Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants (was: Harassment, abuse, accountability. and IETF mailing lists)

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

Now we’re getting to where I thought and hoped we would: to where we agree.

Of course it’s subjective whether criticism remains polite or has crossed a
line, and we’ll always have people offended because their proposals aren’t
accepted.  We’ll never have the perfect situation.  But, exactly, as you
say, better and more insightful criticism, where we do our best to make it
productive… even when it might be the 17th time we’ve had a very similar
conversation.

I don’t think it’s that much subjective and vague, in that we really do all
know what we’re getting at here, what sorts of language is meant to insult
and anger people and perhaps drive them away.

Indeed, being critical IS our collective job, and we should never stop
doing that.  And your final paragraph is totally spot on.

Barry

On Tue, Jun 14, 2022 at 7:14 AM Keith Moore <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> On 6/14/22 01:45, Barry Leiba wrote:
>
> > I'm not arguing that issue.  I think the people Tim quoted (or
> > paraphrased) were pointing out where they saw the bad treatment coming
> > from.  The issue to me isn't*who*  is doing it, as I really don't care
> > to focus on that.  It's that it's a long-term culture that they're
> > seeing play out.  I agree with that: I think we DO have a long-term
> > culture of accepting bad behaviour toward each other, and I think we
> > need to change that culture.  And we need to do it clearly, strongly,
> > and as a group.
>
> Perhaps, though it still seems to me that much of what's being termed
> "bad behavior" is really fairly subjective and arbitrary.
>
> But I don't think Tim's example is even illustrative of a long-term
> culture of accepting bad behavior, unless the bad behavior of the
> individuals quoted.  It's not inherently bad to be critical of a
> proposal, and the judgment of newcomers as to what makes a good or bad
> proposal is... perhaps not the metric we should be measuring ourselves
> against.   For every IETF participant that I've seen being too critical,
> I've seen 10 newcomers come to IETF thinking that their proposal is
> brilliant and really being shocked when it was evaluated critically.
>
> In some sense, being critical is our job.   We're critical to try to
> filter out bad proposals and also to see how to make promising ones
> better.  But newcomers aren't always going to see it that way.   Even
> those well-experienced in the industry may not have seen their proposals
> subjected to so many different points-of-view before.   But the variety
> of points-of-view is one of IETF's strengths.
>
> What I'd like to see, however, is better criticism, more thoughtful and
> insightful criticism, criticism that shows evidence of wisdom.   I have
> the impression that too many IETF'ers shoot from the hip, even when
> they're right.   And that's also something we can address, e.g. by not
> expecting BOF or WG criticism to be made on the spur-of-the-moment in
> face-to-face meetings.  Right now, if you think a WG or BOF has a really
> Bad Idea or dangerous one, the most likely way to nip that in the bud is
> to show up at the meeting in person, be really critical, and get the
> more prominent voices in the room on your side.  (And sometimes, I
> suspect IESG wants it that way, because then they don't have to be the
> ones to wield the axe.)
>
> Is that really the best way to deal even with Bad Ideas?
>
> Or for that matter, we tend to evaluate WG proposals separately, rather
> than realizing that IETF has limited resources and picking a set of new
> proposals from a slate with those resource limitations in mind.   As a
> result we have too many WGs that produce too many RFCs of limited
> applicability and/or marginal quality, and we pat ourselves on the back
> because our output has increased.   How effective would, say, a funding
> agency be if it didn't try to keep from spreading its resources too thinly?
>
> In general, I think we'll get more benefit from analyzing which of our
> practices impair our ability to provide value for the Internet, than
> from arguing about which groups of people have which character flaws.
>
> Keith
>
>
>