Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants

[Miles Fidelman <[e-mail]>]

Nick Hilliard wrote:
> Brian E Carpenter wrote on 14/06/2022 23:37:
>> On 15-Jun-22 02:47, John Levine wrote:
>>> It appears that Miles Fidelman <[e-mail]> said:
>>>> On the other hand, is it really a negative when someone is snarky 
>>>> with a
>>>> snot-nosed kid who doesn't appreciate being told that their "great new
>>>> idea" is a retread of something folks learned not to do decades ago?
>>>
>>> Depends.  If your goal is to make sure nobody new ever comes to the 
>>> IETF, sure, do that.
>>>
>>> On the other hand, if someone new goes to the effort to write up an 
>>> I-D and ask us
>>> to look at it, there are a lot better ways to see if you can 
>>> redirect their interest
>>> to something that might be useful.  Sometimes they may go off in a 
>>> sulk, but sometimes
>>> a little politeness and specific references to prior work they 
>>> should read about can
>>> go a long way.
>>
>> I think it is also a very effective sieve. Newcomers who respond 
>> positively
>> to this are much more likely to become genuine contributors than people
>> who won't listen and learn. The ones who don't listen are unlikely to
>> succeed anyway.
>
> Brian, John,
>
> thank you for speaking up for the values of courtesy and politeness.
>
> The freedom to be "snarky with a snot-nosed kid" also includes the 
> freedom not to be snarky, and given that the latter almost always 
> produces a better outcome, this is what we need to collectively spire 
> to on IETF mailing lists.
>
> Nick
Kind of depends, though.

As Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>
> I think it is also a very effective sieve. Newcomers who respond 
> positively
> to this are much more likely to become genuine contributors than people
> who won't listen and learn. The ones who don't listen are unlikely to
> succeed anyway. 
Just one man's opinion:

It strikes me that hard-nosed questioning & design review are a good 
sieve - folks who do their homework, and want to get results, tend to 
welcome hard-nosed review & comment.  They tend to welcome hard 
questions, as well as brutal design review & editing.  When caught in a 
dumb mistake, or have something obvious pointed out, their response is 
likely to be a face plant.

Someone who's done their homework, and is looking for honest feedback, 
deserves politeness & constructive response.  These are the future of 
the Internet.

And true newbies, asking honest questions - deserve a bit of kindness.  
They're trying.  (Though "participation trophies" don't really help them 
to push themselves & develop.)

On the other hand, there are the self-styled "rockstar programmers," who 
usually also promote "agile," in the form of "don't think, just code, 
maybe fix things later," - who think that every pronouncement out of 
their "mouths" are words of divine inspiration.  Those folks are just 
dangerous.  Divas, with aggressive Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, deserve 
everything they get (IMHO).


And then there are the folks with bad cases of imposter syndrome - very 
good, but don't recognize their own capabilities, and quick to shrink 
from the slightest critique, and to interpret constructive suggestions 
as criticism.  We have way to many folks like this floating around - and 
all too many true imposters tend to promote themselves, by preying on 
the weak.  Not too sure how one helps these folks, except case-by-case.  
Maybe kid-glove treatment is warranted.  Or maybe they need to be pushed 
a bit - to recognize their own worth, and to stand up for themselves.

And finally, there are the professionally offended - those who have 
nothing to contribute, but are quick to complain about how people treat 
each other.  The ones who can turn a useful discussion into 100s of 
messages about tone, along with demands for moderation, 
codes-of-conduct, etc.  (The bane of my existence on a few of the 
community oriented email lists I host.)  These are the folks that I 
think should be the first to be removed from an email list - they 
generate WAY too much noise.

Miles Fidelman



-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown