Re: delegating (portions of) ietf list disciplinary process (fwd)

On Sep 29, 2005, at 9:39, Dean Anderson wrote:
> Let me ask you Ken: Are you participating in the IETF as part of  
> your job?  Or
> are you just here for personal kicks?

It's part of my job; has been for a few years.

> It has nothing to do with legal standing. Its a question of  
> etiquette.  Office
> etiquette and backyard-fence etiquette are different.

True.

>> Still, it is generally considered discourteous among most serious  
>> email users,
>> I think.  But we seem to have gone past the point where that  
>> matters to
>> people.
>
> This is only true with respect to PERSONAL communication. BUSINESS  
> communication
> is not personal communication.

"Business communication" is not one homogeneous class of  
communications.  Technical matters on the IETF lists are one thing;  
personnel discussions about employees would be quite another.  And  
the level of privacy expected, and the degree of rudeness associated  
with publishing someone's not-previously-public communications, vary;  
they are not binary choices.  Email I might exchange with selected  
individuals outside MIT on how to implement some feature in our (open  
source, repository-accessible) product would fall somewhere in  
between.  In my experience there is certainly work-related email that  
is not legally required to be private but would be considered rude to  
disseminate widely without getting permission.

In this particular case, where it sounds like the mailing list was  
explicitly kept off the recipient list, that sounds like a pretty  
clear indication that the sender probably didn't want it as public as  
the previous mail being responded to -- much as if someone took you  
aside from a crowd to make a couple of comments instead of shouting  
at you in the middle of the room.  Perhaps you don't distinguish  
those cases; other people do.  But apparently your interpretation of  
business etiquette trumps his wishes, and whatever his intent was in  
not including the IETF at large ... in your mind, though apparently  
not his, and not mine.

> You don't understand the distinction between business and personal.

I understand that the type of a communication cannot be fully  
represented in one binary digit.

> Actually, I'm now convinced that this is the whole problem with the  
> abuse at the
> IETF: An inability to distinguish between personal and  
> organizational interests
> and subject matter.

There may be some of that.  I strongly doubt that's all there is to  
it, though.

>> So, if I wanted to make comments to you about IETF matters,  
>> people's personal
>> conduct on mailing lists, etc, that I didn't want made public to fuel
>> arguments I specifically don't want to add to, I should ask you to  
>> sign an NDA
>> first?  Got it, I'll keep that in mind.
>
> Those are business topics.  If you are concerned about "fueling"  
> something, then
> you should keep silent. Only a lack of fact adds "fuel", otherwise  
> known as
> hyperbole.

Sometimes what's needed is to encourage both sides to step back a bit  
from a dispute for a while, or suggest that one side use or abandon  
some specific line of argument to make the discussion more  
productive.  I think that's sometimes better done in private  
communication with individual parties rather than in public, but it's  
still business, and one shouldn't need an NDA to figure out that it's  
preferably not to be made public.  (Then again, I guess sometimes  
making it public -- "look!  even so-and-so thinks you're a loser!   
clearly I'm right!" -- may suit one person's desire to fan the  
flames, or to "win" at all costs.  It may be jumping to conclusions  
to think that *everyone* wants a polite, productive discussion, or  
that they're capable of engaging in one in the face of strong  
opposition....)

I'm sad to say, I've actually looked at a little of the stuff you've  
posted on the web page you set up recently, concerning Ted Ts'o.  I  
picked the "July 1" off-list stuff to look at, briefly.  From that  
admittedly small sample... let me try to phrase this carefully to  
avoid anything that might be construed as an ad-hominem attack: I  
disagree with your summary of some of the messages I reviewed.

Ted disagrees with you on the importance of some things you bring up,  
and says what you're presenting isn't very useful (to the discussion  
at hand, I would assume he meant, on reading his message); your  
summary turns this into ``Tso says facts are "not useful" to the  
IETF.''  Without a qualifier like "these facts" and "this  
discussion", that's an unsupported, even absurd, generalization;  
you're ascribing to Ted statements that he did not make.

Ted asked for information on the "court-proven liars" (plural, your  
phrase), and you seem to have responded with info on multiple court  
cases against one person.  Ted points that out, and uses the somewhat  
inaccurate description "lost a lawsuit" in doing so.  He does  
acknowledge that this *one* person is, in at least one instance, a  
"court-proven liar" as you put it; his wording could be read to  
suggest, but does not actually state (as your summary says he does),  
that there was only one lawsuit.  "Has lost such a lawsuit", to me,  
does not at all suggest "only one"; "person who lost a lawsuit" does  
suggest it somewhat, in this context.  "One proven act" would suggest  
it more strongly, though by that point he's talking in more general  
terms.

But his emphasis appears to be on the number of defendants rather  
than lawsuits, and that whole aspect isn't the main thrust of his  
message, which is suggesting that the focus should be on the disputed  
statement rather than the character of the person making it.  And if  
you accept Ted's point that the lawsuits aren't as important as  
examining the disputed statement, the difference between the logical  
"there exists a lawsuit" and "there were three of them" isn't very  
important -- a logical step I think he should've made more explicit  
in his message -- and then the references to "a lawsuit" and "one  
proven act" are more clearly in the "there exists" sense.  (And if I  
were in Ted's shoes at that time, I probably would've ignored the  
implied suggestion that I go hunt through your web site or use Google  
to try to find the information I had asked you to provide on the  
other people your use of the plural implies.)

I haven't read up on enough of the context to form an opinion on the  
reputation versus statement accuracy issue in this instance.

So, to summarize my look at a few of the messages: You both lose  
points for some of your statements or how you tried to make your  
arguments, and the accuracy of the summary page is questionable.   
None of it, so far, really suggests any sort of professional  
dishonesty on Ted's part to me.  (If this were a research paper  
instead of an email message, I'd probably want him to be much more  
careful and even pedantic in his arguments, but that would be about  
the quality of the work, not honesty.)

Bored now, and not interested in the case under discussion in that  
old thread; I'm going to stop digging....

Ken

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