Re: Harassment, abuse, accountability. and IETF mailing lists

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 6/13/22 12:46, Barry Leiba wrote:

> The sort of ignorant stupidity in your statements is what's causing
> the IETF to lose credibility -- and productive, smart participants who
> are no longer willing to deal with such nonsense.  It really makes me
> wonder whether there's any thinking behind it at all.

Yes, it's easy to contrive statements that even Keith would regard as 
objectionable :)

And just in case that wasn't clear, I'm not saying that IETF 
participants should be free to send obviously insulting statements.

But I do think it's tricky to draw the line.   I've long thought that it 
should be okay to criticize ideas, but not okay to criticize people who 
suggest those ideas, and I still think that's about right.   But I 
recognize that in practice, strong criticism of ideas can be hard to 
distinguish from strong criticism of the person suggesting those 
ideas.   Sometimes people really do make poorly-informed suggestions, 
and sometimes the best criticism of such suggestions is to point out how 
they're not well-informed. However, labeling such a suggestion as 
"ignorant", even if 100% accurate, does little or nothing to inform the 
debate.

And I also recognize that working in IETF is likely to be frustrating 
from time to time, especially among those who are passionate about the 
Internet and/or their own protocols.  I think we need to realize that 
such frustration and/or passion are going to be evident sometimes, and 
there's nothing wrong with that.   We need passionate people in IETF.

> Now, I hope that made you, Keith -- and everyone else reading it --
> blanch.  I hope that everyone agrees that it's inappropriate, even if
> it were then backed up with citations of studies that refute your
> claims.  And I hope that if I had been saying that for real, and not
> to make a point, I would be admonished for it.  For the record, I have
> plenty of respect for Keith and consider him a fine, intelligent
> colleague.
>
> But I also think that my first paragraph is never a useful way to
> engage in discussion in the IETF nor in any other context, and serves
> only to inflame and to squelch discussion -- as Jay says.  Perhaps,
> Keith, you're thick-skinned enough that if my first paragraph had been
> a real part of the discussion, you'd have just blown past it and not
> really been bothered.
I do think that a certain degree of skin thickness is very helpful when 
participating in IETF.   It helps to realize that when there's no 
substance in someone's criticism - they haven't offered any real support 
for their claims of someone else's ignorance, stupidity, or whatever, or 
that the only support they can offer is their own claim of expertise,  
there's a very good chance that the critic doesn't know what they're 
talking about.

And I've often seen statements in IETF that were every bit as belittling 
as your example above, but which were couched in "polite" terms.    The 
tactic of contrasting one person's statement with statements from 
"productive, smart participants" (or similar) is quite common.   I don't 
think such statements are any more acceptable.   A statement can be very 
insulting without ever using offending words.
> But I can tell you, based on the number of
> people who have told me that they either left the IETF entirely or
> significantly reduced their participation because they were tired of
> being treated to such rhetoric, that*not*  shutting that down is much
> more damaging to the IETF than allowing it because we don't want to
> limit people's right to speak their minds.
I am not sure that I agree.   I can certainly see how what you describe 
could happen.  But the Politeness Police have themselves discouraged 
participation in IETF, at least in part because some of them were every 
bit as arrogant and demeaning as your example statement above, and 
worse, AND they had the backing of the organizational leaders.

At some point you inevitably end up choosing which group you want to 
favor - do you want to favor the passionate people whose frustration 
sometimes shows, or do you want to favor the "polite" people who don't 
get as frustrated because they have less personal investment in the 
Internet or their protocols?   Neither approach can be described as 
"inclusive".
> So, while I'm very happy to try to find a way to say it that we can
> all (yes, likely) agree is clear enough and that eliminates vagueness,
> I absolutely believe that we have to make it clear, as a community,
> that speaking to each other that way is NOT acceptable.
I think we can certainly make things clearer than they are.   But I have 
doubts about the desirability of rigid sanctions for most cases of 
infringement.   And I think we would do well to work more at encouraging 
and modeling productive means of feedback, and less at trying to 
identify, marginalize, and exclude "bad" participants.

Keith