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

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 4:12 PM Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
>
> > On 14 Feb 2021, at 10:56 am, Keith Moore <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> I think that would work if we didn't have a small group of people who
> vocally and continually insert ever-shifting arguments against this. Under
> those conditions, it's normal practice for a WG to be formed; AD-sponsored
> is always tenuous, and not really built for contentious issues.
>

I concur with Mark. In addition, I note that many of the issues people
are raising now werealso raised in the gendispatch discussion
(
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/6Od2aX-uiYGdYCKZqfvrOHHtY58/
),so
we're going over old ground.

   After extensive discussion, there were objections by the end of the
   first meeting to making the output of this work AD-sponsored, with
   a preference for a quick-spin-up WG. In the second meeting, there
   was more ambivalence as to whether AD-sponsored or quick-spin WG
   would be better. Putting this together, we think the rough
   consensus within the meetings was to have a quick-spin WG.

   ...

   There was rough support in both meetings for recommending a broader
   discussion and resulting document on inclusivity beyond the
   terminology, but there were many concerns for how to structure such
   work in a WG and have it be successful. Several suggestions were
   made to have the IAB sponsor such work as part of their program on
   "Diversity, Inclusion, and Growth". The thought was that perhaps a
   discussion there could generate a path forward for IETF work.

I think it's clear that a significant number of people [0] think it's
useful to do some sort of WG to work on terminology, certainly enough
to meet the threshold of interest for starting a WG. If people think
that that's a bad idea, then that's certainly a reasonable objection
to raise. OTOH, if people just think that there is something more
important to do, then it seems to me that that shouldn't prevent
WG formation.

-Ekr


[0] Full disclosure, I also believe we should do something here
and that a WG is a reasonable approach.