2019 00:35:
I wonder how many useful contributors of the past we've scared away
by trying to curtail their earnest efforts to contribute discussion
of frustrating technical problems?
I know of many people in the operational community who either don't
contribute or who no longer contribute to IETF discussions because of
perceived hostility.
I don't doubt this at all, but there's more than one kind of
hostility. Personal insults are one kind of hostility. Attacks on a
speaker's "tone" are often, I submit, another kind of hostility.
Especially over email, the same words can be read in many different ways
by different readers. Even in person or with audio, frustration can be
confused with anger - and these discussions are inevitably frustrating
sometimes.
Shutting down speakers because of their "tone" has the effect of
explicitly permitting attacks on a speaker based on nothing more than a
listener's (or listeners') prejudice against the speaker. I've seen it
happen many times, and IMO it would be a grave mistake to legitimize the
practice.
Even if the listener's hostility is not toward the speaker him- or
herself, but only to the ideas that the speaker is proposing, arguing
against them on the basis of their "tone" rather than their content is
an extremely unhelpful distraction. By all means suggest edits to
improve the presentation of the ideas, but try to evaluate the actual
ideas.
A speaker with an unusual point of view may see a situation in sharp
relief as compared to others' view of that situation. If the speaker
describes that situation in strong terms, he or she is merely reporting
the situation as he or she sees it. The speaker's point of view is not
necessarily wrong, nor is the speaker's motivation. IETF should not be
hostile to varied points-of-view, though of course decisions still have
to earn rough consensus.
Keith
