Re: Effective discourse in the IETF

[Jared Mauch <[e-mail]>]

> On Jul 3, 2019, at 11:14 AM, Job Snijders <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> That is, we tend not to engage in self-censorship.
> 
> I respectfully disagree, I believe there have been milions of instances
> where IETFers have deleted and not-yet-send emails because they realized
> that for one reason or another the message would not positively
> contribute.

I think there’s a few things here, mostly that we often don’t realize what is
Constructive and what isn’t.  In politics there is the phrase if you’re explaining you are losing.  

In technical discussions you often have to discuss very nuanced things and it’s easy to get lost in that and not realize when you have crossed the line from civil discourse to calling someones baby ugly.

While I appreciate the directness of my dear Dutch friend, some peoples perceptions of this may be it’s a hostile environment or some self-censorship is necessary.  I’m seeing a lot of things that I may feel are low quality pass through the IETF while others feel it’s their paramount achievement of their industry experience.  History will judge meanwhile we can’t hold back the technical critiques while at the same time, it’s large enough that one person may not be able to know it all.

This whole discussion is as much about the culture and history of the IETF as it is about where we are going as an industry group.

People here often turn petty gripes into a big thing (hey, my $800/free t-shirt size, room temps, are you my travel coordinator/cruise director) when they’re unrelated to the main function which is the actual work of the IETF.  The apex of this was the bad attitude event where some members of the secretariat presented.  I noticed the gripes went away (for awhile) after that.  I hope the personal gripes stay away, and a great example of how this went well was the power outage at a recent IETF meeting.  Things just kept going on.

Be the best version of yourself when on the list, and if you have feedback for me about how I’ve been horrible, I will accept your private critiques.  Ask around and you can get my cell number easily (or if you look carefully it’s out there) and call me.

Don’t e-mail when angry, go for a walk (or something else that will help you destress) and re-read before hitting send.

See many of you in Montreal!

- Jared