Re: What's the alternative to "snarling"?

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 4/19/21 12:45 PM, Salz, Rich wrote:

> I really hesitated to say this, but in my experience, most of the snarlers are old men who have not made notable contributions to any draft in some time.

Absent some more precise definition, "snarling" is subjective. And there 
are other ways to contribute without making "notable" contributions of 
text to any specific draft: general comments in a WG discussion that 
shape the problem space or influence how a draft is scoped, private 
comments to a document author, Last Call comments, etc.

***

I get the impression that many people have a theory that IETF's problem 
is that it is populated with too many Bad People, and the way to fix 
IETF is to discourage or silence those Bad People.

I believe the IETF needs many different kinds of people, including 
Annoying People, because it seems like many important issues never get 
looked at without some Annoying People to call attention to those 
problems.   Which is not to say that everyone who is annoying is helpful 
in that way, but that filtering out Annoying People - people who say 
things that make people uncomfortable - would make it harder for those 
issues to be examined and addressed.

Keith