On Tue, Sep 10, 2019 at 12:58 PM Paul Wouters <paul@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 10 Sep 2019, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> It might be more helpful to consider Keith's original point in terms of agenda denial which is a tactic that is used to avoid discussion of topics that a party knows
> they will lose if they get to the facts.
You seem to be assigning a bad motive to anyone who wants to improve
the atmosphere for discussion within the IETF by stating "tone policing"
is only used as a way to do "agenda denial".
No, I am limiting the use of the term 'tone policing' to only apply it to circumstances where the intention is malicious.
A request for civility is fine as long as it is not then weaponized to say, 'and since this issue was raised improperly, it can never be raised' or if it is clearly being raised in bad faith. For example when a political candidate who attacks their opponents by attaching epithets 'lying', 'sleepy', etc. then bemoans the uncivil treatment they receive.
The term 'tone policing' as I understand it is exclusively used to imply a bad faith complaint of incivility or unprofessional behavior.
However, what we were discussing was the situation where hostile or rude
participation lead to people (especially newcomers) to avoid participation
alltogether. That would seem _more_ of an "agenda denial" item that the
one particular and very specific abuse point that you raise.
That is precisely the point I was making we should look beyond the surface and look at what the effect of the intervention is.
What I see in many of the responses to Keith's original post is people raising exactly that point that sometimes people are complaining about incivility because it gets in the way of the discussion.
