Hi Alissa, I fully agree with your mail with two minor caveats. I hope those may be useful input to IESG discussion on this, hence this mail. #1 I don't think continuing to discuss the SOW/RSE role on the IETF list as well as or instead of the rfc-interest list is at all unreasonable if that's what a poster wants to do, despite us asking for discussion to move to the rfc-interest list. For this one, I think the onus is on whomever needs to be up to speed with that discussion to monitor both and there are enough different opinions on related topics that I can imagine someone having what they consider a reasoned argument why moving discussion to rfc-interest is wrong. #2 I'd like to suggest a phrase you used is a bit too broad. You said: On 03/09/2019 02:51, Alissa Cooper wrote: > a firmer commitment to building a respectful environment I've two quibbles with how you expressed that. I think we want an environment where we are all respectful of the people participating (or not participating) in the IETF, but we explicitly do not want participants to be overly respectful of the (current) organisational structures, nor of the fact that one us happens to be in a certain role etc. That does differ from bring "professional" at least as that term is understood by some reasonable people. How to phrase that well is tricky but I'd say doable if we somewhere explicitly note that the kind of openness we aim for requires us to encourage criticism of the subsets of us acting in leadership roles, and of the roles as well, and that such criticism ought be actively encouraged, as long as it's not personally disrespectful. And as a corollary, as nomcom appointees we ought not take ourselves, nor that we're acting in particular roles, too seriously:-) Secondly, we also do not want IETF participants to be shy criticising what they consider technically bad ideas. That's an area where some of us go wrong when we step over lines between criticism of ideas and get too close to being critical of other IETF participants. (For example by imputing motives, which can be done very politely and tangentially but is nonetheless wrong.) I think there's definitely room for improvement here, (myself included) but I'm less sure how to ensure that improvement doesn't also damage the culture of openly criticising ideas. So yes, let's work on being better, but carefully, and taking into account the subtle differences between the IETF and a company, university, or other kinds of organisation. (In some respects, I think we're much more like a largely volunteer-driven amateur-sports organisation, which has different needs, and dangers, compared to a regular for-profit company or even a professional-sports setup.) I guess we may agree that those quibbles need to be handled in IESG discussion of this topic, but do think there's real value in explicitly aiming at preserving one of what I think is the best bits of IETF culture, being folks' willingness to openly disagree. We absolutely need to be better at doing that, (for example, avoiding endless repetition of well-worn arguments that'll never be resolved;-) but we cannot stop disagreeing or I think we're organisationally dead. Cheers, S.
Attachment:
0x5AB2FAF17B172BEA.asc
Description: application/pgp-keys
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
