Re: Rude responses (Was: Last Call: <draft-ietf-spfbis-4408bis-19.txt> (Sender Policy Framework (SPF) for Authorizing Use of Domains in Email, Version 1) to Proposed Standard)

[Pete Resnick <[e-mail]>]

On 8/21/13 4:40 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 8/21/2013 12:46 PM, Pete Resnick wrote:
>> It is not your complaint about the imposition of new requirements that
>> is problematic, or your point that it is not useful to continue that
>> line of discussion. Talk about the utility of a comment all that you
>> want. It is the sarcasm and the rudeness that I am saying is
>> unreasonable. Especially coming from a senior member of the community,
>
> OK.  No sarcasm in IETF postings.  Good luck with that.

Luckily, again, that's not what I said or intended.

Some evidence to the contrary, the IETF is a human endeavor. It involves 
interactions among people. So there will be sarcasm, and humor, and loss 
of temper, and comments with all sorts of embedded meanings. Sometimes 
these things lighten the mood, make the conversation more interesting, 
cause people to think about things in different ways, and contribute to 
the interaction. Sometimes they can have seriously problematic effects. 
Sometimes it will be unclear. And, even though some of our ranks appear 
to want it to be otherwise, there are no nice engineering specs for 
this. It's all very contextual, and is going to depend on the speakers 
and the listeners and the topic of conversation. Social interactions are 
complicated that way.

But there is something going on in the present thread, and in particular 
the mode of communication I objected to here, that I think warrants 
pushback:

> More seriously...
>
> You might have noticed that there have been a variety of folk making 
> unrealistic or misguided suggestions and that they have been receiving 
> entirely muted and exploratory -- albeit negative -- responses.
>
> The implication that I think you've missed here is the obligation that 
> should hold for a 'senior' participant who is lodging concerns.  The 
> current thread is being tenaciously pursued by another "senior" member 
> and former AD and the line of objections and requirements being put 
> forward are studiously ignoring the considerable efforts of the 
> working group and the considerable practical field history.
>
> As such, they represent their own form of disrespect.

I used the word "bullying" with regard to your particular message for a 
very specific reason. Bullying is normally using one's position of power 
to intimidate. I want to circle back a bit to the particulars of the SPF 
discussion:

The SPFBIS WG came to the conclusion regarding deprecating the use of RR 
99 through a very long discussion. There was an extensive review of 
data. (Indeed, there was some initial reluctance in the WG to do as much 
research into the numbers as was eventually done, and I think in the end 
everyone was glad that the WG did do as much work as it did on the 
topic.) There was an extensive discussion of the implications of all of 
the choices. And, with some rough edges, the WG pretty solidly convinced 
itself that it had chosen the right path. And not just that: The WG 
convinced both chairs that they had chosen the right path (one of the 
chairs being the chair of DNSEXT). And they convinced the responsible 
AD. And during WGLC they even convinced the responsible AD for DNSEXT, 
who was originally quite opposed, that the decision was well-considered 
and the correct one in the end. And I believe none of these folks were 
convinced because opposing views were kicked out of the conversation; 
data was presented and explanations were made, and they were convinced. 
Solid consensus was reached, such that as the eventual consensus caller, 
I am quite sure that I'm going to have to see a very carefully reasoned 
new argument in order for me to think that something was missed by this 
WG. Anyone currently outside of the consensus has a pretty high bar to 
clear; they are at a significant disadvantage in the conversation if 
they have an important point to make.

So, now at the point of IETF LC, the correct thing to happen is to let 
folks make their objections, point them to places in the prior 
conversation where the WG, the chairs, the ADs, and assorted other folks 
became convinced, and see if their arguments have some new subtlety that 
was missed earlier. And try to explain. Remember, these folks are 
already at a disadvantage; they've got an uphill climb to convince 
anyone else (especially, me and the rest of the IESG) that this 
long-considered conclusion is incorrect. IMO, that's the time to cut 
them as much slack as possible, because if they do have a serious 
objection hidden in among things that we've seen before, we *all* should 
want to hear it.

But that's not what's gone on. Some folks have simply dismissively said, 
"Go read the archive", without pointers. I found that 
less-than-collegial, and the more dismissive folks I dropped a private 
note asking them to cool it. The dismissiveness AFAICT simply encourages 
people to post more comments without looking at the previous 
conversation. But your note went above and beyond. The sarcasm was sharp 
and directed. It seemed intent on ridiculing. And coming from someone 
who is already on the side of the called consensus (the side that "has 
already won", though I dislike that formulation), directed to another 
senior member of the community with a great deal more experience in the 
DNS end of the world who has (perhaps unjustified or poorly-informed) 
worries that something was missed, I think it was pretty seriously 
ill-spirited and bullying. The *presumption* was that the person was 
"studiously ignorant", that he was being willfully blind of the prior 
conversation and refused to see the obvious. And the response has the 
side effect that anyone else who thinks they may see something that was 
missed had better back off lest they suffer similar attack.

Yes, coming to consensus on contentious issues is hard work. And now in 
the days of the IETF stovepiping, with cross area review not happening 
like it did in the past, contentious issues that cross areas and WGs are 
all the harder to get consensus around. And all I say is, "Tough." We 
have a Last Call process because we expect that not everyone can 
participate cross-area as much as we'd like, and we do want to do a 
final raking-over-the-coals to make sure nothing was missed. We need to 
figure out how to do that better, not use intimidation tactics that will 
cause the final review to not take place at all.

So, I think there's a significant difference between the time used 
(perhaps wasted) by people who are not up to speed and the "disrespect" 
that that implies, and the use of argument tactics by folks who have the 
presumption of having "won the argument". I'm much more willing to cut 
the former more slack.

---

That's all I really want to say on this topic. I won't begrudge you if 
you want to answer any of the above and defend yourself publicly, but 
I'll take any other comments I have to private email. I need to spend 
some time now going through the thread and make sure that all of the 
arguments being brought up *have* in fact been previously answered (a 
job made more difficult because folks were dismissive instead of 
providing pointers to early WG discussion where the arguments were 
answered) and summarize some conclusions. That way the people who think 
they still have objections have a chance to say, "No, Pete, you missed 
my point. There *is* a new argument hiding in there." And then I can 
make some judgments on that. That is, push the discussion to conclusion, 
not just shut it down.

pr

-- 
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - [phone]