On Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 03:03:03PM +1300, Jay Daley wrote:
> There is a big difference between people asking questions, making recommendations, providing alternative analysis, challenging decisions, etc and impugning motives, deliberately misrepresenting people/processes, plain insults, etc. The former is perfectly acceptable, the latter is never acceptable.
Luckily, i am not aware of any intentional cases of this, but maybe i am
also only living under a rock. But of course agreed.
I would like to two more observations:
In general, even a technial, well intentioned discuss can turn into
something perceived to be unfriendly enough that collaboration
diminishes, and i think that may be a more common issue in IETF
than you what you describe.
(1) Most compromises IMHO are found much easier in person in a setting
where there is also no third party present to whom one or both sides
would want to pander to. This type of "small hallway" discussion is
already absent from some conflicts i observe, and of course it will
be worse when we have more and more remote-only attendance and Email-only discuss.
IMHO, "rough consensus" is necessary, but not sufficient. For those cases
where i see this issue i wonder if the folks did try to pick up at least a phone to
talk to each other or discuss the conflict in PM.
(2) Community discussions should follow best protocol interop principles:
Be strict on what you send, and loose on what you accept. If you
send something thats goes beyond technical and could be perceived
personal or otherwise non-technical, that is worth an excuse, but
it is IMHO equally bad if the receipient uses that language to
shame the sender publically and use this as an escape not to tckle
the technical issue. The best solution for these issues is again (IMHO)
PM or audio channel without a third party to pander to.
Cheers
Toerless
