Re: Tolerance

[Jacob Hoffman-Andrews <[e-mail]>]

On 7/15/19 10:50 AM, Keith Moore wrote:
> On 7/15/19 12:32 PM, Jacob Hoffman-Andrews wrote:
>
>> To reinforce what Melinda's saying: I dedicate less time to IETF work 
>> than I otherwise would, specifically because of the hostile and alien 
>> nature of debate here. I have colleagues who feel the same way, and 
>> other colleagues who refrain entirely from participating at the IETF 
>> because of it.
>
> I believe you.   But could you drill down a bit into (i.e. define more 
> precisely) "hostile" and/or "alien"?   Because I suspect these words 
> mean different things to different people.
Several months ago a draft was posted to a WG I don't normally 
contribute to. I had relevant deployment experience, and also wanted to 
ask questions to better understand the topic. However, the first post 
was one WG regular telling the author "You are insane to propose 
<technical thing>."

I have better things to do with my time than potentially being called 
insane by strangers, so I didn't join, didn't post, and instead has a 
useful offline conversation with some trusted coworkers. That's a 
concrete example of how uncollegial behavior discourages participation.

A more useful post would have said "I'm against <technical thing>. It 
would break X because Y, and would also break Z."

On 7/15/19 1:51 PM, Dave Cridland wrote:
> Yes - and I note that a public chastising can very easily be a 
> personal attack of sorts, too.

As a moderator this is a tough needle to thread. On the one hand, giving 
feedback privately is kinder to the recipient and the feedback is more 
likely to be considered rather than defensively rejected. On the other 
hand, what we say publicly creates norms. Sometimes it's important for a 
community to see people say publicly "we don't do that here." Both 
approaches have their place in a healthy community, based on the situation.