Re: Recent threads concerning sergeants-at-arms

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 9/7/19 6:15 PM, Matthew Kerwin wrote:

>
> On Sun., 8 Sep. 2019, 01:55 Keith Moore, <[e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>     On 9/7/19 10:47 AM, Paul Wouters wrote:
>
>     > I would think it is the other way, it is easier for us since
>     most of the
>     > work happens on the lists, and people who keep offending the
>     policies can
>     > be moderated so that they can fix their tone and stay on the
>     technical
>     > content of their message.
>
>     I maintain my position that "tone" is entirely subjective. For this
>     reason it is easy to criticize "tone" as a way of avoiding
>     criticizing
>     technical content, and distracting from the technical content.
>     Criticizing "tone" is itself a kind of personal attack, and should
>     not
>     IMO be permitted.
>
>     Keith
>
>
> It cuts both ways. Tone is entirely about the point where two apes 
> interact, so it is always 'personal'. What we're calling 'tone' is 
> metadata, its use in conversation is to affect the listener's 
> emotional state. It can be just as effective in distracting from the 
> guts of the conversation as criticism.

Tone is not "metadata", at least as I've ever seen the term used.   
"Tone" is either deliberately a layer of the actual content of 
communications (if intended by the sender), or interpretation by a 
reader that is not the literal meaning of the words, and may not have 
been intended by the sender.   The latter is inherently subjective.   
The same words are not interpreted in the same way by every reader, and 
different readers can sometimes interpret the same phrase in 
diametrically opposite ways.

> Asking every recipient to modify their human/emotional response to a 
> message's structure/terseness/choice of words/idioms/etc. seems much 
> less effective than asking the one sender to be conscious of it when 
> writing. Best when they both happen, together, of course. (It's easier 
> to read in good faith if you have a sense that the writer wrote in 
> good faith.)

I'm surprised that you and others seem to think it is easy for a sender 
to anticipate how their message will be read.

Last I knew, the IETF list had tens of thousands of recipients. 
(Granted, that was a long time ago, so my information may be 
outdated.)   Different readers will naturally react to the same message 
in different ways.  Asking every sender to anticipate the spectrum of 
reactions from every recipient and write their message to avoid all 
potential of adversely affecting the listeners' emotional states, seems 
much less effective than expecting recipients to consider that writers 
who come from a wide spectrum of backgrounds are going to think and 
speak differently from one another.

As you point out, these are not mutually exclusive.   There is a need 
for due care on the part of both the author and the readers.   But it's 
not like there's some simple set of rules that an author can follow to 
avoid creating distracting emotional states on a reader's part.

For example, you cited "terseness".   An author may deliberately be 
terse because the author believes that readers are more likely to read 
and understand a brief message than a lengthy one.   Or maybe an author 
will compose a terse reply to acknowledge having read a message, but 
feel like it's not appropriate or wise to burden the list with a lengthy 
reply.   Maybe that author feels like it's a pointless argument, or that 
it's been gone over many times with no new conclusion or understanding.  
A different author, or the same author in a different circumstance, may 
judge it more effective to go into detail.

One reader may interpret a terse message as an insult, especially if the 
reader sees that message as being directed at them and expected to have 
a conversation on the topic.   Another reader may be grateful that the 
message was easy to read or that a lengthy conversation didn't ensue.

There probably are concrete writing suggestions that could be made that 
would be helpful.  But "tone" means whatever a reader wants it to mean, 
or is predisposed to think it means (deliberately or not), based on that 
reader's culture, education, conditioning, and experiences.   The same 
is true for "professional", "polite", and any of several other vague 
descriptions.

A big concern I have is with the idea that it's the sender's fault if 
the sender accidentally pushed some reader's buttons. While there are 
some buttons that are widely shared among humans, there are many that 
are not.

Add to this the fact that criticizing people's "tone" is a very common 
way of attacking people and/or ideas for political gain. That makes 
vague demands about "tone" extremely dangerous.

Finally, when a small number of appointed individuals take on the role 
of deciding whose "tone" is "appropriate", with no transparency or 
community oversight, it creates a very dangerous locus of political 
control over the organization - even if those individuals never actually 
silence people because of their perceived "tone".   Of course, when 
those same individuals are empowered to silence contributors because of 
their "tone", any pushback from those individuals carries with it an 
implied threat whether or not this is intended.   So not only do I think 
"tone policing" is inappropriate for IETF, I think it's doubly 
inappropriate if the SAAs take on that job.

> A thought I try to think before hitting send is: is this valuable 
> enough that it's worth rephrasing?

The normal process of developing ideas on a mailing list is to 
repeatedly rephrase until there's an improvement in agreement, or at 
least improved understanding of the differences, or until it appears 
that no further good can be accomplished.   The value to any recipient 
is also subjective, and a recipient's interpretation may say more about 
the recipient than about the sender.

But sure, at any point in a conversation a sender might do well to ask 
"is this particular message adding value?"   Different people might 
answer in different ways.

> None of this is about policing or enforcement, mind. I don't even want 
> to think about that until we understand what it is that would be being 
> enforced.

The mere hint of a threat of policing or enforcement, of something that 
is completely subjective, is frightening.

Keith