Re: Tolerance

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 7/17/19 3:43 AM, Nick Hilliard wrote:

> Keith Moore wrote on 17/07/2019 00:35:
>> I wonder how many useful contributors of the past we've scared away 
>> by trying to curtail their earnest efforts to contribute discussion 
>> of frustrating technical problems?
>
> I know of many people in the operational community who either don't 
> contribute or who no longer contribute to IETF discussions because of 
> perceived hostility.

I don't doubt this at all, but there's more than one kind of 
hostility.     Personal insults are one kind of hostility. Attacks on a 
speaker's "tone" are often, I submit, another kind of hostility.   
Especially over email, the same words can be read in many different ways 
by different readers.   Even in person or with audio, frustration can be 
confused with anger - and these discussions are inevitably frustrating 
sometimes.

Shutting down speakers because of their "tone" has the effect of 
explicitly permitting attacks on a speaker based on nothing more than a 
listener's (or listeners') prejudice against the speaker. I've seen it 
happen many times, and IMO it would be a grave mistake to legitimize the 
practice.

Even if the listener's hostility is not toward the speaker him- or 
herself, but only to the ideas that the speaker is proposing, arguing 
against them on the basis of their "tone" rather than their content is 
an extremely unhelpful distraction.  By all means suggest edits to 
improve the presentation of the ideas, but try to evaluate the actual 
ideas.

A speaker with an unusual point of view may see a situation in sharp 
relief as compared to others' view of that situation.   If the speaker 
describes that situation in strong terms, he or she is merely reporting 
the situation as he or she sees it.   The speaker's point of view is not 
necessarily wrong, nor is the speaker's motivation.   IETF should not be 
hostile to varied points-of-view, though of course decisions still have 
to earn rough consensus.

Keith