On 9/2/19 4:11 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
4) Don't: Act on your own initiative. Wait for a complaint to be made
and act on it. Complaints need to be public. In other words, being
outraged on the behalf of someone who isn't actually bothered by a
comment directed at them does nothing but reduce the authority of the
SAA. In other words, don't substitute your opinion(s) for community
consensus.
I might take slight exception to that one. If someone on the list is
clearly behaving inappropriately (e.g. engaging in personal attacks)
it's an offense to the entire IETF even if the specific target of those
attacks doesn't complain about them.
At the same time, I emphatically object to "tone policing" by the SAA or
other IETF leadership as being both arbitrary and counterproductive to
IETF's purpose, and consider it an abuse of power when it happens.
5) Don't: Confuse "unprofessional language" with "telling truth to
power".
Certainly agree, but "unprofessional language" is a lousy standard
anyway. It's so vague that it can mean whatever those in power want it
to mean, and that objection can and has been used to suppress valuable
technical input. There are too many things associated with the word
"professional" that aren't appropriate for IETF - including the
"professional" convention that you don't object to your higher-ups'
technical decisions. Really, we need to stop using the p-word.
But I certainly agree that the community leadership should not enjoy
immunity from criticism for their IETF decisions.
To be more blunt: Lying, being disingenuous, deflecting,
distracting, ignoring are unprofessional;
Agree that these should be discouraged, because they're disruptive to
IETF's purpose.
calling out lying, disingenuousness, deflection, distraction, and
ignoring when there is substantial indication of one of these is not
only not unprofessional, but required in a consensus based community
for the community to continue to operate.
Sort of agree. I think we need to be very careful about what personal
criticism we consider acceptable in IETF. I don't think it's wrong to
"call out" leadership when they do these things, but I also realize that
it's easy for a person to completely misinterpret someone else's
actions. In general I think we need to strongly discourage personal
criticism in IETF, but the actions of leadership (at whatever level) are
necessarily subject to more public scrutiny than those of ordinary
participants.
9) Don't: Act as the mailing list policy police. If consensus has
arisen that it's time to take the discussion elsewhere, or that a
topic is off-topic for a list and that's abused time and again by one
or two people then feel free to make a private comment to them to move.
This is not the SAA's job at all. If the SAA wants to make a comment
while acting as an ordinary participant (with the "SAA hat" off), he or
she should be clear about this.
Keith
