Re: tone policing

Dan Harkins <dharkins@xxxxxxxxxx> · Mon, 09 Sep 2019 16:31:38 -0700



      Hi Bron,

    
    On 9/9/19 4:15 PM, Bron Gondwana wrote:

    
      On Tue, Sep 10, 2019, at 08:43,
        Joel M. Halpern wrote:

      
        Dan, you asked for specific
          examples of speech whose acceptability has 

        
        changed.

        
        A clear and simple example is
          personal attacks.  It is no longer 

        
        acceptable (or at least, we try
          to make it impossible) to respond to an 

        
        argument by saying "you do not
          know what you are talking about, so we 

        
        should ignore your input." 
          Other even more extreme and personal 

        
        comments were once accepted in
          this community.   they are not accepted 

        
        any longer.

        
      Like for example this thing, which
        I'm not particularly proud of:

      
      https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/imap5/zPoaR1ezRWRs4ji9rbojXLuomFE

      
      The whole experience around there
        nearly turned me off the IETF entirely, largely due to things
        like this:

      
      https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/imap5/4bg3IkTTJvCAcr8aro5wCyNjZSA

      
      ... and I know Mark's not around
        to defend himself here, so I can only point out the flaws in my
        own communication style there and the missed opportunities to
        progress work because I was too busy butting heads.

      
      There are plenty of emails I am ashamed of. 

      
      I'm sad I never got to meet Mark
        in person.  I think a lot of the value of in-person meetings is
        the sitting together and looking into each other's eyes and
        realising that the other person isn't a moron and isn't
        deliberately trying to break the world!

      
      Yup, after a flare-up on this list some years ago in which I
      was kind of active

      I was sitting at the bar in the IETF hotel with an IESG member.
      Another IESG member

      came up to him and said, "what's with this Harkins guy? He's such
      an asshole!" The

      response was, "ask him, he's sitting right here." So this other
      IESG member and I

      went and found a table to chat. It was my "tone" on the list that
      got his dander up.

      But we had a nice exchange and the opportunity to sit together and
      have a talk really

      helped. Email is a flawed medium for communication but it scales
      well so we use it.

      
        I guess maybe we shouldn't read so much into an email or at
      least not draw conclusions

      about people based solely on the emails they send. 

      
        regards,

      
        Dan.

      
      Bron.

      
      --

      
          Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd

        
          brong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx