Re: Agenda Denial Was: tone policing

[Dan Harkins <[e-mail]>]

On 9/10/19 9:57 AM, Paul Wouters wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Sep 2019, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
>> It might be more helpful to consider Keith's original point in terms 
>> of agenda denial which is a tactic that is used to avoid discussion 
>> of topics that a party knows
>> they will lose if they get to the facts.
>
> You seem to be assigning a bad motive to anyone who wants to improve
> the atmosphere for discussion within the IETF by stating "tone policing"
> is only used as a way to do "agenda denial".

   Well we've had a few examples of it very recently that seem very close
to that so I think talking about it that way would be good.

   You seem to think that people who are against "tone policing" don't want
to improve the atmosphere for discussion. Not that I want to police your
tone, or ask you to rewrite your email, but it's illustrative of what's 
going
on here.

>> Tone policing is the specific strategy of saying that because 
>> something was raised in the wrong way, it cannot ever be raised.
>
> Not at all. It is a way of asking the participant to see if they can
> rewrite their message so it contains the same valuable content without
> the unneeded negative wordings that would have a negative impact on
> the willingness of other people to remain in the disuccion (or in the
> IETF completely).

   But if we allow the recipient of a message (or possibly worse, an 
authority who
imagines how someone could possibly misconstrue a message) to be the 
determining factor
in whether the statement needs to be rewritten, or the speaker needs to 
stop speaking,
we will soon be in the land of agenda denial. We will end up with, as I 
noted earlier,
a Kafkaesque situation where people are told they violated some rule no 
one has ever
seen ("that which once was encouraged but now is not") created by a 
cabal of unknown
people (the leadership) that concerns vague things like "toxic" and 
"hostile" message
content.

   There's a rule of thumb I go by when considering creating rules and 
giving power
and that is do not assume the people given the power to enforce the 
rules will always
be people who you like or agree with or who will desire the same outcome 
as you.

   By its very nature, the IETF attracts "Type A" people who devote a 
lot of time
and energy into proposals and sometimes discussions will get heated. We 
should all just
calm down and be civil. "Type B" people can have good ideas too. Try not 
to ascribe bad
motives to people who don't agree with your proposal. But policing tone 
will become agenda
denial and we will have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

   regards,

   Dan.