Re: Describing which behavior is appropriate or not (was: Last Call: <draft-eggert-bcp45bis-06.txt> (IETF Discussion List Charter) to Best Current Practice)

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 10/30/21 7:39 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:
> Hi Keith,
> At 03:53 PM 20-10-2021, Keith Moore wrote:
>> The aggregate effect of such efforts is to make IETF more like an 
>> echo chamber, in which everyone is expected to "know their place" - 
>> i.e. know to not express views that might conflict with the views of 
>> those in power, or otherwise know the unwritten "rules".   This is, 
>> after all, often what is expected of "professionals" in their 
>> workplaces, which is yet another reason why "professional" is a poor 
>> criterion for describing which behavior is appropriate or not in IETF 
>> discussions.
>
> I read comments about the word "professional" in a RFC over the 
> years.  Here is another comment [1] (translated with Yandex):
>
>   "Unfortunately, this RFC feels obliged to add that it is necessary 
> to behave
>    in a professional manner as if amateurs were avinee brutes and that 
> it is
>    only in the context of work that one can be civilized."
>
> The sentence with that word was the "IETF Consensus" when the RFC was 
> approved for publication.  The "know their place" was removed during 
> the revision of the document.  There isn't anything in the RFC which 
> prohibits a participant from expressing his/her disagreement with an 
> Area Director's decision.
>
> One of the points which you raised is about "a system in which people 
> are placed in a series of levels with different importance or 
> status".  The RFC does not establish a system with different levels of 
> importance or status.

For me a lot of the problem is that the word "professional" has many 
different meanings, and is therefore ambiguous.

One interpretation of "professional behavior" seems to be norms of a 
corporate workplace.  But corporate workplaces have many restraints on 
speech and behavior which aren't appropriate for IETF.   For example, 
publicly criticizing your employer, or its leadership, or its policies, 
or its products, can get you fired. But IETF should be open to public 
criticism, even by (perhaps especially by) its participants.

Another interpretation of "professional" refers to a group of persons 
who are all make their living in the same trade.   It can even carry 
with it the assumption that "professionals" are privileged somehow.  
(There's a joke: "Why don't sharks eat lawyers?"  "Professional 
courtesy.")   But IETF is open to participation by everyone, and its 
participants should treat each other as peers, regardless of how they 
earn their living or even whether they are employed.

It's hard to escape the impression that some of those insisting on 
"professional behavior" are looking for a way to exclude those who they 
deem not qualified, so as to get out of the way of the Big Corporations 
who want IETF to do what they want it to do.

Anyway, if "unprofessional behavior" is not defined, those in power can 
use any deviation from "normal" as an excuse to sanction participants.


But I also realize that maybe this doesn't matter much, as the scope of 
this document is limited to the IETF list which is of decreasing 
relevance anyway.   The IETF list used to serve as the primary forum of 
the community, its center, and also its conscience.   This draft along 
with several other IMO extremely harmful measures that have been taken 
in recent years (including the creation of gendispatch) narrows the 
scope of the IETF list so much that it effectively destroys most of the 
utility that the IETF list used to have, and with it the organization's 
core values.

I don't know why people think that the solution to traffic overload is 
to keep siloing discussions ad infinitum, and I would argue that one of 
IETF's core problems has long been the over-fragmentation of discussions.

Or maybe the fragmentation of the IETF list was part of a deliberate 
effort to subvert the IETF into being a forum that only serves the 
Internet industry, rather than one trying to serve the broader Internet 
community?

>
> The underlying value for some participants is most likely related to 
> https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does 
> A participant residing in another country might not have the 
> background information to understand those participants.  It takes 
> many years to understand all that.

These rules don't really apply to discussions like the IETF list, even 
in the United States.   Governments within the US are forbidden from 
penalizing most kinds of speech.   But those restrictions on government 
don't prevent the moderation of discussions hosted by non-governmental 
organizations such as IETF, or for that matter discussions on social 
media sites.

But it may well be true that US citizens and longtime US residents, 
accustomed to having few government prohibitions on speech, are somewhat 
more outspoken than those from elsewhere.

Keith