Re: [Gendispatch] New Version Notification for draft-ecahc-moderation-00.txt

[Rob Sayre <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]> wrote:
> The draft itself notes that we don't have agreement as to
> what may be disruptive, so creating a fake "agreement" (the
> de-facto processes followed by the putative small team) will
> likely lead to more disruption than we face now.

Agree, it is contradictory. Maybe even hand-waving. [0]

> I would also envisage this creating a situation where the
> most sensitised IETF participants (for any given topic) will
> feel obliged to "inform" on others to the moderation team
> which is not a good situation to set up for many reasons.

I also noticed this issue, but I thought I might be the only one. The
terminology is really bad, and I think the draft would be better if it was
deleted and not replaced. It unintentionally references Unofficial
Collaborators [1], or McCarthyism in the US [2].

It's also bad management, in that it implies that complaining is to be
rewarded. That might seem like a careful thing to do at first. But,
excepting absolutely terrible behavior, you are diverting effort from
technical work to complaints.

> I think it's good to discuss this problem but strongly oppose
> what I understand to be the proposed solution.

Agree. It's well-meaning, but clearly an effort made by people that haven't
done any work in moderation or social networks. For example, there is an
entire earnest thread on this topic where everyone is seemingly unaware of
the "mods are asleep" meme [3]. That one is used as a joke now, but has
abhorrent origins. It is at least 13 years old.

There are people that specialize in this problem space. I'd recommend going
that route, rather than trying to build your own.

thanks,
Rob

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-waving
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unofficial_collaborator
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
[3] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mods-are-asleep