Re: A contribution to ongoing terminology work

[Dan Harkins <[e-mail]>]

   I'm saddened and shocked at the inability of IETF leadership to
understand satire.

   Do you think that Swift's "A Modest Proposal" really advocated
cannibalism or was it, perhaps, a satirical response to a problem
that should not have been taken literally?

   I'll point out that 3 satirical April 1 drafts were deleted at
the vocal insistence of Niels ten Oever who produced his own unfunny
April 1 RFC. Lars dutifully responded on twitter that he was
removing these drafts, and received the applause of the censorious
who then proceeded to cheer their own contribution.

   Niels noted that people should make fun of those who have more
power then they do. Well I think it's obvious who has the power.
It's the people you're not allowed to make fun of.

   Dan.

On 4/1/21 8:20 PM, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
> [obligatory disclosure: this is not a statement of the IESG, and I did not
> consult with any of my fellow ADs on its content before sending.  It is
> shaped in part by some discussions we had, but the opinions expressed are
> my own.]
>
> On Thu, Apr 01, 2021 at 02:57:36PM -0500, Nico Williams wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 01, 2021 at 09:40:16PM +0200, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
>>> In other words: is holding or expressing the opinion that "ongoing
>>> efforts to make the IETF more accessible to all interested
>>> participants are somehow overblown, not useful, or Orwellian in
>>> nature" a violation of the code of conduct?
>> That would be Orwellian in itself, wouldn't it.  I await Lars' response.
> I note that based on timezones, Lars is likely asleep and that both Friday
> and Monday are public holidays in his locale, so a response from Lars may
> not be forthcoming until after that.
>
> As far as the quoted question itself, the answer is "no", and we tried to
> indicate that by saying "contributions of diverse opinions are encouraged,
> [but] they need to be done in accordance with the code of conduct,
> respecting the other individuals and opinions in the discussion".
>
> Stepping back to a more abstract level, the most respectful way that I know
> of to have a discussion when there are strongly conflicting views is to
> take an approach that produces messages structured roughly like (with []
> indicating portions that only sometimes appear): "I believe that I
> understand what you would like to have happen in this case, and it is
> <restatement in my own words>.  [However, the actual text that you are
> proposing in this draft seems to me to actually have the effect of
> <something else>.]  This seems problematic to me because I think it will
> cause <thing>, which I think is harmful.  [Additional justification of why
> <thing> is harmful.]"  This makes it very clear that there is an active
> attempt both to understand and acknowledge what the differing party wants
> to do, and to provide a causality chain to harm that may be caused by that
> proposal.  It also provides ample opportunities to clarify miscommunication
> or misundersatnding, as well as to determine whether any deviations between
> the stated intent and the implications of the specific wording of the
> proposal are inadvertent.
>
> But, while this approach is pretty reliable, it is also a lot of work!  So
> it's perfectly understandable and normal to only use a subset of it, or
> other forms of discourse, depending on the situation.
>
> I believe that in some situations, satire is a prefecly usable technique
> and can be a good tool for conveying sentiments akin to those I summarize
> above as "this sees problematic to me because I think it will cause
> <thing>, which I think is harmful".  But it, by itself, does essentially
> nothing to cover the "I understand what you would like to have happen" or
> "however, the actual text that you are proposing in this draft seems to me
> to actually have the effect of <something else>" parts, and if those cannot
> be filled in in some other way, it's not a very effective mode of
> communication, at least for a technical discussion.  Implicitly asking the
> reader to put in the effort to backfill those other steps can be
> disrespectful, especially when there is a large gap to backfill, because it
> is asking the entire reader base to independently reimplement what could
> have been provided once by the writer.  (The size of this gap will, of
> course, vary from person to person and situation to situation, so
> reasonable people will tend to be accomodating of some level of variation.
> For some very well-done satire the gap is very easy to fill.)
>
> Returning now from the abstract level to this specific draft: in this case,
> speaking for myself as a reader, the gap between the presented satire and
> my understanding of the intent of what is being proposed in the terminology
> effort is so large that I simply cannot bridge it on my own.  The presented
> scenario is so different from my expectations that it's not even a
> "worst-case scenario" or "bad dream"; it just simply doesn't compute for
> me.  Maybe this is a lack of creativity on my part, and someone will step
> in and help show me what I'm missing, but I doubt that I'm alone in this
> regard.  I would have expected a contribution to an ongoing technical
> discussion to be respectful of the readership and ask less of the reader in
> understanding what point is being made.  Otherwise, the satire just looks
> like standalone satire and not a contribution to a technical discussion.
> (I hope it goes without saying that there's nothing intrinsically
> problematic about satire as satire, though IETF mailing lists are probably not
> the best place for it.)  But, I'm willing to operate on the assumption
> that we are still having a technical discussion about the proposed TERM
> working group.
>
> In that vein, Ipromise to put in the effort to receive and attempt to
> understand any reasoning that is sent to me about why the proposed
> terminology work is not something that the IETF should undertake.  I
> especially encourage messages covering aspects related to what I write
> above about "however, the actual text that you are proposing in this draft
> seems to me to actually have the effect of <something else>", since I think
> I am seeing significant gaps between what the proponents of the work are
> saying the work is intended to do and what the opponents of the work are
> saying it will actually do.  The proposed TERM charter is currently on the
> agenda of the 2021-04-08 IESG telechat.  Per
> https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/6yVtXkj3wJjQxQA29On8-Lyvwmw/
> please send your comments to [e-mail] by 2021-04-05.
>
>
>
> In closing, I'd like to follow up on a couple points from Lars' note.  While
> IESG members are saddened by this draft, we do not claim a right to not
> be sad.  Lloyd can post this draft, and the community members (including me)
> can respond to it, and I am sad about what I see as a detrimental effect on
> the organization, [1] but the draft is still up, and we are talking about it.
> There were two other drafts posted today that were removed from the I-D
> repository for being clearly in violation of the code of conduct, but Lars'
> note says only that this draft is "not in alignment with our code of
> conduct", which can cover many points on a spectrum.  I don't think this
> says that Lloyd is bad or that Lloyd's opinions are bad, just that we can
> do better at having a respectful technical discussion that is more closely
> aligned with the code of conduct.  Nobody's perfect (we will never be
> perfectly aligned with the code of conduct), and we understand that on
> occasion we all will get close to the boundary of the code of conduct, and
> that's not intrinsically a failing on our part when it happens.  What's
> most important is that someone notices when we're veering astray and how we
> respond when it's pointed out.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ben
>
> [1] I see this draft as having a detrimental effect because, in constructing
> an elaborate work of (what I assume to be) satire but introducing it as "a
> contribution" with no acknowledgment of its nature or attempt to "bridge
> the gap", the author seems to be setting up the sense that the efforts
> related to terminology are jocular as well.  I can understand if people who
> are advocating the work feel disrespected when receiving the sentiment that
> their effort is a joke, and I see how that would in practice make us a less
> open organization.  While there is value in satire, if I have to estimate
> the value that this draft, as presented (with minimal introduction on the
> list) adds, and compare it against an estimate of the harm it causes, the
> net effect seems more likely detrimental than beneficial, and so I am sad.
>

-- 
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius