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

[Joel Halpern <[e-mail]>]

Keith, in my and many other people's experience, in an open forum, if 
rudeness is not policed, and more importantly not publicly objected to 
when it occurs, it will occur more and more often and get worse.


I understand your objection to the abstract "rudenss".  So, for me, I am 
happy to replace that with more specific behavioral descriptions such as 
"objecting to the person instead of the technical point", and probably 
other similar descriptions.  From what I can tell from your email, even 
with more specific terms of reference you object to having such 
restrictions enforced.   In an ideal world, I might agree with you.  But 
as far as I can tell that is not the world we live in.

Yours,

Joel

On 6/22/2022 3:03 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
> On 6/22/22 13:04, Tim Bray wrote:
>
>> The below from Tom Petch captures my opinion.  I have sympathy with 
>> more or less all the notes from all the factions in this discussion, 
>> which instantly stops when they say or imply “… and that’s why it’s 
>> OK to be rude.” 
> I also believe that Tom's advice is good advice.
>
> In case I'm one of the people whom you think is saying or implying 
> "... and that's why it's OK to be rude", I wish to clarify that I 
> don't believe that at all.  Rather, I believe "rudeness" is extremely 
> subjective, and that it's unfair for a small group of people 
> (regardless of their positions) to impose their subjective criteria on 
> discussion participants.  I don't object to specific, 
> narrowly-tailored criteria that have been discussed and gained IETF 
> Consensus.
>
> I also believe, separately, that trying to police "rudeness" is both 
> counterproductive and inconsistent with consensus-making. If you want 
> to encourage better behavior, for some meaning of "better", the best 
> way to do that is by example.   Note that reasonable people can have 
> different ideas on what "better" is.
>
> Keith
>
> And for what it's worth, I regard the casting of the discussion points 
> as either for or against rudeness, as at least potentially rude, or 
> more specifically inappropriate, as a presumption of ill intent.   But 
> I'd prefer to assume that such characterizations are merely 
> misunderstandings.
>
>