Re: [Gendispatch] draft charter text: terminology-related WG

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 2/13/21 5:52 PM, Mark Nottingham wrote:

> This issue is settled in much of tech, so we have strong cowpaths to pave. As a result, the amount of energy that it will take to create language guidelines is almost completely determined by how much energy people put into trying to stop it.
>
> If people have legitimate reasons as to why we shouldn't do this, that's one thing; 'our energy is better spent elsewhere' is not one of them.

To me this proposal looks like a DoS attack against actually increasing 
inclusion in IETF.   Why actually do the hard work when we can fill in a 
check box and pretend we have virtue?

If we want to publish a document that talks about exclusionary language, 
let's just Last Call what we have once or twice (but no more than that) 
and be done with it.   I don't think a WG is going to improve the 
document as much as community-wide Last Calls, and IMO a WG on this 
topic has a lot more potential to do harm than good.

> No where in the IETF is such an argument acceptable against a charter; we routinely charter groups that many feel aren't worth the effort, but I don't get to determine how people in the routing area (for example) spend their time, as long as there's demonstrated support for it.
We're not bound by stare decisis.   We shouldn't use poor past practice 
to justify poor present or future practice.   That's called propagation 
of error.

It's one thing when a WG's topic area only affects people in a narrow 
area of interest.   If a WG isn't going to create problems for people 
outside that area of interest, a narrowly focused WG makes sense.

But this is a topic that potentially affects everyone who writes RFCs.   
Burying this discussion in a WG that most people probably don't want to 
fool with, seems likely to produce two results: (1) a document that 
doesn't earn community-wide consensus (but might end impairing our 
ability to write RFCs anyway), and/or (2) a lot of people's time spent 
arguing with people that will be attracted by this topic but who don't 
have a strong interest in IETF work outside of that topic.

> If you have better ideas about how to improve inclusivity and diversity in the IETF, suggest a (parallel) charter. This one will be judged based upon the interest expressed in it and the legitimacy of any objections against it -- just as with every other charter.

Maybe it's not the sort of problem that a working group can reliably 
solve?     Sometimes a working group is a way of avoiding a problem 
rather than solving one.

> OTOH if you're suggesting that the IETF introduce a metric for new charters that considers priority between different possible efforts, I'm all for it -- provided that the first item of business is reviewing ALL current working groups on those criteria.

Now there's an idea that might be worth discussion.   (Just please don't 
suggest a working group to review working groups. But a WG to sketch out 
nonbinding review criteria... maybe.)

Keith