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

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

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.

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.  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.

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.

Barry

On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 3:44 PM Keith Moore <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> On 6/13/22 09:24, Warren Kumari wrote:
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>
>> Even if it feels "rude" to speak up.   It always feels rude to speak truth to power.   And even if the same kind of speech at work would result in reprisals - because quite often at work, challenging the boss is a career-limiting move even when you're 100% right and the wrong decision would harm people.   Fortunately, we don't have bosses in IETF.   And that's just one reason that "professional" is a poor criterion for inappropriate speech in IETF.
>>
>>
>> The way that people know that it's okay to speak up is to witness other people speaking up, even being "rude" or "unprofessional", and not being subjected to reprisal.   An atmosphere of candor is important to ensuring a safe space for honest technical discussion.
>
>
>
> Yup, I mostly agree. Professional (well, the opposite of unprofessional) has always felt weird to me something to be aiming for.
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> For example, much of my behavior (and attire -  e.g: https://twitter.com/danyork/status/623142046031720449 ) would be "unprofessional" if I were working for IBM in the 1970's, or if I were a barrister / lawyer / etc. The obvious reply to this is "Well, duh, this is the IETF, not IBM in the 1970s, nor the Old Bailey. We have different culture and norms, and don't (generally) wear suits or silly wigs. What are you, stupid?!"
>
> And this both proves and disproves my point — my argument / analogy is clearly flawed and was a straw man - we were not talking about this sort of professional / unprofessional, and I tried to lead the argument down an unrelated path. Calling me out on that should be expected. However, adding the "duh" and "What are you, stupid?!" moves it from "calling out" / "candor" to something approaching "rude" and ad hominem (and adding "silly" is just unnecessarily insulting an outside group).  But, to my point, "unprofessional" seems more "violating our cultural norms"...but that assumes that our norms are actually the ones that we want… But, I also don't think that "rude" is the right word  - "discourteous" actually seems like the closest I can come up with.
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> I think "rude" and also "professional" mean different things to different people, and that's part of the problem with using those words to set bounds for behavior in IETF.
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> I don't really agree with your "It always feels rude to speak truth to power." - I fully agree that it can be (and usually is) uncomfortable, and that it's always possible to *be* rude when speaking truth to power, but I think that if we try for courteous  (or, at least try to not be discourteous) we can get on much better.
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> People often rely on a "felt sense" of what is and is not appropriate behavior.  Or to put it differently, behavior is often regulated by conditioning more than rational thought.   And it generally feels uncomfortable to violate that conditioning.   But different people may use different words for that uncomfortable feeling - one person might feel like they're being rude, another might feel like they're doing something dangerous, and so on.
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> And while I think I agree that IETF participants should be courteous to one another, even that is problematic because to some it might feel discourteous to object to someone else's poor idea.
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> Keith
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>