Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

[Joseph Touch <[e-mail]>]

> On Jul 27, 2020, at 9:08 AM, Yoav Nir <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On 27 Jul 2020, at 15:50, Salz, Rich <rsalz=[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>>>    And I'm telling you that if you that the bar to compel speech is 
>>>   considerably
>>>   higher than rank assertions and fallacies.
>>> 
> 
>> Nobody is compelling anything,
> 
> The subject of this thread is “IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language”. Someone is definitely tryiing to compel people to not use what they consider to be oppressive and exclusionary language.

The doc says:

	Authors SHOULD … (avoid the following terms)
	RFC Editor MUST … (support this process by offering alternatives)

I.e., the only compelled party here is the RFC Editor - at best to provide suggested alternatives.

> ...
> IETF consensus is usually achieved by a small group of people who care about a particular subject.

That’s how the IETF works. If you want to change process, that’s a different doc.

> This doesn’t work here. Like every other topic, only the people who care about word usage are going to participate in the discussion, and maybe Dan and two others will be the only voices there against it. The people who don’t care so much, or the people who think the whole thing is just silly are not going to participate.  Yet this will end up in an RFC that is binding on everyone.   

That’s true of all IETF docs.

> The potential for a small but motivated group to hijack the process and dictate policy is great, and the argument that the process was open to everyone is not convincing. We all have limited time, and arguing language policy at the IETF is not a good use of time for most of us.  

You could say the same for the documents at the core of many current WGs. 

This is the process we have. If you want to change THAT, it would be a different proposal.

We’re not trying to ban words; we’re trying to help those who might not realize otherwise when certain words have current  connotations they might not have intended.

Joe