On Tue, Sep 10, 2019, at 09:20, Dan Harkins wrote:
Hi Joel,On 9/9/19 3:43 PM, 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.I witnessed someone at the mic tell a presenter that his was theworst ideain the history of the IETF. That's not really acceptable but it was alsoway backin the 20th century.
I last saw something like that at the BIMI BOF in Prague at IETF104. Not quite "the worst idea in the history of the IETF", but a very strong and emotional "this is a horribly bad idea and I strongly oppose the IETF doing any work in this area and I will fight you to the death and die on this hill".
And I'm glad people can say that about ideas. I disagree on this specific topic, but I do think the IETF needs the ability to say "not everything is a good idea"!
I didn't take notes about who said that, which is probably a good thing :) I took notes during that session, so I know the concepts raised, but I didn't note who raised all of them.
I haven't heard that kind of talk in 2 decades.AdmittedlyI tend to hang out with a small group of people and probably missed someegregiousbehavior but I don't think personal attacks have ever been OK.
But it wasn't "you're bad people", it was "this is a bad idea". Keeping that distinction is 100% a good thing.
I had a good chat with the proponents of BIMI afterwards, and they were not dissuaded by their experience, which is good - but I can imagine it would have turned away people who weren't prepared for being told so forcefully that their idea was awful.
Bron.
--
Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
brong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
