Re: Harassment, abuse, accountability. and IETF mailing lists

[Donald Eastlake <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2022 at 4:57 PM Brian E Carpenter
<[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> On 06-Jun-22 23:56, Keith Moore wrote:
> > On 6/6/22 04:20, tom petch wrote:
> >
> >> I saw an apology for the use of '...considered harmful' recently and
> >> was suprised that that phrase was .. well considered harmful
> >
> > This makes me wonder: how is making a reference to a letter that's
> > rather famous in Computer Science history any different that referring
> > to any established technical term or concept? Granted not absolutely
> > everyone will have heard of that letter, but is it really hostile to
> > newcomers to use well-established language of the subject domain that we
> > work in when that language isn't, say, sexist or racist?   Is
> it hostile
> > to newcomers to refer to the end-to-end principle?
>
> I suspect that, as always, context is everything. If somebody had written
> a draft "6to4 considered harmful" some years ago, I don't think that
> Keith or I would have been upset. (If you don't get that, see RFC 3056.)
> But if they had written a draft "Carpenter and Moore considered harmful"
> we would have been quite angry. Somewhere in between is "Carpenter and Moore's
> work considered harmful" - I'm really not sure how I would have reacted to that.

I am the author of RFC 3675 ".sex Considered Harmful".

Thanks,
Donald

> As a matter of fact that work was subject to a lot of criticism, as was its
> extension by RFC 3068, but I don't recall a single ad hominem comment.
>
> We can be critical without being rude.
>
>     Brian