Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 01:55:50PM -0300, Fernando Gont wrote:
> On 28/7/20 12:54, Nico Williams wrote:
> [....]
> > > (3) We are an international community with aspirations to be
> > > even more so.   That may imply that a term or acronym that is
> > > neutral or otherwise acceptable in English may be offensive,
> > > oppressive, or exclusionary when translated or transliterated
> > > into another language.  We should probably be aware of that too.
> > 
> > There are limits to how sensitive we can be to issues we're not aware
> > of.  I.e., we depend on reviewers to tell us about the issues they are
> > aware of.  Which brings us back to your point about banned word lists
> > not possibly being sufficient.
> 
> Part of the issue is, I guess, that much needs to be second-guessed, because
> virtually all the communities that would find the aforementioned language to
> be offensive are under-represented here (if at all represented).

Because we are such an international community, but also a very very
small and unrepresentative subset of the world's population, we're bound
to have under-represented communities.  There are a few things that are
particularly important when dealing with such a situation:

 - empathy
 - openness
 - intent

Intent, of course, is typically not-of-interest to many in these debates
for some reason.  But it is important.  If one unintentionally gives
offense and their lack of intent is insufficient to obtain forgiveness,
then we might as well stop having a functioning society.  I.e., we can
learn.

> Maybe if one were to try to address the underlying problem (inclusiveness),
> any issues related to language would be solved as a side-effect?

We're a very specialized, *self-selected* group.  No one ever said to me
"hey, you'd bring diversity to the IETF, so your next assignment is to
participate there".  Nor is that a recipe for the further success of the
IETF.  Many of us are not sponsored in any way by employers.  When I was
at Sun my IETF participation was never a principal aspect of my job, and
I participated entirely of my own initiative.  Ditto my employer
previous to Sun.  Ditto all my employment since.  I believe this is true
for most IETF participants.

Self-selection simply *cannot* produce uniform diversity.  For that
matter, how could a group of 1,000 to 2,000 people, no matter how they
be selected, possibly be reasonably representative of the world's
population??  If you want proportional representation of the world in
the IETF's participant population, you'd have to make the IETF an
expensive membership organization with participant ethnic/racial/
gender/etc. quotas to be met by member organization employers who have
the kind of resources to make that happen (as if rich high-tech
employers' employees are themselves representative of the world!).
That's not in the cards, so we'll have to make do with the diversity
that we have.

Perhaps you mean that we have barriers to entrance that produce an
exclusive club.  However, of all the SDOs, the IETF is by far the most
accessible by any and all measures: ease of access (mailing lists,
meetecho, etc.), cost ($0 for mailing list participation, which is the
only participation that is required to get RFCs published, i.e., work
done), discrimination (our rules for selecting a NomCom and I*
leadership are explicitly non-discriminatory using any plausible
protected classes).  All other SDOs are far far more costly and less
accessible at the very least: ISO and member nation SDOs, the ITU-T, the
UC, IEEE, OASIS, etc -- all expensive membership organizations and
inaccessible to non-members.

We've yet to hear a plausible proposal for increasing diversity at the
IETF.  In the meantime we have to operate with who we are.  Decrying our
lack of diversity will not help us.  Instead, we need (and have!)
mechanisms for identifying use of offensive language and correcting it
prior to publication -- mechanisms that work as well as can be expected
given an educated, empathetic, open-minded, self-selected, -yes, fairly
diverse considering- membership.  We have such a mechanism, and it is
the entirety of our publication proces, with its many opportunities for
review.

Nico
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